With a sigh, Avisha caught the attention of one of the kitchen workers. “I’m going down to my garden.”

“I’m hoping those melons you planted give fruit,” said the woman with a smile, tucking a strand of loose hair back into her kerchief with a sweaty hand.

Avisha trudged down through the growing settlement. Men expanded a second reservoir at the base of the irrigation channel. The main reservoir had captured a fair bit of water in the recent rains, which was routed into cisterns. Mai had extended credit for seeds, and Avisha had received a plot in one of the irrigated parcels. The soil was a fine-grained pale silt nothing like the black river-fed soils of her home. She hadn’t much to enrich it with beyond peelings and scraps she composted with night soil, but while celestial star simply would not grow, she had coaxed along decent plantings of ginger, onions, pepper-heart, and various chilis. She watered and weeded the garden, then walked past the parade ground. Down by the shelter where folk could rest under shade after drilling, Jerad cracked sticks with another lad. Although she halted and waved, he did not notice her.

She wiped away a tear with a dirty finger and walked to the dry fields, where she had set up pot irrigation for her melons. She had also planted sapling figs, dates, and three ranks of precious woolly-plum seedlings; all but two had sprouted. Out here, all alone, she felt truly isolated. She did so badly miss her father.

Horsemen pounded into view in tight formation. She watched admiringly as the Qin soldiers pulled up, wheeled, turned again, and galloped away with dust spitting in their wake. Another group of ten raced up to attempt the same maneuver, the local riders awkward on their mounts while their black-clad Qin supervisor slashed his whip at those who fell out of line. A second unit of trainees attempted the drill, half of them hopelessly lagging on the first turn as the Qin soldier yelled at them and chased them back to the starting point. A third group came, holding together better at the first turn, but several fell off the line at the second turn and then whipped their horses to catch up, only to get themselves in a tangle, pulling up short before the horses crashed into each other.

Jagi was in charge of this group. He rode through the ranks laughing, and pointed with his whip here, and then there, indicating where they had gone wrong. He had the riders work back through the drill in pairs before a shout from the starting point called his group back. They rode off in paired rows; some of the local men had their hair up in topknots, like the Qin, while others had bound their long hair in horsetails that swagged down their backs. She admired their squared shoulders. Jagi, at the back, had so easy a seat on his horse that he and it might as well have been one creature.