The negotiations lasted six hours.
Xin sat through all of it. Not at the main table — to the side, back against the wall, listening. Shen Bao talked. The Emperor's advisors argued. Mei interjected twice with points so precise they ended entire branches of disagreement in under a minute.
Master Zhou slept in his chair for forty minutes and nobody mentioned it.
By the time the candles had burned down to stubs, the framework existed. Not a treaty — frameworks were not treaties. But the shape of something that could become one, if the army stopped moving and the three generals cooperated.
The Emperor stood, signaling the session's end.
"The army," he said to Shen Bao. "Tonight."
"I will send the order at dawn," Shen Bao said. "Sending it now through darkness creates confusion. My command
