Chapter 5: Auntie's Rice

By the time the river broke in spring, the washhouse had a rule about the rice.

Nobody ate until Ruyun counted the bowls.

"Forty women, forty bowls," she said, standing over the pot with a wooden ladle in her left hand.

"Forty-one," said Auntie. "You forgot yourself."

"I never forget myself. I am the one who wrote the count on the wall."

"She wrote it on the wall," Auntie told the woman beside her. "Four months in the camp and she is already posting rules."

"The rule is that nobody takes two scoops," Ruyun said.

"Then why are you looking at me?"

"Because you are holding two bowls."

The washhouse roared.

Auntie put one bowl down with great dignity.

"It was for the cat."

"We do not have a cat."

"We might. Someday. Those things come to those who prepare."

Even the girl in the corner, a thin thief who had not spoken since winter, covered her mouth and shook.

Ruyun felt it in her chest, warm and unexpected.

It had been so long since she had been in a room where she was not the one to be pitied.

The quartermaster had been moved to the east stores, where he counted sacks and glared across the yard at the washhouse smoke.

Every evening a soldier brought the women their rice on the Commander's own scale.

Every evening, Shen Zhuo's orderly handed Ruyun a single copper coin.

"Your wage," he said the first time, expressionless. "The Commander says the washhouse bills the army by the load now. Your share is a copper a day."

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