The storm did not ease with dawn. It pressed against the shutters of the teahouse like a living weight, rain hammering the tiles, wind dragging its nails along the roof beams. The brazier's embers had died, leaving only a cold red glow that could not warm the air.
Li Ziyan sat at the low table, hair unbound from its pin, eyes hollow from a night without sleep. The strip of silk from Prince Ning lay between her fingers, its ink still sharp, its words still heavy: We will speak of the river and the bridge.
Wei stirred first, waking with a flinch as if from a blade in a dream. He tucked the knife back into his sash and studied her without speaking. Li Qiang brought water from the courtyard urn, his movements efficient, his silence heavier than Wei's. Both men were waiting for her to say something—anything—that would give them shape and purpose.
But words did not come.
The quiet stretched until Ziyan finally placed the strip of silk back into its tube and said, "Prince Ning will not rest until he knows whether I stand with him or against him. He gives me no ground but his own."
Wei tilted his head, wary. "And Li Wenxu?"
At her father's name, Ziyan's throat tightened. She saw him again, as he had sat in the Hall of Clear Judgment: unmoving, his silence deeper than Ning's decree, his eyes flat as river ice. She had once believed silence could be mercy. Now it seemed a blade.
"Li Wenxu builds walls behind walls," she said. "Every step I take leads to a door he placed long ago. Lianhua was only one of many. If Prince Ning tugs the thread hard enough, it will lead back to him."
Li Qiang's jaw set. "Then it will strangle you as well."
"Perhaps that is what he intends," Ziyan murmured.
The storm outside cracked with thunder. For a long while, no one spoke.
By mid-morning, the rain thinned to needles of mist. A messenger arrived from the palace: Prince Ning required her presence by the next bell. The courier did not wait for reply; he bowed and vanished into the dripping streets.
Ziyan rose, spine taut though her limbs felt like lead. Li Qiang wrapped her cloak around her shoulders, his touch brief and without hesitation. Wei checked the knife at his side, then the latch on the door, as though the palace itself might send hands to snatch her before she reached it.
As they walked through the city, whispers followed them like smoke. Merchants leaned from stalls to murmur her name. Scholars in pale robes averted their eyes but not their ears. Even the guards at the palace gate looked longer than protocol allowed. A Vice Minister stripped of her seals but still walking free—such a figure was neither safe nor doomed, but something more dangerous: a question with no answer.
The Hall of Autumn Lattice lay waiting. Its screens of carved cranes and verses caught the gray light, turning it brittle.
Prince Ning stood within, hands clasped behind his back, gaze on the faint reflection of the moon in the courtyard pool. He did not turn when Ziyan entered, nor when she bowed with the exact degree required.
"Two spies were taken last night," he said at length. "One spoke of you. The other spoke of your father."
The air froze. Wei, standing behind Ziyan, shifted as though struck. Li Qiang's hand moved half an inch toward his sword and stopped.
Ziyan's voice did not waver. "What did they say?"
Ning finally turned, his eyes unreadable. "That Li Wenxu dealt with Xia's envoys in the year of the famine. That he bartered the learning halls' grain stipends for assurances that the empire would not close its schools while others starved. That you, unknowingly, served his designs when you opened your door to the woman called Lianhua."
Her heart clenched. She remembered her father's measured calm when men starved in the outer provinces, his refusal to divert granaries from the academies and libraries. She had told herself it was the logic of education, a cruelty for the sake of learning. Now the shape of that cruelty revealed a deeper shadow.
"My father is Minister of Education," she said carefully. "His name is bound to this dynasty by more than rumor."
Ning's gaze sharpened. "Names bind nothing. Only fear and debt bind. Tell me, Minister Li—if the choice stands between father and throne, which bond will you honor?"
The hall seemed to contract. Rain pattered against the screens like a drumbeat.
Ziyan did not answer.
Ning let the silence linger before he spoke again. "For now, you will continue as you have. But every word you hear, every whisper you catch—you will bring to me. Not to your father. Not to the Grand Secretariat. Only to me."
His tone remained even, but the meaning was iron.
When she left the hall, the air seemed sharper, as though her lungs had been cut by glass. She walked quickly through the corridors, Li Qiang and Wei close behind, until they reached the safety of the outer streets. Only then did her steps falter.
By the time they returned to the teahouse, night had fallen. The storm raged again, wind moaning through the shutters. Ziyan sank to the floor near the brazier, pulling her cloak around her shoulders as if it might hold her together.
Her chest ached. Ning's leash was invisible but she could feel it, tugging her every breath. Worse was the shadow of her father's name, the possibility that everything—her rise, her hope, her trust—was only another stone in a riverbed he had dug long ago.
At last, the weight broke her. She pressed her face into her hands, and the tears came—hot, unbidden, unstoppable. They slid between her fingers and fell onto the cloak in slow, traitorous drops.
Li Qiang knelt beside her without a word. His hand, calloused and steady, hovered before it found her shoulder, resting there like a promise made of earth.
Wei lingered by the brazier, his eyes dark but softer than usual. He set a fresh log into the coals and said quietly, "You are not alone in this."
The fire caught, filling the room with crackle and light. The words did not heal, but they kept her from drowning.
Later, when the tears had thinned, Ziyan lifted her head. The storm outside had not broken, but here, in this dim room, warmth flickered. She looked at Li Qiang—mercenary, soldier, loyal despite the world—and at Wei—spy, wanderer, bound by guilt yet still here.
For a fleeting moment, she felt something dangerous: happiness. The fragile kind that comes not from safety but from knowing one is not entirely abandoned.
It confused her. Comfort from two men whose pasts could ruin her. A warmth that felt like betrayal of her own caution. She leaned into it anyway, if only for a breath.
"Tomorrow," she whispered. "We endure tomorrow."
Neither argued. That, too, was comfort.
The next morning, the storm calmed. A courier from the Censorate arrived, his robe spattered with river mud. He bowed low and presented a sealed dispatch.
Inside was a single line, written in the hand of the Emperor himself:
The Minister of Education, Li Wenxu, is to be summoned before the Dragon Throne for inquiry regarding matters of state and war.
The brazier snapped. Ziyan's fingers trembled. Her father's river had surfaced at last.
And she stood, unready, between the bridge and the flood.