The sky over Haojin had learned a new weight.
Fog used to be the town's worst habit—fat, damp, forever forgetting to lift. Now it came with a tightness in people's shoulders, as if the river itself were waiting for someone to name it guilty.
Sun Wei woke before the bells, heart already beating like he'd heard one.
The pigeon crouched on the beam over his sleeping mat, a small, impatient knot of feathers and arrogance. It had arrived in the grey hour, battering at the shutter until even his dreams admitted defeat.
He untied the silk and read it three times in the light of a stingy lamp.
Hold the hall. Hold the law inside. Do not fight Du in the square… If he smashes the tablets, let him. Then carve new ones on the broken pieces when he leaves. The Road is not stone.
He could hear her voice in the strokes, sharp and steady.
You are Road work, not bait.
Shuye sat up across the room, hair sticking out at unrepentant angles. "News?" he yawned.
Sun Wei flicked the silk at him. "She says we're not allowed to die for pride," he said. "I think I'm offended."
Shuye squinted, lip curling into a half-smile as he read. "She's right," he said. "You're much more useful alive. Dead men carry very few sacks."
Chen Rui kicked the door open with her heel, arms full of firewood. "Why is everyone awake?" she demanded. "Did someone invent a new way to cheat at dice?"
"Zhang's found us," Sun Wei said. "Properly this time."
Something in her expression sharpened. "Good," she said. "I was getting bored of fish."
Lin Chang's voice floated from the outer room. "If you lot break my floor with any heroic gestures," she called, "you're paying for the planks."
They went about the morning anyway.
Fish arrived with their usual lack of enthusiasm about being weighed. Customers arrived with their usual inability to agree on who was cheating whom. The first case of the day was a man insisting the goddess of the river had stolen his boat because he had forgotten an offering; the goddess, when consulted via Lin Chang's raised eyebrow, declined all responsibility and the man left with a fine and the suggestion that he tie his knots better.
It almost felt like any other mist-soured morning.
Almost.
Just before noon, the bell at the ferry rang twice, then once: riders. Official.
Lin Chang's lad, hair still wet from the river, burst through the door. "Du's coming," he puffed. "With more boots than usual."
"We were expecting him," Shuye said. "We've even swept."
Sun Wei wiped his hands on his coat and looked at the tablets.
Three hung on Lin Chang's main pillar, wood dark with oil and hands, characters incised deep enough to catch dust:
No soldier seizes food or shelter within this hall without witness and record.
No beating without witness. No judgment without both sides heard.
No weighing without scale and ledger. Lies pay double.
They looked smaller than usual.
"Inside the door," he murmured.
"Inside the door," Shuye agreed.
They didn't bar it. They didn't lock anything. They simply stood where they always did when arguments walked in: Sun Wei near the weigh-table, Shuye with his brush, Chen Rui by the wall with her arms folded and her eyes promising unkind physics to anyone who tried to turn the room into a battlefield.
Captain Du entered as if the air were something he had to convince.
He wore his usual plain armor, cloak damp with mist. Two dozen men followed, not quite in parade, not quite relaxed. Behind them, watching with the delicate curiosity of men who expect to sell news later, came half the town.
Du's gaze skipped over the jars, the scales, the chalk marks, and went straight to the tablets.
Sun Wei saw the tension in his jaw. Something bulky sat in the inner pocket of his coat, making the cloth strain: a scroll case, no doubt, with ink already sharpened.
"Captain," Sun Wei said, as if they had met by chance at a ferry instead of under the Regent's shadow. "You're early for lunch."
A few soldiers shifted, unsure if they should be offended. Du ignored them.
"By order of the Regent of Qi," he said, voice carrying cleanly, "this hall and these tablets are declared unauthorized instruments of law. Seditious, in the precise phrasing."
Silence tightened. Even the fish stopped dripping.
Sun Wei took a breath that tasted of clay and river damp. "You have the order?" he asked.
Du drew the scroll-tube out and held it up. The red wax gleamed.
"I do," he said.
"Then we follow our law as written," Shuye said cheerfully, popping up at Sun Wei's shoulder with a ledger already open. "No soldier seizes anything in this hall without witness and record. You have a mandate. We have witnesses. Sit. We'll make a note."
A ripple of uneasy laughter. Lin Chang hid a smile under her hand.
Du's eyes sparked. "Your law does not bind the Regent," he said.
"No," Sun Wei agreed. "It binds us. Which means if we break it, we answer to these faces." He swept a hand at the townsfolk. "You have your paper, Captain. Let it meet our clay properly. Or are you afraid of ink being weighed?"
One of Du's lieutenants, a young man with the sort of eager jaw that breaks easily, snapped, "You will show respect to—"
Du cut him off with a tiny gesture. "Record," he said curtly.
Shuye blinked, then grinned wide. "Name and title?" he asked, brush poised.
"Du Yan," the captain said. "Third Banner, Southern Crossing Garrison."
Shuye wrote it down in neat strokes. "Order presented?" he asked.
Du tapped the scroll-tube. "By the Regent: to seize any seditious tablets, detain ringleaders resisting lawful inspection, and report on any… organized insolence."
He let his gaze slide pointedly over Lin Chang, Chen Rui, and Sun Wei in turn.
Shuye inscribed the words seize, detain, organized with a care that felt almost like mockery.
The crowd stirred. This was new: watching a man with authority walk himself into other people's record.
Sun Wei spoke before anyone else could throw their temper into the room.
"Then we have a dispute," he said. "Between the Regent's ink and our clay. Between an order that calls us seditious and a law that says no seizing in this hall without witness and record." He nodded toward the townsfolk. "Witness we have. Record we're making. So the only question is whether seizing happens."
The eager lieutenant took a step toward the pillar. "We can solve that—"
"Stop," Du said.
The word was not loud. It carried like a knife.
He did not look at the tablets as he spoke next. He looked at his men.
"The Regent commands," he said. "We obey. But we obey as soldiers, not butchers. The order says: seize seditious tablets. It does not say: spill blood in a merchant's hall."
He turned toward the pillar and, at last, let his gaze rest on the carved characters.
"Your law," he said slowly, "is written on wood for anyone to read. Mine is carried by men who've never seen the places their ink hits." He addressed the room more than Sun Wei now. "We are told this is sedition because it makes people listen to someone else's words."
Wei's voice echoed in Sun Wei's head: You can refuse. Ziyan's followed: Bend. Don't break.