Heat didn’t merely ignite inside Lu Chen’s ribs. It blew up.
A wave of molten iron roared from his dantian. It tore through his blood-vessel network like boiling animal fat poured down dry lead pipes. His marrow sizzled, every bone in his limbs groaning under sudden crushing pressure.
He dropped to one knee on the salt-crusted floor, teeth clamped tight.
Muscle tissue tightened with the muffled twang of overdrawn bowstrings. His skin turned the color of dull river slate, compacting into dense, horny armor that felt cold and heavy to the touch.
Then came the butcher’s bill.
His backup spirit veins—narrow tiny blood vessel channels unfit for such violent heat—scorched instantly. They hardened into brittle, charcoal-black melted rock waste, snaking up his left forearm and collarbone like burnt hemp ropes.
The heavy pine door shuddered under a savage kick.
“Lu Chen! Unbar the latch before I split the timber!”
The voice belonged to Corporal Wu of the county patrol. He was followed by the rasping cough of Old Meng.
Lu Chen dragged freezing air into his lungs, expelling a thick plume of scalding vapor. His core ran at over forty degrees. That turned the sweat on his brow to steam before it could bead.
He had less than ten seconds.
With one sweep of his boot, Lu Chen kicked the pale gray ash of Lady Yan’s slippers beneath the lime chest. He threw the grease-soaked shroud over the limp corpse on the granite slab. He tucked the edges under her heels.
The girl was dead again. A drained, harmless husk.
Lu Chen rose, his slate-gray fingers wrapping around the oak crossbar. The timber groaned as he hoisted it with easy leverage.
He pulled the heavy door inward.
A blast of sub-zero wind surged inside. That brought the smell of pitch torches, wet dog fur, and rancid sulfur wine.
Corporal Wu shoved his way through, an unsheathed iron saber gleaming in his hand. Behind him stood two county constables with iron manacles, and at the rear limped Old Meng. It held a dented horn lantern.
“Why the delay, boy?” Wu snarled, thrusting the torch toward Lu Chen’s face. “The Judge’s night carriage saw a black cloud drop onto your roof from the canal.”
Lu Chen kept his gaze low, fixed on the muddy toe of Wu’s boot.
“The iron crossbar froze solid,” Lu Chen said. “Took three blows to clear.”
Wu squinted, sweeping his torch across the dark room. The flame lit up wicker baskets, cedar salt bowls, and wrapped corpses resting on pine benches.
His eyes stopped on the central slab.
“That the Song girl?” Wu asked, prodding the shroud with his sword sheath.
“Merchant Song’s daughter,” Lu Chen replied evenly. “Awaiting Doctor Bai.”
Wu grunted, peeling back the shroud at her neck. The girl’s skin was bloodless and wrinkled from canal mud, her lips parted in a frozen grimace. There was no sign of black sludge or the thrashing spine that had nearly torn Lu Chen’s throat out moments earlier.
The corporal sniffed the air, mustache twitching.
“Stinks of scorched salt and burnt suet in here,” Wu muttered.
He turned toward Lu Chen, eyes narrowing as he stepped close.
The heat streaming from Lu Chen was like standing beside a freshly fired kiln. Steam curled in thick wisps from the apprentice’s collar, rising toward the rafters.
“Why are you steaming like a dumpling basket, boy?” Wu demanded, hand tightening on his handle. “You carrying the red rot?”
Before Lu Chen could answer, Old Meng limped forward. His iron-banded hickory was heavy club thumping hard against the flat stone slabs.
“Stove chimney pipe choked,” Old Meng rasped. He spat a wad of bitterleaf juice between Wu’s boots. “Boy hauled hot embers.”
Wu jumped back, cursing as the brown spit splattered his shin guards.
“Old dog, watch your mouth,” Wu spat.
“Leave the dead be, Corporal,” Old Meng muttered, scarred eye socket twitching under his patch. “Uncanny clings to curious men.”
The two constables behind Wu shifted uneasily, glancing back out into the pitch-black street. Nobody in Black Water County liked lingering inside a deadhouse after midnight.
Wu swallowed hard, his bluster fading.
“Mark the tally,” Wu ordered the constable holding the wooden register. “No stray ghouls in the Seventh Ward cellar.”
He turned back to Lu Chen, pointing a gloved finger at his chest.
“Court guard Qian’s sedan had its lanterns snuffed on the north bridge an hour ago,” Wu warned in a harsh whisper. “The county is on high lock. If anything walks out of this deadhouse before sunrise, both your heads go on the pikes.”
“Understood, Corporal,” Lu Chen said.
Wu spat into the threshold straw and turned. “Move out. Tannery row next.”
The patrol’s footsteps pulled back into the gravel alleyway, swallowed by river fog.
Old Meng remained behind. He kicked the heavy door shut and dropped the oak bar into its iron brackets.
The old watchman turned slowly, his lone eye fixing onto Lu Chen’s left arm.
“What happened here, boy?” Old Meng asked.
“Salt broke,” Lu Chen said quietly. “Knife slipped.”
Old Meng snorted, unhooking a battered tin gourd from his belt. He pulled the wooden stopper and took a long swig of pungent sulfur liquor, wiping his gray beard.
“Don’t lie to an old dog,” Old Meng rasped. “Hide your hands. They’re steaming.”
Before Lu Chen could speak, the body bill came due.
His dantian went cold. The sudden absence of body-energy felt like a heavy stone dropped into an empty pit.
His internal heat remained locked at 40.2 degrees, but the fuel was gone. With no heat fats left to support the heat burning, his backup spirit veins shuddered wildly.
A wave of freezing shivering seized his spine, clashing with the fever streaming from his chest.
Lu Chen’s knees gave out. He slammed against the tool bench, left arm locked in a painful cramp as the charcoal veins bulged under his skin like shards of broken black glass.
“Boy?” Old Meng stepped forward, heavy club clattering to the floor. “What ails you?”
Lu Chen couldn’t answer, his jaw locked tight by neuromuscular spasms.
Rich fats, his mind roared through the red static of his vision. The fire is stalling.
He dragged himself across the rough boards toward the bottom shelf of the tool rack. His fingers, now hardened like river slate, punched straight through the rotten pine siding of his locker.
He pulled out a greasy parchment package tied with hemp twine.
Tearing the paper open, he revealed a two-pound brick of dried sheep fat and salt-cured beef fat, rendered hard as candle wax.
He didn’t hesitate. He sank his teeth into the waxy yellow block.
The cold fat tasted of rancid grease, rock salt, and sheep wool. It coated his mouth in thick slime. But he forced his jaws to grind through the dense mass, swallowing huge waxy lumps raw.
Old Meng stared in numbed horror, his lone eye bulging behind the leather strap.
“Flesh of heaven...” the old watchman whispered. “You’re eating raw suet?”
Lu Chen swallowed another fist-sized chunk. His throat burned with salt, but his stomach welcomed the payload with savage greed.
The animal fats hit his gastric acid like dry pine resin tossed onto dying coals.
Within thirty seconds, the fire in his gut caught.
A surge of warm life-force rushed into his scorched spirit veins. The violent tremors ceased, and the painful throb in his left arm pulled back, the black glass ridges softening beneath his slate-colored skin into dark seams.
His blood heat steadied. Forty point two degrees—hot, constant, and fed.
Lu Chen rested his forehead against the damp stone wall, his breath coming in slow drags. The waxy taste of animal fat stayed on his tongue. But his pulse was steady at fifty beats per minute.
Yet in the quiet of the cellar, the lingering malice of Lady Yan still hummed in his ears like a drowned woman weeping beneath ice.
He needed to ground the seam.
Reaching into his sleeve, Lu Chen drew his four-inch unpolished iron bone awl.
He set the blunt point against the callous of his left palm and drove the iron half an inch deep.
Pain, sharp and clean, pierced the phantom haze. Dark blood welled from the puncture, thick and hot as lamp oil.
Flesh breathes. Blood resists. Anchor checked.
The weeping died instantly. The reality seam settled firm.
Lu Chen pulled the awl free and wiped the dark blood on his apron. The dense, iron-hardened skin tightened around the tear, sealing it into a faint mark within moments.
Old Meng picked up his heavy club, hands trembling slightly. He looked at the gnawed block of animal fat, then at Lu Chen’s slate-gray knuckles. Then he shook his head.
“You’re not right in the head, boy,” Old Meng muttered.
“I’m alive,” Lu Chen said.
“Barely,” Old Meng snapped back, limping toward the door. “Sun’s breaking through the mist. Doctor Bai will want the saw sharp.”
Lu Chen nodded once. He gathered his cedar salt bowl, pocketed the animal fat. Then he looked toward the high cellar window.
Through the greased paper, gray dawn light spread across Black Water County.
Beneath the lime chest, a fine drift of gray ash still clung to the wood grain. Doctor Bai would arrive within the hour, and Doctor Bai noticed everything.