The ridge shadow reached the red rectangle at the exact moment the first trebuchet spoke—a bass thud that punched air from lungs before sound reached ears.
Lan was knotting the last trip-cord when the stone arced overhead, black against violet sky, trailing ice crystals like a bridal train.
It landed short, shattered on the reverse slope, shards humming past helms.
Timing, she thought—Wei Lian keeps appointments better than court minstrels.
She ran crouched through needle-fall, found the third pine west of the command dug-out—a trunk split by lightning, bark peeled into scrolls.
Behind it the ground fell away three spear-lengths to a shelf of slate no wider than a wagon-bed, screened by a skirt of dead branches.
Shen waited there, back against rock, visor up, eyes reflecting sunset like wet steel.
He had traded armour for a quilted coat the colour of river mist; on his knees rested a small cedar harp—six strings, travel size, the one she had broken years ago in the peach orchard.
She stared; he lifted it like contraband.
"Commandeered from a bard who owed dice money," he said. "Tuning pegs still weak."
Voice low, almost shy—a boy producing a stolen flower.
Another trebuchet coughed; this stone kissed the palisade, sprayed splinters.
They flinched together, then laughed—small, ridiculous, the sound of two people remembering they owned lungs.
She sat, boots dangling over void.
He offered the harp; she took it, brushed frost from shoulders, tested a chord—flat by a quarter-tone, exactly as memory demanded.
She adjusted until the wood hummed true, then began the song they had never finished that spring night: "River Under River"—a courting tune about lovers who traded hearts like promissory notes.
Her voice cracked on the high third—cold, not fear—he joined on the chorus, equally off-key.
They sang anyway, breath mingling, steam weaving a curtain no arrow could pierce.
Between verses he produced a strip of dried peach—summer pressed in wax paper, carried since the last supply train.
They tore it halves, let sweetness dissolve the iron aftertaste of day.
Below them the valley filled with fire-flowers—ballista bolts trailing oil-soaked hemp, blooming red where they struck.
The ledge trembled; snow sifted onto their hair like confetti at a wedding no parent attended.
He brushed a flake from her lashes, fingers lingering.
No declaration—they had spent those words years ago on a balcony overlooking different armies.
Here the currency was simpler: one song, one peach, one heartbeat borrowed from siege arithmetic.
When the final refrain arrived they let it hang unfinished—superstition: to end is to summon conclusion.
Instead he set the harp aside, took her mittened hand, opened the fingers one by one until palm met palm—skin to skin, scar to scar.
He traced the salt-circle cut, then pressed her hand against his own stitched wound—blood tacky, warmth real.
A quiet vow: what we owe the river we pay together.
A mortar cracked close; the shelf shuddered, spilled a fist-sized stone into night.
Time's creditor calling.
She started to rise; he held a moment longer, eyes asking a question language had abandoned.
She answered the only way permitted—forehead to forehead, breath shared, no kiss—because kisses imply futures, and futures were mortgaged to iron.
Then they stood, separate as planets re-orbiting.
He handed her the harp.
"Keep it till dawn. Strings remember the throat that fed them."
Echo of the dagger hours earlier—his habit: lending pieces of himself against the possibility of no return.
She slid it inside the empty quiver on her back—arrows spent, songs loaded.
He donned helm, became general again.
They climbed the rope he had knotted, emerged into torchlight and shouting—sergeants begging decisions on breached palisade sections, wounded queued like unbalanced books.
Before parting he touched her sleeve—two fingers, no more.
"Lan, when the ridge shadow leaves the rectangle, find me. There'll be a new ledger to sign."
She nodded, already translating: if we live, we balance the accounts together; if not, the song was receipt enough.
She jogged left, he right—vectors in opposing ledgers, hearts temporarily reconciled.
Behind her the cedar wood vibrated against her spine, humming with every trebuchet impact—a second heart keeping time.
Above, clouds tore open; moonlight poured through the slit, silvering the wrecked palisade, silvering the peach-sweet ghost on her tongue.
She tasted summer, tightened hand where his pulse still echoed, and stepped back into the arithmetic of dying—carrying a six-string asset no auditor could seize.