"So here is how this will be done," Du said. "You will take down your tablets. You will place them on the floor. My men will mark them as seized, as the order demands. No one will draw steel. No one will touch your stores. No one will drag anyone out by their hair." His eyes flicked briefly to Chen Rui, acknowledging the rumor. "You will keep your disputes inside these walls with words. Outside, you will remember whose banners still fly."
A mutter. A protest on someone's tongue.
Sun Wei felt his spine want to stiffen. Thirty days of sacks argued for one kind of dignity; years under other banners argued for another.
"Captain," he said, quietly enough that the room had to lean in. "If we lay them down, they will break. Clay and wood crack when they meet stone. You know that."
"I do," Du said.
"Zhang will say you did your task," Sun Wei went on. "He will be satisfied until he finds a new excuse. But these people…" He gestured around. "They'll remember who gave the word to push. You can't control that ink."
"Do you plan to fight me for them?" Du asked.
Sun Wei thought of the pigeon-silk, of the line of Ziyan's hand where she'd written You are Road work, not bait.
"No," he said. The word tasted like a scar being pressed. "Not today."
Shuye gave a tiny, plaintive noise, but he didn't argue.
Lin Chang stepped forward, jaw set. "They're just planks," she said roughly. "I have more wood. And more walls. He can't carry my mouth away on any horse."
Du's lieutenant snorted. "We can carry you."
Lin Chang's gaze cut to him, sharp. "Try," she said.
Du didn't have to raise his hand this time. His stance alone shut the boy up.
"Take them down," he said.
For a heartbeat, no one moved.
Then Sun Wei went to the pillar.
He laid his palm on the first tablet—the one about soldiers, food, witness. It had become a familiar presence, like the weight of a shield on his arm.
"Inside the door," he murmured again. "Not the wood. The words."
He lifted it carefully, feeling the nails resist, then give. Shuye took the weight. Together, they laid it down on the floor, as gently as one lays an old friend.
The second followed. The third.
Du nodded to his nearest man. "Paint," he ordered.
The soldier pulled a little pot from his belt, popped the lid. The thick, black ink inside smelled metallic.
He hesitated a fraction of a breath, then bent and painted a single stark character across the top tablet: SEIZED.
The ink bled into the carved strokes, dark on darker.
Du watched, face unreadable. He did not kneel. He did not touch the brush.
"There," he said. "I can report obedience."
Sun Wei's jaw ached from clenching. "And if we stand them up again when you leave?" he asked.
Du met his eyes. "My order does not speak of that," he said. "If I return and find them taller, we will… have another conversation."
The words did not promise safety. They promised space.