With a dull, wet crack, an ash-wood heavy club struck home.
A boatman crumpled into the freezing mud, clutching his fractured shoulder as red froth bubbled between his teeth.
“Back into the ditch, water rat!” a guard post guard snarled, wiping the heavy club’s iron tip against his apron. “Another step toward the barricade, and we hang you from the watchtower!”
Behind the timber wooden wall, fifty armored spearmen locked shields.
The crowd of two hundred refugees surged backward in scared sobs, dragging crying children through the gray slush.
Lu Chen kept his stride unbroken.
His boots struck the raised stone road, each step ringing with a faint metal tone that cut through the weeping crowd.
The refugees parted before him.
A tall man wrapped in heavy mountain wolf pelts, with white steam curling from his collar, was not someone desperate men jostled.
At the end of the raised stone road sat the tax pavilion.
Behind an ink-stained cedar table sat Bailiff Geng.
He was a plump official in padded green silk and a moth-eaten red fox collar.
A brass fire bowl full of glowing charcoal hissed beside his knees. But greasy sweat constantly beaded on his jowls.
Three heavy strongboxes sat open on the table, heaped with copper cash and tarnished silver.
A trembling fish merchant stood before him.
“Seven silver bits,” Court guard Geng droned, dipping an ox-hair brush into black ink. “Five for your cart of salt carp, two for the quarantine health chop.”
“Mercy, Lord Guard!” the merchant cried.
“The official heavy tax is eighty copper coins! Seven silver bits is my family’s entire winter bread!”
Court guard Geng smiled thinly.
“The heavy tax was eighty coppers when the river was clean,” the court guard said smoothly. “Now the southern basin is under spiritual quarantine by order of the Provincial Governor. Pay seven silver bits, or dump your fish in the river.”
The merchant cried, reaching into his sash to hand over his last pouch of silver.
Court guard Geng swept the coins into the chest.
“Stamp his cart,” he muttered. “Next.”
Lu Chen stepped onto the flat stone slabs of the pavilion.
The two armored guards right away crossed their hooked bill-poles before him.
“Halt!” the guard barked. “State your business, drifter!”
Court guard Geng squinted through the charcoal smoke at Lu Chen’s mud-stained boots, the wolf pelts. The heavy shape wrapped in coarse hemp at his waist.
His nostrils flared at the faint scent of dried blood and charred marrow clinging to the weapon.
“Another northern sellsword fleeing border ruins,” Court guard Geng sneered. “Entry toll for armed wanderers is ten silver bits. Plus five silver to register that cleaver at the armory.”
The guards gripped their bill-poles, eyes hungry.
Lu Chen didn’t reach for his silver pouch.
He reached inside his canvas sack.
His fingers closed around the cold, heavy square of iron stripped from Commander Tie’s corpse on Dead Man’s Ridge.
He laid it flat on the ink-stained ledger before Bailiff Geng.
Clang.
The impact rang like a blacksmith’s hammer.
Court guard Geng leaned forward to curse, then froze.
His eyes locked onto the tablet.
Dark unpolished border iron, forged with the three-clawed coiled dragon of the Great Yong Royal Courier Corps.
Beneath the dragon was the deep seal of the Northern Border Vanguard Garrison. He was flanked by crimson vermilion wax.
The ox-hair brush slipped from Bailiff Geng’s fingers, splattering black ink across his ledgers.
The fat on his neck went rigid.
His face turned the color of a drowned corpse.
Under Great Yong military law, obstructing a royal courier carrying border dispatches was treason.
The punishment was nine-generation execution by the judge’s saw.
“I-Royal...” Court guard Geng squeaked.
He shoved his chair back so wildly that it tipped against the fire bowl. It scattered red sparks across the pavilion.
The two guards looked down at the dragon badge, their faces blanching to curdled animal fat.
Both men dropped their weapons, falling to their knees.
Court guard Geng threw himself across the desk, pressing his forehead into the wet ink.
“Lord Emissary!” the court guard gasped, trembling wildly.
“Blind eyes! This lowly dog has blind eyes! We didn’t know a royal vanguard was crossing from Old Crow Pass!”
Lu Chen picked up the iron token and slid it into his sack.
“Open the gate,” Lu Chen said.
“Open it this instant!” Court guard Geng shrieked at the guards, scrambling up while clutching his robes.
“Raise the timber bars! Clear the lane for the Lord Emissary!”
The guards scrambled to haul open the heavy wicket gate into the inner wharf.
Lu Chen paused.
“Where is the animal fat market?” he asked.
“Second alley on the main wharf, my lord!” Court guard Geng stammered, wiping sweat from his chin.
“Behind the salt warehouses! Master Meng’s apothecary keeps medical mutton fat and cured animal fat!”
Lu Chen gave a slight nod.
“Good.”
He stepped past the table and walked through the gate.
Behind him, Bailiff Geng remained bowed, scared the silent courier might demand his head.
The inner wharf of Gu Ning smelled of cold stone and stall.
Granite lanes were lined with two-story timber warehouses of the Water Freight Guild.
Yet trade was frozen. Guild clerks stood in hushed, nervous clusters outside shuttered offices.
Lu Chen followed the lane past the salt storehouses.
The salt water smell gave way to the sharp, bitter stench of boiled roots, bitter pine-resin, and sulfur.
At an alley corner, a small herbal stall sat beneath a patched hemp awning.
Behind an iron mortar sat an old man.
He was stooped and wiry, wearing a stained hemp apron over a faded cotton tunic.
His left cheek bore a jagged white scar, and his yellowed eyes were sharp as a hawk’s.
His iron pestle pounded dried bitterroot with rhythmic thuds.
He looked so much like Old Meng that Lu Chen’s hand grazed his cleaver.
The same stubborn jaw. The same hard, angular skull.
Only this man smelled of vinegar and crushed bitter pine-resin instead of rancid sulfur liquor.
Lu Chen stopped three paces away.
The old man didn’t stop grinding.
“You’ve got northern dust on your boots,” the apothecary rasped, his voice like river gravel. “And you smell like burnt sulfur and dead watchmen.”
Lu Chen looked at the old man’s scarred face.
“Old Meng sent his regards before Black Water burned,” Lu Chen said.
The iron pestle stopped.
Silence hung between them for three heartbeats, heavy and cold.
A shadow of grief crossed the old man’s eyes, quickly hidden behind cynical disgust.
“That stubborn old bastard,” Doctor Meng muttered, setting down the pestle.
“Thirty years ago, I told him the judge would feed him to the crows. He wouldn’t listen, claiming a watchman dies at his post.”
He wiped his hands on his apron and eyed Lu Chen.
His gaze stayed on the faint shimmer of heat rising from Lu Chen’s collar.
“Fifty degrees,” Doctor Meng said clinically.
“Your chest is running like a smelting kiln. Your marrow is cooked, lad.”
“Ordinary lungs would have charred three days ago.”
“I need fuel,” Lu Chen said.
“What kind?”
“Purified beef animal fat. And bitter pine-resin lard.”
Doctor Meng reached beneath the bench. He pulled out two heavy bricks in oiled paper and a sealed brown jar.
“Two bricks of animal fat, salted clean,” Doctor Meng said.
“Four ounces of bitter pine-resin lard in the jar. That will lubricate your scorched vessels for forty-eight hours.”
Lu Chen placed two pieces of mountain silver on the wood.
Doctor Meng swept the silver into a drawer.
“Take a piece of advice for free,” the old man rasped.
“Don’t drink the water from the canal. Even boiled, it carries poison.”
“What poison?” Lu Chen asked.
“Something crawled up from the deep trench three nights ago,” Doctor Meng whispered.
“The Freight Guild is bribing the Governor to keep the docks locked while they hunt it.”
“Fish in the lower basin are washing ashore with hollow spines. Whatever is in that river... It eats marrow.”
Lu Chen packed the animal fat and jar into his sack.
“Thank you.”
Before he could turn, the river breeze died fully, swallowed by greasy stillness.
Out on the canal basin, the watchtower gong tolled three muffled strikes through the fog.
Dang... Dang... Dang.
Doctor Meng froze, his hands trembling over the stone mortar.
“The dead-water bell,” the old apothecary whispered, color draining from his scarred face.
From the outer water gate, scared screams tore through the afternoon gloom.