The annex gates shrieked in the storm like teeth grinding against bone. Smoke rolled low, thick with the acrid tang of burning ink, parchment, and wax. The Education Ministry's night furnace, meant for routine disposal, had become a pyre.
Ziyan's horse reared as a spray of sparks leapt into the sleet. Li Qiang vaulted down first, blade bare, shouting to Jinrui's men to fan out. Wei vaulted after, knife already catching the glow. Wen Yufei's face was pale beneath the smoke, but his eyes were fixed, not on the furnace, but on the silhouettes moving within its glow.
Clerks. Too many. Their robes were official, their motions too practiced to be mere cleaners. They fed bundles into the flames with grim devotion, ignoring the coughing that shook their chests. Each packet bore seals already half-melted, the cords shriveling like dead snakes.
"Pull them back!" Ziyan called, but Li Qiang's warning came first: "Not clerks—guards!"
The nearest "scribe" swung the bundle like a cudgel, striking one of Jinrui's scouts across the jaw. Another pulled a hidden blade from his sleeve, the parchment in his arms falling forgotten into the fire. What had looked like ritual was cover for destruction.
Ziyan pushed forward, arm raised to shield her face from heat. The furnace gaped like a dragon's mouth. A wooden ledger board cracked and split, sending embers into the night like fireflies fleeing. She glimpsed names, ink half-eaten, curling into unreadable ash: students, southern registries, the very records Yufei had warned of.
Wei slipped behind two guards, knife whispering once, twice, until they fell. His cloak caught flame at the edge; he tore it off without breaking stride. Li Qiang barreled through with sheer weight, scattering men like reeds before a storm. Jinrui's men caught the momentum, and soon the snow was striped with both ash and blood.
Ziyan herself lunged for a bundle still unburned. Her sleeve brushed sparks, searing through cloth to skin, but she clutched the papers close and smothered them in the wet hem of her robe. Pain seared her arm; she bit it down and pressed forward.
"More at the back!" Yufei shouted, pointing toward a side passage. "They're carrying crates!"
Ziyan staggered toward him, smoke clawing her lungs. She forced herself to see through the haze—beyond the flames, two men dragging a lacquer chest toward the river sluice, its lid already blackened. If they reached the water, the current would take the last of it.
"Stop them!" she rasped.
Li Qiang was already moving, but the furnace roof cracked above. A rain of timber fell, sending sparks in a blazing arc across the yard. One beam struck between him and the men with the chest, splitting the ground in a spray of sparks. The chest tipped, slid, and disappeared down the sluice with a hollow splash.
The river had taken its share.
Wei cursed, his blade dripping rain and blood alike. Yufei caught Ziyan's arm, dragging her back as the roof gave another groan.
"Out!" Li Qiang roared. "The whole annex is going!"
They stumbled clear just as the furnace wall collapsed inward, sending a pillar of flame skyward. Snow hissed into steam. The Education Ministry annex, once a hive of records and clerks, was now a burning carcass bleeding ink-black smoke into the winter sky.
Ziyan collapsed against the low wall by the canal, the rescued bundle still clutched in her arms. Her sleeve smoldered; Wei smothered it with his cloak. Yufei knelt beside her, his face streaked with soot. Li Qiang stood guard, eyes scanning the shadows.
From the far side of the river, the umbrella figure reappeared, still and composed amidst the chaos. Even as the annex roared and timbers fell, he did not move closer. The umbrella tipped again—acknowledgment, mockery, something in between—and vanished into the night.
Ziyan's breath rasped. "He watched. He wanted this."
Yufei's hand pressed against hers, firm. "Not only him. Your father's hand was in this fire. The seal cords—they were his weave."
Ziyan's lips tightened, bloodless. She looked at the bundle she had saved. The ash-stained covers bore faint watermarks: cicadas. Her father's hand again. A ledger meant to burn, but not before she saw it.
Li Qiang crouched before her, voice low, urgent. "We need to move. Gao's men will say you lit the fire yourself. Ning's spies will say you carried the chest to the river. Anyone who saw will say what they are told to say."
"And my father," Ziyan whispered, "will say nothing at all."
Her vision swam, part smoke, part the phoenix mark burning beneath her sleeve. It pulsed as if alive, a heartbeat not her own. She pressed the papers tighter to her chest, though her arm screamed.
"Wei," she said. "How much did you see before it burned?"
"Enough," he said grimly. "Some names, half a cipher key. Enough to prove something existed, not enough to prove what."
"Then Gao will claim treason," Yufei said. "And Ning will claim silence. And your father—"
"—will claim nothing," Ziyan finished, bitter. "Which leaves me between three mouths, each ready to chew."
Snow fell harder, muffling the last groans of the annex fire. The wind carried ash down the river, past the bridge where the Xia envoy had died. Bridge. River. Ning's words again. The rope around her throat pulled tighter.
She rose unsteadily. Li Qiang steadied her without asking. Wei kept watch, knife bare, eyes sharp despite the exhaustion dragging at his shoulders. Yufei looked back at the fire as if seeing both past and future inside its flames.
"We lived," Ziyan said softly. "Barely. Which means someone wanted us to. For now."
Her fingers tightened on the rescued bundle. It was small, pitiful compared to the crates that had gone to the river, but it was all she had. Proof. Or bait. She could not yet tell which.
A horn sounded in the distance—imperial watch. Lights flickered on the far street. Voices approached.
Li Qiang swore under his breath. Wei glanced at Ziyan. Yufei's jaw clenched.
Ziyan drew her cloak tighter, the bundle hidden beneath. "We go. Now. Before the flames name us louder than any witness."
They vanished into the storm's teeth, ash trailing like ghosts behind them.
And on the far bank, beneath the cypress, the umbrella figure stood once more, though no servant could have reached that spot so quickly. He closed the umbrella, lifted it like a staff, and planted it into the earth.
Snow buried the mark within minutes. But the fire on the river wind carried its meaning forward.