Pei Jing set the vial on the scarred pine. It was pale green, eight-sided, and shorter than his thumb. The wax seal bore the mark of his Five-Elemental Root. Inside lay a single dark green pill. A clan patriarch in Thousand-Star City might pay three hundred mid-grade stones for it. In Great Yan, a prince might give a title and land.
Cheng looked at the seal. The birchwood cracked in the stove, and the storm laid more snow against the walls.
“What is it, Third Boy?”
“Medicine to put life back into the body. It can clear your lungs and mend the knee. You could walk without a cane for ten winters.”
Cheng rested his smoke-darkened thumb against the glaze.
“Ten years.” He smiled a little. “Ten more winters on this mountain.”
He pushed the vial back across the table. It stopped against Pei Jing’s fingers.
“Keep it.”
