Chapter 416 — Day Two

CHAPTER 416

Day Two

The second pill didn't crack. It simply went dull.

The pill kept its perfect shape as the glow faded. Shi Feng lifted it from the ash with the tongs. He’d already learned what that fading meant. Beneath its lack of flavour, he could sense the Withering still present, untouched by the medicine.

[Devoured: second failure | Gain: small | Note: a medicine that fears the poison is already too late]

“Two,” Elder Zhang Pei said heavily, from the roof's edge. “As the saying goes, haste won't let you eat hot tofu.” He had stopped shouting at the second hour.

“Two,” Sima Lan agreed, and chalked a line on the furnace ledger.

“There's one more day,” Su Wanning said, in a very small voice.

“One more day,” Shi Feng said.

He washed his hands and went to bed at the hour of the rat. He did not sleep.

Su Wanning had been given the night watch in Ling Qingzhu's room, and she had lost the fight with her own eyelids by midnight. She lay face-down on the table with her cheek on a herb list. A candle burned beside her, a stub the length of a thumb.

Shi Feng set a cup of the stabilising draught on the floor by the bed, quietly.

The room was small and plain. A screen, a chest, a window facing the Heart Garden. Ling Qingzhu lay under a thin quilt with her hair loose on the pillow and no veil. Her left hand rested on top of the quilt. The nails were grey to the first knuckle now.

“...not the east bed,” Ling Qingzhu said.

Shi Feng stopped.

Her eyes were shut. Her lips moved again, hot and dry. “Don't cut the east bed. Mother planted that one. It's the oldest. It only looks dead in winter,” Ling Qingzhu said.

He did not move.

“And the dark one,” Ling Qingzhu whispered. “Leave the dark petal, Mother. It's the one that remembers. It only tells you where it hurts.”

Her fingers closed on the quilt, opened, closed again.

“Nine more breaths,” Ling Qingzhu said. “Eight. Don't let the array... Eight...”

He lifted the cup and knelt beside the bed. With an arm behind her shoulders, he raised her burning head enough to drink. Ling Qingzhu swallowed twice, coughed, then opened her eyes. Shi Feng kept the cup steady while she recognised him.

They were wide, dark and not entirely clear.

“Shi Feng,” Ling Qingzhu said.

“Drink,” Shi Feng said.

She drank. When the cup was empty she looked up at him for a long moment, and the fever made her face very young.

“I didn't want you to come,” Ling Qingzhu said.

He put down the cup.

“I know,” Shi Feng said.

“I said any alchemist but you,” Ling Qingzhu said, her voice small and cracked. “The Master said you were the only one who might do it. I still said no. Then she became ill, and so did I. It wasn’t my choice anymore. Spilled water can’t be gathered back.”

“You didn't ask,” Shi Feng said.

“I know. That was the point,” Ling Qingzhu said.

Beside the candle, Su Wanning breathed in, snored faintly and turned her face the other way.

“I wanted one place you hadn't seen,” Ling Qingzhu said. “One place where I wasn't... You've seen me at the capital. You've seen me in Qingliu Lane and on the gathering stage and in the mud. I wanted to keep the Valley. I wanted to be well here. Just here.” Her hand tightened on the quilt. “And now you're standing in my mother's garden and it's dying, and I'm in a bed, and I can't even hold the array.”

“You held it until you couldn't stand,” Shi Feng said.

“That isn't,” Ling Qingzhu said.

“The Valley's records say one holder lasts two days,” Shi Feng said. “You lasted twenty-one. I read them.”

Ling Qingzhu stared at him.

“Don't be kind,” Ling Qingzhu said at last. “It's unfair. I can't argue with it.”

“It's not kindness,” Shi Feng said. “It's arithmetic.”

Ling Qingzhu nearly laughed, then coughed instead. Shi Feng raised the cup to her lips again. This time she drank without protesting. He waited until the coughing eased before lowering it.

“Is the Blossom still...” Ling Qingzhu said.

“Tomorrow,” Shi Feng said.

“Don't let it go,” Ling Qingzhu said.

“I won't,” Shi Feng said.

“Go away,” Ling Qingzhu said, and shut her eyes. “You'll catch it.”

“I've had the Withering twice,” Shi Feng said. “It's bland.”

This time the laugh came out. It was a short one, a tired one, hardly more than breath, and it faded into the quilt. Her grip loosened. Within a minute she was asleep, her breathing even, her grey left hand open on the cover.

Shi Feng stood in the candlelight for some time.

It only tells you where it hurts.

Shi Feng remembered the seventh petal, black and curled against the stem. The elders saw damage to cut away. In her fever, Ling Qingzhu had remembered her mother saying it showed where the flower hurt. He considered what that meant for the failed pills.

He went out quietly. In the corridor, Sima Lan was standing with her slate under her arm.

“Day three,” Sima Lan said.

“Day three,” Shi Feng said. “Tell Yu Lan the Blossom stays in the box. Nobody cuts anything.”

Sima Lan's pen moved.

“And the black petal?” Sima Lan asked.

“That's the one I need,” Shi Feng said.