Administrator Wen had organized the garrison records by year, event, and relevant jurisdiction. The Hekou engagement had its own bamboo folder which went over the account of the battle, as well as the contract. Wen had been careful about what he put down.
The soldier at the records desk looked up when I came through the door. He was young and in his early twenties with dark hair that was cut short. From a certain angle he vaguely reminded me of someone else that I had known but I couldn’t place a finger on it.
"Instructor Pei," he greeted me by standing at attention.
"I need the casualty record from the Hekou engagement," I said with urgency.
He reached for the shelf behind him without hesitation. The folder had been accessed recently, the edge of it sitting slightly forward compared to the other records that were achieved near it. He set it on the desk between us.
"You're the second person to ask for that this week," he began to say. "A middle-aged woman came in three days ago and asked for this too."
"What did she say when she finished reading it?" I asked him.
He thought about it. "She smiled, thanked us for our time, and then left. She originally said that she needed to confirm the date of the contract for the smith Gao Ren."
For Gao Ren? Why would he need a record for that?
Of course this soldier wouldn’t be aware of such things, so I didn’t blame him for not being suspicious.
I pulled the folder toward me and opened it.
The engagement summary was at the front, Wen's compressed notation, two pages covering what had happened in broad strokes. The casualty tally was recorded behind the account of the attack, and I turned to the back of the bamboo folder where the detailed record sat that was originally recorded by Lu Fang himself. The names were listed by unit and by commander, and it also mentioned Shan Pei as the sole cultivator as well as Ma and Tao being constricted from Tongshan.
Then I found them on the second page.
Wu Jun and Wu Chen. They were listed as killed in engagement which was confirmed by a Western Reaches unit commander notation. There was no account for their effects or where their bodies were buried or sent off to.
I kept reading.
Wu Bao was not in the killed section.
I went back through carefully and found him in a separate column near the bottom of the page. He was apart of the ground that had surrendered to the Western Reaches forces after the battle was won. His name noted alongside two others who had opted to stay with the Western Reaches instead of returning east.
Ma and Tao.
Wu Bao was then promptly released near the border along with three other soldiers who surrendered alongside him. He was alive somewhere in Western Reaches territory, or had been when the record was written.
She doesn't know Wu Bao is alive.
Wait, no, she had to have known if she read the record, so the question was, was she here to confirm this or was there something more to it than that? Either way, two of her three sons had died here at the hands of our militia who had turned Lu Fang's force back that day. We had not known their names. We had not known whose sons they were. We had simply done what we had to do in order to protect ourselves. I cupped my chin in thought as I handed the folder back to the soldier.
Perhaps it is time to put her under observation.
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"Should we put her under observation?"
I looked up. The soldier was watching me with the same stillness he had shown when I came in. He had read my face and drawn the same conclusion that I had.
He was sharp.
I studied him. "What's your name?"
"Xu Bing," he said.
"Xu Bing?” I perked a brow at him. “Are you by chance related to Commander Xu?"
The boy beamed with pride. “Yes! She’s my older cousin and assured me that I would be in good hands here for my first assignment!”
I almost chuckled at his words. His enthusiasm and trust was infectious, and since he had complete trust and faith in us, then I would take that trust seriously and not allow any harm to come to him.
"Can you assign someone to the task?"
He nodded his head. "Yes, I can."
"Then do it." I picked up my outer robe. "Come to me directly if anything changes. Oh, and from now on, keep a record of anyone that enters this room to ask for documents. Have them write their name down on a piece a paper on one side and mention what document they asked for on the other side. If they are not literate enough to do so, then write their name down for them.”
He nodded once, his eyes showed that he believed what I said to have been something of a revelation, when in all honesty, it should have already been standard practice. Security was definitely far more loose in these parts than Lanyu.
I went to find Hao.
I found Hao coming out of the cultivation hall, and then saw Suyin crossing from the clinic, and Duan finishing the afternoon militia count at the south wall. I was lucky that they were all relatively close since it saved me the trouble of three separate conversations.
"Inside," I gestured to them all and they immediately followed me to the curriculum room without asking why.
I told it in the order I had learned it - about Pei Yan’s personal account of her journey to Hekou, her suspicious questions, and her entering the garrison’s administrative wing to request a record of what was known as The Defection Of Hekou Village.
When I finished, the room was quiet before anyone spoke up.
Hao sat with his hands on the table, both of them were balled into fists.
"Wu Jun and Wu Chen…” He mouthed the words and it made him grimace. "That is the kind of grief can consume someone’s spirit."
"I feel sorry for her," Suyin said. She said it plainly, without softening it. "I cannot imagine losing a child, or two, for that matter." She looked down at the desk. "When we trained together, her hands were always fisted and tight as if she would snap the pole in half.” She paused. "But I do agree that she needs to be watched. If she blames us for what happened then…" Her voice trailed off because she needn’t say anything more.
Duan had been quiet through all of it. He spoke now.
"Is she working alone?"
We all looked at him.
"She asked about the garrison watch schedule and the timing in-between cohorts. She is gathering intelligence and could be feeding it back to Meishan or Qinghe, or she is waiting for the right time to strike." he crossed his arms and I could tell that he was ready to strike at her now if he was given the word.
"Either scenario is just as plausible, but I don't know what to do yet," I admitted. "I say we keep her under observation for now. A soldier named Xu Bing will assign someone to do just that. If she has any help, or has been feeding information, then we will know about it.”
"Xu Bing?" Duan repeated.
"He’s a sharp soldier that works at the garrison. He'll be quiet about it."
Duan nodded slowly. "The watch window she asked about is the most vulnerable point in our perimeter rotation. Dawn and dusk both." He looked at me. "She knows it."
I nodded. “Which means if she were to strike, then it would be either between the early morning hours or at night.”
Hao put his hands flat on the table and stood to his full height, I could feel his Qi bubbling to the surface. He was conflicted, as were we all. "So, what do we do next?"
"We watch," I said. "We don't move until we know who else is involved. If we move too early and arrest her, then that could signal to the others to stay hidden, and it could potentially turn the rest of father’s family against us. We have to catch her in the act."
Nobody disagreed.
I sent them out one at a time, enough gap between each departure that it looked like ordinary end-of-day traffic from the curriculum room. Suyin last, who stopped in the doorway and looked back at me.
"It isn't your fault, you know that right?”
"I know," I said.
She frowned, just slightly, as if she was not entirely convinced that I meant it. Then she walked out.
I sat at the desk after the door closed.
The curriculum room was quiet. The training ground had its end-of-day sounds outside. The kitchen fire, Duan's count, Shan Pei's voice somewhere near the south wall. Ordinary sounds.
Sounds that my cousins Wu Jun and Wu Chen never had the chance to enjoy.
They had died here in the same ground I had been building on for three years. In that moment they were my enemies, and they had to be taken care of by any means necessary. That’s what war does to people, to families, it pits them against each other.
My hands had begun to tremble. I pressed them together in my lap and held them still by force.
The only right choice is to protect this village. Even if it means protecting it from my own family.