Lu Fang had counted fourteen villages since the Lord of Qinghe's new levy order had landed on the Prefect's desk, and Hekou would be his fifteenth.
Fourteen villages meant fourteen negotiations that weren't really negotiations because Lu Fang held the tablet and the tablet held the numbers. Villages that paid promptly earned a note of compliance on Lu Fang's ledger. Villages that resisted earned a different kind of note, and when the cultivators came on the second visit, no one resisted twice.
Lu Fang had not yet needed the second visit. That was his record and he intended to keep it.
He rode at the front of the column. Six infantry, two pack horses, and one empty cart that would be full by the time they turned back to Meishan. His horse was the Prefect's third best, which was an insult he catalogued alongside every other slight he'd endured in three years of service. The Prefect's first and second horses went to military officers who didn't hold the land together like he had.
What earned promotions was surplus. Collecting more than the quota. The Lord of Qinghe had doubled his war expenditure in a single season, which meant every collector who exceeded targets became visible to the men who decided careers.
Lu Fang intended to be very visible.
The northern road curved through farmland that looked unremarkable. Rice paddies, millet fields, the usual subsistence spread. But Lu Fang had learned to read villages, and what he saw as Hekou came into view made him sit straighter.
The fields were planted.
All of them.
Every village he'd passed through since Tongshan had shown gaps. Fallow plots, abandoned rows, and the visible scars of a labor force that had lost too many men. Hekou should have been the same. His records showed four men lost in the spring campaign. Four men dead meant four families struggling, which meant four plots underworked.
He didn't see struggling.
A fence connected the outermost houses along the northern approach, with a gate standing open at the road. Pine posts with a rough construction meant a livestock barrier. The only difference from a dozen others he'd seen was that this one was new.
A young man stood inside the gate. Tall and broad with an inviting smile.
"Welcome to Hekou. I'm Pei Hao. We've prepared refreshments for you and your men."
Lu Fang dismounted. The man was perhaps eighteen years old and built like an ox. He had a certain air about him...charismatic? Yes, that was the word. The kind of natural authority that made people follow without being asked.
He marked the boy. If the conscription quota wasn't met in grain, this one filled a uniform nicely.
"Business first," Lu Fang said.
"Of course. My brother handles our accounts."
The brother was standing in the commons next to a set of open grain bins. He looked younger and paler, and he was perhaps fifteen years old at most with a thin frame. He didn't smile when Lu Fang approached.
"Pei Liang," The boy introduced himself. "I manage our village's stores and labor coordination."
"A fifteen-year-old manages stores and labor?" Lu Fang raised a brow.
"Our village head passed two winters ago. My brother leads the community. I keep the numbers."
Lu Fang waved a hand at the bins. "Show me."
The boy walked him through the stores. Each bin opened, contents displayed, quantities stated without hesitation. Rice, millet, sorghum, preserved vegetables. The numbers were consistent with a village of Hekou's registered size. Forty-three households, approximately one hundred and ninety residents, operating at baseline productivity.
Exactly baseline.
Lu Fang had been doing this long enough to know what exact baseline looked like and when it occurred naturally, and what it looked like when it was staged. Natural baseline was messy. Uneven bins, some households overstocked, others depleted. This was even. Every bin at the same level.
Someone had gone household to household and equalized the grain stores before he arrived.
He looked at the boy. Pei Liang looked back and revealed nothing.
"Your quota for this cycle," Lu Fang said, unrolling the tablet, "is twelve shi of grain or the equivalent in labor. Twenty percent of your registered working-age males, which by my records is eight men, or the grain equivalent."
"Twelve shi. That's higher than last cycle," the boy observed.
"The Lord's campaign requires increased contribution. The new rate is standardized."
"We can do nine shi," Pei Liang said.
Not a plea nor a protest, but a counter-offer.
"The quota is twelve," Lu Fang reiterated.
"The quota assumes a full labor force. We lost four men in the spring campaign. Our effective working-age population is reduced by fifteen percent, which proportionally reduces our productive capacity. Nine shi represents our maximum sustainable contribution without compromising next season's planting."
He's negotiating in yield projections, Lu Fang thought. A fifteen-year-old farm boy is projecting my revenue impact across multiple tax cycles.
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"Twelve shi. Not negotiable."
"Ten, then. We absorb the shortfall from reserves. We eat less this winter."
"The Lord's campaigns are not funded by villages eating less. Twelve shi. Or I take the grain equivalent in men."
The older brother shifted at the edge of the commons. Lu Fang felt the movement, a tension in the air that made his escort stiffen.
The younger brother raised his hand, and the older boy stopped in his tracks.
The younger one controls the older one, Lu Fang thought.
"Eleven shi," Pei Liang said. "Plus supplementary livestock. Three chickens and two pigs, delivered to your cart within the hour."
Lu Fang paused. Eleven shi was below quota, but the livestock closed the gap in material value. Chickens and pigs were worth more per unit weight than grain on the Meishan market, and unlike grain, they didn't need storage. He could sell the livestock before reporting and pocket the surplus while recording the full twelve shi on his ledger.
The boy was watching him with those still, dark eyes.
"Eleven shi and the livestock," Lu Fang said. "Within the hour."
"Done." The boy turned. "Hao, get the men started on the grain. I'll handle the livestock."
The village moved. Men appeared from houses, carrying grain sacks to the cart with coordination that didn't happen by accident. They'd known he was coming. They'd staged the negotiation to arrive at a number both sides could accept.
Lu Fang watched the cart fill while his soldiers inspected each sack as it was loaded. Corporal Chung, who had complained about weevil-ridden grain from every village since Tongshan, opened the first sack of rice and went quiet. He checked the second. Then the third.
"Sir. This is clean."
Lu Fang walked to the cart. The rice was dry, well-stored, free of insects and mold. The millet was the same. Every sack his soldiers opened showed grain that had been properly sealed and rotated, the kind of quality you saw from established market towns, not backwater farming villages. His men were loading the cart with more care than they'd shown all week because they recognized what they were handling.
Fourteen villages, and not one of them had produced grain this clean.
Pei Liang loaded the two pigs himself and made the work look effortless.
But the quota was met. The livestock overage would look good on his ledger and better in his purse. Hekou's fields were productive, the grain was superior quality, and next cycle would yield even more. Stripping this village wasn't efficient. It was the short-term thinking that kept other collectors riding the third-best horse.
"Your village is well-managed for its size," Lu Fang said to the younger brother as his men secured the cart. He looked around the commons, the even houses, the fence, the tended fields beyond. "You must be doing well for yourselves."
"We're a village of farmers," the boy said. "That's our usefulness to the Lord."
Lu Fang studied him one final time. The boy held the gaze, and for a moment Lu Fang felt something he couldn't name. A sense that the surface covered something deeper, like a pond that dropped off a step past the edge.
Then the moment passed. The boy was fifteen and clever, but cleverness in a farming village was like a sharp knife in a kitchen: useful within its context, but irrelevant outside it.
"See that next season's yields improve," Lu Fang said. "The Lord's campaigns won't be getting cheaper."
He mounted, signaled the column forward, and rode south.
I watched them go until the last soldier passed through the gate and the cart wheels faded.
Then I collapsed down onto the ground and let my hands shake.
Hao was beside me. "Liang."
"I'm fine. Just give me a minute."
People were emerging from houses, voices lifting from quiet relief to open celebration. The Wei brothers laughing. The Chen widow crying. Zhao Ping standing by the gate with his arms crossed, watching the empty road.
I pressed my palms against the earth and breathed. Eleven shi. Three chickens. Two pigs. The hidden surplus covered the loss. The labor rotation covered the reduced stores. Next harvest in six weeks, increased acreage offsetting the tax. The math worked. It had to work.
"His soldiers liked the grain," Hao said. "The one checking the sacks kept looking back at the cart like he couldn't believe what he was loading."
"Good. That means Lu Fang files us as a high-value collection point. He protects his revenue sources. We become a village he wants to keep productive, not one he strips and moves on from."
"And next season?"
"Next season we have more. The eastern fields are planted, the refugee families are integrated into the rotation, and if Gao Ren gets the forge running we can start trading iron tools to neighboring villages for additional grain reserves. We build the surplus faster than the quotas climb."
Hao nodded slowly. "The refugees stayed hidden. None of them are on his register."
I looked at him. I hadn't told Hao the exact reasoning behind the eastern field positioning. I'd told him it was about keeping the Tongshan and Liuwan families clear of the inspection, but the register detail, the long-term implication of carrying unregistered households, that was a layer I'd kept in my own head.
"Eight families producing grain that doesn't exist on any tax ledger," Hao continued. "That's a shadow surplus. You're building a reserve he can never account for because he doesn't know the people generating it are here."
I stared at my brother.
"I pay attention, Liang. You're not the only one who watches."
He was right, and I'd been underestimating him. The warmth, the laughter, the way people leaned into his orbit. I'd been reading all of that as instinct. But underneath the instinct was a mind that tracked cause and effect just fine. He simply chose to lead with his heart instead of his head.
"There's something else," Hao said. His voice dropped. "You let me believe I was going with them if the negotiation failed. You had me standing there ready to volunteer myself because you needed the collector to see that I meant it."
"I did."
"I know. And it worked. But don't do that again. If I need to be the sacrifice play, tell me that's the plan and I'll sell it just as well. Better, probably, because I won't be carrying the weight of actually believing it."
Something tightened in my chest. My brother wasn't asking me to stop planning. He was asking me to stop planning around him like he was a variable instead of a partner.
"I'll play the piece," he said. "I'll stand at that gate and smile and volunteer my life if that's what keeps these people safe. But I do it knowing what I'm doing. Not because my brother decided I was more useful uninformed."
He was right. And he was exactly the kind of person who'd cooperate with any plan but never forgive being handled. I needed to remember that.
"You're right," I said. "I won't do it again."
"Good." He gripped my shoulder once, then turned toward the celebration. Within ten seconds three people had called his name and he was laughing with the Wei brothers.
I walked through the village toward the eastern fields. The Tongshan and Liuwan families were coming back through the tree line, uncertain smiles on faces that had spent the morning braced for the worst. Gao Ren's daughter Shu ran ahead of the group, barefoot in the grass.
The flat ground east of the river sat empty in the afternoon light. Open space, good drainage, sheltered from the northern road by the tree line. I'd had it marked on the second bark map for weeks.
Training ground.
I stood at the edge and looked at the grass and the packed earth underneath.
Lu Fang would come back and the quotas would climb. The Lord of Qinghe's wars would grind on, chewing through villages, and eventually the math would break no matter how carefully I managed the grain. A farming village couldn't outproduce a warlord's appetite forever.
I walked the perimeter of the flat ground. Forty meters by twenty-five, roughly. Enough space for group exercises, paired practice, and formation drills if it ever got that far. The river on one side for the environmental Qi effect I'd documented. The tree line on the other for concealment from the road.
"This is the spot," I said aloud.
Then I went to find Hao.
We had a training ground to build.