The column did not stop at dawn.
Shen pushed west along the old quarry road, wheels grinding ruts deeper, hooves punching black slush.
By the time the sun showed—a dull coin behind mare's-tail clouds—men's eyelashes had frozen into glass fringes and the horses' breath came out in long white ropes that broke against the riders' knees.
Lan rode where she always rode now: ahead of the vanguard, far enough to taste ambush before it bit, close enough to whistle warning.
Her scouts rotated every hour; frost-numb fingers could not keep a bowstring drawn.
At mid-morning the road tilted into a valley of slate and dead pine.
The wind funnelled between cliffs, knifing through wool and mail alike.
Here the map named the place Black Candle Gorge—because, the guides said, once upon a famine winter travellers burned coffin-wood for light, and the resin of old corpses made candles that bled black smoke.
Lan did not believe ghost tales, but she felt the name settle on her shoulders like wet wool all the same.
She halted the column at the gorge mouth.
From horseback the pass looked harmless: a straight throat two arrow-flights long, walls rising sheer, river frozen at bottom.
Yet the snow on the gorge floor lay ruffled, not packed—too soft for last night's wind.
Someone had walked here since the last snowfall, then swept their tracks with pine boughs.
Amateurs at concealment, but diligent.
She signed fan out, rode forward alone.
Halfway in she found the first marker: a splintered crossbow bolt driven upright between stones, fletching stripped.
A border sign used by both armies: we were here first.
The bolt head carried the White Banner arsenal stamp—Wei Lian's phoenix re-forged into a wolf.
So the drowned riders at the ford had not been his whole vanguard; he had sent a second hand by the high road.
How many?
She studied the slate walls—no boot-scuffs, no iron scratches.
They had come, looked, left again.
A picket, then, not a garrison.
But pickets sometimes stayed to watch the candle burn.
She whistled the all-clear for six scouts, dismounted, and walked the rest on foot.
At the far mouth of the gorge the wind spilled them into sudden sunlight—and into smell: woodsmoke, horse-sweat, pine-pitch.
A camp had squatted here hours ago; coals still pulsed under grey jackets of ash.
She paced the perimeter: five tents, maybe sixty men, picket line for forty horses.
They had broken camp at dawn, heading west—same vector as Shen, but half a day ahead.
A screen force, meant to shadow, count, perhaps delay.
Wei Lian was no longer hiding; he was measuring.
Korin found the first corpse: a White Banner scout, throat opened ear-to-ear, body folded beneath a fallen sled.
Blood had blackened on snow, already iced.
The cut was single, left-to-right—sword, not knife, strike from behind.
So Wei's picket had met someone else in the night.
Bandits?
Deserters?
Or Shen's own forward spies already loose?
She studied the ground—no second set of tracks leaving the kill.
Whoever had done it had carried the body here, arranged the sled, then vanished uphill across bare slate that left no print.
Professional work.
A third player had entered the game, and the candle had gained another shadow.
She wrapped the dead man's badge in cloth—proof, or bait—and turned back.
By the time she reached Shen the column had closed up, wagons nose-to-tail, archers on rims.
He listened to her report without comment, only rubbing the scar on his thumb—a habit when numbers refused to balance.
Finally he spoke: "We march through. If they want the gorge, they'll have to take it from our backs."
A gamble: a narrow throat could choke an attacker, but it could also choke the defender if the far mouth closed.
Yet standing still in winter killed faster than arrows.
They entered in battle order: pioneers first with pavises, then scouts spread halfway up walls, then Shen himself, cloak reversed to black.
Lan walked beside his horse, bow strung, eyes scanning slate for the glint that shouldn't be there.
Halfway in, the wind died; sound flattened.
She heard her own heart, the creak of Shen's saddle, the faint crack of cooling ash in the wagons' braziers.
A place that swallowed echo—perfect for ambush, perfect for echo's revenge.
It came as a whisper first: the soft scrape of steel on leather, high above.
She looked up—saw nothing, but the sound repeated, left wall, then right.
She whistled once—halt.
Archers nocked.
Shen raised a gauntlet, fist closed.
Stillness.
Then the cliff spoke: a single crossbow bolt spat from the sky, buried in a wagon rail finger-width from Shen's knee.
The shaft was short, heavy, armour-piercing—imperial pattern, but fletched with grey goose, not White Banner white.
The third player again, firing warning, not kill.
Lan traced the angle—an overhang forty paces up, reachable only by chimney climb.
She signed cover, slung bow, started up the rock herself.
Fingers numbed fast on cold stone; breath rasped.
Halfway she risked a glance down—Shen's face tilted up, unreadable behind visor, but his hand stayed raised: permission, or farewell.
She reached the overhang, rolled onto a ledge no wider than a saddle-skirt.
There stood the shooter: a woman in grey lamellar, hood shadowing cheekbones Lan almost recognised.
She held an empty crossbow, arms slack, no side-arm drawn.
Between them lay a second bolt, unfired, tip painted crimson—the colour reserved for princes.
A message, not a weapon now.
The woman spoke first, voice wind-thinned: "Tell Shen the debt of the black candle is owed to those who lit it, not to those who carry the flame."
She stepped backward off the ledge—not down, but out, cloak snapping like a broken wing, falling thirty paces onto slate.
Lan lunged, too late.
The body hit with a sound like a water-jar dropped from a tower.
Below, horses shied, men cursed.
Lan descended fast, sliding on shale.
They gathered around the corpse.
Under the grey cloak the woman wore no badge, only a black silk cord about her neck, knotted seven times.
Shen knelt, cut the cord, unfolded a strip of parchment tucked inside.
On it, ink still unfrozen: a list—grain stores, powder caches, payroll convoy dates—every secret ledger of the Black Banner for the last six months.
At the bottom, a single line in different hand: The candle burns at both ends; choose which side you hold.
Shen stared long, then folded the parchment into his gauntlet.
He looked up at the cliffs, at the sky, at Lan last.
"Burial detail," he said quietly. "Then we march. The gorge is ours, but the ledger is not."
They buried the woman in black shale, no name, no prayer.
Lan placed the crimson-tipped bolt upright at the head—a candle that would never light.
When they rode out the other side wind returned, carrying the smell of snow and something sharper—the scent of accounts coming due.
Behind them Black Candle Gorge swallowed echo again.
Ahead, the road widened toward Ice-Ridge Ford's western flats, where Wei Lian's main force waited somewhere beyond sight.
Lan felt the parchment's absence like a missing scale of armour.
She did not know who kept the black candle's books, only that Shen's name appeared in them, and that debts written in smoke could not be repaid in coin.
Shen rode silent, thumb rubbing scar, eyes forward.
At midday he spoke at last, voice low: "When the time comes, you will choose too."
Lan answered nothing, but her hand found the empty pouch where Wei Lian's jade arrowhead had once lain—a space now filled with questions colder than any winter wind.