A Mirror's Secret

Su Zhaozhao's aunt and uncle show up at the family estate with a lawyer before she has even unpacked, ready to argue the inheritance out of her hands. She is still sorting through her grandfather's belongings when she finds an old bronze mirror from the Tang dynasty tucked away in a cabinet. The mirror lights up on its own one night, and on the other side she sees Linsha City, under siege by the Tubo army two thousand years earlier, its walls cracking and its wells dry. The general defending the city, Pei Zhaohan, is down to nothing. No water, no grain, soldiers collapsing at their posts. Zhaozhao starts passing things through the mirror. Bottled water first, then instant noodles, then medicine and bandages. She works up to building materials, then weapons, then a drone she flies over the walls to scout the enemy camp, then a tablet loaded with information he can use. City by city, the siege starts to turn. Pei Zhaohan holds the walls with supplies that should not exist yet, and pushes back the Tubo forces in stages. On her end, the aunt and uncle keep pressing their claim on the house, hiring their own experts and twisting old documents. Pei Zhaohan, watching her fight this from across the mirror, starts sending back suggestions, ways to expose the paperwork, angles she hadn't thought of, passed through the same bronze frame that carries her water bottles to him. Zhaozhao keeps the house. Linsha holds. The two of them go on talking through the mirror, one holding a rebuilt city two thousand years in the past, the other holding a house that almost slipped out of her hands.