She let the board fall and stamped it under her heel. The wood cracked.
"And this," she said, voice dropping but somehow carrying further, "is my answer."
She stepped to the tavern beam. Her fingers found the nail holding Zhang's decree. She pulled once. It held. Li Qiang stepped beside her silently and, with one twist of his knife-tip, loosened it enough.
The decree came free in her hands.
Gasps. The sort that happen when people realize a thing they've been staring at with dread can, in fact, be touched.
"You keep this," she said, holding it up, "not as law but as witness. This is what he threatens. Fine. We witness it. We don't bow to it."
She folded it once and handed it to the Reed Mouth boy.
"You keep it with the ledger," she told him. "If anyone asks why Green Dike stands where it stands, show them this first. Then show them our answer."
He nodded, fierce and pale.
Then she faced the village again.
"Now. Here is what happens if the patrol returns."
No one breathed.
"They find me," she said. "And twelve riders. They find every witness in Green Dike already in the square, not scattered for the taking. They find the women with staves and the men with enough sense not to swing first. They find the Road House empty of records and full of people, because people are harder to burn quietly."
Her gaze swept them one by one.
"They will try to provoke you," she said. "Do not give them the pretty death they want. If they strike, we witness. If they seize, we count. If they name ringleaders, you raise your hands together."
Murmurs now. Not of fear. Of understanding.
"We can do that," the tavern woman said.
"We already did," Luo said.
Ziyan nodded. "Good. Then today you do it with the Road Commonwealth present."
Wei stepped forward, grinning with all the warmth of a drawn blade. "And if they forget their manners," he said, "then my lot remembers ours."
That got an honest laugh, ragged but alive.
The ring tightened. The square changed shape around them—not a crowd now, but a deliberate arrangement. Witnesses at the edges. Staves where they could be seen. Children pulled back into doorways where they could watch but not be grabbed first. The Road House chest tucked under the tavern stairs. The goat cut down, very annoyed, and led away before it could become a second symbol.
They waited.
Waiting, Ziyan had learned, was often the real battle. Not the clash itself, but the part where you sat with your fear and made it face the same direction as everyone else's.
By afternoon, the patrol came.
Not seven this time. Nine.
The same sergeant at their head, loudness still compensating for whatever his rank lacked. Behind him, among the men, a soldier with a scar at his neck whose face closed when he saw the square already arranged, the villagers gathered, Ziyan standing under the sparrow like a challenge given bone.
The sergeant pulled his horse up too sharply.
"Well," he said. "The bird's nested a princess."
"Speaker," Wei corrected sweetly. "Princesses wait for other men to save their villages."
The sergeant's eyes went to Ziyan. Recognition sparked, then greed. He had not expected to see the name from the decrees standing knee-deep in Green Dike mud.
"You," he said.
"Yes," Ziyan said.
He laughed, a little too loudly. "Good. Saves trouble. By order of the Regent—"
"You've read your order once here already," Ziyan said. "The village remembers. The question is whether you do."
A flicker of uncertainty. The sort that grows when a script meets a person and finds they don't behave properly.
"You stand in a suspect hall," he said. "Under a seditious mark. You shelter—"
"I stand in a Road House," she said. "Under witness. And you have arrived in a square that now contains every ringleader you are likely to find."
As one, Green Dike's people raised their hands.
The sergeant stared.
The scar-necked soldier looked away first, perhaps to hide the beginning of a smile.
It might have gone worse quickly. The sergeant's hand dropped to his sword. Wei's fingers twitched toward his spear. The square tightened, every breath becoming a held thing.
Then Ziyan did the one thing he had not expected.
She stepped forward, into the middle of the square, and held out both empty hands.
"You want me?" she said. "Fine. Name the charge. Before witnesses. On which law? Zhang's? Yours? Or that one?"
She tilted her head toward the tavern beam, where the sparrow still hung and the place beneath it was now bare except for one small new tablet Luo's daughter had nailed up not twenty minutes earlier.
WE REMEMBER WHO READS ALOUD.
The sergeant followed her gaze and, for the first time, looked rattled.
"You mock the Regent," he snapped.
"No," Ziyan said. "I force his men to hear themselves."
The square laughed.
The sound was small. But it was enough.
Anger flushed the sergeant's face. He half-drew his sword.
The scar-necked soldier's hand closed on his arm.
"Sergeant," he said low, just loud enough for those nearest to hear. "Witness."
The word hit like a stone thrown into water.