Word of the hearing spread faster than fire and with fewer regrets. By the time Ziyan stepped onto the granary square's cracked stones, half the city was already there.
Snow had been trampled into slush. Someone had swept a rough circle open in front of the tablets. In the middle of it stood a man in battered Qi armor, arms bound with cord. His hair had the streaks of middle age; his jaw held the set of someone who had spent years refusing to admit mistakes because men died when he did.
Two women from the new quarter stood opposite him. One carried a child on her hip; the other held a ledger with numbers that had learned to be frightened.
Ren the scribe stood by a fresh slate propped against a broken column. On it, he had written: Grain taken without witness. Claim: rank. Claim: law.
Ziyan took her place between them, back to the tablets. The wind threaded her hair. Feiyan lounged to one side, close enough that anyone rushing rashly would meet a knife before they met Ziyan.
"Name," Ziyan said.
The man lifted his chin. "Sun Wei," he said. "Former captain of the Third Eastern Banner, Qi army."
"All of that is too long for a tablet," Ren muttered.
"Sun Wei," Ziyan said. "You stand here because yesterday you took three sacks of grain from the south warehouse, meant for the new quarter, without signing for them. When confronted, you struck one of the stewards and claimed that, as a captain of Qi, you have the right to requisition supplies."
He snorted. "We bled for three years on the river while your Ye Cheng counted tax. I'm owed more than three sacks."
A murmur. Some nods. These were words with weight.
Ziyan turned to the steward's assistant, the woman with the ledger. "You?"
"He walked in like the soldiers used to," she said, bitterness fraying the edges of her voice. "Took what he wanted. Said if we had a problem we could send a complaint to a commander who burned last spring. We went to the tablets instead."
The midwife with the burned hair elbowed her way to the front. "I told them to," she announced. "Figured the stones should earn their keep."
Ziyan inclined her head to her. "This city," she said, "has lived under many flags. Under Qi. Under men who borrowed Xia's knives. Under no one. Now it lives under the Road's law."
She tapped the nearest tablet. "This one says: 'No soldier shall seize food, coin or shelter without witness and record, save in open battle when the city itself is at stake. Any who do shall repay double, in kind or in labor.'"
Sun Wei's lip curled. "I'm not your soldier," he said. "I don't wear your sparrows. I fight for Qi."
"Qi didn't feed you," someone called. "We did."
"Qi didn't stop the wolves," another voice added. "We did."
Sun Wei's gaze swept the crowd. "You call yourselves Qi," he said. "You speak our tongue. You write your laws with our characters. But you bow to Xia's seal when you send grain. You invite their banners to stand over your gate. You want to judge me? Do it as what you are: traitors."
A sharp intake of breath. The word hit harder here than beyond the wall.
Ziyan let it hang a moment, like a bad smell.
"We are not Qi," she said. "We are Yong'an. We are the Road Under Heaven. We remember Qi. We remember what it did. What it failed to do. We remember wolves at our doors and names on edicts. We remember that when Gaoling fell, when Ye Cheng burned, these tablets did not exist."
She stepped closer to Sun Wei. "If you wish to live under Qi's rules," she said softly, "there are roads that can carry you back toward whatever is left of its court. If you wish to live here, you live under this law. It does not care what banner you used to carry."
His jaw bunched. "You think ink can erase rank?"
"No," she said. "I think rank earned facing arrows can teach the ink to mean something." She glanced at the ledger. "What did you do with the grain?"
"Gave it to my men," he said. "They haven't eaten properly in days. Neither have I."
"You could have asked," the steward's assistant said. "We would have recorded it. Shared it."
His silence answered.
Ziyan looked out over the crowd. Men from the wall. Women from the riverside stalls. Newcomers clutching bundles and the thin, smoky light of hope they did not trust yet.
"This law is new," she said. "We are all learning what it costs. If I let him keep what he took without record, I teach you that the old way still rules: the man with the sword eats first. If I beat him and throw him out, I teach you that the Road has no room for anyone who arrives hungry and proud."
Ren's brush hovered, capturing her words.
"So we do both less and more," she said. "Sun Wei. You will repay what you took in grain when you have it. Until then, you will work in the south warehouses under the steward's eye: lifting, counting, learning how hard it is to fill a sack before you put a hand to one. For thirty days, you wear no rank. Only this."
She held up a strip of cloth on which a sloppy sparrow had been inked by a child.
"Road work," Wei said under his breath. "We should make more of those rags."
Murmurs rose. Some scoffed. Some nodded. Sun Wei stared at the sparrow as if it might bite him.
"And if I refuse?" he asked.
Ziyan met his eyes. "Then you refuse the law you stand under," she said. "You will not be beaten. You will not be hanged. You will be walked to the gate and told that Yong'an has no place for men who believe their hunger is more important than everyone else's. The wolves and the Regent can fight over you."
Silence thickened.
He flexed his hands against the cord. Old calluses creaked.