Ziyan had learned to measure power not by crowns, but by silence.
In the Eastern Capital, silence was currency. And in the days following their failed infiltration of the Ministry of Supply, the silence that surrounded Lord Li Jun's court was suffocating.
She had been taken alive. Not interrogated. Not beaten. That would have been too crude for someone like him.
Lord Li Jun didn't spill blood when he could spill doubt.
She hadn't seen Feiyan or Shuye since the courtyard. She didn't know who had escaped—if anyone had. But the Phoenix mark on her palm, shaped like a blooming lotus, pulsed faintly beneath her sleeve. A warning? A signal? A thread?
No. Not warning this time.
Guidance.
Elsewhere in the city, a black lacquered box was set gently on a low table in the back room of the Lotus Pavilion. The air was thick with rosewood incense. A single candle burned beside a ceramic teacup, half-full.
Lianhua brushed a speck of dust from the box's lid. Inside was a red ledger, its cover stamped with the coiled serpent of the Ministry of Supply.
The red ledger.
The one Ziyan and her allies had risked everything to steal.
Lianhua had not taken it by force. She didn't need to. Amid the chaos—the alarms, the fight, the guards chasing ghosts through the corridors—she had simply walked in through the side door.
No one questioned a silk-clad courtesan delivering wine to the recordkeepers.
No one noticed when one book went missing.
She had taken it without a sound, and no one yet realized it was gone.
Not even Ziyan.
Back in the cold stone cell, Ziyan waited. She could hear the guards laughing again, speaking of her fate like it was already sealed.
"Li Jun says she'll be put on a ship by the end of the week," one muttered. "Off to some distant outpost. If she's lucky."
"And if she's not?" the other snorted.
"She won't need a ship."
Ziyan stayed still. Let them speak. Their arrogance was useful.
That evening, the tray arrived. A bowl of rice, a few cold vegetables. Nothing unusual.
Except for the sliver of lacquered wood tucked beneath the cloth.
Crescent-shaped. Smooth. And warm to the touch.
The Phoenix mark on her palm pulsed once—bright.
Move.
Feiyan had not been so lucky.
She hung in a locked storeroom beneath the Ministry's northern annex, wrists swollen, lips bloodied. They had not broken her, but they were trying. One interrogator—gold rings stacked on his fingers—whispered to her between strikes, "Where's the ledger?"
She only smiled.
A broken smile. But defiant.
She knew one thing for certain: Ziyan would not give them what they wanted. And even if she did…
...they no longer had what they wanted.
Shuye had escaped. Barely.
Dragged through a side passage in the chaos, he had fought his way free with nothing but a ledger satchel and a throwing knife. The satchel had been slashed during the retreat. By the time he reached the alley outside the Ministry, the red ledger was gone.
For two days, he searched. For Feiyan. For Ziyan. For any sign of the ledger.
He found Feiyan first—half-conscious and bleeding, chained to the wall like some discarded animal.
He killed the guard with the rings.
Carried her out on his back, using servant tunnels and blind alleys mapped in memory.
He didn't cry until they were safe.
Ziyan moved the night after she received the sliver.
The lock opened with a quiet click. She slipped out into the corridor, feet silent against the stone. The guards had rotated. Two were missing.
Coincidence?
She didn't think so.
The servant's hallway at the west end of the building had a cloak hanging on a hook and a half-empty teacup still steaming. She wrapped the cloak around her shoulders and pulled the hood low.
She didn't know if it had been left for her.
But she used it.
She exited through the delivery courtyard at dawn, walking past two sleepy guards who barely lifted their heads. The mark on her palm pulsed warm.
Behind her, someone watched.
She could feel it.
Three nights later, they reunited in an abandoned warehouse behind a shuttered spice shop. Feiyan lay curled beneath a pile of old wool cloaks, pale but alive. Shuye sat beside her, clutching a small blade in one hand and a bundle of herbs in the other.
"She didn't talk," he told Ziyan. "Even when they broke her shoulder. She didn't say a word."
Ziyan's breath caught. She reached out, touched Feiyan's bandaged wrist.
"She saved us," Ziyan murmured.
"She almost died."
"I know."
Shuye looked up at her, eyes dark. "I wasn't strong enough to stop them. I ran."
"You survived."
"That's not enough anymore." He looked at his hands. "I'm going to train. Not just knives and words. Real fighting. Next time, I protect her."
Ziyan saw it then—something in him had hardened.
The quiet boy was gone.
That night, Ziyan stood alone by the window. The city buzzed beyond, its rooftops golden under the waxing moon.
The Phoenix mark glowed steady now. No danger. No urgency.
Just purpose.
She pulled a cloth from her sleeve—the one with the silver petal. Lianhua's mark.
They had escaped Li Jun's trap. But the ledger?
It had vanished in the chaos.
She had mourned its loss.
Now, she wasn't so sure.
Somewhere in the city, someone had picked it up. Not for Li Jun. Not for gold.
Someone who knew exactly what it was worth.
She looked at the cloth again.
Then she smiled.
In the Lotus Pavilion, Lianhua sipped plum wine as she flipped through the pages of the red ledger.
Bribes. Orders. Kill lists. Trade routes rerouted during famines.
It was a map of rot.
She turned to a blank page at the back and picked up her brush.
Ziyan, Feiyan, Shuye.
Three names.
No price yet.
But soon.
She smiled.
And turned the page.