Akeha waited for him to still before returning to work. Black thread drew flesh to flesh, forest-nature set it on the path to healing.
Closing the wound was the easy part. The blood loss—that was harder to fix. A skilled doctor would have had ways to replenish the lost iron; Akeha was no such thing. He pressed the thick paste he had made over the gash, equal parts nourishment and antiseptic. Then he bound it with clean cloth.
“No compression until it heals,” he said. The other man nodded.
The injuries clouding his head and legs were superficial, easier to deal with. Basic doctoring was simple; the rest was up to the fortunes.
Yongcheow’s fingers grazed his chin. Akeha froze. “Thank you,” the man whispered.
Akeha escaped the contact to prepare the strong, bitter healing brew.
His patient accepted the cup of dark liquid with a small expression of wonder. “Why did you save me?”
“We’ve discussed this.”
“You didn’t answer.”
In irritation, Akeha turned away to clean the room. “Rest now. This place is safe. Soldiers won’t find you tonight.” And it was the best they could do for now. Tomorrow was tomorrow’s affair.
*
Yongcheow slept easily; Akeha didn’t. In a square of moonlight by the bed, soft as winter frost, he combed through the cloth bundle that had almost cost his companion his life.
The Machinist scrolls drew his attention first. They were lightning scrolls, new technology that had filtered south only in the last few months: thin sheets shaped out of lodestone paste, Slack-imprinted with information that required a decoder to extract. Their presence told stories—Tensor involvement, money, deep organization. In Akeha’s line of work, he listened to a lot of talk. The talk about the growing Machinist rebellion in the capital said it was driven less by downtrodden farmers than by disaffected Tensors. Here was the proof, solid in his hands.
His companion, then: also one of those disaffected? The bundle told little of the man. The small wooden boxes held medicines, soaps, tools to mend broken things, money. There was a thin prayer mat, folded and rolled up. The third scroll was a copy of the Instructions, the holy edicts revered by the Obedient. An old copy, but well kept. Well loved. He looked for evidence of family, lovers, friends. Nothing.
Akeha unwrapped one of the last bundles. As he laid the cloth flat, its damning contents spilled into the light. Pearl-sized silver pellets. Blasting powder in packets, smelling of fireworks. And the main event, heavy and metallic, sitting in the middle of it all.
A gun.
Akeha had seen guns before. They were Tensors’ playthings, put together by masters of earth-and water-nature for fun. The ones he’d seen used coiled springs and slackcraft and produced just enough force to punch holes in paper cutouts. This one was no plaything. It had heft. It had scars, black on the nozzle and stark across the body. It had a slot for blasting powder.
It was a weapon.
A weapon that didn’t rely on slackcraft.
A weapon that didn’t require a Tensor to charge it.
A weapon that anybody could use.
Akeha lifted it, felt its stonelike weight, put it back down. A slip of paper caught his attention. Unfolded, it revealed a scrawl of diagrams and instructions. Akeha recognized the signature appended to it. Midou. A friend from later childhood, a relative close enough to bear some prestige, a cousin distant enough to be dispensable. The paper was speckled with red that could be inkspill or bloodstain.
He rolled up the bundle, blood racing in his veins. If this was the Machinist endgame—arming the peasant masses with deadly weapons—then his understanding of the situation was broken and hollow.
Akeha looked over his shoulder. In the dark, on his bed, Yongcheow slumbered, pallid and inscrutable. A small man, caught up in a web of things beyond his ken. Akeha had to extricate himself before he, too, got caught in it.
Chapter Fourteen
YONGCHEOW WOKE AT FIRST sunrise to pray. Akeha, who’d slept on the floor, watched his slippered feet pad across the ground, pause to retrieve the prayer mat, then vanish behind a cabinet’s bulk. He drifted back to sleep with Yongcheow’s fluid supplications nestling in his ears.
Later, he woke again to a stirring in the Slack: Yongcheow pulling on fire-nature to dry freshly washed clothes. He sat up. The bed had been made, the cloth bundle reassembled. Yongcheow was half dressed, heating his tunic as it hung on a piece of string.
“What are you doing?”
“Oh. You’re awake.”
“Planning to leave before I woke?”
“No, I—” Yongcheow obscured his reaction in the flurry of putting on the tunic. “I need to get to Waiyi as fast as possible.”
Akeha knew Waiyi. A foot-of-the-mountain hamlet in the wilds, several hundred yields off the river. It was surrounded by hills and good places to hide. He did a lot of business there. “I don’t advise traveling. Your wounds need more time.”
The stiff, cautious way Yongcheow fastened his tunic was proof he also knew this. “It’s time I don’t have. I would stay longer, if I could.”
Akeha watched the man’s face and movements intently as he posed the next question: “What are you carrying that can’t wait one more day?”
“Information.” He met Akeha’s gaze head-on. “I know you looked through the bundle.” When Akeha didn’t deny this, he continued, “The information concealed on the scrolls is a matter of life and death.”
“Information the Protectorate would kill for. What is it?”
Yongcheow’s lips tightened. “Maybe . . . it might be better for you not to ask.”
Akeha folded his arms and leaned against a wooden beam.
“It involves your sister.”
Within him, Akeha’s stomach lurched into movement. “Tell me.”
A seismic sigh. “Your sister had a vision. She saw an attack on the Great High Palace by a small group of Tensors. These Tensors had connections to the Machinist movement. It’s . . . complicated, and their motives were their own. But in short, the attack failed, and now your mother is purging suspected Machinists throughout the Protectorate.”
“Purging . . .” Dread shivered through him. “Do you mean—”
“What do you think it means?”
Akeha looked to the ceiling, to where the rafters held firm. “How many dead?”
Yongcheow’s shoulders tilted. “We can’t save those in the capital. They got out, or they died. We’re trying to warn everyone else. What I’m carrying are lists. A list of known members outside the capital, and a list of Protectorate targets. Not all the people on our list are Protectorate targets. And not all the people on the Protectorate’s list are our people.” He licked his lips. “We could save innocents by warning them.”
Akeha closed his eyes and counted the stiff breaths that passed. When he opened his eyes, the world was still there. “What about the gun?”
Yongcheow remained mute for several heartbeats. Finally, he said thickly, “It was a gift. Bequeathed to me.”
“I saw Midou’s signature. He was a childhood friend.”