The road east wound through low, sweeping valleys dusted with frost. Each morning the grasses glistened silver, the donkey's breath puffed out in small dragon clouds, and Lian'er laughed to watch it vanish. Her laughter was a small, fragile shield against the tense hush that followed them.
They traveled slowly, wary of patrols. Qi's banners were more frequent now — dark red and heavy, bearing the five-clawed dragon. Twice they saw small processions of conscripts marching to join the Emperor's new war. Boys who could not yet grow beards, old farmers pulled from their paddies, all wrapped in mismatched scraps of armor. Ziyan watched them pass with a tightening in her chest.
"They're sending children to die," she murmured.
Li Qiang walked beside her, hand on the cart. "Because children are cheaper to bury."
His voice held no heat, only a flat truth. It stung more for that.
One evening they made camp by a crooked willow. Ziyan sat on a rolled blanket while Li Qiang cleaned one of his short swords, the whetstone whispering steadily. Lian'er knelt nearby with a circle of pebbles, painstakingly arranging them into little towers.
Ziyan spoke softly, careful not to break the hush. "When we reach the capital, I won't stay quiet. Zhao's death will be my opening. The court is already hunting rumors, terrified by how he died — who orchestrated it, and why. If I can bait them into showing their hands…"
Li Qiang's eyes flicked up. "Then they'll try to kill you again."
"They'll try," Ziyan agreed. Her phoenix mark burned faintly under her sleeve, as if in agreement. "But panic makes even cautious men sloppy."
Li Qiang ran his thumb along the blade's edge. "So what bait will you offer?"
Before she could answer, Lian'er crawled into her lap, scattering her pebble towers. She looked up with a small, fierce pout. "Why does everyone want to cut off heads? It makes the ground so sad."
Ziyan blinked. "…Sad?"
Lian'er nodded solemnly. "Because it makes the dirt hungry. All that blood goes in, but it doesn't grow flowers. Just black grass."
For a moment, there was only the crackle of the small fire.
Then Li Qiang let out a low breath, almost amused. "That's a sharper truth than half the ministers in the court could see."
Ziyan brushed a thumb along Lian'er's cheek. The girl leaned into it, sleepy but stubborn.
"Then we'll give them something else to grow on," Ziyan murmured. "A trail of rot — rumors and half-letters, hints that whoever killed Zhao is already reaching for higher prey. That way they'll tear each other apart trying to root it out."
"And by the time they look for you," Li Qiang finished, "you'll already be standing on their throats."
Ziyan smiled, small and sharp. "Exactly."
By the next afternoon, the roads grew busier. Merchants clustered in wary convoys, paying extra coin for borrowed guards. Rumors flew like startled birds. Some swore the first skirmishes with Xia had ended in slaughter — Qi's lines broken by cunning mountain tactics. Others claimed the Emperor's personal guard had already crossed the border, dragging whole villages into forced service.
"War is profit," an old seller of dried plums muttered as she weighed their small bundle. "But it's never ours. It's theirs. The lords eat it first."
Ziyan paid without comment. Her mark pulsed again, a soft reminder that the burden of old powers would not rest easy in any war.
That evening, they camped close enough to see the faint glow of the capital's lanterns on the horizon. It was a cruel, beautiful sight — a golden crown on the dark land, promising splendor that would never reach villages like Nan Shu.
Li Qiang finished checking the perimeter, then joined Ziyan by the small pot of millet. Lian'er curled up between them, her head pillowed on Ziyan's thigh, hands clutching her little cloth doll.
"You could still turn back," Li Qiang said after a while, his low voice blending with the night insects. "Stay with Feiyan. Build up Nan Shu. Wait until Qi is too weak to notice you."
Ziyan shook her head. "I can't. That would leave this war to men like my father, who'll cut alliances and people alike just to keep their ledgers clean."
Li Qiang grunted. "And if your plan fails?"
"Then we try another. I didn't survive Rulan's tests, or Zhao's knives, or whatever old gods tied to this mark on my palm just to die in silence."
She stretched out her hand, watching the mark stir — a faint shimmer of red and black, like coals under silk. "I'm not the same girl they cast out. They'll learn that soon."
Later, as the fire burned low, Lian'er stirred and blinked up at them. "Will there be more people in your big city?"
"Yes," Ziyan whispered. "More people than you could count in ten lifetimes."
Lian'er's brow crinkled. "Will they be kind?"
Ziyan's heart squeezed. "Some will. Most won't know how."
"Then I will learn how," Lian'er said, with sleepy conviction. "So someone will teach them again."
She drifted off before Ziyan could answer. Li Qiang was silent a long time.
Finally, he said, almost under his breath, "You chose a good name for her."
By dawn, they joined the slow trickle of carts and travelers pressing toward the capital's great gates. The walls loomed impossibly tall, painted with coiling dragons whose eyes seemed to watch each passing stranger.
Lian'er stood on the cart bench, clutching Ziyan's arm, eyes wide and bright. "It's like a giant stone garden," she whispered.
Ziyan squeezed her hand. "A garden full of snakes."
But in her chest, something beat stronger. This was her city. Her ruin. Her chance.
They moved forward under the gate's towering shadow — toward the old palace that had once scorned her, toward ministers who thought her nothing but a discarded girl, toward secrets that now trembled on the verge of exposure.
Whatever waited inside, Ziyan knew this time she would not walk away quietly. And if the streets had to run red again before they bloomed clean… so be it.