Chapter 4: Notches

Du Heng woke them by dropping a tray in the doorway.

"Your breakfast, General!" he shouted, picking up rice off the floor.

"The prince's household sends its compliments.

Also a basin, a comb for the hair you don't have, and a very long look from the cook."

"Why is he allowed to be loud?" Lin asked from the bed, with his face in the pillow.

"Because he's a servant of your house," Jiang said, "and you told the Marshal so."

Lin groaned and rolled over.

His hair was a black river across the quilt.

Jiang looked at it for longer than he meant to, and Du Heng saw him do it and went out whistling.

After the morning audience Lin took him to the study.

It was a long room behind the bedchamber with a high window, shelves of scrolls and a desk the size of a door.

A map of the northern provinces covered the whole east wall.

It was Jiang's map.

He knew every river on it, and the dates inked beside every pass.

He stood in front of it with his hands behind his back.

"Where did you get this?"

"I made it," said Lin.

"Over time."

Jiang let that go for now.

Lin crossed to a lacquer cabinet and brought out a long flat box.

He put it on the desk and opened it.

Inside, on red silk, lay two arrows.

They were Yan arrows, black-shafted and goose-feathered, and one of them was snapped a hand's breadth from the point.

Jiang knew them at once.

He turned the unbroken one in his fingers.

Under the fletching was a notch the width of a grain of rice, cut with a knife.

"I cut one in every arrow I loose," Jiang said.

"My first teacher did.

He said a man should know his own work."

"I know," said Lin.

"This one came out of the barge rail.

The other came out of the standard pole.

Both missed me by more than a hand.

I had the officers pull them before anyone else could."

"Why keep them?"

"They were the first time in six years you had come near enough to touch."

Jiang looked at him.

Lin did not look away.

"The third arrow is in the Hall of Wounds," he said, more quietly.

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