The morning after the executions was quiet.
The four wicker basins had been cleared and burned in the back of the garrison yard. The four entries had been recorded in the ledger that now hung from a long iron hook in the commons, under a small wooden roof that Bolin had built that morning to keep the rain off the parchnt.
I had risen at the second notch before the dawn, written for an hour at the curriculum room, and gone down to the river to wash my hands and my face in the cold water before the rest of the compound began to move.
By the first notch I was at the eastern porch with the cohort, sitting the breath cycle. Lin Zhi held the line on her third sit, eyes shut, shoulders settled in the way I had been training them to settle.
Then the shouting reached us from the commons.
"You filthy Pei dog! Look at her!"
The voice was a young man's. A second voice picked up the chant, yelling "Pei dog" in unuson.
Then a third.
I rose.
The cohort rose with . The four of them moved when I moved, and the formation took itself the mont we cleared the porch — Lin Zhi at my left shoulder, Mu Renshu at my right, Sun Hai and Cao Yan a half-pace behind.
Bolin t us near the commons, he was already moving. "It's Luan Wei, Squad Captain. Three of his cousins with him, half the well watching, and the woman is Pei i."
"Where is Elder Pei Tao?" I asked him.
"In the compound. Nobody's run to him yet, but they will if this drags on."
"Hold him there until I send for him, and bring Xu Bing."
"On it."
He peeled off toward the garrison.
We crossed the bridge.
The commons opened on the village side, and the well sat at the center of the open ground where the four basins had stood the morning before. Won with empty buckets stood along the edge in clusters of two and three. n with kindling on their shoulders had set the kindling down and had not picked it back up.
At the well stood Pei i. She was sixty-one years old and a married-in cousin of Pei Tao, and her empty bucket rested on the lip of the stone wall where she had set it down. Her hands were folded in front of her and her gazed remained fixed on the ground.
Five paces in front of her stood Luan Wei. Twenty-three, second son of a Luan clan household. Wei Lun of the Wei brothers had been his closest friend.
Behind him, three young Luan n.
"Pei dog! Are you planning on attacking us again?!"
The chant was a ragged rhythm.
I walked into the open ground and stopped.
Luan Wei reached for a stone at his feet.
I rembered Zhu Rong on the day she had co to the village. I rembered the cold pressure of her standing in the forest with the way the air between us had carried her weight without her lifting a hand. I had not understood what it was at the ti, but I understood it now, and I reached for the sa feeling within myself.
I had been carrying a great deal of rage for a long ti, and now was the ti to unleash it.
I let it leave as an invisible pressure on the open ground between Luan Wei and myself, through my pores and my very being, a pressure of intent that sent a ripple through the ambient Qi energy around , and it startled my cohort, as well as Luan Wei.
Sweat broke out across Luan Wei's face in a sheet, and his knees dipped, and he caught himself on the heel of his palm against the packed earth. His other hand was still around the stone.
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"Luan Wei. Drop that stone."
The stone fell.
Luan Wei drew a ragged breath. He lifted his face to match my gaze with his eyes, and the grief he had been holding all morning was still in him.
"Why are you defending her?! She is nothing more than a Pei dog!"
I let the pressure ease a quarter.
"As am I, Luan Wei. Or have you forgotten from which clan that I have held from?"
He blinked.
"Did you think I brought my mother's clan here to fight my father's people?"
He did not have an answer for that.
I stepped closer.
"The next ti you reach for a stone in this village, Luan Wei, you will cut off the hand that reached. You will not need a man to hold the blade for you. You will do it yourself. Are we clear?"
He nodded once.
"Use your voice." I commanded.
"We are clear, Squad Captain Pei."
I let the pressure go, allowing him to breathe easy once more.
Pei i was moving toward . She had lifted her bucket and crossed the open ground, and she stopped two paces from and bowed her head.
"Squad Captain Pei. The clan thanks you."
I narrowed my eyes at her.
"Luan Wei is wrong to throw a slur, but he is not wrong to doubt. The Pei clan will remain separate from the rest of the village for now. Tell Pei Tao when you return."
Her eyes had widened. The hand at her belt rose a quarter and stopped.
"Squad Captain Pei, with all due respect, surely you do not wish to separate us...."
I let my eyes leave hers, and I let them move across the edges of the commons. The Tongshan families who had co down the eastern road three years ago after their own gate had failed them were standing in clusters along the southern edge, and their faces were turned toward Pei i, and the hard set of their eyes glistened with mistrust.
I saw the sa glares in Gao Shu who stood near the forge, in Hao's wives and sons, in Zhao Ping's sons as well, the wound of the attack ran deep, and as such, there was no argunt to be had here.
I turned my eyes back to her.
"The Pei Clan have lost the faith of the village, Pei i. That is the reality of it. You shall inform Elder Pei Tao of this."
She held my eyes and hers were full of shock, then she relented when she saw that my gaze remained steady, and after a brief mont she bowed her head.
"Squad Captain Pei."
She turned and lifted her bucket and crossed back toward the bridge.
I turned.
Xu Bing was at the edge of the open ground with four garrison regulars behind him. He had walked into a mont expecting to do work and had discovered that the work was already done.
The cohort had moved without being told. Lin Zhi was at the south edge of the open ground guiding the won with the buckets back toward the cookhouse. Mu Renshu was at the bridge keeping the foot traffic moving across it in one direction. Sun Hai had taken the boy off the low wall and walked him toward his mother. Cao Yan was at the well with his back to it, his eyes on the three young Luan n who had been Luan Wei's chant, his stance one of a guardian ushering them back to their chores.
The commons was clearing.
Xu Bing ca up to .
"Squad Captain. Should I round him up? He brought a stone to the commons."
"He has learned his lesson. Let him walk ho to his mother."
"Yes, Squad Captain."
I let the open ground hold the silence for another breath.
The cohort had fallen back into the formation they had taken in the morning, but the formation was looser now. They were not students moving behind a teacher. They were four people moving behind the man they had decided they were going to follow, and I took that as confirmation of their loyalty and regard for , not of the village, and not of the clan.
A clan was a structure of loyalty that ran upward through the senior household and outward to the married-in families.
There would co a ti where the village would have to dispense with the clan nas and unify under a higher authority, but that day was not today.
We made our way towards the clinic stood at the eastern end of the compound, and the door was open.
I went in.
Suyin was at Hao's bedside.
She had not heard co in. She was sitting on the low stool beside the bed with a folded cloth in her hands, and she was running the cloth along the inside of Hao's forearm from the wrist toward the elbow. The cloth was blackened and wet. There was a wooden basin at her feet with two more cloths in it, and a second basin beside it for the cloths that were ready to burn.
She finished the stroke along the forearm. She lifted the cloth, turned it over the basin and the wet fell from it into the basin in a thin dark stream, and she set the cloth aside and reached for the next one, and she began the sa motion on Hao's other arm.
Her hair had co loose on the right side and was falling into her eyes.
I had never seen her like this.
The cohort had stopped at the threshold behind .
"Suyin."
She turned her head. Her eyes found mine, and her eyes began to swell with barely constrained tears, though she did her best to hide them and remain professional.
"Liang....."
"What's going on?" I asked her.
She drew a breath. "I have been wiping him since dawn, but...it-it won't go away."
She closed her eyes.
She forced the professional healer back to the forefront.
"It is not blood, nor is it pus. It does not match anything in the texts I have. The sll is like wet tal, yet his color was better this morning than it was yesterday, it...it doesn't make any sense to ."
Her voice cracked, but she steadied herself with another breath.
"His skin is so cold, Liang."
I crossed to the bed and knelt beside her.
The cloth in her hand was wet through and the wet was the dark of old iron after the forge. I looked at Hao's arm. I looked at the line of the dark coming up through the pores of his skin in a thin even film, the way water cos through cloth that has been laid on a wet stone, and I knew what I was looking at...
His body was casting out impurities.
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