Ren kept his eyes lowered to hide a flash of something dangerously like satisfaction.
"Your Majesty," Minister Qiao tried again, "if Qi learns of this—"
"They will," the Emperor said. "They will call it meddling. They already call anything they dislike by that name. Let them exhaust themselves burning tiles while my border villages grow used to not being beaten without witness."
His voice softened, so slightly that only those close to the dais heard.
"I am not a fool, Qiao," he said. "I know what it means when people learn they can say 'no.' But I am also not blind. I see what hunger, and unrecorded fists, and men like Zhang have made of maps. If Xia is to stand when I am gone, its bones must be stronger than fear."
The word gone hung in the incense-thick air.
Ren's head jerked up before he could stop himself.
The Emperor smiled, faintly. "Don't look so startled, General," he said. "Men who cough blood into their handkerchiefs do not live forever. Even Emperors find their lungs less impressed by titles as the years pass."
He flicked a glance at the courtiers. They looked away, as if treason lay in acknowledging mortality.
"When I die," the Emperor went on, as conversationally as if discussing weather, "my heir will inherit borders drawn by wolves and tended by men like you. I would prefer he also inherit villages that have learned at least a little how to think. It will make his life harder. It will make his realm harder to steal."
He turned back to Ren.
"Deliver this edict yourself to the western command," he said. "Explain it to the captains in words they understand. And send a copy…" His eyes flicked briefly to the rafters, where shadow lived. "…where it needs to go."
Ren swallowed. "Yes, Your Majesty."
"Good," the Emperor said. "Now go tell my border that I am becoming sentimental in my old age. It will confuse them. Confusion is often safer than certainty."
As Ren backed out of the hall, scroll in hand, Feiyan dropped like a shadow from the highest beam, landing on the outer roof with a soft thud.
She was waiting on the western parapet when he emerged.
"Well?" she demanded, falling into step beside him as if roofs had always been meant for company.
"He's drawn a little circle around your halls," Ren said. "Calls them 'protected neutral markets' as long as they keep your tablets and pay his taxes. Orders his captains not to raid under pretext of 'fighting bandits.'"
Feiyan's brows rose. "That's generous," she said. "Border captains will hate it. Bandits too."
"Minister Qiao nearly swallowed his beard," Ren said. "He thinks the Emperor is giving away Heaven's authority."
"He's trading one kind for another," Feiyan said. "Less whip, more argument."
They leapt a gap between roofs; snow hissed under their boots.
"And you?" she asked. "What do you think?"
"I think," Ren said slowly, "that your Speaker will be pleased to know there are places where her sparrow will get fewer spears and more side-eye."
Feiyan's grin flashed, quick and fierce. "I'll tell her," she said. "She's been waiting for the other shoe to drop on Xia's side. This is more like the Emperor throwing her a slightly used sandal."
Ren huffed a laugh despite himself.
They reached the western gate tower. Bai'an lay below, roofs packed tight, river a dark strip beyond.
"You know this won't last," Feiyan said. "Emperors die. Regents sharpen knives. You're building something delicate on a coughing man's breath."
"I know," Ren said. "So are you."
She tipped her head. "Difference is," she said, "your man sits on a throne. Mine sits on a stone in a square and refuses to call it a throne."
He considered that.
"The Emperor asked me to send a copy of his edict 'where it needs to go,'" he said. "He didn't say Yong'an. But he looked at your beam when he said it."
"Then he's less sentimental than he made out," Feiyan said. "He knows where his leaks are."
She held out a hand. Ren passed her the second copy; she rolled it and tucked it into her sleeve.
"I'll carry both stories," she said. "Zhang's new whip, your Emperor's little shield. Ziyan can make of them something useful."
Ren rested his hands on the cold stone of the parapet.
"Tell her," he said quietly, "that the day may come when my orders and hers point different ways. When that happens, I will stall as long as I can. But I am still Xia's man."
Feiyan's eyes softened, briefly.
"I know," she said. "That's why I bother talking to you. Men who know where they stand are easier to tilt."
He snorted. "I thought you preferred people who didn't know where they stood, so you could knock them over."
"Those are for practice," she said.
She stepped onto the battlement's edge, balanced for a heartbeat like a sparrow between flights, and then dropped out of sight, into the city's arteries.
Chapter 271
In Reed Mouth, four days later, a rider arrived with two scrolls.
The village headman had never held anything sealed with the Emperor's crest before. His hands shook as he broke the wax.
He read the first decree, lips moving: protected neutral markets… sparrow mark… no beating without witness… pay your tax, keep your tablets…
Then he unrolled the second, written in a different hand on humbler silk.
Acknowledge receipt of Xia's edict, Ziyan's message began. Where it shields your hall, use it. Hang it next to your tablets. When Qi's officers call you 'bandit', point to the Emperor's seal and ask them if they plan to start a war over a scale.
Aunt Cao peered over his shoulder, squinting.
"She's cheeky," the old woman said approvingly. "I like her."
The headman swallowed. "It says here," he went on, "that if a captain from Xia beats someone in our hall without witness, we are to write his name and send it along with the story. To Yong'an, and to Bai'an both."
He looked up at the scout who had brought the letters. "Is that… allowed?" he asked.
The scout—Ren's wiry woman, cheeks more windburnt than before—smiled thinly.
"Lots of things are allowed now that no one's had the courage to try," she said. "My general says: if a man wears Xia's colors and ignores the Emperor's own edict, he embarrasses us more than you. Call him out. Quietly. Through the right pigeons."
"And if Qi's men come?" the headman asked.
"Then you're already doing better than most," the scout said. "You'll have two sets of paper to wave and more law than they like. Sometimes, that buys a night."
Aunt Cao snorted. "Sometimes night is enough," she said. "Dawn changes people's minds."
They hung the Emperor's edict on one side of the tavern beam, Ziyan's rougher silk on the other, and the original sparrow between them.
The beam creaked, but did not crack.
—
In Yong'an, under a sky that finally remembered how to be clear, Ziyan stood before a map that had outgrown its table.
New marks dotted it: Haojin, Reed Mouth, Green Dike, Stone Gate's empty circle, Pomegranate Bend. Tiny sparrows marched in ink across the western borderlands.
Feiyan laid the Emperor's edict and Ren's latest report beside Zhang's newest curse.
"Three voices," she said. "One calling you disease. One calling you experiment. One calling you city."
Ziyan's eyes traced the lines.
"They all see us," she said quietly. "They all plan around us. They are starting to speak to one another through us, whether they like it or not."
Wei scratched his head. "And us?" he asked. "What do we call them?"
"Opportunities," Zhao suggested.
"Storms," Han said.
"Walls we haven't built yet," Ren the scribe offered.
Ziyan smiled, tired and sharp.
"Roads," she said. "Even they. Zhang's decrees. Xia's edicts. Our replies. All roads, crossing. We'd better learn quickly which ones lead to ash and which to something we can live on."
She picked up a brush, dipped it in ink, and drew a new line on the map—not where any border currently lay, but where the little sparrow marks were beginning to cluster.
"Here," she said, "is where the Road City truly lives. Not in Yong'an alone. Not in any decree. In the places where men like Du count differently, where headmen in Reed Mouth dare hang two crests and a bird on one beam, where Emperors cough and still choose to make beating harder."
She set the brush down.
"Now," she said, "we start teaching them how to be citizens of something that doesn't yet exist on anyone's map."
Outside, pigeons took off from Yong'an's coop, wings beating against the cold.
They carried scraps of ink written by a traitor-princess who refused crowns, a border general who loved his Emperor, a tired Emperor who loved his people more than his image, and a clerk in Ash Hall who had begun to hate the sound of his own neat lies.
The Road Under Heaven felt each little weight and adjusted, amused, as if to say: at last, you all remember what I'm for.