Morning took the frost the way a careful hand takes a splinter—slow, with patience for the sting. Willow Shade smelled of steam and flour; the baker's wife had the first loaves cooling under a cloth. Xueyin wrapped the guqin and shouldered her pack.
Ash arrived at a run, then remembered not to run and walked very fast instead. He held something behind his back like a secret.
"You're leaving," he said, trying to keep his voice from wobbling.
"I'm walking forward," she said. "It sometimes looks the same."
He squinted at that and decided to accept it. "Then you need this." He produced a small wood whistle, badly carved and proud of it. A single reed had been shaved to almost the right thinness.
"It's heavy with genius," she said solemnly.
"It only squeaks a little," he admitted.
"I respect honesty." She tucked it into her coat as if it were a jewel. The reed-hat woman came from the stall with a twist of greens and a lump of salted bean curd.
"For the road," she said. "And for the fox, if he's as stubborn as you."
"I'll share," Xueyin said.
The yamen runner stood by the board, reading it like it might change if he looked away. "There's a mile-stone on the north road where the ditch begins to talk to the river," he said without preface. "Don't sleep under it. Boys carve there at night and sometimes a cart forgets itself."
"Not under stones," she said. "Not under trees that complain."
He considered her, nodded once. "If someone bothers you on the road, keep it small where the shrines can see." He tapped the brush against his palm. "I've written your witness line in firm paste. You'll be a rumor anyway, but this one's neat."
"Thank you," she said. It felt like an official farewell, which was the only kind he knew how to give.
She took one last slow lap of the square with the guqin against her ribs. People looked up with that careful, not-clinging look towns use when they want to be kind to a traveler. She gave them a three-note blessing by the well and left while it was still hanging.
The road north unrolled between scrub willow and winter grass, then ducked into a shallow cut where stone showed through the frost. The air had the clean taste of far water. Xueyin walked with the steady rhythm she trusted, heel then toe, counting nine and letting the second beat settle her feet.
A shrine sat crooked on a rock where old wheels had worried the soil away. Its little bell was missing. Someone had tied a ribbon in its place; it made the bell's shape badly and tried hard. She touched the wood with two fingers and left a note that matched the ribbon's effort—nothing grand, only a breath-long kindness. The wind moved like it approved.
Around the next bend she caught up with a small caravan—two ox-carts, one mule, a family tramping between, and a guard who looked bored in the way a man looks when he has promised his wife he will not pick fights and has found it difficult. The lead ox had decided the road was a rumor and the ditch a promise.
"Hold," the carter said, pleading with the harness. The ox leaned like a thought no one could change.
Xueyin kept to the grass so she would not spook the animals. "May I try?" she asked, staying well back.
"If you can move him without breaking his pride," the carter said, "I'll name a loaf after you."
"Name it 'plain bread,'" she said, and set the guqin to her hip.
She counted, measured the space, and laid a line from the cheek strap past the animal's shoulder to a fence post—a one-pace lane, aimed toward wood. A thin, glass-clean note traced it. Dust hopped. The strap settled. The ox blinked and, without admitting it had changed its mind, resumed being reasonable. The mule pretended to have intended this all along.
The guard snorted. "Trick." He wore a short saber at his hip and the look of a man who thought blades should do all the talking even when no one was asking questions.
"Habit," she said.
"Where's your sect badge?" he asked, making it sound like a riddle with only one acceptable answer.
"I don't have a gate," she said.
"Then you don't have a road," he said, and because luck finds men like him, a winter-brittle limb chose that moment to crack above the mule's cart.
The branch would have fallen between cart and ditch—enough to spook the mule and send the back wheel hunting for the soft edge. Xueyin stepped on the second beat and drew a line from limb to the fence post beyond, no more than one pace wide. She struck short, not to cut the branch entirely, only to change its mind. The wood split along an old lightning scar and fell away from the cart, thumping the road with the resigned puff of aged rot.
The mule flinched and then thought better of it. The guard put his hand on his saber in order to put it somewhere.
"Trick," he said again, but softer.
"Angle," she replied, and let her hand rest on the strings so the echo would not wander.
"Loaf's yours," the carter said, relief spilling his words. "If we ever bake again."
The family shuffled forward, half gratitude and half fear of missing the daylight. A little girl with hair in two tragic knots stared at the guqin like it might tell her a story. "Are you a fairy?" she asked, dead serious.
"Only on Tuesdays," Xueyin said. "Today I'm a person with cold hands."
The girl considered this and decided it would do.
The guard fell in beside Xueyin as they walked a short stretch together. "You shouldn't be alone," he said. "There are sect brats who practice courage on musicians."
"I'll keep to shrines and milestones," she said. "And I keep my lanes small."
He grunted. "Small keeps you alive. Large keeps them away." He watched her from the corner of his eye. "Ever widen it?"
"In the wilds," she said. "When there's no one to catch the extra."
He weighed this like a man who preferred extra. Then the caravan took a side path toward a farm that had promised shelter, and Xueyin continued on the main road.
The mile-stone the runner had mentioned stood a little crooked where the ditch began muttering to a larger stream. Boys had carved their names in it, then thought better of leaving names where runners read. Winter sun lay thin and honest over rock and reed. She did not sleep there.
By midafternoon, wind got busy about nothing. It nosed at her coat and made a mischief of the half-loose thatch on a wayhouse roof up the road. Two travelers had paused under the eaves, discussing the sky with the solemnity of men who had known weather that did not keep its bargains.
The thatch chose badly—slid, bunched, and then threatened to collapse across the doorway where an elderly couple were trying to decide whether to step out or step back in. Xueyin didn't run. She set her feet and drew a short lane from the header beam to the outer peg—only a pace across—and tapped the bridge. The sound nudged the bundle just enough to fall where no heads were. Straw sighed onto the step. The couple blinked, then laughed the relief-laugh that sounds like a cough.
"Bless you," the woman said, and meant "thank you" in the old way.
"Bless the peg," Xueyin said. "It did the heavy work."
The wayhouse keeper came out with a broom and the kind of apology that comes after a near-miss. He pressed a small coin into her palm she hadn't asked for. "Stay for soup," he said. "Wind hates an empty stomach."
She stayed. The soup was cabbage made brave with a heel of pork; the bread had more enthusiasm than yeast. A peddler snored in the corner like a saw. When the wind settled in for the night with its list of complaints, she asked for space in the common room and received an indulgent nod that meant: if you don't break anything, fine.
She set the guqin on a low table by the hearth and made herself useful mending a strap and rubbing oil into the pegs. A traveler with a bamboo flute took it out, sighed at its crack, and put it away again. "No breath left," he said, half-joking.
"Breath is habit," Xueyin said. "Not luck."
"Tell that to my chest," he said, but not unkindly.
When the talk got easy and the bowls empty, someone asked for a piece. She gave them small, near the hearth, lanes aimed at wood and nothing else. The notes walked the rafters and came back without complaint. For an encore she played nothing at all and let the silence finish the work. People breathed like they were remembering a lesson.
Later, when shutters had been barred and the last spoon clinked quiet, the keeper nodded at the hearth. "You can sleep by the warm side," he said. "You bought your space with straw and soup."
She thanked him and made her bedroll thin. Before lying down, she stepped outside once to listen. The wind had opinions but no new plans. A fox print tracked the ditch for three strides and vanished where the reeds offered privacy. She smiled at the dark like it had made a joke in her language.
Back inside, she laid the guqin against her ribs the way she liked and let the heat of the banked fire dull the ache in her hands. The room creaked the way honest wood creaks. Someone snored like a reluctant saw. She counted her ledger without moving her lips: a whistle, greens, a loaf owed, one limb persuaded away from harm, one roof corrected, a road that had not asked for blood.
Sleep came with her right ear still whispering, the split nail tugging less, and a warm fatigue in her wrists where the day had set its hand.