Under the slap of an oily river wave, the damp deck of the seventeenth grain barge shuddered.
Lu Chen wiped the studying grease from his hands with a scrap of salt-crusted linen.
He dropped the short ladder from the helm, his heavy boots making no sound against the slime-slick oak.
Behind him, Doctor Meng leaned against the bulwark. He grabbed his throat, coughing bitter bile into the gray river.
“Cover the helmsman’s chest,” Lu Chen ordered. “Burning lime powder.”
“Right... Right away,” Meng wheezed, his fingers fumbling with a hemp sack of white stone powder.
Lu Chen walked down the starboard rowing well.
He inspected five more corpses in rapid row.
