Chapter 3: The Woman Who Raised Two Wolves
Mother was having a good day, which meant she could sit upright without the coughing fits lasting more than a minute. I brought her tea, which consisted of boiled water with dried chrysanthemum from the patch behind the house — and sat across from her on the floor of our main room while Hao was out helping the Wei family replant their eastern field.
"You've been walking the village," she said.
I set the cup down and nodded. "I have."
"You've checked the irrigation, counted the grain stores, and you've been watching who talks to who..." She sipped her tea with shaky hands, but her eyes never wavered from him. "Your father used to do the same thing before planting season. But you're not checking fence posts."
I could've deflected, but Mother had raised two sons in a warring states farming village while her husband got conscripted twice, buried a daughter last winter, and kept this household running through three bad harvests.
She didn't need me to manage her.
"The Prefect lost men in that skirmish," I began to say. "More than expected, based on how few came back across the region. The Liu family has a cousin in Dongshan village, and their village lost six men. We lost four. That pattern holds across the prefecture, which means the Prefect's fighting force is down by at least a third."
Mother watched me over her cup.
"Which also means one of two things: Either the Lord of Qinghe pulls back and consolidates, in which case the Prefect leaves us alone for a season while he rebuilds. Or the Lord pushes forward because he's already committed to the southern campaign and can't afford to stall. In which case the next conscription will be harsher than the last."