"How much longer will Chaoge keep you waiting?"
Those words pierced the woman's ears like a needle.
She held her child, and the porridge bowl in her hand wobbled. Hot porridge spilled onto the backs of her fingers, but she did not even feel the burn.
The child looked up at her.
"Mother?"
She hurriedly steadied the bowl and said softly, "Drink first."
The man in the old cloak neither approached the pot nor blocked the way.
He simply stood half a step away, keeping his voice low.
"The Northern Border is so far from Chaoge. How long does a letter take?"
"A month?"
"Two months?"
"Have you ever counted?"
The woman's lips trembled.
She had counted.
How could she not have?
When her husband left, he had said he would ask a relay rider to bring back a letter once he reached the Northern Border.
But from late spring until now, the Military Dependents next door had received a letter. She had not.
She had asked the neighborhood clerk, and he had told her to wait.
She had asked at the military households office, and they, too, had told her to wait.
She had heard that word so often that she had come to dread it.
The man pulled half a Relay Station Slip from his sleeve.
The Relay Station Slip's corners were blackened, as though soaked in blood, and an incomplete seal remained on it.
The woman's gaze froze.
She recognized that seal.
The Northern Border Relay Seal.
Her husband's last letter assuring her he was safe had borne the same seal.
The man held the Relay Station Slip toward her hand.
"Someone didn't dare deliver this to the Grand Preceptor's Residence."
"I'm only letting you see it because I pity you."
The woman did not take it.