I Was Sent as Tribute to the Prince I Shot novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: The Widow

She was standing exactly where she had stood on the road, with the snow up to her ankles.

The mourning white hung off her thin shoulders, and she held the same wooden tablet in both hands.

Up close she was thirty, maybe less, with chapped red knuckles and eyes that had stopped being angry some time ago.

The guards at the moon gate watched her and did not touch her.

They knew who she was too.

"General," she said.

"Madam."

"They told me you would not come out."

"I'm out."

She held up the tablet.

A name was cut into the wood, three characters, short and plain, with the character for river in the middle.

"My husband," she said.

"A spearman.

Second rank.

He was thirty-one, and he went to the ford because the Marshal's levy took every man on our street who could stand."

Jiang looked at the name.

"He had two sons," she said.

"They're seven and four.

The little one asks when he's coming back from the fighting, and I tell him soon."

The snow came down between them.

Jiang had stood in front of generals and emperors and never found it so hard to stay upright.

"Where did he die?" he asked.

"On the east bank.

At dawn, in the first volley."

"That was my archers."

"I know."

"Then he died at my order." Jiang made himself say it plainly.

"I won't tell you I'm sorry for the shot at your prince.

I'd have done it again, and I told him so.

But I'm sorry for your husband, Madam.

I never saw him.

I never saw any of them.

That's not an excuse.

It's the worst part."

She looked at him, and the lines of her face did something complicated.

Jiang took the silver thumb ring off his right hand.

It was his archery ring, the one his first teacher had given him, and he held it out.

"It's worth something."

"I don't want it."

"Then what do you want?"

"I want one man from that side to say his name," she said.

"Out loud.

Not 'the dead.'

His name."

Jiang read it from the tablet.

The syllables were plain, a farmer's name, with a river in it.

He said it twice, then a third time, so that the guards at the gate could hear.

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