Chapter 14: The Warm Room

Cen Yu climbed back up the mountain at dusk with the oil jar wrapped in his shirt and held against his chest.

Before he left, his mother had made him cut his palm over a spoon.

She had taken it from him once, with her eyes shut, and said it was the last time.

It would hold the cough for three days, no longer.

He kept to the thought of those three days all the way up, because the other thought was the register.

The courier boy was waiting at the Hall gate with his mule.

"The Elder says come to the Pill Room," the boy said. He did not meet Cen Yu's eyes. "He says the second door is open."

The outer chamber was empty.

The six bowls of tea water still stood in their row on the shelf, and Cen Yu walked past them.

The iron door at the back stood open the width of a man.

He had pressed his cold hands to that wood a month ago and felt warmth and a faint thrum behind it.

He stepped through, and the warmth came up his arms to the shoulders.

It was a round room cut into the rock, and it was hot.

Rows of lidded crocks lined the walls, each with a hole the size of a coin in the lid, and the thrum came from all of them at once.

A trough of warm water ran down the middle of the floor.

At the far end stood a long stone table with a groove along each edge, and a hook above it on a chain.

The Elder sat on a low stool beside the table, drinking tea.

"Come in, Cen Yu," he said. "Mind the trough. It is not for drinking."

His hands were bare around the cup, and as always they were warm.

Cen Yu stood at the door with the jar against his chest.

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