The skin over Meng Shan’s chest bone was cold as a cemetery marker.
Apothecary He pulled his withered fingers back from the giant’s chest. It shook his head until his scraggly grey beard fluttered against his stained hemp apron. The sick room table groaned under Meng Shan’s turning to stone weight.
“Twelve beats a minute,” Apothecary He said, his voice raspy and dry. “The stone melted rock waste has reached the main coronary branch. If I pour bone-melting vinegar down his throat, the acid will dissolve the vessel walls before it touches the stone.”
“And if we puncture the heart-sac?” Lin Ke asked, leaning over the stone slab.
“He bleeds into the chest cavity and drowns in his own stone sludge within forty seconds,” the apothecary spat. “This isn’t an illness, Lin Ke. It’s a royal shackle forged five hundred years ago. The Emperor owns his marrow.”
Lin Ke stepped back, pressing his shoulders against the damp stone wall of the clinic.
His right forearm ached where the royal burn had peeled the skin, but he ignored it. He gripped his iron metal pen in his right fist. He drove the point straight into his left thumb until dark blood dripped onto the floor.
