Chapter 4 — One Last Prescription

CHAPTER 4

One Last Prescription

The copper needle turned under Shi Feng’s skin for half an incense stick. He watched the ash grow longer. He didn’t dare look at the old man’s face.

“Did it find anything?” Shi Feng asked.

“Nothing!” Meng Shou growled, flinging the needle into the stove.

For eighteen months Shi Feng had sat under the same painting of a mountain crane while the old man told him to drink more soup. Today Meng Shou took the painting down. Behind it was a hidden cupboard.

“The capital’s letter says what I found,” Meng Shou grunted. “No channels at all. Hmph. An empty room.”

“So nothing is blocking them?” Shi Feng asked.

“Nothing,” Meng Shou grunted.

He brought out a pressed plant between sheets of waxed cloth. Its narrow roots were black on one side and silver on the other.

“Yin Jade Root,” Meng Shou said. “Dead one. Picked near Hanyin Well in Heilu Marsh, eleven years ago.”

“What does it treat?” Shi Feng asked.

“In beasts, a fever that stops their inner flow. It can wake dormant channels for a short time,” Meng Shou said gruffly.

Dormant, Shi Feng thought. His heart began to pound, and he was stunned. Every other physician said dead, and this one said dormant.

“And in people?” Shi Feng asked.

“A charcoal burner took a sliver. Feeling came back to his leg,” Meng Shou said.

“Then?” Shi Feng asked, leaning forward.

“Then he took a second dose by himself. His kidneys failed,” Meng Shou said.

“I see,” Shi Feng said.

“You don’t, so listen!” Meng Shou snapped. “A piece the size of your smallest fingernail. Never more. I’m not promising a cure, boy. I’m just sick of selling you soup.”

“Can it be bought?” Shi Feng asked.

“Living roots rot once they’re pulled from the mineral bed. One lasts a day, sealed well,” Meng Shou said. “No merchant will risk the western flats for you.”

“Then why tell me at all?” Shi Feng asked.

“Your credit here runs out in seven days. A merchant offered me fifty stones for a living root,” Meng Shou said bluntly. “You need a cure. I need someone fool enough to fetch it.”

Meng Shou pressed a folded survey into his hand. Hanyin Well sat beyond the maintained roads in a blank space ringed by warnings in four different inks.

“An old patient gave me that map,” Meng Shou said. “The square marks are abandoned kilns. That black circle is the well. Follow the raised stone path from the hunting hut.”

“What’s the red line?” Shi Feng asked.

“Where he got lost,” Meng Shou replied. “Don’t follow that.”

Shi Feng turned the map the right way up. The physician immediately turned it back.

“North is down on this one,” Meng Shou said.

“Did your patient survive?” Shi Feng asked.

“Long enough to complain about the map,” Meng Shou replied.

He also sold Shi Feng wound powder, fever pellets and instructions for the root.

“What will you pay for a living sample?” Shi Feng asked, his hand on the door frame.

“Twenty stones,” Meng Shou said. “And any more roots come to me.”

“That wasn’t in the price you named,” Shi Feng said.

Meng Shou grunted.

Shi Feng waited with the stones in his palm, and after a while the physician grumbled, dipped his brush and crossed out the line about exclusive supply.

Qingshi Town was getting ready for the spring market. At the corner by the well, the storyteller He Yan had gathered a ring of listeners around a new tale.

“...and the fallen genius fell to his knees before the kingdom’s tenth fairy!” He Yan cried, slapping his fan against his palm. “‘Don’t abandon me!’ he wept, and then he fainted dead away on the Lu family’s carpet!”

The listeners groaned with pleasure.

“Pitiful!”

“What a waste of a face like that.”

“I heard he fainted twice.”

Shi Feng stood at the edge of the ring until the storyteller noticed him. The fan stopped in mid-air, and He Yan’s expression changed.

“I didn’t faint,” Shi Feng said.

“It’s only a story, young master!” He Yan said.

“Then please use a different name,” Shi Feng said.

He walked on before the man could decide whether that was a threat. It was a polite request. If it was ignored, Shi Feng would come back.

Behind him the ring buzzed.

“Was that him?”

“He doesn’t look like he fainted.”

“Then why’s He Yan so scared?”

“…”

Gao Sheng’s pawnshop smelled of camphor and other people’s misfortune. His father’s brass compass, pawned by Shi Yulan for his treatment, lay in the case between a chipped thumb ring and a hair clasp set with glass.

“Twenty stones,” Gao Sheng said.

“You lent my aunt eight,” Shi Feng said.

“Twenty,” Gao Sheng said.

“Treasurer Du Cheng is checking our household’s receipts this month,” Shi Feng said, glancing at the account books on the man’s desk. “I’ll need a receipt for this.”

Gao Sheng’s expression changed. “Ten,” Gao Sheng said. Shi Feng counted ten stones onto the counter and waited until the owner wrote ten on the ticket.

By the time he reached home, most of the rest of his money had become travel rations, a bow with an uneven pull, a short spear, and a compass that still pointed south as faithfully as it had for his father.

Shi Yulan listened to the whole route. Then she asked what it had cost, and then she picked up the map.

“Three men from the northern branch died in Heilu Marsh last autumn.” Shi Yulan said.

“They went to hunt,” Shi Feng said.

“Do you think the beasts will care that you only came to pick a plant, brat?” Shi Yulan shouted.

“I can’t stay here,” Shi Feng said.

“Is it because a girl left?” Shi Yulan asked.

“Because I still have to rest halfway up the eastern stairs,” Shi Feng said. “Waiting another year won’t make them shorter.”

“You could be killed, you idiot!” Shi Yulan said.

“Yes,” Shi Feng said.

The answer made her look up. He was afraid, and his decision was the same. She turned the map around, studied it, and set it down with a sniff.

“You’ve packed two fever pellets. Take two more!” Shi Yulan said gruffly. “Red for sweating fever, grey for chills. Don’t mix them up. And take your father’s boots. Yours will fall apart in seven days.”

“Aunt,” Shi Feng said.

“You owe me money, brat,” Shi Yulan said, not looking at him. “Don’t you dare die on me!”

She found the compass under his spare robe and went quiet. She rubbed her thumb over the dent in its lid, from his father’s fall off a border horse. Then she put it back in his hand and folded his fingers around it.

“He never got lost with this,” Shi Yulan said. “Don’t be the first.”

Before dawn she pushed a belt with a hidden pocket into his hands. The seam was split, so she mended it herself, with very small, very angry stitches. Aunt, he thought, you’re the worst liar in the Shi Clan.

“Come back with enough stones to settle your account, brat,” Shi Yulan said at the door.

“I’ll pay back what I owe,” Shi Feng said.

“A living debtor is better than a dead one!” Shi Yulan shouted, and shut the door before he could answer.

At the clan gate, a servant waited beside a wooden notice board. By order of the Second Elder, the eastern courtyard’s quarterly allowance was suspended until the year-end clan test. Under the seal someone had chalked: A cripple has no road.

Shi Feng looked at the chalk and smiled faintly. So the Second Elder still needed a wall to insult him. He didn’t bother answering it.

He would find his own road.

The servant waited for him to notice the chalk. Shi Feng already had, and the servant’s face fell. He adjusted the strap on his shoulder and stepped onto the road west.

The pack was heavy, and his legs were weak. Shi Feng knew the marsh would be dangerous. He kept walking anyway.

Behind him, the servant waited for a curse or a threat.

Shi Feng didn’t give him either. He had medicine to find.