North of the river, Ren Kanyu watched his map change.
A messenger from Li Shi knelt in the snow, presenting the signed treaty and a second tablet—a copy of the one Ren had carved promising Yong'an's law would be written twice.
"You have seen their square?" Ren asked.
"Yes, General," Li Shi said. "They read it aloud. There were curses. Some tears. One man laughed when he signed. The midwife hit three apprentices for shoving ahead in line."
Ren almost smiled. "Good," he said.
He added a new notation to his map: a small circle around Yong'an, not the solid black of conquest, not the hollow of rebellion. A ring.
His adjutant shifted. "The Emperor's envoys won't like that," he said. "They want clear colors."
"Then they should stop making such complicated messes," Ren murmured.
Another messenger waited, this one from the capital. He held a different kind of scroll.
"The Emperor…" he began.
Ren saw it in his face. "Dead?" he asked.
"Not yet," the messenger said. "But the Regent holds his seal. Orders come with his stamp now. He names himself Heavenly Guardian until a new reign may be declared."
Ren's fingers tightened on the brush.
"The Regent," he said, "has just become a man who will fear cities that know their own law."
Li Shi's gaze flicked to the map. "And we have just created one," he said quietly.
Ren's eyes rested on Yong'an's ring.
"Yes," he said. "We have."
He folded the Emperor's old letters with care, set them aside. Then he took up a fresh tablet and began to write his report.
Yong'an is pacified, he put in neat, confident strokes. Its people keep order. They feed their refugees without demanding troops. They do not harbor Qi's armies. They are useful.
He did not mention the tablets, or the midwife, or the square that had refused to empty under falling stone. Some truths, like some roads, needed to remain half-seen to survive.
In the keep, Ziyan sat with Feiyan, Li Qiang, Han, Zhao, Ren the scribe and Shuye, the treaty between them and a new, blank sheet of silk beside it.
"We have a border," Han said. "North: Xia. South and east: ash and confusion. West: hills that may yet decide to fall on us for fun."
"We need a name," Shuye said unexpectedly.
Zhao looked offended. "Yong'an not good enough for you?"
"Yong'an is the city," Shuye said. "Stones. Streets. We're talking about the thing that sits inside it." He tapped his chest. "The… law. The way the council works. The idea."
Ren chewed the end of his brush. "Titles have power," he said. "If we call ourselves 'protectorate' long enough, we'll start thinking like one. If we cling to 'Qi', we'll keep bleeding for a throne that no longer remembers us."
Wei, half-dozing on the floor, cracked one eye. "Call it 'the road'," he muttered. "That's all you ever talk about. 'The road this, the road that.' May as well make it blame-worthy properly."
Feiyan's eyes lit with mischief. "Kingdom of the Road," she said. "Sounds terribly improper. Imagine the court poets choking."
Han snorted. "Kingdoms have kings. We have a mad girl with a pen."
"Kingdoms have people," Ziyan said softly. "Kings are a habit."
Silence pricked.
Feiyan leaned in. "Say it, then," she murmured. "Try it on. We're among friends and one convenient cynic."
Ziyan looked at the blank silk.
"We are not a kingdom," she said slowly. "Not yet. Not by any old measure. We have no crown, no ancestral seal, no court. We have a city full of tired people and some words on stone."
Her fingers curled. "Let's call it what it is. For now."
She dipped the brush.
The Road Under Heaven.
Ink bled into silk, shy at first, then sure.
"A place where law comes from below, not above," she said. "Where we listen before we order. Where no one bows because someone's great-grandfather stole enough land to be called a lord. Where we walk, not kneel."
Ren stared, then laughed, a short, astonished sound. "That will look very nice on a death sentence," he said. "But… it's honest."
Han rubbed his face. "You know the jokes that will come?" he grumbled. "Cart drivers claiming to be your ministers. Every idiot with a wagon saying he's part of your 'road'."
"Good," Feiyan said. "Let them. Better that than every idiot with a sword calling himself a prince."
Li Qiang touched the fresh characters. "Under Heaven," he said quietly. "Not under Xia. Not under Qi. Dangerous words."
"True ones," Ziyan said.
Shuye grinned. "We'll need a symbol," he said. "Something I can set on jars and banners without wasting too much paint."
"A road?" Wei suggested. "Too obvious. And very long."
"A sparrow," Feiyan said. "Two, facing opposite ways."
Ziyan looked at her.
"Road and blade," Feiyan said. "Law and knife. Lian'er and you. Small things that survive winters kings don't."
Ren smiled crookedly. "Very poetic," he said. "I'll pretend it was my idea in fifty years when I'm senile."
Ziyan's hand went to the hairpin under her cloak. She nodded once.
"Two sparrows, then," she said. "On stone. On jars. On sleeves. Not as a crown, but as… a reminder."
Feiyan's fingers brushed the stitched scrap of Xu Min's cloak. "Of what?" she asked.
"That we're meant to move," Ziyan said. "Not to perch on anyone else's branch."
Outside, in the narrow lane by the temple, the midwife swatted a boy's ear and told him to stop throwing snowballs at the shrine. In the western quarter, Chen Rui argued with a tanner about fair prices for leather armor now that the wolves weren't actively climbing the wall. In the square, children traced characters from the law tablets into the snow with sticks, getting most of the strokes wrong and all of the shape right.
Beyond the river, Ren Kanyu sent half his host east toward Qi's dying capital and kept the rest watching Yong'an with a wary, unwilling respect.
Farther still, in halls choked with incense and treachery, Zhang looked at reports of a city that had refused to die, had refused to bow, had made a bargain with his supposed ally and then told Qi to wait its turn.
He smiled, thin and sharp.
"Li Ziyan," he murmured. "You were always going to be more trouble than your father's plans."
He dipped his brush and underlined Yong'an's name on his own map. Then he drew a little sparrow beside it, ugly and mocking.
"Empire of ash," he said softly. "Road under Heaven. Let's see which one the wind favors."
In Yong'an, Ziyan blew on the drying ink of her new name for what they were building, and for the first time since Ye Cheng, she felt something under her feet that did not belong to anyone else.