River of Stars. Guy Gavriel Kay

      Being alone, he was an obvious target. On the other hand, he clearly had nothing worth taking, and bandits tended not to disrupt the peasants, lest the villagers turn against them and help the militia. For the most part, officers of the law were more hated in these days of taxes and conscription for the war in the northwest than those who preyed on merchants and travellers.

      Ziji didn’t stand up. He realized, however, that his mouth had begun to water at the sight of those buckets.

      “You have wine to sell?” cried one of his own soldiers, rashly.

      “Not to us he doesn’t!” Ziji rasped.

      There were old tricks on the road, and he knew enough of them.

      “I do not,” said the young man loudly as he crested the hill. “These are for the silk farm. I do this every day, they pay us five cash for each bucket.”

      “We will save you the walk, however far it is. We’ll give you ten cash right here,” said the magistrate eagerly. He was on his feet.

      “We will not!” said Zhao Ziji.

      He also stood up. It was difficult, what he was doing. He could almost taste that wine, the sweetness of it.

      “Never matters what you will or what you won’t,” the shirtless peasant said stubbornly. “They are expecting me at Risheng’s and they pay me. I give these to you I lose their business and my father beats me for it.”

      Ziji nodded his head. “Understood. Carry on, lad. Good fortune to you.”

      “Wait!”

      It was the other party’s leader, emerging from the trees across the road. “We will give you fifteen cash for one bucket. You carry the other to the silk farm and give it to them for free. You come out ahead, they get a bucket of wine for nothing. Everyone is happy!”

      “We aren’t!” cried the magistrate loudly. Ziji’s men were muttering.

      The boy with the wine hesitated as the leader of the other merchants came up to him. Fifteen cash was a great deal to pay for a bucket of country wine, and his load would be lightened for the rest of a very hot day. Ziji saw him wrestle with this.

      “I don’t have a ladle,” the boy said.

      The merchant laughed. “We have ladles, that’s no matter. Come, take my money, pour us wine. Divide what’s left in the two buckets and ease your walk. It’s going to be hotter this afternoon.”

      That was true. And the right thing to say, Ziji thought. He was dying for a drink, but he didn’t want to die drinking it, and he knew too many stories.

      “We’ll give you twenty cash!” the magistrate cried.

      “We will not!” Ziji snapped. This was overriding his authority and he couldn’t allow it. “We aren’t buying.” Broke his heart, almost, to say the words.

      “These offered first, anyhow,” the young man said (he wasn’t a merchant, clearly). He turned to the others. “Right, then. Fifteen cash in my palm and you get one bucket.”

      It was done quickly. The other merchants came out from the trees as their leader counted coins for the wine seller. Ziji was aware of two things. Extreme thirst, and hatred coming at him like a second blast of heat from his own party.

      The other merchants unhooked a bucket from the pole, removed the lid right in the road, which was foolish, Ziji thought. They began taking turns with a long-handled ladle. With the bucket’s cover off, you could smell the sweet, pale wine. Or maybe that was his imagination.

      With six men drinking quickly (too quickly, Ziji thought, on a hot day) it was finished in no time. The last man raised the bucket with two hands and tilted it to his face. Ziji saw wine dribble down his chin. They didn’t even pour an offering for the spirits of this place.

      Ziji wasn’t happy with any of this. Being a leader wasn’t always as pleasurable as it was thought to be, he decided.

      Then, as the wine seller carefully counted again the coins he’d been given, Ziji saw one of the men from the other merchant party slip behind the seller and, laughing, remove the top of the second bucket. “Five cash for five scoops!” he cried, and dipped the ladle.

      “No!” the boy cried. “That isn’t what we said!”

      The laughing merchant picked up the heavy, now-open bucket and ran awkwardly with it towards the woods. Some wine sloshed out, Ziji saw wistfully. “Give him ten coins!” the man yelled over his shoulder. “More than he deserves!”

      “No!” the wine seller shouted again. “You are cheating me! I’ll have my family watch for you on the way back!”

      That was a real threat, Ziji thought. Who knew how many were in his family, how many friends they’d have, and these merchants would have to head home this way. Indeed, they were going to the same silk farm the wine seller was. The man running with the bucket had made a mistake.

      “Bring it back!” their leader cried, obviously coming to the same conclusion. “We won’t cheat him.”

      We won’t risk cheating him, was more like it, Ziji thought sourly. He noticed the running-away fellow take a quick drink from the second bucket. Now he reluctantly brought it back from the shade of the woods—where they should have been drinking, slowly and out of the sun, all along.

      “Just one more scoop!” he said, dipping his ladle again.

      “No!” cried the boy again, rushing up and slapping the ladle from the man’s hand. It fell into the wine; he pulled it out and threw it angrily away.

      “Leave him alone,” said the leader. “We are honest men, and I don’t want a party lying in wait when we come home tomorrow!”

      There was a short silence.

      “Twenty-five cash for what’s left of that bucket!” Ziji’s magistrate cried suddenly. “I have it in my hand!”

      The boy turned to him. It was a ridiculous sum. It marked them as carrying more money than was safe, if they could be this extravagant.

      But Ziji was really very thirsty now and he had noticed something. It had been possible the second bucket was poisoned, the first one being a ruse, kept clean. But a man had just drunk from it and was standing in front of them, laughing, pleased with himself.

      “Yes, we’ll give you that,” Ziji said, making a decision.

      He didn’t want his own men killing him, and he really wanted a scoop or two of wine. He added, “And tomorrow you can carry two buckets to the silk farm and offer them for nothing instead of ten cash. They’ll forgive you, and you know it. And you get to turn back right now and go home.”

      The boy stared at him. Then he nodded. “All right. For twenty-five. Cash first.”

      Ziji’s men let out a cheer. First happy sound all day, he thought. The magistrate hastily reached inside his robe and counted out coins (showing too heavy a purse in the process). The others all stood up and were watching as he dropped the money into the wine seller’s palm.

      “Bucket’s yours,” the boy said. “Well, the wine is. I need the bucket.”

      One of Ziji’s soldiers picked it up and, showing more good sense than the other merchants had, carried it to their shade. Another rushed for two ladles from the gear on one of the donkeys. They crowded around the bucket.

      With a leader’s almost inhuman restraint, Ziji stayed where he was. “Save me two scoops at the end,” he called. He wondered if that would earn him any goodwill.

      He wondered if they’d save him the two scoops.

      The other party retreated across the roadway, chattering loudly and laughing—there had been an adventure here, and they’d drunk wine very fast. They would probably sleep now, Ziji thought.

      The wine