The bronze lamp burned with rancid sheep fat. It filled the narrow medical pavilion with greasy yellow light and the choking reek of scorched fat.
Apothecary He pulled Lin Ke’s right eyelid open with a thumb that felt like calloused horn. He shoved the sputtering flame three inches from Lin Ke’s pupil. His breath smelled of dried centipedes, bitter tree bark, and stale tobacco.
“Look up,” the old apothecary snarled.
Lin Ke looked up. The light hit his eye like a white-hot needle. It sent a sharp, nauseating spike of pain straight through the eye nerve into the back of his skull. The glassy lining of his congenital glass spirit veins throbbed in sympathy, producing a high-pitched, crystal-clear chime that shook through the enamel of his back teeth.
“Look down. Now track the flame to the left. Stop blinking, you terrible boy.”
Apothecary He let go of the eyelid with a disgusted grunt, snatched a heavy baked-clay bowl filled with dark, bubbling fluid from the fire bowl. Then he slammed it onto the pine check table with a wet thud.
“You’re an idiot,” Apothecary He said. He reached into a basket of wooden tongue depressors and snapping one in half between two gnarled fingers. “A brilliant, suicidal idiot who treats his own skull like an ungreased water wheel. Your optic nerves are swollen to the width of goose quills. The membrane enclosing your Sea of Mind looks like an eggshell dropped on cobblestones. Micro-fractures across both frontal lobes. Three more…
