Chapter 1010 — Survivors’ Pills

CHAPTER 1010

Survivors’ Pills

“Next,” Tong Xian said.

An old ferryman shuffled up to the furnace room door with his left forearm wrapped in rags. Behind him the yard of Northwind House was full. There were people from three burned villages out there: Inkwater Ferry, the Helian herb village in Bitter Wind Gorge, and a charcoal hamlet on the upper Inkwater that nobody in Beiling had heard of until its smoke came over the hills.

Most of them had one of two wounds.

Shi Feng unwrapped the ferryman’s arm. Under the rags the flesh had gone grey-blue in a band round the forearm, as cold as the river, and the band was spreading a little at a time. It didn’t bleed. It didn’t smell. It just kept dying.

“Does it hurt?” Shi Feng asked.

“It doesn’t, Master Alchemist,” the old ferryman said. “That’s what frightens me. My grandson’s leg is the same.”

The Nineteenth Elder’s chain had done this. When an anchor nailed the air, everything inside that piece of space was held still, the blood in a man’s arm included. The anchors had let go when Yao Chenggu died, but flesh held still for an hour didn’t wake up by itself, and it had been dying slowly ever since. The people from Bitter Wind Gorge had the other wound: shallow seams, left by the edges of the Eighteenth’s Rot-Seam Palm. A deep seam needed a 5 Mark pill. Dead-still flesh and a shallow seam could both be woken by one simple pill, as long as it was made exactly right.

“Two a day, morning and night, for five days,” Shi Feng said, and put a small paper packet in the ferryman’s good hand. “Give your grandson the same. If the grey hasn’t stopped by the third day, come back.”

The old ferryman looked at the packet, then at the price board Tong Xian had hung on the wall that morning.

“How much, Master Alchemist?” the old ferryman asked carefully.

“Nothing,” Shi Feng said.

The old ferryman’s hands began to shake.

“Nothing? But the board says...” the old ferryman began.

“You lost your village,” Shi Feng said gently. “Keep the money for food and somewhere to stay. Bring your grandson back if the medicine doesn’t help.”

The old ferryman bowed so low his forehead touched the doorframe, and backed out into the yard still bowing.

Shi Feng turned back to the cauldron and fed the Thousand Forge Flame in low and steady. Rot-closing pills didn’t need force. They needed patience, and a lot of them.

His stomach gave a sharp twist, and he stopped to breathe.

Three days ago he’d let the Eighteenth’s palm land on purpose, and the All-Devouring Physique had eaten the rot as qi. It had worked. It had also left his stomach angry, and it would stay angry for the rest of the week.

Qin Wuyan stood at the door with his hands in his sleeves. He watched the young alchemist bent over the cauldron with a hand on his belly, and said nothing.

“You’re thinking I deserve it,” Shi Feng said.

“This one is thinking nothing,” Qin Wuyan said.

“I knew the palm would hurt afterwards, Senior Qin,” Shi Feng said. “I’ll bear it. These people still need their pills.”

Qin Wuyan’s eyebrows moved a hair’s breadth and settled again.

By noon he’d made four hundred pills. By evening he’d made eleven hundred, and the yard was emptying. Tong Xian sat at a small table beside the door with the house ledger open and wrote down every packet that went out, without being asked.

“Herbs from the house stores,” Tong Xian said, and ran her brush down the column. “Three hundred thousand, near enough. Whose account, Master Shi?”

“Mine,” Shi Feng said.

“Not Her Highness’s?” Tong Xian asked.

“Her Highness’s business is grain and salt,” Shi Feng said. “This is mine.”

Tong Xian wrote it without comment.

The last in line was a grey-haired woman from Bitter Wind Gorge carrying a small girl on her hip. The girl had a grey line across her cheek. Shi Feng gave the girl her pill himself and watched her swallow it, and the grey at the edges of the line stopped spreading before the woman had finished thanking him.

“When you drink the water, you remember who dug the well,” the grey-haired woman said, holding the girl tight. “The Helian will remember this, Master Shi.”

Tong Xian looked up from her ledger. Shi Feng only nodded, and the woman carried the girl out into the dusk.

A courier with the Thunder Abyss Valley’s silver lightning on his collar came in at the gate just as the lamps were lit.

“From His Highness the Fifth Prince, for Master Shi Feng,” the courier said. “His Highness said to wait for a reply.”

Shi Feng broke the seal. The handwriting was large, fast and pressed so hard it had torn the paper in two places.

Shi Feng! The court says your bandits come with numbers on them now, and the numbers keep going down. Nineteen, then Eighteen. By the time they get to Fifteen they’ll be at my realm. Leave the Fifteenth for me! I’ll come north as soon as Second Sister stops hiding my horse. You still owe me a rematch. Zhenlei.

Shi Feng laughed despite the pain in his stomach. The prince was as eager as ever, even while his Second Sister kept him from charging north. It was good to hear from him.

Shi Feng took a fresh sheet and wrote four lines.

Fifth Highness. I’m sorry, but the Fifteenth has already asked for me by name. They all do. You’ll have to wait your turn.

It was true enough. Every Elder so far had carried the same order slip: Alive. Hands unharmed. The Fifteenth would carry one too.

He folded the reply, sealed it and gave it to the courier, who bowed and left at a run.

Before the gate had closed, Qian Ze came through it. The tower steward never hurried. Tonight he was hurrying.

He stopped at the furnace room door and bowed to Shi Feng first, then to Qin Wuyan.

“Guest Elder. Forgive the intrusion,” Qian Ze said. “Word has just come down from the outer lands. Whitereed Village burned last night.”

Shi Feng put down the brush.

“Whitereed,” Shi Feng said. “That’s inside the Serene Jade’s outer lands.”

“Yes, Guest Elder,” Qian Ze said quietly. “Half a day’s ride inside the sect’s own boundary stones. Nobody has struck inside the Serene Jade’s lands in three hundred years.”

Tong Xian stopped writing. Qin Wuyan took his hands out of his sleeves.

The bandits had stopped hunting only on the Emperor’s roads. Now they were burning villages under the Serene Jade’s own mountains, and they wanted everyone to know it.