Dusk crawled down the sky like a shy animal.
At the bend in the river, frost rimed the reeds. The water moved slow, dark, pretending disinterest. Snow flattened the ground on both banks, erasing everything but today's decisions.
Ziyan waited with Li Qiang and Feiyan at a place where the bank made a low shelf. Their cloaks blended with the reed's muted colors. No helmets. No visible armor, though Feiyan had cheated with thin plates sewn under cloth.
On the far side, three figures approached: Ren Kanyu, in plain dark coat and no helm, only his rank's narrow belt; his adjutant; a third man Ziyan did not know, with a scholar's knot in his hair and a soldier's wary posture.
"No archers?" Wei had asked before they left.
"None you can see," Feiyan had replied. "And none that will fire unless they feel insulted."
Now, as Ren descended the opposite slope, Ziyan could see no glint of metal in the reeds, no shadows that didn't belong. That meant nothing. But it meant something.
They stopped with the river between them, a strip of moving, unforgiving distance.
"Lady Li," Ren called across, voice steady. "Thank you for indulging a tired man's curiosity."
"General Ren," she returned. "Thank you for not starting with arrows."
"That seemed impolite," he agreed.
Feiyan snorted softly under her breath. Li Qiang said nothing, hand resting close to his sword without quite touching it.
Ren's adjutant stayed a step behind his commander, eyes scanning the bank, the reeds, the rooftops. The scholar-soldier—if that was what he was—watched Ziyan's face as if memorizing it for someone else.
"We agree this is not surrender," Ren said, without preamble. "Else you would not have carved what you did."
"You have readers in the city," Ziyan said. "I expected you to see it."
"I do," he said simply.
"I am not here to beg quarter," she went on. "This wall stands. This city breathes. We are tired. Not broken."
His mouth twitched. "So are we," he said.
The river moved between them, not impressed.
"Your Emperor," Ziyan said, "wants you to make me an example."
"He does," Ren said. There was no point lying. "He fears that if cities hear of your law, they will ask why his seal is needed."
"Perhaps they should," she said.
"I am not here to debate his wisdom," he said. "Only to decide how many of my men I will spend obeying it."
"And how many of mine I will spend defying it," she said.
For a time, neither spoke.
Feiyan's fingers brushed Ziyan's sleeve lightly. Wait, that touch said. Let him name the first thing he truly wants.
Ren saved her the trouble.
"Yong'an," he said, "has already left Qi."
The words landed heavier than any stone.
Ziyan felt them in her chest more than in her ears.
"Qi left itself," she said. "When it let Zhang sell it. When it watched the capital burn and argued over titles in the smoke."
"History will quarrel about which came first," he said. "But for now, in the Emperor's eyes, you are rebel twice over: against Zhang's pact, against Qi's throne. To mine, that makes you… negotiable."
Feiyan arched a brow. "So generous," she murmured.
Ren ignored it. "Here are my orders," he said. "Break this city. Quickly. Publicly. Make your experiment in law something children are warned against when they grow too bold."
He looked, for a moment, older than the snow.
"I find," he said quietly, "that I am less afraid of your law than I am of what my Emperor will build if the only cities left are those that never tried anything like it."
Ziyan studied his face. The fine lines at the corners of his mouth. The tired pull at his shoulders. The absence of armor where an arrow could find him if anyone chose to break tonight.
"Then why are you here?" she asked. "If not to demand my kneeling?"
"To offer your city a different name for its survival," he said.
His adjutant stiffened, but said nothing.
"You hold," Ren went on. "You may hold another week, another month. Long enough for my supply lines to fray, for other fronts to crack. Long enough that, when I finally take your walls, I will be standing in a graveyard, not a city. What will I rule? Who will I have proved anything to?"
He gestured at Yong'an's distant silhouette. "You have made yourself a story. If I crush you, I inherit your ghost as well as your ruins. I do not like the shape of that inheritance."
Feiyan's eyes narrowed. "So you want us to surrender cleanly instead," she said. "So you can parade us as proof that even people with pretty promises bow to your Emperor in the end."
He shook his head. "No," he said. "I want your city to yield to me without kneeling to him."
Even the river seemed to pause.
Ziyan's brows lifted. "Explain."
"Call it… an arrangement," Ren said, the word tasting odd in his mouth. "Yong'an swears not to harbor troops hostile to Xia. You keep your law. Your granaries. Your council. You pay grain in years when your stores allow. You send no tribute in men unless they sign under your tablets first. In return, I report to the Emperor that you are not a rebellion but a… cooperative protectorate."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning he can claim your tax on his maps," Ren said. "He may boast that Yong'an did not fall to chaos. He will be too busy fighting his own people in the capital and his jealous cousins in the south to look closely. So long as grain moves north some years and no banners march openly under your walls, he may tolerate your… experiment."
"And if he decides later he does not?" Ziyan asked.
Ren's gaze was steady. "Then he will find a city full of people who have learned to choose what law they obey," he said. "A city that has had time to learn to fight on its own terms. Perhaps by then…"
He did not finish.
Perhaps by then, his own loyalties would have shifted. Or the Emperor's power would have thinned. Or the map itself would look different.