Chapter 12: Fifteen

On the morning she turned fifteen, Shuyao woke before dawn and went out to shoot.

Zhengyu had left a short bow on her porch the night before, wrapped in red cloth.

It was cut down to her size, with a grip wound in plain linen.

There was a note tucked in the string.

"For the girl who owes me a leg. Don't tell Grandmother. -Z."

She laughed out loud in the empty yard.

By the time the sun came over the wall, her fingers were raw.

She had put three arrows in the straw target at forty paces.

Grandmother found her there with a bowl of birthday noodles.

"You should be at your embroidery."

"I'm busy."

"I can see that." Grandmother set the bowl on the stone rail. "Eat. You're thin."

"I'm exactly the right weight."

"Eat anyway."

Shuyao ate.

The noodles were hot and salty, and she let herself take one full minute of it.

At noon, the first rider came.

He wore the Western Garrison's gray and was caked in dust to the knees.

He bowed in the yard and held out a flat letter case sealed with her father's wax.

"From the Marquis, miss. For your birthday."

She cracked the seal.

Her father's blunt hand ran across the page.

"Little rabbit. Fifteen is too much. Your brother says you shoot like a hawk and boss him like a general. Keep both."

"The prince is a diligent observer and a polite young man, and he has not once complained of the salt."

"I do not like him. Your father."

She read the last line twice and put the letter in her sleeve.

Her father had never liked Wei.

He had never said so aloud before.

The second rider came at the hour of the horse.

He wore no uniform at all.

He was a thin man in a farmer's coat, with a mud-colored scarf over his face.

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