Chapter 9: What The Brother Knew
The lead refugee's name was Gao Ren, and he was lying about something.
Don't get me wrong, the story about Tongshan was real, the hollow eyes on his children confirmed it, and nothing could fake that. The Prefect's collectors had done exactly what he'd described. But Gao Ren himself didn't move like a farmer. He planted his feet too wide when he stood, kept his weight centered, and when Hao had offered to help him unload his pack on the first night, the man had shifted his body to keep his right hand free without thinking about it.
It was a trained reflex.
I gave it two days before I approached him. I had let the families settle into the temporary housing the village had arranged within the empty Chen shed that had been cleaned out and patched up, as well as space in the Liu compound's overflow room. I let Hao do what Hao did best, which was make the Tongshan families feel welcome with a speed that bordered on supernatural. By the second morning, their children were playing with the village kids and their wives were trading recipes with the Liu women.
On the third morning, I found Gao Ren alone at the river fork, washing clothes.
"Your leg," I said, crouching beside him. "How long has it been like that?"
He glanced at me with the same wariness he'd shown since he had arrived here. "Took an axe handle to the knee during the conscription three years back. It never healed right."
"You were conscripted?"
"Yes for two campaigns. The first one was south against the border clans. The second one was east when the Lord tried to take the river crossings at Jiankou." He wrung water from a shirt. "The knee got me sent home from the second one since I could no longer march on it. The Prefect's captain decided a limping spearman was worth less than the rice it took to feed him."