Chapter 835 — Grey Ash

CHAPTER 835

Grey Ash

The sickroom smelled of incense and cold stone.

It was the quietest room in the east wing, with its shutters half closed and a brazier burning in each corner. Elder Ye Wanqiu lay on a low bed under a white quilt. She was a thin woman with grey-streaked hair, and down the left side of her neck, from her ear to under the collar, ran a thin black line.

It wasn’t a cut. The air over it looked wrong, as if the room had a crease in it there. The lamplight bent around it.

Shi Feng stood in the doorway behind the princess’s maid, where an alchemist in attendance should stand. Nobody told him to leave.

Shen Yaoqing knelt at the bedside. She took her master’s hand, and Ye Wanqiu opened her eyes.

“They lit a furnace for me?” Ye Wanqiu asked faintly.

“Grandmaster Qu did, Master,” Shen Yaoqing said. “Eight clouds.”

“Eight.” Ye Wanqiu’s eyes moved to Qu Hanshan, standing at the foot of the bed in his red robe, and then back to her disciple. “And the price?”

Shen Yaoqing didn’t answer.

Ye Wanqiu closed her eyes again. She was too weak to argue.

Qu Hanshan opened the jade box himself. He took out the dark jade pill between two fingers, bent over the bed, and placed it on Ye Wanqiu’s tongue. Then he pressed one palm lightly to her throat and guided the pill down with his qi.

For three breaths, nothing happened.

Then a faint green light spread out under Ye Wanqiu’s skin. It ran along her neck toward the black line, and the line seemed to shrink a little. Her breathing eased. The colour came back into her lips.

Qu Ming, by the door, let out a soft laugh.

“There,” Qu Ming said. “Eight clouds is eight clouds.”

The green light reached the black line.

And the black line opened.

It didn’t widen. It just stopped being a line, and for an instant it was a narrow dark mouth in the air above her neck. The green light poured into it like water down a drain. Ye Wanqiu’s whole body arched on the bed. She coughed, hard and dry, and something came out of her mouth onto the white quilt.

It was a little heap of grey ash, still warm. It was all that was left of a Perfect pill at the 5 Mark.

The black line closed back into a crease. Ye Wanqiu fell back against the pillow and lay still, breathing in short, shallow breaths. She was no better than before. She might have been a little worse.

Shen Yaoqing wiped her master’s mouth with the quilt and folded it over the ash.

No one in the room spoke.

Qu Ming’s smile was gone. Qu Hanshan looked down at the ash for a long time. His face didn’t change, but the hand he’d used to guide the pill had closed into a fist at his side.

Shi Feng thought: he isn’t surprised. He’s already working out what to ask for next.

“It is beyond the 5 Mark,” Qu Hanshan said at last.

His voice was as calm as before, and much colder.

“The pill was Perfect. The wound refused it. Medicine cures what the body can still hold. This wound isn’t in her body.” Qu Hanshan turned to Shen Yaoqing. “This old man has seen void wounds before, and none like this. It doesn’t rot the flesh. It eats the space the flesh sits in.”

“Only a 6 Mark could treat it, if any can,” Qu Hanshan said.

“Then find one,” Shen Yaoqing said quietly, without looking up from the bed.

“A 6 Mark,” Qu Hanshan said. “There are only a handful living, and they don’t receive visitors. This old man has known one of them for half a century, and could ask.” He paused. “But a 6 Mark’s favour costs more than a betrothal, Chief Disciple Shen. When the Serene Jade Sect is ready to discuss what more it can offer, the Azure Sun will be glad to listen.”

He bowed slightly to Long Caili, turned, and walked out. His disciples followed. Qu Ming went last. At the doorway he stopped beside Shi Feng and said nothing, but his eyes were full of hatred.

Shi Feng stepped aside to let him pass.

The sickroom was quiet again. Long Caili stood by the window with her hands behind her back. The draught from the shutters stirred her veil. Shen Yaoqing hadn’t moved from her knees. Her face was as cold and smooth as it had been in the hall.

Her hand, resting on her own sleeve, had gripped the cloth so tightly that her knuckles were white.

Long Caili saw it. She didn’t say anything about it. She just looked away to the window and said, in a perfectly ordinary voice, “The braziers need more charcoal. I’ll send someone.”

It meant: I saw, and I won’t say.

Ye Wanqiu opened her eyes a crack.

“Yaoqing,” Ye Wanqiu whispered. “Don’t sell anything for me.”

“I won’t, Master,” Shen Yaoqing said.

She said it too quickly. Shi Feng heard it, and so did Long Caili. Neither of them said so.

Shi Feng walked to the bed and turned back the quilt. He took a pinch of the grey ash between finger and thumb and rubbed it.

Even scorched residue kept the qi of its ingredients. This ash should have been heavy with four million worth of herbs. It wasn’t. It was nearly empty. The pill hadn’t burned in her. Most of it had fallen through into wherever that crease led, and only the shell had come back.

“It didn’t burn,” Shi Feng said. “It fell through.”

Shen Yaoqing looked up at him for the first time. Her eyes were cold.

“And who are you to say so?” Shen Yaoqing asked.

“The princess’s alchemist,” Shi Feng said. “Only a 4 Mark.”

Shen Yaoqing looked at him a moment longer. Then she turned back to her master, as if he’d stopped being there.

Shi Feng dusted the ash off his fingers and went out. Long Caili followed him into the corridor a moment later. She closed the door behind her and stood with her back to it.

“You knew in the gallery,” Long Caili said. It wasn’t a question.

“I guessed in the gallery,” Shi Feng said. “Now I know.”

Long Caili looked at him. Above the veil, her eyes showed nothing. Then she turned toward her own wing.

“Tonight,” Long Caili said. “After the second watch. Wash your hands first.”