It could not last. Work never does. The second echelon halted outside the bowl and refused to be stupid on schedule. Their engineers read fire like a book they half remembered. Orders went back, then forward. Drums argued with themselves about whether to be brave.
"Enough," Ziyan said at last, not happily. "Pull them back. We don't need trophies. Just caution."
Horns answered. Han's riders peeled away as neatly as thread from a seam. Wei reversed because he never liked letting anyone think he'd forgotten how. Li Qiang backed up with the kind of dignity men use when their legs are shaking and admire themselves for it later. Shuye came last, hands black, grin blacker.
By dawn the bowl smoked and hissed and told no one its secrets. Xia's advance had stalled. Their dead lay in patterns that meant something to the men who would collect them and to no one else. The second echelon built a new berm and stared into a valley that would be undesirable real estate for a month and a cautionary tale for a season.
On the spur, Ziyan took the Emperor's letter in both hands. She did not open it. She didn't need to. The jar's warmth had found its level in her bones.
Han joined her, helmet under his arm, hair damp where discipline had forgotten it. "You bought a day," he said.
"Three," Ziyan answered. "One for the men who lived, one for the men who died, and one for the road."
A courier climbed the spur with that expression couriers have when they have failed to be faster than catastrophe. He knelt without drama and held up a strip of silk with a seal clouded by ash and the kind of handling that does not come from reverence.
"From the inner city," he said. "No orders. No voice. Only this: the court is… quiet."
The word had not learned yet how to be a condemnation and a condolence at once. Ziyan took the silk, pressed it, then let it go.
"We bought them days," she said, as if the valley needed the inventory. "Now we must buy years."
Feiyan's hand touched her sleeve, a weight used in measuring, not in comfort. "Then the road leaves the river."
Ziyan looked north where the pines drew a dark line that wanted to be horizon. She nodded, once, a seal impressed without flourish. "We have other bridges to break," she said. "And other men to teach caution."
Han's mouth found the shape of something like agreement. "I am not a believer," he said. "You make it easier not to be."
"Good," Ziyan said. "Faith dulls."
They broke camp like a body gathering itself. Men ate hot stones pretending to be breakfast. Horses shook fire out of their manes. Shuye packed his empty jars with the contentment of a man who had seen them become what they were meant to be. Wei slept thirty breaths on his feet with his spear for a pillow and woke meaner and more himself. Li Qiang checked the new crack across his gauntlet and smiled at it the way older men admire proof.
At the bank, the ice had thickened another finger-width at the edges. It held light as if light had been meant for smaller things. A heron lifted in slow offense and went somewhere history was not being written in that precise moment.
Ziyan set her palm on the jar one last time before mounting. It was warm still, stubbornly, like a kiln that refuses to agree with weather. The jade ring sat under the blue silk, cool and particular. Listen, it said, as always.
"I am," she said, not to it.
They rode without horns, without banners, with names. The river behind them did what rivers do when they are done listening: it carried away what it could and kept the rest for spring. Ahead, the road rose into the pines and bent out of sight like a promise that hadn't worked out its details but intended to.
Feiyan eased her horse alongside Ziyan's and kept pace, the limp invisible when she chose it to be. "We taught the river nothing," she said, which was true.
"We taught ourselves," Ziyan said, which was truer.
The wind shifted, east to north. Smoke thinned. The day chose to be cold instead of cruel. They did not bless it or curse it. They weighed it, accepted their share, and went on.