Feiyan reached the capital of Xia under another woman's name.
At the last posting inn before the city, she traded her road-stained cloak for a cotton jacket with neat mended cuffs, tied her hair lower, and let the dust of the journey settle into the lines of her face. The mirror on the wall was polished bronze; it showed her the way men saw trouble when it wrapped itself in patience.
"Madam Liu," the innkeeper said, bowing himself almost double as she settled the account with worn, precise coins. "You'll find the city full today. New reign, new titles. Everyone wants a scrap."
Feiyan smiled with half her mouth. "When names change, someone always gets trampled," she said. "Best to arrive between hooves."
He laughed uneasily and blessed her journey. She stepped back onto the road with the sun a pale coin behind thin clouds.
The capital – Bai'an, pearl of Xia – no longer looked like a pearl. It looked like a bowl dropped on a stone floor and glued back together in a hurry. Streets bustled, yes, but the noise had an edge to it, words spoken too quickly, laughter that checked itself halfway. New banners hung from the gate-towers: the old imperial emblem cut down, a fresh character sewn above it in heavy, impatient strokes.
Emperor.
Not Heaven's Son. Not Regent. Just the bare word, as if daring the sky to argue.
Feiyan joined a grain caravan at the last turn, shoulders bowed under a borrowed sack. The guards hardly glanced at her; they were too busy comparing the new seals on their warrants, making sure some clerk's mistake wouldn't cost them their hands.
Inside the walls, Bai'an smelled of incense and fresh ink. Street-criers shouted proclamations about tax remissions and border victories and punishments for vague treasons. Feiyan listened, counting.
"—traitors on the eastern frontier who sign pacts without seal—"
"—border-net tightening—"
"—General Ren Kanyu recalled to receive the Emperor's favor—"
She let that one hang in her chest a moment longer than the others.
Ren, then, was inside the palace as promised. Being favored by a man who changed his title as often as his robes was a dangerous thing.
She left the grain-men at the city granary and wound her way toward the hill where the palace sprawled, pretending to be smaller than it was. Along the way, she saw the marks she had come for: three scratches on a lamppost, chalk under the eave of a tea-stall, a sparrow's rough shape drawn in soot behind a shrine brazier.
The Road had already found a way into Bai'an.
Madam Wen's jars had traveled farther than anyone had guessed. Shuye's friends—carters, traders, men and women who measured their lives in milestones instead of court bells—had passed the word.
She ducked into a side alley that smelled of old noodles and damp stone and found the door she wanted: plain, warped, the red of its New Year's paper worn to the memory of color.
The man who opened it had flour on his forearms and a burn scar across one cheek.
"Looking for bowls?" he asked.
"Looking for roads," Feiyan replied.
He stepped aside at once. Inside, the air was warm, crowded with shelves. Not just bowls. Not just jars. Tablets, too, of cheap clay, each etched with a character or two.
"Shuye sends his debts," Feiyan said.
The potter nodded. "He paid too little," he said. "We've had to work hard to justify them." He took her pack without asking, swung it into a corner. "You're early. We thought the Road would wait longer before sending anyone to look our way."
"The Road doesn't wait," Feiyan said. "It looks both ways and runs when it has to."
He grinned, brief and fierce. "Then you're in time for the first game," he said. "They've called the generals to kneel."