On the walk back to the city, snow fell as if each flake had been measured in the Education Ministry. The teahouse's warmth struck her like a hand that did not hurt. Li Qiang looked up from mending a strap, Wei from boiling ginger with too much fire. Zhang Jinrui stepped in from the alley a moment later, bringing the smell of river iron.
"The Emperor has made you the knot between two ropes," Jinrui said after she told them what she was allowed to tell. "Ning holds one. Your father holds the other."
"Then we will see who bruises the wrist first," Ziyan said. She laid out three sheets and weighed them with common stones. "Two ledgers. One true, one… almost true. The almost true will carry a small flaw that only an Education clerk would notice." She dipped her brush. "The Censorate will receive the true under Ning's seal. The almost true will travel by family hands."
Wei watched the characters grow. "And if both reach Lord Gao before dawn?"
"Then the river carries more boats than we counted," she said. "And we begin to scuttle them."
They worked until the lamps leaned. Ziyan's script was cool and thin, her seals light, her margins clean—invitation without confession. She dusted the pages with fine ash and breathed out once until her chest ached. The phoenix mark beneath her sleeve held its peace.
When she went to sand the copies, the door slid open without knock. Li Cheng stood there, cheeks bright with cold and purpose, holding a lacquered sleeve case she recognized too quickly.
"I took this by mistake," he blurted, setting it on the table with theatrical care. "A clerk put it with the household packets."
Ziyan looked at the case. A faint nick marked its lower edge where she had once caught it on the lip of a drawer. This case had never left her room until now.
"What made you notice the mistake?" she asked gently.
"The ribbon," he said, almost proud. "Your sea-green ribbon for 'urgent—eyes only.' I remembered it from your desk and thought—well—my aunt said the family should help."
Behind her, Wei stopped breathing. Li Qiang's hand, flattening a crease, went still.
Ziyan smiled as if soothed. "You did well to return it, Cheng." She slid the case back toward herself and did not check what was inside; she would not give him that lesson yet. "Come to the Bureau tomorrow. I will have you copy titles all morning until you are too bored to make mistakes again."
His face shone. He bowed too many times. He left, his boots cheerful against the stair.
Wei exhaled. "Your father's hand."
"My father's hand," Ziyan agreed. "And too eager to hide it."
Jinrui rested two knuckles against the window lattice and listened to the wind. "Gao will test the rumor that family navigates you. Ning will test whether you obey him when the current pulls the other way. The Emperor watches to see if you drown with dignity."
"And you?" Ziyan asked without looking up.
"I test whether your enemies taste choke-weed or plum," he said.
She rewrote two headers. In the faintest corner, where only someone trained to look for a watermark would think to look, she brushed a thread-thin feather in diluted ink on the true ledger, and a drifting cicada on the almost true. No clerk would see it; a collector of rare books might. Her father would, if he handled the paper himself. She hoped he would.
Snow whispered harder at the shutters. The city beat its slow drum through the night. Ziyan folded the ledgers, sealed them—not with the heavy stamp of office, but with a small knot of cord only she used, easily cut, easily tied again, a mark thieves mistake for carelessness.
"Li Qiang, take the true ledger to the Censorate's night box," she said. "Wei, shadow Cheng. If he turns left at the river, he goes to the family shrine. If he turns right, he goes to Lord Gao."
"And if he walks straight?" Wei asked.
"Then he is cleverer than I thought," Ziyan said.
They moved. Jinrui's men faded with them as if the walls were water. Ziyan stayed by the brazier and watched the fire eat its own edges, ember to ash to dullness. She had learned many things in the last season: that a prince's gentleness could hold steel, that a father's protection could be a lid, that hope was a kind of thief. Tonight she would learn how far blood could be diluted before it was no longer called family.
She blew out the lamp and sat in the half-dark until the door slid again.
Li Wenxu did not enter. His voice came from the corridor, low and perfectly polite. "Daughter," he said, as if the word were a rope he was measuring, "I sent Cheng to assist you. He will be useful if you teach him. Teach him the right things."
"The right things," she repeated, and let the rope coil at her feet.
"Do not disappoint the house," he added, and his step receded.
Ziyan smiled into the dark where no one could see. Tomorrow, the cicada would sing in one ear and the feather would fall in another. Between them, a river would choose a bank.
At dawn, a boy from the outer kitchens pounded up the stairs, red-faced with cold and triumph. "Mistress!" he blurted. "Assistant Li—your cousin—he took a packet to Lord Gao's steward before first bell. I saw the cord; I swear it!"
Ziyan rose to her feet. The brazier had gone to sullen coals. Outside, the snow stopped as if the sky had closed its account.
"Good," she said, voice light as paper. "Let's see who shivers first."