"Qian Jun, where are you?" she gasped as water slapped her face.
"Spit it out!" a woman on the bank yelled. "Don't drown like a fool and waste hands we're short of."
Liuli kicked under the current and pushed toward the bank. Mud grabbed at her feet. A dozen villagers leaned over the low earth wall, voices tight and sharp.
"Move," an old man barked. "Her clothes—she's a city brat. Let her float."
"No," someone answered. "Pull her up."
Liuli grabbed the bank with one hand, hauled herself up, and coughed river into the first warm breath she managed. Her head pounded. Her ribs burned. Her body was small, fingers raw where mud had ground the skin.
"Who are you?" an aunt snapped, stepping forward with a broom. Her voice carried the kind of accusation that makes an entire crowd agree without thinking. "What business do you have by Jun's field? Jun's wife—where is she? You bring trouble."
Liuli looked at the woman and did not think of manners. She had a cop's voice in her head, honed to cut through chaos.
"You're wrong about me," she said.
Silence snapped like a struck reed.
"Wrong?" the aunt repeated. "You answer like you know names."
"Wrong," Liuli said again. "I'm not their kind of fool."
The aunt's broom hand trembled. The villagers blinked, some shifting their weight like prey recalculating threat.
"She speaks bold," an old neighbor muttered. "City children
