Chapter 14: The Lieutenant

Tan Bao did not wait for an answer.

"They say the commander's letters are in your hand," he said.

"They say Lu Zhaoming is a name on a wall and not a man."

His voice shook, and his sunburned face had gone a mottled red.

"The Censor's clerk told me this at the gate, in front of the whole watch."

"I hit him," said Tan Bao.

"Then I came to ask you to tell me he was lying."

Lanxin stood very still on the wall.

The sun was coming up red behind the barracks roofs, and it lit the new lines at the corners of her eyes.

Shuyi saw her decide.

"Come into the study," Lanxin said.

"Not here."

"Here," said Tan Bao.

"I want to hear it where I wept."

He pointed along the wall to a worn stretch of parapet between two towers.

Lanxin walked there.

Shuyi followed three steps behind and stopped, because it was not hers to cross.

"I wrote them," Lanxin said.

"Every one, from the first night."

"There was no Lu Zhaoming."

Tan Bao made a sound.

"There was no eastern army coming," Lanxin said.

"The marshal was dead, the relief had turned back, and you would have opened the gate by the third week."

"You lied to us."

"I lied to you."

"I stood on this stone in the sleet and heard you read me his voice."

"I wept for him."

"I told my mother in a letter that a great man had saved me."

"I named a nephew after him."

His fists were shut so hard that the knuckles shone white.

"Everything I felt was for nothing."

"Not for nothing," Lanxin said.

"For you, and for the men beside you."

"You did not hold the wall because of Lu."

"You held it because of what the words asked of you, and that was yours."

"Do not tell me what was mine."

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