Chapter 12: The Collectors Eye
Lu Fang had counted fourteen villages since the Lord of Qinghe's new levy order had landed on the Prefect's desk, and Hekou would be his fifteenth.
Fourteen villages meant fourteen negotiations that weren't really negotiations because Lu Fang held the tablet and the tablet held the numbers. Villages that paid promptly earned a note of compliance on Lu Fang's ledger. Villages that resisted earned a different kind of note, and when the cultivators came on the second visit, no one resisted twice.
Lu Fang had not yet needed the second visit. That was his record and he intended to keep it.
He rode at the front of the column. Six infantry, two pack horses, and one empty cart that would be full by the time they turned back to Meishan. His horse was the Prefect's third best, which was an insult he catalogued alongside every other slight he'd endured in three years of service. The Prefect's first and second horses went to military officers who didn't hold the land together like he had.
What earned promotions was surplus. Collecting more than the quota. The Lord of Qinghe had doubled his war expenditure in a single season, which meant every collector who exceeded targets became visible to the men who decided careers.
Lu Fang intended to be very visible.
The northern road curved through farmland that looked unremarkable. Rice paddies, millet fields, the usual subsistence spread. But Lu Fang had learned to read villages, and what he saw as Hekou came into view made him sit straighter.
The fields were planted.
All of them.