Chapter 8: Warm Hands

The cook of the Black Cloaks' kitchen had held the same ladle for thirty years.

He was holding it in both fists now.

"I only turned my back for a breath," he said. "The child went out for water."

"A blue-robed disciple gave him a candied haw and walked him toward the guest court."

The cupbearer sat on an upturned bucket with both hands over her mouth.

The captain stood in the doorway, large and silent, and rubbed his right wrist.

Shi Wen noticed that, because the big man was not a man who fidgeted.

"Is it hurt?" he asked.

"It aches," said the captain. "I am more tired than the day requires."

"The Young Sword steadied me in the court, when I stumbled on the step."

"You don't stumble."

"No," said the captain, slowly. "I do not."

He turned his arm over.

On the inside of the wrist, fading even as they watched, lay a pale print in the shape of four fingers and a thumb.

It was frosted white, and Shi Wen's skin crawled.

He had seen the same mark on an old gatekeeper an hour ago.

"Don't wash it," he said. "Show it to Doctor Gu. Tell him the gatekeeper has one too."

"What is it?"

"I don't know yet."

That was the truth, which made it worse.

Dawnbreak had described the Young Sword's Warm Hands technique in one glowing paragraph, as healing.

The grateful villagers in the novel always died within the year, of old age, and the author had never thought about it.

Shi Wen had.

He had wondered on the bus, around eleven at night, why a healer left so many widows.

"Where does a boy go in the guest court?" he asked.

"Nowhere I may enter," said the captain. "It is Azure Peak's under the Charter. I would need the Lord's leave and an excuse."

"I'll find an excuse."

The excuse was the banquet.

The Alliance's welcome feast was at dusk, in the guest court's pavilion, and the Lord's taster had a duty to inspect the kitchens first.

Nobody could refuse him that, and Shi Wen walked straight past the pale-blue guards with a bow and a tray.

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