The smell of dried bile and scorched centipede shells hit Lin Ke three paces before he reached the apothecary door.
He dragged his left foot over the worn cedar threshold, his calf cramping with every shift of weight. Beneath his sleeve and collar, his skin was mottled like bruised fruit. Livid purple splotches where stray packets of unvented Qi had leaked into the under-skin muscle tissue, trapped between the brittle glass spirit veins and unbending stone bone.
In the back of the cluttered medicine room, Apothecary He paused his rhythm. The heavy bronze pestle hovered two inches above a bowl of dried horn.
He squinted through thick, wire-rimmed glasses, his grey eyebrows knotting into a vicious snarl. “You again.
I told you three months ago to stop snorting fire soot. Sit down before you bleed on my clean flat stone slabs.”
Lin Ke dropped onto the low wooden check bench, extending his left wrist.
Apothecary He pressed three calloused, tobacco-stained fingers against Lin Ke’s outward pulse. The old man’s face went fully still for three heartbeats. Then his eyes bugged out, his hand jerking back as if he had touched a red-hot branding iron.
“You lunatic,” He hissed. He grabbed a clay jar of smelling salts and slamming it onto the counter. “Your liver is eighty percent stone-hard with iron salts, your blood is running like cold ditch mud. Your outward pulse feels like someone striking a cracked fine china teacup with a brass nail. You have forty-eight hours before…
