The square remembered how to breathe. By midmorning, steam rose from the porridge pot in steady ghosts; a cobbler thumped nails into soles; geese argued with the well rope. The Cost from the earlier scuffle sat where she had left it—right ear ringing, split skin at the nail—but the ache had cooled from alarm to information.
The boy with the hoop kept orbiting her bench. He had decided that if he stayed within two arm lengths he wouldn't miss anything important.
"Do you have a name?" Xueyin asked.
He hesitated, then: "Ash." He said it like a dare, as if she might laugh.
"Good name," she said. "It remembers the fire but doesn't brag."
He grinned so wide his ears moved.
The reed-hat woman returned with a heel of bread wrapped in cloth. "For the quiet," she said. "And for the donkey."
"You already—" Xueyin began, then let the habit go and accepted the bread. "Thank you."
The yamen runner was back at the notice board. He had pasted the morning's marks high where hands would not worry at them and now stood with a small brush behind his ear, weighing whether to add something more. He looked like a man who argued with himself and often lost.
"Runner," Xueyin called softly, respectful of his work. "Do you need a witness line while it's fresh?"
He glanced over, surprised she would offer. Then he tapped a blank strip near the bottom and nodded. "One sentence. Plain words."
She spared ten breaths to fit her letters between the paste seams: Two men demanded coin. No ring declared. One knife dropped. Crowd safe. The brush left a thin, even trail; the tablet beneath hummed a little in approval. Records beat rumor.
Ash read the line with his lips and squinted. "Does that make them stay out?"
"It makes them think," Xueyin said. "Thinking is good work for a fool. It slows him down."
Her fingers throbbed again, a reminder. She tore the bread heel in half and slipped one piece into her coat for later. With the other, she walked to the porridge stall and bartered a small bowl with the last of last night's copper. Warmth spread through the cold corners of her.
"Can you play something small?" a grandmother asked from a stool near the well. "The baby slept poorly."
"Small is the easiest kind," Xueyin said. She set the instrument and let her hands rest on the strings without pressure. She counted to nine and gave the square the kind of tune that was more listening than song—three notes then a breath, three notes then a breath. The lantern paper over the well breathed with it; the baby's whimpering settled to a soft, offended snuffle and then to peace. People did not clap. They breathed, which was better.
Ash leaned in. "How do you make it so…thin?"
"Angle," she said. "And mercy. If you aim with mercy, you aim small."
He looked like he would chew that all day.
A man with flour on his sleeves hurried over from the bakery, eyes tight. "Musician," he said, "my oven door sticks and the crowd's loud; if the bread falls, my wife will throw me in the well."
"Let the oven keep its bread," Xueyin said. She stood, shifted one step to put the well and most windows behind her, and set a line toward the bakery lintel—no more than one pace wide, aimed at wood. One thin note brushed the beam. The men at the dice table stopped mid-throw, surprised to find their hands gentler. Inside the bakery, something thumped and then settled. The baker blew out a breath like a man who had just remembered how.
"Coin later," he said, already turning back to his work. "You have my thanks now."
"It spends just as well," she said, and smiled.
The square's noise rose again, this time without sharp edges. The runner finished his paste and stowed the brush. He took a slow lap around the rope that marked off the ring space on market days, then came back to Xueyin.
"If trouble returns," he said, "it will come from the mill lane. You'll hear them before I do."
"I'll listen," she said.
"You do that," he said, a little grudging, a little grateful. He pointed at her fingers. "Wrap those. The nail will split worse before it mends."
"I have thread," she said.
"Thread is for hoops," Ash put in, proud to know a thing. "She needs—what did the old man at the shrine call it? Habit."
"Both," Xueyin said. "Habit and thread."
She wrapped the split with the silk coil from last night, snug as a promise. The right ear's whisper stayed, but quieter now that the square had learned which way the notes would walk.
"Play this evening," the reed-hat woman called from her stall. "Small and near the well."
"If the wind behaves," Xueyin said again—because she liked how that line fit in the day.
Geese honked toward Mill Lane and then went suddenly quiet. The kind of quiet that had intention in it.
Ash looked up. "That sounded like a swear," he whispered, as if the geese had language she shouldn't hear.
"Geese always swear," Xueyin said, lifting the instrument. She moved with the runner without having to say they were moving together.
Mill Lane bent once around a store of reed mats and once more past a wagon in need of a wheelwright. A fine dust hung in the air, the kind that made light look harmless. At the far end, near the fence that kept back the winter-flooded ditch, three boys had a dog cornered with sticks. The dog was mostly ribs and winter; the boys were mostly nerves and pride.
"Stop," the runner said, easy and even. He didn't shout. He had learned to save shouting for rooms where it helped.
"It bit my brother last week," one boy said. His stick was too new; he had cut it fresh this morning to make this feel like a plan.
"Did you throw at it?" Xueyin asked.
"Maybe," the boy said, defiant by reflex.
"Then it learned a lesson you're trying to teach again," she said. "How many lessons do you need?"
Ash, suddenly at her side though no one had told him to come, held his broken hoop behind his back like a shield.
The dog's eyes flicked from stick to stick to the instrument. It was too tired to choose. Its breath made steam ghosts on the cold.
Xueyin set the board against her hip and gave the lane to the ground instead of the air. She did not need much—a whisper across dust. Tap, tap—two light touches to the bridge. The sound ran the packed earth and hopped up through ankles, not to hurt, only to interrupt.
The boys blinked. One stick wobbled. Another lowered a finger's width.
"Put the sticks down," the runner said. "Go to the bakery. Ask for the heel that fell. Bring that to the ditch edge and toss it far. Then leave the dog alone and let it decide if the village is home or road."
"It bit my—"
"Names," the runner said gently, brush-voice even though the brush wasn't in his hand. "For the board."
The boys looked at each other. It is hard to be brave and hungry at the same time. Pride cracked where the morning had warmed it. Sticks fell. They bolted for the bakery like arrow geese.
The dog took one step, then another, expecting pain, finding none. Xueyin let one more thread of sound run along the earth to remind it which way safety was. The animal slid through a broken slat and vanished. Mill Lane remembered it was a lane and not a trap.
Ash exhaled. "Did you fight?" he asked.
"No," Xueyin said. "I asked nicely."
"With sound?"
"With sound," she said.
The runner scratched his jaw, pretending not to be relieved. "I'll write a line," he said. "Dog leaves by ditch. Boys warned." He glanced at her ear. "Still ringing?"
"A little."
"You should not spend it all before noon."
"I'll keep a coin," she said, meaning her strength. He nodded as if he understood the currency.
They walked back toward the square together. The baker's wife had hung a clean cloth to cool loaves, and the smell was the sort that made even a hard morning soft. The reed-hat woman looked up from her stall and saw that there was nothing to fear for now. The geese resumed swearing.
"Play at dusk," the runner said, a little gruff to hide concession. "Near the well."
"Near the well," she agreed.
By afternoon she had mended two straps, tuned a cracked kitchen bowl with a line of pitch, and earned three honest coppers and a pear with a bruise only on one side. Ash followed like a small shadow and did not ask more than four questions an hour, which was impressive work for a boy his size.
"Where are you going next?" he finally asked, when the sun had slipped just enough to make the square kind. "After dinner. After playing."
"Forward," she said.
He considered that. "Is forward far?"
"As far as you make it," she said.
He nodded, then scuffed his heel against the bench. "If you leave tomorrow, will you come back?"
"If the road curves right," she said. "If the wind behaves."
He breathed in the way a boy breathes when he wants to say "please" without saying it. She pretended not to notice to make it easier to be brave.
Dusk folded down. She set the instrument near the well. People drew in without crowding. The lantern paper warmed from within.
She gave them a small song and then another. She kept the lanes narrow and aimed toward wood; even the windows seemed to listen without complaint. At the end, she let the last echo die and did not reach for more. Enough is a kind of art.
The runner nodded once and slipped into the street to do a thing that was not her problem. Ash's mother tugged his ear and thanked Xueyin with her eyes for a day that had not gone wrong. The baker's wife sent her home with the heel that did fall after all.
When the square emptied, Xueyin wrapped the instrument and walked the perimeter once. Only geese complained. Only the lantern paper breathed.
She chose a spot under the eaves of the mill again, where the wind was less afraid of corners, and settled her back to the wall. The bread's warmth had left it; the day's warmth had gone into the village. She chewed, counted the night ahead, and set her ledger in her head: three coppers, one pear, two small favors owed, one square that might sleep.
Far down the road, a bell thudded once and did not thud again.
She lay down with the instrument against her ribs and let her breath mark time. She counted nine, and then nine again, and then the kind of numbers that turn into sleep.
Somewhere between them, the wind changed.
Cost: right ear whisper; split nail tug; wrists aching mild.