Zhù Ying did not enter the town right away. Instead, she took her time surveying the county seat. Since she had dispatched Xiang Le and Zhù Qingjun here, this was her first time paying it a visit.

Gan County’s seat was slightly smaller even than Zhù Ying’s own “private estate,” and its layout was far from orderly. It nestled against the foot of a low hill, and from the outside, the surrounding walls looked reasonably new—yet they bore none of the proper, imposing appearance one expected of a county wall.

The seat of Zhu County had been built from blueprints she herself had drawn up, modeled on the imperial court’s standards for constructing city walls. Gan County’s seat, however, had its roots in the Yigan clan’s main stockade, and stockades were never built to any standard.

Zhù Qingjun said, “It was already like this when we arrived. We’ve wanted to make repairs, but it’s never been convenient—we’re always afraid of being ambushed mid-construction, and the project is so large it can’t be finished quickly.”

Zhù Ying said, “There’s no need to be rigid about it.”

Zhù Qingjun said, “The inside is just as irregular as it looks from here. The foundation is an old, small stockade that once belonged to the Yigan clan. After the Yigan chieftain moved in, he built additional structures on the outside, but there was no plan to it—they just put things wherever they pleased.”

Zhù Ying asked, “What happened to the original stockade chief?”

“Shortly after the Yigan chieftain arrived, his stockade could no longer hold out. His family died, and those who survived fled to the Jima clan.”

The great stockade that the Yigan chieftain’s family had built and inhabited over several generations still stood below Zhù Ying’s own mountain city. Eventually the Yigan chieftain had abandoned it, and because the terrain there was flat and the grounds more spacious than here, the forced relocation could be counted as one of the great grievances between the Yigan clan and Zhù Ying—a wound that made reconciliation nearly impossible, and which ultimately left both sides with no choice but to meet on the battlefield.

Being the most powerful figure in the region, the Yigan chieftain had found himself a rather large stockade to move into, inevitably displacing those who had been there before—a cuckoo taking over another bird’s nest.

Listening to Zhù Qingjun’s account, Zhù Ying spurred her horse and rode into the county seat. Inside, it was exactly as Zhù Qingjun had described: the roads were crooked and uneven, winding along the slopes and borrowing the shape of the terrain, so the houses on either side rose and fell at unequal heights. The people living within the town seemed quite at ease, however, and the children did not shy away from strangers. They jumped and skipped around the horses, delighting in the spectacle.

Some of the children called out to Zhù Qingjun in the Huapa dialect: “You’re back!”

Zhù Qingjun glanced at Zhù Ying with a trace of embarrassment, then answered the children openly: “That’s right, I’m back!”

Her Huapa was spoken with a slight accent, and the children giggled and mimicked her, echoing “I’m back!” in exaggerated imitation of her inflection. Zhù Ying laughed out loud listening to them.

One of the children asked, “Is this your man, then?”

Zhù Qingjun was caught between laughter and exasperation. “Where did you learn to talk like that?”

The child stuck out her tongue at her and slid her gaze sideways toward Zhù Ying. Zhù Ying had already dismounted, and the children took two steps back, studying her with open curiosity. Seeing that she was fair-skinned and fine-featured, with a slight smile on her face and nothing fierce about her manner, the children crept two steps closer again. The others in Zhù Qingjun’s party dismounted right behind her.

Zhù Ying fished some sweets from her pocket, distributed them among the children, and said with a smile, “No, I’m not. Why did you ask her that? Just because two people walk together doesn’t mean they’re a pair.”

Hearing her speak fluent Huapa dialect, the children were pleasantly surprised—then immediately took it as perfectly natural. “Someone sang a song for her,” one of them said.

A little girl with a sweet in her cheek said, “He’s a nuisance. He kept us from harvesting grain. You’re not keeping us from living our lives, so we don’t find you disagreeable. Do you sing too?”

Shortly afterward, adults came to pull the children back home. Since coming to Wuzhou, Zhù Ying had grown ever less particular about what she wore and ate. After her father Zhù died she had worn mourning garments, and the new clothes made afterward were all plain, fine-woven cloth. When she traveled, Zhang Xiangu had prepared a number of changes of clothes for her, all drawn from this same modest stock. It bore no comparison to the refined dress she had worn in the capital.

And yet the clothing was new, with no patches, and the cut was unlike what common people wore.

The children could not tell quite what it meant, only that it looked fine. Adults with more life experience could see at a glance that the wearer was no ordinary person. Afraid the children might give offense to this “personage of importance” and bring trouble down on everyone, they watched the little ones with anxious eyes. Then suddenly one among them muttered something under their breath; people nearby asked quietly what had been said; they began pointing and gesturing at Zhù Ying, murmuring, “Looks like him.”

Zhù Ying crouched down and said very earnestly, “I don’t sing, and I’m not her man.”

“Oh—” The children let out a small, collective sigh of disappointment. A thin little boy suddenly spat out the sweet in his mouth, then burst into tears at his own loss.

Zhù Ying fished out another sweet and gave it to him. “Here! Hold onto it this time—don’t talk when you have something in your mouth. Spitting it out is fine, but if you choke on it, that’s your life on the line.”

The thin little boy nodded very seriously, unwrapped the sweet paper, tucked it carefully into his cheek, and pressed his lips tightly shut.

Zhù Qingjun, seeing that the crowd was only growing larger, said to Zhù Ying, “We should go to the magistrate’s office and speak there. You’ve come on a tour of inspection—there’s no rush to head back, and you’ll have plenty of time later to understand the mood of the people. Xiang Le and I would never arrange compliant village elders and students to give prepared answers to a superior official.”

Then she added in a lower voice, “And even if we tried to arrange it, it wouldn’t fool you anyway—so we didn’t bother.”

Zhù Ying—herself one of those court officials well-practiced in the art of “arranging compliant elders and students to give prepared answers”—felt not the slightest embarrassment. She nodded and said, “Good.”

Zhù Qingjun announced loudly to the onlookers, “This is the Prefect I always talk about! The one who distributed land to everyone!”

The crowd erupted in louder discussion. One person, unable to control their volume, said, “I knew I wasn’t wrong—that year when he came…”

Someone corrected: “Isn’t she said to be a woman?”

Zhù Qingjun’s gaze turned sharp and piercing as she looked over. Zhù Ying placed a hand on her shoulder and said, “Relax. Don’t frighten people. Take it easy.” She raised her voice and said, “I once visited the old stockade of the Yigan clan.”

Then she called out, “Are any of you from that old stockade?”

One person called back, “Yes—we moved here later.”

Zhù Ying said, “I’m sorry for the trouble of making you move.”

The person said, “No trouble at all, no trouble—this is the first time we’ve had a real home.”

There was a great deal to say about that matter. No one had been willing to leave their ancestral home, and over these ten years, no small number of the Yigan people had cursed Zhù Ying’s name—saying that outsiders were duplicitous, cunning, and without decency. But the year before—from that year onward—the ordinary people of the Yigan clan had changed their tune: the Prefect was actually a decent person, and the old chieftain had simply been too foolish to recognize what was good for him.

Zhù Ying smiled and swept her gaze across the crowd. “I’m imposing on you all,” she said to everyone. “From now on, we’re all one family. Live well—things will only get better.”

“Yes!” they responded together, with no small measure of genuine feeling.

———

It took Zhù Ying half a day just to walk from the town gate to the county yamen. Once inside, things moved rather more briskly than they had in the streets.

Zhù Qingjun said, “I don’t normally live here—I stay in the barracks next door and only use a room here as a rest space. Xiang Le lives here; his wife and children didn’t come with him, so there are plenty of rooms.”

Though Xiang Le himself was away, everyone at the county yamen had been transferred from Zhu County and nearly all of them bore the surname Zhu. There were four bailiffs and a squad leader who were Xiang Le’s own trusted subordinates that he had grown accustomed to using, and one account keeper, whom Xiang Le had borrowed from the Xiang family. When Xiang Le set out, he had also taken two bailiffs along with him.

The account keeper came running over and began bustling about to clear out a room for Zhù Ying, but stopped mid-sentence, clearly hesitating.

Zhù Ying said, “Never mind. Xiang Le isn’t even home yet—what kind of sense does it make to clear out his room for me? Once I leave, you’d only have to move everything back—what a waste of effort. I’ll stay with Qingjun. Qingjun, add a bed for me in your room.”

The account keeper’s expression was a little pained. He had something of a scruple about this—if a male superior had arrived, there would be no question; he’d be set up immediately. But a female superior arriving and being given a man’s room—there was no easy way to talk about that.

Zhù Ying, however, had no such tangled considerations: Xiang Le wasn’t in the yamen anyway, and if she wanted to understand what was happening, she would have to speak with Zhù Qingjun regardless.

Zhù Qingjun went off to see to the luggage and get it settled; Zhù Ying didn’t go straight to the barracks but stayed in the yamen’s main hall and questioned each of Gan County’s other officials in turn. All the county officials had been appointed by her, new and old alike—they had all passed before her eyes, and she could call every one of them by name. She began by asking the Records Clerk: “Has the census and land registration been completed?”

Gan County had only recently been taken. There had not even been a writing system before, and everything had had to be started from scratch. The previous year, Zhù Ying had dispatched a number of people here to begin surveying the population and inventorying the land. That was not something that could be finished in half a year, and as a result, the entire county’s tax collection for the previous year had been handled in an approximate, informal manner.

Who received how much land, and at what per-mu rate—a provisional one-in-ten tax had been levied. Those who had not yet been registered were, congratulations to them, exempt from a year’s tax. By the same token, instruction in growing winter wheat started from the registered areas: if you weren’t in the records, the prefecture didn’t know you existed and naturally couldn’t find you to teach you.

Conscription for corvée labor worked the same way—if you weren’t registered, you weren’t called up. Other per-capita benefits, such as salt at government-controlled prices, also wouldn’t reach you.

The Records Clerk said, “It’s mostly done. Since the last report to you, we’ve found an additional three hundred seventy-one households, for a total of one thousand five hundred sixty-nine people. Land has been allocated to each household, and they’ll be able to pay rent and perform labor service starting this autumn.”

Zhù Ying then asked the account keeper, “How long can Gan County’s treasury sustain operations?”

The account keeper said, “When the Yigan chieftain was defeated, he suffered considerable losses. All remaining goods have been inventoried.” He then offered up an account ledger.

Zhù Ying asked the Law Clerk next, “Are there any disputes? How have you been adjudicating them?” The Yigan clan had had no writing system, and therefore no clearly defined legal code either—everything had run on customary law. Within that customary law, there was an unspoken rule: defer to the headman. Headman rulings tended to be rather arbitrary. Zhù Ying had already been aware of this from her dealings with the Asu clan, and so when establishing Gan County, she had specifically noted it, instructing Xiang Le and the others to take heed.

With something like the household marriage code, for instance, one could not demand the formal three matchmakers and six betrothal gifts—one had to let people court each other by singing.

The Law Clerk looked slightly uneasy and said, “It’s been manageable. Very few of them come to the yamen to lodge complaints.”

Zhù Ying did not press further. She said, “If there are few, there are still some. Bring me the case files.”

“Yes.”

Zhù Ying then questioned the remaining officials in turn. The account keeper came again to ask where dinner should be served. Zhù Ying had the meal right there in the yamen with Zhù Qingjun and the others. At the table, she said nothing of official business—only that everyone had worked hard, and that once Gan County was running smoothly, she would give everyone time off in rotation. She added with a light air, “All of you should work on developing your abilities. Your futures don’t end here.”

Everyone cheered up at that. A young man dressed as a secretary stood and said, “Our futures are in your hands, Prefect. And it’s not only about futures, either—following you, one always feels there’s something to strive toward.”

A chorus of agreement followed immediately. Zhù Ying recognized him—he was one of those who had come out of the private estate. He had once been a minor slave of the Suoning clan; his parents had been mountain people abducted by the Suoning clan, and because of that, he had his own surname—one of the few in the estate who had retained their original family name. He was called Xu Miao and was now working under the Records Clerk.

Zhù Ying said, “If there’s something to strive toward, then keep striving. There will be finer landscapes ahead.”

“Yes!”

That night, Zhù Ying stayed with Zhù Qingjun. This section had originally been the headman’s residence: the central part had been taken over as the county yamen, and the left wing, which had a stable, had been enclosed as barracks. Gan County’s military force was not particularly large—regular troops were few, with most being called up on a temporary basis. Zhù Qingjun gave up her own room and went to make do in the one next door.

Zhù Ying was not someone who went to sleep early. She dragged Zhù Qingjun out at midnight, and they walked the full circuit of the county town by torchlight before returning to rest.

The next day, Zhù Ying ate breakfast together with the garrison soldiers. The barracks had both men and women, and everyone knew she was a woman—yet when they saw her, they were still taken aback: she resembled what they expected, and yet she didn’t.

The resemblance: her fair complexion and pleasant features, the cleanliness and refinement of her whole bearing—some of the young women in this stockade weren’t even that fair-skinned. The difference: she was tall, and she was dressed as a man; her whole body, in motion, was easy and open, carrying not the slightest feminine affect.

Zhù Ying lifted the lid off the pot and said, “Everyone sit and eat. Let me see what you’re having. Is there enough to eat?”

She filled a bowl for herself, cradled it in both hands, and chatted with the soldiers.

The soldiers’ answers were a little halting, but they said, “We—we eat very well.” And added, “Much better than before!”

Zhù Ying said nothing, just nodded and took a few mouthfuls. Mixed grains, with some vegetables stirred in. There was salt, but no meat. No meat at breakfast—that was acceptable. She decided to wait and see what lunch and dinner were like.

The soldiers, seeing that she had gone quiet, were afraid she didn’t believe them, and stumbled through an explanation: “We’re—we’re Yigan people.”

Zhù Qingjun followed with an explanation: “They’re conscripted soldiers.”

“I know. You were all registered, and I’m aware of it.”

Zhù Qingjun had led part of Zhu County’s troops in the campaign against the Yigan clan. After the battle, even Zhù Ying couldn’t go on maintaining a force of that size indefinitely. Some of the conscript soldiers who had come from Zhu County had returned to farm their land as before. But Gan County was not entirely peaceful—the Xika clan kept harassing the borders—so Zhù Qingjun had sought Zhù Ying’s permission and conscripted soldiers from within Gan County itself, drawing suitable and reliable men from among the former slaves and enrolling them in the local garrison.

That was how these soldiers had come to be here. With land allocated to their families and houses to live in, they served with a willing heart.

Ordinary people went through their lives at sixty or seventy percent full most of the time, toiling constantly—it wasn’t that they didn’t want to eat; there simply wasn’t enough. Slaves had it even worse. In a household with many mouths, the elderly might get only one meal a day, and even that could hardly be called “full”—not for lack of filial piety among their children, but because there wasn’t enough food, and what there was had to go to the able-bodied, who needed it to work. Every family had buried elderly people or young children lost to hunger.

So this meal, with only a little salt and no meat, still struck them as quite good.

Life in Gan County was, among all the counties, the hardest.

After breakfast, Zhù Ying went back into the county town. She was the same as always—fond of wandering through the streets—and would occasionally crouch down at the roadside to chat with old people and children. Coming across a man selling bamboo baskets, she helped him split bamboo strips, and as she worked, she chatted, and very soon a circle of people had gathered around her.

It was called an inspection tour, but there was no urgency to reach the border, and no urgency to summon Xiang Le back. Before long, the whole of Gan County’s main settlement had heard that there was such a Prefect—one who learned everything quickly, who wove bamboo crickets for the children, and who was always ready to lend a helping hand to anyone in need. The young man at the base of the western wall whose wood-chopping knife had broken and who had no money for a new one received a new chopping knife. She had also seen straight through a quarrel between two neighbors over a winnowing basket and identified the true owner. And she personally came to blows with a young ruffian who had been pestering a young woman.

By the time Xiang Le returned from the border, every child in the settlement had stopped calling Zhù Ying “Prefect” and had switched to calling her “Grandma”—she didn’t look much like anyone’s grandmother or aunty in the conventional sense, but no matter! Grandma herself had said, “You know what I look like, and that’s enough.” The children felt that while Xiang Le was a “Prefect,” Grandma was simply closer to their hearts, and more admirable.

When Xiang Le returned from outside, and people on the road still addressed him as “Prefect,” he always felt that the word “Prefect,” in their mouths, had somehow become a little less warm and respectful.

———

Xiang Le went straight back to the county yamen and, before even changing his clothes, received the latest news of Zhù Ying. He immediately said, “Where is the Prefect now? Take me to meet her at once.”

The account keeper said, “She’s probably in the east of town.”

Xiang Le said, “Lead the way.”

When he found Zhù Ying, the sky had already grown dim. That day, she had gone to a new place—a blacksmith’s shop—and was standing there wrapped in a tattered apron, learning to work the forge alongside the smith. When she saw Xiang Le, she said to the people around her, “I’ll go and see him. Don’t let me interrupt your work. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

She untied the apron. Xiang Le had already come to her side. “Prefect, how did you—”

Zhù Ying waved a hand. “You’re back? Let’s go back and talk.”

“Yes.”

Xiang Le knew Zhù Ying’s temperament. He wasn’t afraid—he hadn’t been throwing his weight around or preying on the local people in Gan County, so there was nothing to fear.

Even so, he made explanations on the way back: “We’re short-handed, and sometimes things have to be done roughly. This place doesn’t recognize the rule of law, and some customs don’t conform. All I can do is tell right from wrong—whether I’ve weighed things too lightly or too heavily in a given case, I can’t always be sure I’ve been thorough.”

Zhù Ying smiled. “You’ve done well enough.”

Xiang Le brightened immediately. He held himself in check until they were back inside the county yamen, then said, “That young man from the Xika clan is really infuriating—but, looking at him, I’d say his intentions seem genuine.”

“Oh?”

Xiang Le wasn’t sure how to explain it to Zhù Ying. If it had been before, he might have given her a man-to-man knowing look, as if to say “you understand.” But Zhù Ying was a woman.

After a moment’s thought, he said, “If someone behaved like that toward my wife, I wouldn’t think he was up to anything improper. It’s just…”

Zhù Ying watched his flustered expression and had a rough sense of what he meant—the other party seemed decent enough?

Xiang Le caught Zhù Ying’s expression and relaxed. “Still, we have to see what Qingjun herself thinks. If it interferes with Qingjun or with your arrangements, Prefect, it won’t do. As for the Xika clan—if we can bring them over without a fight, that might not be a bad thing. Qingjun is no longer young; a hasty marriage would be a poor thing. If we’re talking about a match of equal standing, the sons of the Wuzhou headmen—in my opinion—aren’t good enough for her. Qingjun has no family or kinsmen either. If she had a capable and supportive partner, she could spare herself some trouble and focus more fully on building her accomplishments.”

As he talked on, Xiang Le grew unexpectedly wistful. He thought of his own younger sister—if she, too, could have had such a capable and supportive partner…

Zhù Ying said, “There’s no rush on this matter. In a few days I’ll go take a look at the border myself. Once I’ve seen him in person, we can talk.”