Days of drizzle had turned the earth at Sanghe Village's edge to soup—slick underfoot, the air sour with mud and rotting leaves. The place felt hollowed out; no one was in the fields, no one on the road.
Qingshui squatted beside the stone ward-tower at the village gate, running her thumb inch by inch along the cold face of the blue-green blocks.
Her third visit.
The crack at the tower's base had spread again. The seam she had sealed with starmud had split wide, longer and deeper than before.
Worse—this time the ground around the tower had slumped into a warped ring, as if something within kept battering outward. The wild grasses were long dead. Today she also found birds: three, maybe four, fallen any which way, feathers sloughed, beaks dry and split. One had died with wings half-thrashed, frozen in a spasm.
"This won't hold with seals anymore," she said under her breath.
She exhaled, lifted her gaze southeast—toward Muyun.
On the wind, faint but distinct, came a sound.
Qingshui cocked an ear. Drums—escort drums. The cadence of state troops.
She stood, brushed the grit from her hands. A chill like steel slid into her eyes.
"Kingdom men? Finally."
—
Muyun's south gate yawned open. Chevaux-de-frise lined the way. Boots and hooves clattered over rain-dark stone, trailing a knife-edged cold into the streets.
A mixed column entered: light-armored town troops in front; the Medical Directorate in white coats, jade drip-tubes at their belts, in the middle; mounted soldiers behind. Their first stop was not the markets but the town office.
A gray-haired army physician stood at the fore, spare as a blade, waiting while a clerk brought out the register of nonresidents.
"…Bihua, female, twenty-eight, of You Town, entered with a son, Layne, to reside…"
He shut his eyes. When he opened them a long time later, his mouth shaped a name he hadn't spoken in thirty years.
Mu Wanhua…
—
"Ma, this rice sack is super heavy—can I carry one by myself?" Layne bounced out from the rear of the grocer's, smacking the empty sack on his back, thrilled.
Carrying oil, Bihua shot him a look. "You've trained all of three days. Mind your back."
She scolded with her tongue, smiled with her eyes.
The streets were thin with people now. Soldiers had taken over. The outbreak was clearly worse.
Most stalls were shuttered. Those still moving walked quick and talked low, as if extra words could infect.
At a corner they found a knot of onlookers.
"Isn't that… the house at the head of Willow Lane?"
"Second son started fevering and raving yesterday. This morning he bit someone—went mad!"
"Why didn't they send for a doctor earlier?"
"Who dares? Report it and they'll seal the household and cart you off—who knows where—all of you!"
The buzz thickened. Bihua pulled Layne to the edge and craned a look.
At Willow Lane's mouth, soldiers kicked a door in.
"My second boy just has a fever! He ate something bad—You can't—!" A woman's wail shredded in the wind.
White-robed medics and their aides flooded in. Two soldiers soon hauled a man out on a sheet.
He looked thirty, or a ruin of it. Clothes ripped, body shockingly gaunt. Dark red mottling ate his skin; in places the flesh had ulcered, membranes crawling. His lips were split; his eyes bulged.
"—Hurgh!"
He pitched forward and vomited a gush of red-black blood that bubbled like boiling broth.
The crowd recoiled.
"He—he's not moving!"
"No, look—his arm—bones are broken!"
His limbs hung at wrong angles, slack as if tendons had parted. His mouth worked, sound grinding in his throat—"hhh… hhh…"—and a grin twitched across his face, a rictus yanked by muscles no longer under his command.
"It hurts…" The words slurred out, eyes empty, staring past them at something not of this world.
"Seal the household! Quarantine camp—now!" the chief medic barked. Soldiers slammed the man into a wooden crate, nailed it shut, heaved it onto a cart.
Then an officer swept the bystanders with a hard eye and snarled:
"Too many gawkers. Exposure risk. By regulation—detain the lot and send for testing."
"What? We were just looking!"
"Don't—my parents—someone has to—"
"Who asked you? All of you, move!"
Hands fell to hilts. The line advanced.
And then—
"Did your brains get waterlogged?"
A woman's voice, dry with fatigue, cut in from the flank.
Qingshui.
Blue tunic, a new gourd at her hip, hair a mess again like she'd crawled from a hayrick, a dogtail grass at her lip. But her eyes were ice from before time.
"Take the sick. Seal the house. I won't stop you," she said, walking forward to stand between blades and people, arms folded. "But you're going to arrest everyone who glanced over? Why not shut the gates while you're at it? Burn the town for good measure!"
"Seals are by order. Not up for debate!" the lead officer snapped. "Who are you to obstruct?"
Qingshui smiled as if at a kitten baring teeth.
She spat the grass aside, brushed her belt, and flipped a token into her palm.
Front: cloud scrolls and battle flags encircling the characters Qingzhou. Back: a black tiger mid-pounce.
She tossed it. The officer caught it, examined it.
Silence fell like a dropped curtain.
He snorted, flicked it back, and hissed through his teeth:
"Xuanhu's reach is long. Inner Guard, is it? If anyone here turns out infected today, not even Xuanhu will save you. We're done."
At the rear, a man who'd been quietly watching went wide-eyed at the flash of bronze, then patted himself down in a panic.
"Uh—when—? Where's my token?!"
Qingshui didn't spare the near-fainting close-attendant she'd picked clean. She was listening to the officer's threat.
Her sleeve flicked. A wash of force shoved the rank of soldiers half a step back. The stones under her toes crazed and split.
"Threaten me? You?" Her voice was flat. "Get lost."
She turned, took Bihua and Layne by the arms, gentled her tone. "Home. No groceries today."
But Bihua did not move. She stared at Qingshui and spoke, each word hammered:
"Who. Are. You. Really?"