Chapter 10: Needle Night

"Lie on your front," Wanning said.

Chengxiao lay down on the bed with his arms at his sides, and she lit a second lamp.

His black robe was folded on the chair, and his inner shirt lay open to the waist.

She stood at the foot of the bed and held the needle case against her stomach, and told herself it was a medical matter.

It had been a medical matter on the first night, too.

She pulled the shirt down off his shoulders.

His back was long and hard with muscle, still thin from three years in bed.

A scar ran across it from the left shoulder blade to the opposite hip, old and white and straight.

"A sword," she said.

"A border knife. I was twenty-two."

"It didn't kill you."

"It was meant to."

She laid her palm flat beside the scar to feel the heat of his skin.

She had touched a hundred patients with her father, and she had never needed to hold her breath.

"Tell me if it hurts."

"It always hurts."

She found the first point at the base of the neck, and the second below it, and set the needles.

His back flexed under her hands.

"Does that hurt?"

"No."

"Then why did you..."

"I was not prepared for your hands to be cold."

She stopped.

"They're always cold."

"Then I will have to be prepared."

She bit the inside of her cheek and set the third needle.

The fourth went into the hollow beside the left shoulder blade, where the poison sat deepest, and she turned it slowly.

His hand clenched in the quilt.

His breath came harder.

She laid two fingers on the side of his neck to count his pulse and found it running fast, much faster than a sleeper's.