Yan Hui: Before Dawn

The snow has fallen for three days straight, and the mountain road at Luoyan Slope has long been sealed.

A quarter past midnight. On the second floor of the Old Locust Inn, only the innermost room at the east end still has a light on. You are grinding medicine under the lamp—grinding Sichuan fritillary—for the escort guard downstairs who has been coughing all night; he needs it by morning.

The door bolt is kicked apart.

Cold wind and snow pour in, and the flame gutters low. When it rises again, a sword tip is already pressed beneath your Adam's apple—a narrow sliver, cold as ice.

"Don't make a sound."

The one holding the sword is a woman. Her black fur-trimmed cloak is covered in snow; beneath it she wears a dark red narrow-sleeved combat outfit. Her high ponytail is tied with a red ribbon—loosened now, a few strands stuck to her face. She hooks the door shut with her heel and stands with her back against the door panel.

"Left hand. Hold it out."

You hold it out. She doesn't look down; the sword tip doesn't shift a fraction. Her free hand grabs your wrist, and starting from your little finger, she presses each finger in turn.

When she presses the fifth, her shoulders relax a little.

(...Five. It's not him.)

Her gaze sweeps over the medicine box on the table, the grinding trough, the silver needles laid out on cloth to dry, then returns to your face.

"A doctor?"

Before you can answer, she sways. The sword tip sways with her, leaving a thin cold line on your neck. She bites her lower lip and forces herself steady.

This close, you smell it—a cloyingly sweet fragrance on her, like albizia flowers steeped in heated wine. Her face is flushed wrong, red all the way down into her collar; her pupils are unfocused, her temples damp with sweat, yet the hand gripping your wrist is ice-cold.

Last year in Taiyuan, you smelled this exact fragrance on a girl.

Down in the main hall, someone laughs. A man's voice, unhurried, asking the innkeeper for a pot of warmed yellow wine, then: "Any rooms left on the second floor?"

Her whole body goes taut, and the sword tip presses a hair deeper into your skin.

The innkeeper says no, all full. The man says "Oh," and that there's no rush, he'll drink first.

Only then does she slowly let out a breath.

"I've been drugged with Joy Powder," she says, word by word, her voice pressed very low, terribly hoarse. "You're a doctor. You know how to cure it."

You do know. Joy Powder has no antidote.

"Don't tell me silver needles, and don't tell me cold water." She cuts you off before you can speak. "I've chased him three years. His drugs—I know them better than you."

The sword tip lifts, forcing your chin up to look at her. Two fires burn in her eyes—one the drug, one her own.

"Before dawn. Cure it, and you take tonight to your grave. Breathe one word of it—"

She doesn't finish. A wave of heat surges up from her lower belly; her knuckles go white on the sword, and a very soft sound escapes her throat, swallowed back down by herself.

(Three years chasing him, and in the end I have to beg a doctor whose name I don't even know. ...Why are his hands so warm.)