Chapter 8: The Black Ford

"I sent two riders at noon," Shen Zhuo said. "And the camp physician with them. They will reach the mountain temple in six days."

Ruyun was still sitting on the wool bales.

"Add it to what I owe you."

"You owe me nothing."

"Then it is a favor, and you have a rule about favors."

"I do." He looked at the wall instead of her. "Consider it a rule I broke, and keep your coin."

She laughed, helplessly, and wiped her face with the back of her hand.

The riders came back in twelve days with a note in the old steward's hand.

The Grand Princess was thin and furious and alive.

She had eaten three bowls of the physician's broth and asked what the camp was paying for rice.

That winter was the third, and the longest.

The river froze so hard the washhouse women had to chop for an hour before they reached water.

Ruyun worked the line beside Auntie at the ford below the north wall, where the camp's laundry went down to the ice in baskets every morning.

On the twelfth day of the first month, she knelt on the flat wash stone and saw grit.

Fine yellow sand, strewn across the ice in a stripe.

She rubbed some between her fingers.

It was fresh and dry, and it ran from the far bank toward the camp side in one straight line.

"Auntie," she said. "Where does sand come from in a frozen river?"

"Nowhere good."

"There was none here yesterday."

"Then somebody carried it."

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