Chapter 1035 — Fever

CHAPTER 1035

Fever

“Red Frost Root, four,” Mei Shuo said. “Cloud Pine Needle, nine. Snow Bitter Leaf, twelve.”

The voice came from somewhere beside the bed, steady and low, and Shi Feng held on to it.

The fever had come up the moment the Helian sledge passed the gate of Northwind House. By midnight he’d stopped knowing which room he was in. The Third Anvil Fire had burned a fold’s wall, and some of that heat hadn’t left with the fire. It had stayed in his meridians, where no fire belonged, and now his body was burning it out the only way a body could.

He’d told them that much before the fever took his tongue. He’d also told them not to give him any pill but the ones he’d named, and to keep the window shut.

“Pale Ginseng, two,” Mei Shuo said. “Ice Lotus Seed, seven. Dragon Scale Moss, one.”

He opened his eyes on the second day. The furnace room’s herb shelves stood along the far wall, and Mei Shuo sat on a stool between the shelves and the bed with an open drawer on his knees, counting what was in it aloud. He was a thin man in his forties with his sister’s narrow face and old burn scars across the back of each hand from the kiln furnaces.

“How long?” Shi Feng asked. His voice came out cracked.

“A day and a half,” Mei Shuo said, without stopping his hands. “You told Steward Tong you’d burn for three. Ice Lotus Seed, eight.”

“Why are you counting the drawers?” Shi Feng asked.

“Because you were listening,” Mei Shuo said. “At the kiln, if a man stopped counting, the deacon came. Everyone listened for everyone else. You were listening last night. I could tell.” He shut the drawer and opened the next. “Golden Thread Grass, thirty-one.”

Shi Feng felt grateful. Mei Shuo knew how frightened a helpless man could be. He closed his eyes and let the familiar counting steady him.

On the third day, Steward Tong Xian came in with a bowl of millet congee and a letter.

Tong Xian was a neat woman of about forty who ran Northwind House strictly and well. She put the congee in his good hand before she gave him anything else.

“Illness comes like a falling mountain and leaves like drawn silk,” Tong Xian said. “Eat slowly.”

When the bowl was empty, she took out the letter.

“From Tianjing,” Tong Xian said, and broke the seal for him, because he only had one hand that worked. “It came by the Long household’s relay last night.”

The letter was short. He read it twice.

The court has heard that the north has fewer bandits. Your note is entered.

There was no greeting and no signature. He didn’t need one. He knew the hand.

Shi Feng looked at the seal Tong Xian had broken. It wasn’t the pavilion seal that went on every letter from the princess’s houses. It was smaller, a single plum flower cut in red jade.

“That’s not the house seal,” Shi Feng said.

“No, Master Shi,” Tong Xian said. “That’s Her Highness’s own. The house letters all go out under the pavilion seal. I’ve kept Her Highness’s houses for twenty years, and I’ve seen that one twice.” She took the empty bowl from his hand. “This is the third time.”

Shi Feng said nothing for a moment. He folded the letter along its old crease and put it under his pillow.

“Her Highness writes very short letters,” Mei Shuo said from the stool.

“She knew I’d understand,” Shi Feng said, touching the folded letter once before putting it away.

Mei Shuo didn’t look up from his drawer. “Red Frost Root, four,” Mei Shuo said, and moved on to the next one.

That night, the fever broke.

It went out of him slowly, over most of the night. He woke before dawn soaked in sweat, cool for the first time in three days, and found that he could feel the ends of his fingers again. His left arm ached in its splints. His ribs pulled when he breathed in deeply. Shi Feng was relieved to find his meridians quiet. The trapped heat was finally gone.

He lay still and checked his body piece by piece. The bones of the forearm had started to knit. The cut in his side was closed under the salve. And deep in his meridians, where the heat had been, there was a new channel worn clean, wide enough for the third anvil to fall onto next time without burning him.

The fever had been his body making room for it.

Qin Wuyan sat in the doorway. He had been sitting there, Tong Xian said later, for all three days. The cut in his Pavilion robe had been neatly sewn.

“Senior Qin,” Shi Feng said.

“You lived,” Qin Wuyan said, and stood up. “That is this one’s report.”

“Report to whom?” Shi Feng asked.

“The Old Tower Master,” Qin Wuyan said. “He asked for one line.”

He went out. A little later, Shi Feng heard a Pavilion courier’s horse leave the courtyard at a gallop.

In the morning he got out of bed by himself and walked as far as the door. Out in the courtyard, under the bare plum tree, fourteen alchemists in borrowed coats stood in a line in the snow, waiting for him.

None of them said a word. They had clearly been standing there for some time.