The old woman's lips moved as she tracked the characters. Her eyes flicked up, met Ziyan's. Without being asked, she read aloud.
"'People of Qi,'" she began, voice surprisingly strong, "'Your so-called Phoenix leads you to ash. Lay down arms, open your gates, and Xia will feed your hungry, clothe your cold, spare your children. Those who resist will be treated as rebels and bandits, without mercy. Those who surrender now will receive the protection of the Wolf Banner and a place in the Emperor's new order.'"
She finished. It was quiet enough to hear sleet patter on leather.
Wei spat over the wall, toward the ranks that had sent the message. "Generous," he said. "Like wolves sharing warmth with a lamb. Once."
Some faces on the wall were pale. Others set harder.
Ziyan took the scroll from the woman's hands. "Thank you," she said. "What do you think of their offer?"
The old woman snorted. "I think I've already raised sons for one emperor. Didn't like how that turned out. Don't fancy trying again for another."
A few tired chuckles scattered along the line.
Ziyan held the scroll up where all could see. "This is not just to frighten us," she said. "It is to find the cracks. To see who takes it and hides it. Who reads it alone. If you are tempted"—she let that word hang, honest—"do not be ashamed. Bring it to us. Speak of it. We cannot fight what we pretend not to see."
She tore the scroll cleanly in half, then in half again. The pieces fluttered over the wall, catching on sleet, plastering themselves briefly to stone before dropping to the churned ground below.
"Tell your general," she called in Xia, her voice steady and cold, "that if he wishes to feed our hungry, he can start by sending grain without chains. Until then, he can eat his own words."
The answering arrow thudded into the merlon inches from her hand.
"Rude," Feiyan observed.
"Accurate," Ziyan said dryly.
The attack surged again, anger sharpening its edge. But the spell of the scrolls was broken. Men fought harder, in part because the choice had been made in the open.
They held through midday. They held through another failed rush at the eastern culvert, where Feiyan's traps turned a stealth approach into a wet, screaming pile of broken legs. They held through a feint at the south gate that Zhao, to his credit, read correctly and refused to answer with a foolish sally.
By late afternoon, Xia's advance slowed. Torches did not come forward. Horns called their own back.
General Ren did something Ziyan had not expected.
He raised a white banner.
Not the small, perfunctory flag of a herald's party, but a large, plain sheet, unfurled beside his command standard. It snapped in the sleet-heavy wind, visible from every point on the wall.
Wei squinted. "What's that? Surrender? Unlikely. He hasn't bled enough for pride yet."
"A pause," Li Qiang said. "Or a message."
As if in answer, a single rider detached from Xia's center and walked his horse forward at a careful, unthreatening pace. No escort. No raised weapon. Only a scroll case at his hip.
"Again?" Feiyan muttered. "I'm running out of polite ways to say no."
"This one's different," Ziyan said. "Look at the angle."
The rider stopped just beyond comfortable bowshot, raised his hand palm-out, and waited.
"Han," Ziyan called along the inner stair. "You have command of the wall. If archers see any movement from their main line, they fire without waiting for my word."
Han's brows rose, but he nodded. "And you?"
"I go down," she said.
Feiyan's hand clamped on her arm. "You go nowhere without me."
Ziyan glanced at her. "You don't trust me to parley politely?"
"I trust you to be you," Feiyan said. "It's everyone else I don't trust."
They descended through the innards of the gate tower, boots ringing on stone, breath steaming in the narrow spiral. Outside the great doors, the ground was a mess of old battle and new ice. Ziyan stepped past the char of burned ladders and the dark, frozen splashes that marked where men had fallen. Wei and Li Qiang flanked her. Feiyan walked a half-step behind, as if she were part shadow, part unsheathed threat.
The city's north gate opened just wide enough to let them through, then closed again with a boom that seemed louder than any drum.
They walked out onto the ground between.
Close enough now, Ziyan could see the rider clearly. He was not ornate. No gold, no extra filigree. His armor was well-kept but plain. The wolf's-head seal at his collar was worked in honest, unpolished iron. His face held lines at the mouth and around the eyes that spoke of humour and late-night paperwork both.
He dismounted as they approached and bowed, not deeply, but correctly.
"Lady Li Ziyan," he said. His Qi accent was careful, precise. "I am Ren Kanyu, commanding general of Xia's eastern host."
Feiyan's brow twitched. "He came himself," she murmured in their tongue. "Either very brave, or very sure he doesn't need to be."
Ziyan inclined her head the exact degree it deserved. "General Ren. Your scrolls are clumsy work."
He allowed himself a brief huff of something like amusement. "Then let me speak without paper."
He unhooked the scroll case at his hip and held it out. "I came to give you this."
Ziyan did not take it. "You sent your words over our walls already."
"These are not mine," Ren said. "They are copies of Zhang's orders."
That, she had not expected.
Feiyan shifted her weight, eyes narrowing. Wei's grip on his spear eased.
"We already have his orders," Ziyan said cautiously. "His seals. You saw them when your man spoke to me before the siege began."
"These," Ren said, "are the ones he sent about you."
Silence gathered, quick and sharp.