By the eighth stroke, Madam Chen looked bored. By the fifteenth, Second Aunt was counting wrong. At twenty, Li Wenxu lifted a finger and the poles ceased to matter. He spoke as if he were assigning a reading.
"Now," he said, "filial correction. Ziyan will sign a pledge that all future work will pass through the family seal before it sees the court. You will remain useful. We will remain unembarrassed. The dynasty remains calm. Everyone keeps warm."
Second Uncle's mouth curled. "And a marriage, elder brother. There are offers. A prudent match cures restless wings."
Li Rou's eyes gleamed. "The Governor of Yu Prefecture needs a second wife. He likes clever birds in cages."
Wei would have laughed then if he'd been in the room. Li Qiang would have broken something. Ziyan only looked at the ancestral tablets, at the names that had once been a shelter and were now a ledger kept by men.
"And if I refuse?" she asked, evenly.
"You will not," Li Wenxu said, the shadow of Ning's words echoing in a different mouth. "But if you do, the family will memorialize the court. The Censorate tires of your name. You will learn how quickly a phoenix becomes a fire hazard."
Ziyan bowed—to the tablets, not to him. "I will not sign a pledge that makes a daughter a stamp." She turned. "But I will not tear the house in front of the house. Bring me a brush."
Madam Chen smiled, certain she had won. "Ink," she sang.
A junior servant hurried forward, clumsy with nerves. Ziyan took the brush and wrote, in a clear hand that made even Li Shide straighten: "Li Ziyan accepts responsibility for all work issued under her seal. The family is not answerable for her crimes or her virtues." She sanded it, folded it, set it on the low table. "There," she said. "You have what you wanted most: distance."
Second Aunt snapped her fan open again. "Impudent—"
The beaded curtain rustled. Wen Yufei slipped in like a shadow that knew the path better than the lamp. He bowed as if to the air. "Forgive the intrusion. The Ministry annex is lit past curfew. Sub-ledgers are moving to the furnace."
A silence dropped so hard even Madam Chen's perfume stumbled.
Li Wenxu did not start. "Housekeeping," he said. "Old paper molds."
Yufei's eyes did not leave Ziyan's. "The 'mold' is stamped with the Southern Academies' winter rosters. The names Lord Yu died for." He looked, then, at Wenxu. "And the cipher you taught me to see before you told me to forget."
Second Uncle's chair scraped. "Who are you to speak?"
"A man who has run out of why," Yufei said, and the weariness in it was older than his face. "Minister, if those papers burn, Gao becomes patient and Ning becomes curious. Only one of those is survivable."
Li Wenxu regarded him long enough to erase a lesser man. "You were told to stay hidden."
"I hid," Yufei said. "But she is no longer allowed to."
Ziyan stepped between them as if heat alone would part water. "When?"
"Now," Yufei said. "The furnace gate is open. Education clerks posted like novices at a funeral—hating the smoke and loving the ritual."
Madam Chen rose in outrage. "You will not leave this hall on the word of a servant!"
"He is not my servant," Ziyan said.
"Nor mine," Wenxu added, calm as dry ink. "But he is not wrong." He turned his head a fraction. "Cheng, keep kneeling. Qin-shi, stop counting."
Li Wenxu's gaze returned to Ziyan, colder than the snow outside. "Go then, Daughter. Save your ledgers. But remember what burns easier than paper."
"What is that?" she asked.
"Names," he said softly. "And houses."
She bowed again to the tablets, not trusting her tongue. When she turned, Li Mei and Li Rou shifted aside just enough to make her brush sleeves graze their silk—a small insult, a memorized habit. Second Aunt whispered something about ungrateful wings. Second Uncle stared as if measuring where a net should be cut.
At the threshold Yufei caught Ziyan's sleeve. Not to stop her; to whisper. "Prince Ning sent no courier—tonight. He waits to see if you run to him or away from your father. Whichever you choose, he will call it proof."
"Then I will choose the fire that warms more than it lights," she said.
They stepped into the biting night. In the outer court, a groom fumbled up with two horses; Li Qiang swung into the second saddle from the shadows where he had watched everything and been seen by no one. Wei slipped from a side gate with a scarf over his mouth and a knife under his cloak.
"Furnace gate?" Wei asked.
"Furnace gate," Yufei answered.
They rode. Snow hissed under iron shoes. The city's breath smoked in narrow lanes. Ahead, over the Education Ministry annex, a low red pulsed against cloud like a heartbeat that had learned to love its own ending.
By the canal bridge a runner in Ning's livery appeared, soaked to the bone, mouth blue. He thrust a tube toward Ziyan, breath shredding. "For—Minister Li—by order—second bell—Hall of Winter Lamps—bring all ledgers touching Southern Academies—Prince—"
The runner pitched forward into the slush, spent. Ziyan caught the tube, broke the seal with her thumb. Two characters only, in a hand that left no dust:
Look back.
She lifted her head. Across the canal, in the glow thrown by the annex furnaces, a line of clerks moved like mourners. And on the far bank, under a cypress, someone watched with an umbrella held too steady for a servant.
The umbrella tilted—a small, precise acknowledgment—then vanished behind smoke.
"Who?" Li Qiang asked.
"Someone who thinks he owns the river," Ziyan said, and drove her heels into the horse. "Let's see who burns first—the books, the house, or the hand that struck the match."