Chapter 15: Letters in Boots

The sick ward was a long stone hall that smelled of camphor and wet wool.

Twenty cots stood in two rows under the high windows.

A cook with floury arms sat at the door, shelling beans into a bowl, and watched Shuyi come in with her borrowed lantern.

"Who's this?" he said.

"A copyist," said Shuyi.

"I've come to read."

"We have a reader."

"He didn't come tonight."

The cook looked her up and down, the small woman in a green ribbon and a grey coat three sizes too big.

"He said it was the general's business," the cook said.

"Everyone's heard about the Censor."

"Some of them have heard worse."

"I'll read anyway," said Shuyi.

She walked down the middle of the hall.

Faces turned on the pillows, grey and unshaven, and the coughing never quite stopped.

At the far end an old spearman with a bandaged chest was propped against the wall.

He had a folded square of paper on his blanket, worn through at the creases, and one hand lay flat on top of it.

"I'm Qin Shuyi," she said.

"I copy letters for a living."

"I've been copying the Frostgate Letters at the general's house."

"And I thought you might want to hear one."

Nobody answered.

The spearman turned his head away.

Shuyi set the lantern on a stool and took a paper out of her sleeve.

It was a fair copy of the sixth letter, her own work, in the hooked hand.

She had written it the day before, and she knew it by heart.

"My dear wife," she read.

"The wind on this road is cold, and the dust gets in everything, but I am not afraid.

I carry your name in my coat, next to my heart."

Her voice was small in the long room.

She read the part about the plum tree, and the part about the road, and the part where the husband promised to come home before the snow melted.

By the second page, the coughing had stopped.

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