The copper tang of bright red blood cut through the vinegar fumes in less than two heartbeats.
Meng Shan crossed the cellar floor in a single stride, his iron slab thumping against the flat stone slabs like an anchor dropped into mud. He lifted the safety chain with his thumb, catching the door as it swung wide.
A man tumbled across the threshold, his chest hitting the wet packed earth with a sickening, hollow thud.
He wore the tattered leftovers of a blue scholar’s robe, now blackened by sewer slime and torn to ribbons along the right flank. His right arm hung limp at his side, unnaturally stiff, the skin from the elbow to the knuckles swollen to twice its normal girth and tinted a dull, rotting violet.
In his left hand, the man clutched an iron-hilted broadsword wrapped in greasy oilcloth. He refused to let go even as his forehead struck the floor.
“Shut the door,” Lin Ke said quietly.
Meng Shan kicked the timber shut and dropped the heavy oak crossbar into its iron cradles.
Apothecary He was already kneeling beside the fallen fighter, his fingers sinking into the man’s neck to feel the neck-artery pulse.
