The Empress Who Balanced the Ledger
Chapter 10 · free to read
Four routes out of the depot, and three of them run past a garrison. The fourth crosses a dry riverbed where a loaded wagon must slow to a walk. He had chosen it for the same reason I did: nobody watches a ford.
Sixty wagons in the ford at once, because a convoy that stops in a riverbed blocks itself. He had never worried about that, because nobody knew the depot was there.
Fifty-two wagons turned east. Eight did not, and one of my guardsmen went down under the wheels of the ninth and did not get up again.
Eighty-one thousand piculs by first light. Seven thousand short of what she had promised a city, and I closed that gap the only way a counter can: I re-measured the picul.
Artwork and narration generated with AI.