Lu Chonglou unfolded the map on the carriage floor and examined it. It was the small folding map issued by the Court Adjudicator’s Office to its agents — no larger than a compact folding screen, and designed to open accordion-style.

This map belonged to Ye Xiaoqian, who had given it to Lu Chonglou not so he could track their position and direction, but because he thought Lu Chonglou would be bored stuck in the carriage all day.

“Take this to pass the time,” Ye Xiaoqian had tossed it over, saying.

“You use a map to pass the time?” Lu Chonglou had asked.

“I do it all the time,” Ye Xiaoqian had said earnestly. “Look at the map — mountains, rivers, water — it’s like taking a trip without leaving your seat.”

He made it sound easy, but Lu Chonglou lacked such eyes. When he looked at the map, he saw a mesh of lines. He could barely distinguish mountains from rivers.

—

As dusk approached, the convoy halted. They were in open country, and the formation arranged the vehicles in a ring with soldiers deployed around the perimeter.

“My lord.”

Ye Xiaoqian came over from a distance. The defensive arrangements had been handled — all according to the rotation already established — and he found Lu Chonglou standing there lost in thought.

Lu Chonglou smiled when he saw Ye Xiaoqian — but the smile carried a faint bitterness that the fading light fortunately concealed.

The bitterness that no one else could see, a man feels himself. But such feelings are rarely spoken aloud.

“Have you eaten dinner yet, my lord?” Ye Xiaoqian asked cheerfully.

*This careless child,* Lu Chonglou thought. His worry was a vast and heavy thing — yet Ye Xiaoqian’s smile was enough to make him smile along without even trying.

The boy always wore that smile, as if missing his daily quota of grins would be a personal loss.

Lu Chonglou had once teased Ye Xiaoqian about it, saying he seemed to have a set allotment of smiles each day that he could only exceed, never fall short of.

Ye Xiaoqian had replied: if smiles were rationed, would they still be real?

Lu Chonglou had said: what if you had to smile all day just to earn a living and feed your family?

Ye Xiaoqian had gone quiet for a long moment, then nodded slowly. *”So smiles aren’t always pure,”* he had murmured to himself.

Like a shop boy. Like a merchant. A person who scowled at everyone all day long would probably lose business.

*”When people are hurting,”* Ye Xiaoqian had said quietly, *”they force a smile for the sake of getting by.”*

Lu Chonglou’s response had been: so what? If it’s for the sake of living, no matter how great the effort, it’s what one must do. To want a certain kind of life without working for it, and then feel aggrieved that fate hasn’t delivered it — that’s simply asking for it.

Ye Xiaoqian had found this too profound — not the sort of thing his age was supposed to grasp. He understood it. But he resisted understanding it at this age.

Now, watching the pure and unfeigned quality of Ye Xiaoqian’s smile, Lu Chonglou’s own face softened.

“I haven’t eaten yet. Have you?”

“I’m full,” Ye Xiaoqian said. “I ate my fill just walking back.”

Lu Chonglou blinked. “You got full on the wind?”

“Think about it, my lord — I walked in from the outer perimeter. Everyone was eating. I just had a bit from each person. One bite from a hundred people — that’s more than enough.”

“Whether you bother cadging food like that is beside the point,” Lu Chonglou said.

Ye Xiaoqian burst out laughing.

“The Qianban once said: when you’re on a mission, do your utmost to keep your own ration pouch from going flat. You never know when you might need it.”

“You’re always saying ‘the Qianban said this, the Qianban said that,'” Lu Chonglou said. “Which Qianban actually raised you?”

Ye Xiaoqian grinned. “Can’t tell you.”

He glanced around, then lowered his voice. “My lord, why don’t you do a round of inspection. Walk a stretch and then ask — ‘how does your ration bread taste? Is it good?’ Then try a bit. Everyone will think a great official like yourself just wants to make sure they’re eating well, that you’re looking out for them. No one will suspect you’re there to cadge a meal.”

“I am a fourth-ranked official of the imperial court,” Lu Chonglou said flatly.

“Try it, my lord.”

Lu Chonglou harrumphed — and then stepped out.

He was back in about a quarter shichen. His stomach was visibly rounded.

“My lord, you didn’t go very far,” Ye Xiaoqian observed.

“I couldn’t eat any more. How do you manage a hundred people? I was done after twenty or thirty.”

Ye Xiaoqian sighed. “My lord, were you going down the line one by one?”

“Isn’t that how it’s done?”

“With a talent like that, my lord, I’m afraid you could never serve in the Court Adjudicator’s Office.”

He looked at Lu Chonglou pointedly. “The Qianban said the first thing an agent must learn is how to be shameless — and not just shameless, but shameless in a way that no one notices.”

*My lord, you went person by person tasting their bread — the bread was the same for everyone! Even a fool could see you were just looking for a free meal.*

“Are you tired, my lord?” Ye Xiaoqian asked.

“No. Why?”

“Then cover my watch for me — I’m going to sleep in your carriage.”

And he did.

Lu Chonglou stood there, bewildered. *Ye Xiaoqian, you’re a Baiban. Standing watch is your duty. Your duty is to protect me. You’re now making the person you’re supposed to protect stand watch while you sleep in his carriage?*

He followed quickly, only a few paces behind. He watched Ye Xiaoqian climb into the carriage. He reached the door, pulled it open, and started to say: “Ye Xiaoqian, you shouldn’t—”

From inside: *”Zzz… zzz… zzz…”*

Lu Chonglou now suspected Ye Xiaoqian had some kind of hidden mechanism built into him. The moment he said he was going to sleep, he just — lay down and pressed a switch — and was out. There was no lying there gathering drowsiness, no gradual drifting off. Nothing.

Left with no other option, Lu Chonglou held out until the middle of the night before he truly couldn’t keep his eyes open. He went back to the carriage and found Ye Xiaoqian still snoring away. He cleared his throat.

“Ye Baiban, I’d like to sleep too.”

Ye Xiaoqian rolled over, patted the space he’d just cleared. “Come on. We’ll share.”

Lu Chonglou: “……”

Tired as he was, he lay down, and was asleep before long. When he woke, the sounds of the convoy beginning to move had roused him. The space beside him was empty — Ye Xiaoqian had slipped out at some point.

He climbed down from the carriage and spotted Ye Xiaoqian in the distance, relieving himself — and swaying side to side while doing so.

Ye Xiaoqian turned, saw Lu Chonglou, and called out cheerfully: “My lord, come give me a hand!”

Lu Chonglou jogged over, thinking something was wrong. “What is it?”

Ye Xiaoqian pointed at the ground. “I was trying to write ‘Ye Xiaoqian was here’ but I ran out.”

Lu Chonglou stared.

“I need you to pick up where I left off.”

Lu Chonglou looked at the ground for a long moment, then sighed. “The fact that you managed to finish the character for ‘one’ is already quite impressive…”

“My lord, you think I was slow?” Ye Xiaoqian said. “Wrong! I wasn’t just fast — I can *aim* while spinning.”

Lu Chonglou: “……”

He tilted his head back. *Is my life and safety truly to be entrusted entirely to this person?*

But Ye Xiaoqian didn’t notice Lu Chonglou’s gloom. “Hurry up, my lord. Don’t tell me you can’t even manage the character for ‘tour’?”

“I am a fourth-ranked official of the imperial court,” Lu Chonglou said stiffly. “I have a dignity to maintain. How can you ask this of me?”

“My lord, just this once… If you help me, I’ll go catch us some game later. I’ll roast it for you at midday.”

Lu Chonglou glanced around to confirm no one was watching, then lowered his voice gravely. “Just this once. Never again.”

And so—

“My lord, why are you dripping first? At your age, that shouldn’t be happening. The Qianban once said, men don’t start doing that until they’re around forty.”

“Shut up!”

Ye Xiaoqian thought it over carefully and then, with sudden revelation: “My lord, have you been… overusing it?”

“Get out of my sight!”

“My lord, don’t be angry… finish the character for ‘tour’ first… then I’ll go find you some game.”

—

After leaving Yuezhou, another three days on the road brought them to worse terrain. Liangzhou was hilly, but not the steep, sheer kind of hills — nothing like Shuzhou, where range after range of mountains stood like coils that had to be unraveled one by one before the Sichuan basin finally appeared.

Liangzhou’s hills were more like vast, rolling mounds. The official road wound between them, and because the terrain kept it low, rain would collect into standing water. The road was also narrower here, so the convoy’s progress slowed considerably.

Lu Chonglou had never been to Liangzhou. In fact, for the first twenty-odd years of his life he had never left the capital. Seeing these landscapes now, his heart stirred with the urge to compose a poem.

The carriage had been jolting so badly that he and Ye Xiaoqian had decided to walk alongside it. He was just gathering his poetic mood — the lines were already in his throat — when he heard Ye Xiaoqian up ahead unable to contain himself any longer.

“Hilltop without stones looks like a bun, hilltop with stones looks like a nipp—”

Lu Chonglou lunged forward and clamped a hand over Ye Xiaoqian’s mouth.

The last few syllables escaped through his fingers anyway: *”—le of a cow.”*

Which left Lu Chonglou momentarily embarrassed.

“My lord, what are you doing?” Ye Xiaoqian asked indignantly. “Why are you stopping me from reciting poetry?”

Lu Chonglou coughed a few times. “I only feel that doesn’t look like a cow’s — it looks more like a bull’s.”

“Why does my lord say so?”

“Ahem… I see the scenery ahead is truly picturesque. Let’s walk faster and go take a look.”

He quickened his pace and moved on.

Ye Xiaoqian watched him go, then murmured to himself: “Reading really does make a difference. He can even tell male from female just by looking at mountains.”

Lu Chonglou stumbled.

—

On a hillside about three or four *li* from the convoy, Wen Jiu lay prone with his men and watched.

Once they were past this undulating terrain, they would be fully inside Liangzhou — and that was when they would strike.

He turned and glanced at the subordinate lying beside him. “Word came last night that this Ye Xiaoqian is just a half-grown boy. But I think he might be putting on an act. Have someone go and test him.”

The subordinate hesitated. “Sir, the Jiedushi said we should not provoke the Baiban. Should we wait a little longer?”

Wen Jiu’s brow furrowed. “Do you think my word carries no weight?”

The subordinate was startled and immediately replied, “No, sir! I’ll see to it at once.”

—