Ten storehouses stood against the limestone bluffs along the southern road. Heavy slate roofs rested on oak pillars. A ditch carried gray water from the grain troughs into the marsh. Fog hung over the yard. It smelled of wet straw and sour grain.
Pei Jing lay flat on the roof of Vault Four. Below him, the seventy workers were carrying sacks off the four carts. The ropes had rubbed their shoulders raw. Three overseers watched from wooden platforms, each with a long whip.
One sack split open when the man carrying it fell on the ramp. Wheat scattered into a puddle.
“Pick it up.” An overseer came down and kicked the man into the ditch. “Every kernel, or your village loses its salt for three moons.”
The man got onto his elbows and began scraping wet grain into his lap.
Pei Jing kept hold of the slate. He wanted to jump down. He could knock three overseers off their platforms before a whip came up. That would still leave the guards at the road and the granaries locked. He needed to see how much food was here and how to get it out.
He worked his way to the back of the roof and slipped through an old air vent. Inside, he went along an oak beam thirty feet above the floor. Wheat sacks rose in stacks twelve tiers high. Three hundred wooden bins held white rice polished for the inner court. A man’s footsteps at the far end made…
