Bonus Chapter – Memories Of The Heart

The perimeter guards at the camp moved at a measured and unhurried pace.

The woman approached the two sentries outside the tent and they quickly came to attention. She acknowledged them with a nod and she was almost through the tent flap when Fen Liao appeared from around the supply line post to her left.

He was carrying a ledger as he approached her.

“Commander.” He fell in beside her and brought the ledger close to his chest. “The cart to Dongwei village left at the third bell. I confirmed the contents myself. There was grain, salted pork, and two bolts of heavy cloth. It will arrive there before Frost Fall.”

Dongwei.

His village.

She stopped in her tracks and turned to regard him.

“I also sent a letter with the messenger,” Fen Liao continued. ” That way my wife knows it came from the supply office, and that it came from you.”

He gave the Commander a deep bow of gratitude.

“Thank you,” he said. “Truly.”

She raised her hand. “I did it because your wife would kill me if I let her village go into frost while I had three carts sitting idle.” She kept her voice level. “Don’t thank me for that.”

He looked up from the bow. His face had gone unguarded, endearment and surprise was rolled together on his visage.

He straightened, nodded once more, and then left to return to his duties.

She watched him go, then lifted the tent flap and went inside.

The interior was warm.

Shen Bao had banked the brazier before sleeping, which he always did without being asked, and the tent held the heat well. He was in the camp bed, half under the furs, one arm behind his head, the bare line of his chest was visible in the torch light.

He was not asleep. He never slept until she was back.

She unfastened her outer robe at the shoulder and set it over the field chest at the foot of the bed. The cold of the air lasted only until she pulled the furs back and lay down beside him. He drew them back up over both of them and she settled against his chest, ear pressed to his sternum, one hand flat against his ribs.

His heartbeat was there immediately. Steady and unhurried, the same cadence it always was.

She had thought the first time that she imagined it. That the steadiness was something she needed and so perceived. But she had listened for three years now, through skirmish and supply shortage and the grinding anxiety of the weeks before a major engagement, and the heart under her ear had never changed its pace.

Even now.

She pressed her palm flat and felt the beat travel through the bone.

“What are you listening for?” Shen Bao asked her.

She smiled softly. “I’ve been listening to see if it ever changes.”

He took that in. His hand, which had been resting at her back, moved slowly upward and came to rest between her shoulder blades.

“It won’t,” he said. “Not with you here.”

She accepted his words of comfort before her minds moved to what the future would entail. “Tell me about the southern engagement again.”

“You’ve already read the assessment,” He replied.

“I want to hear your opinion about it.”

He exhaled because he knew that his wife was not asking for information that she hadn’t already known. “Three hill clan groups have been moving together for the past month. They haven’t coordinated before, which means someone is organizing them. The passes they’re using are the same ones Lord Shen Yue’s father mapped thirty years ago, which means someone with access to old administrative records is feeding them intelligence.”

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“Or someone who grew up on those roads,” She countered.

“Or that.” His chest rose with a breath. “The western flank is exposed. I’ve asked for the third company to hold it, which Lord Shen Yue has approved contingent on supply availability.”

“Supply is covered.” She had been managing supply for this campaign since the autumn. She knew where every cart was. “Third company has what it needs.”

“Then it will go the way it goes.” He said it plainly. Some men said things like that and meant they had given up on managing outcomes. Shen Bao said it and meant he had done the work that was his to do. The distinction was the difference between a good commander and a bad one.

She circled one finger slowly against his bare chest, tracing nothing in particular. The skin there was warm, the texture of it as known to her hands by now as anything in the world.