The smell of boiled herbs crept into places even smoke had not reached.
It threaded through the temple that had become an infirmary, through the old market hall where pallets lay in uneven rows, through stairwells and corners and the hollow under the north tower where a girl had once hidden to avoid learning her characters. Now there were no lessons that did not have blood in them.
Ziyan moved between pallets with her sleeves pulled back and a strip of cloth over her mouth. Fever had a sound: the restless rasp of men talking nonsense, the too-quiet breathing of children, the occasional sudden, ugly cough that made everyone nearby tense.
Ren the scribe read off a list from his bamboo. "Thirty-four with lung heat in the east ward. Twenty-two in the granary. Six in the guard barracks. No deaths in the last bell."
"That we know of," Shuye muttered from where he crouched over a pot, testing the thickness of the brew with a spoon. "Some people still think if they don't say the word 'plague' it won't find them."
"It isn't plague," the old healer snapped, without looking up from the boy whose chest she was tapping. "It's winter and too many bodies in too little air. And men who think they can keep fighting without sleeping."
She thumped the boy's ribs lightly. "Breathe. Again. Not as if you're trying to argue, as if you're trying to light a coal."
Ziyan watched the boy obey. His eyes were glassy. The steam from the pot made the air heavy.
She looked at the crate from Xia, now half-empty. Some of the herbs were familiar: dried mulberry leaf, bitter root that she'd chewed as a child when a cough would not leave. Others were stranger—river-plant twisted in careful spirals, resin beads that smelled of far pine forests. They'd tried each in turn, cautiously at first, on those most likely to die anyway.
None had.
"You'll write it all down?" she asked Ren quietly. "What worked. What didn't."
"Already started," he said. "If we live through this, I'd prefer not to have to reinvent remedies the way we reinvent law."
Wei appeared in the doorway, helmet under one arm, expression stuck halfway between a scowl and something more helpless. He held a child in the other arm—a boy of eight or nine, limp as a wet cloth, sweat shining on brown skin.
"Found him outside the east tower," Wei said. "Trying to carry water. Couldn't draw the bucket up more than a palm before he nearly toppled in."
The healer clucked, took the boy without ceremony, laid him on an empty pallet. "Another with river frost in his lungs," she said. "His hands are wrong for hauling yet. Whose idea was that?"
"No one's," Wei said stiffly. "His own. He said he wanted to work."
"He will," Ziyan said. "Later."
She looked at the herbs, at the boy, at the scraps of law Ren had pinned to the temple pillars in place of the old sutra scrolls. In the lamplight, the fresh ink looked almost like blood.
"Give him the same as the others," she said. "No special treatment because he tried to be brave. No less because he's only a boy."
The healer grunted. "Good. Heroes die faster."
Feiyan slipped in like a question. She did not like sickrooms; they reminded her of things knives could not fix. But she made herself cross the threshold anyway.
"River quarter calm," she reported. "For once. The story about the medicine spread faster than the fever. Half the city thinks we'll all wake up Xia in the morning for taking it. The other half is burning incense to whatever gods will listen for sending it at all."
"And you?" Ziyan asked.
Feiyan's nose wrinkled. "I don't light incense. I watch hands. And I've seen three now slip packets into sleeves when they thought no one was looking."
"Hoarding?" Wei growled.
"Selling," Feiyan said. "To cousins. To lords' kitchens. To anyone with coin who doesn't want to line up in the cold."
Ren's jaw set. "Names?"
Feiyan's eyes were flat. "I brought you more than names."
Two men stood by the temple steps between guards, wrists bound. One wore a ragged coat with a merchant's habit of flinching at loud noises. The other wore a steward's belt, his hair tied carefully even in disgrace. Both looked like they'd been pulled away from something mid-thought.
Ziyan stepped out into the courtyard.
"You were given medicine under law," she said, without preamble. "Herbs sent by an enemy, counted by our own scribe, distributed by our own healers. You decided to add a price."
The steward's mouth twisted. "There is always a price," he said. "Your law is pretty, my lady, but prettiness doesn't put rice in bowls. Those with coin—"
"—already have warmer rooms and thicker coats," she cut in. "They do not need first drink from this river as well."
Feiyan tossed something at their feet: packets with Xia stamps, their wax half-melted. "He asked for three ingots," she said. "Per pot. Told the buyer it was rare stock from the palace stores."
The merchant flinched. "I only—"
"—went along," Ziyan finished. "Because no one wants to be the only honest man in a city of thieves."
She looked at them both and felt, for a moment, the old temptation: pick up Zhang's habit with a cleaner grip. Make a lesson so sharp no one would dare follow their example. Fear was fast. Fear was efficient.