A divine healer, a general, a young marquis! Who can rival them!

At midnight on the second day of the seventh lunar month, all four corners of the tent caught fire.

It didn't start from the lamp. The lamp was still standing inside the tent. The fire started from the felt feet at the four sides and burned upwards, all at once, and the wind was favorable.

When the felt blankets caught fire, they first emitted white smoke, which was drawn low and made it difficult to open one's eyes. Once the fire reached the top, the tent became an inverted brazier.

Liu Ye was the first to wake up. When she kicked open the tent flap, the eight people standing outside took three steps back, and none of them came up.

"Fire!" she shouted.

The eight people began to move, very slowly. One of them turned to pick up a bucket of water, which was empty.

Su Heng emerged from the fire clutching the stack of papers, her hair singed and her hands covered in blisters.

Yang Hu carried the young man with the broken leg out of the tent in the end.

They ran east. To the east was the second enclosure, beyond which was the sheepfold, and outside the sheepfold was the outer sentry post.

When they reached the second encirclement of tents, a dozen or so riders appeared ahead of them.

The leader, holding a torch, recognized them and shouted. The translator was no longer there, and no one translated the words, but everyone understood: the shout was an accusation of thieves.

"To the left," the young man on his back suddenly said. "Behind the third tent, there's a gap in the sheepfold; people can pass through, but horses can't."

"Grab me."

"General." The young man released his grip. "I'll turn right from here."

"Your leg."

"I use crutches," he said. "They'll know it's me when they see the crutches."

He slid off Yang Hu's back, picked up his crutch, and went to the right.

Most of the torches chased after him.

Yang Hu glanced back.

He saw the man moving forward with his cane, moving quickly, pausing with each step, as the torches closed in from both sides. He saw the cane fly out, land on the ground, and roll twice.

He didn't look a second time. If he had, the other two wouldn't have been able to leave.

The remaining four riders caught up.

"The general goes first."

Liu Ye pushed Yang Hu toward the gap and turned to face him. She only had a small knife for peeling scallions. When the first rider charged, she ducked to avoid his head and slashed at his leg from bottom to top with her knife; when the second rider's knife came down, she raised her left arm to block it.

The knife sliced ​​from the outside of her left arm down to her elbow.

Yang Hu rushed back, picked up a broken tent pole from the ground, and swept it horizontally across the horse's leg. The horse lost its footing, and the man fell. He suffered a cut on the back of his right hand from the stirrup and a knife wound on his left shoulder.

As they squeezed through the gap in the sheepfold, Su Heng's skirt got caught on a splinter. She tore the skirt off, still clutching the stack of papers in her arms.

Two people stood outside the breach, leading three horses.

The one in front is the princess.

"Mount up."

"Where to?"

"Head north."

To the north was an open space at the outermost edge of the royal court. At the other end of the open space were three tents, each with a bare pole stuck in the air. Nothing was hanging on the poles.

"That's a tent with bare poles." Liu Ye reined in her horse.

"Yes."

"There are patients inside."

"Eleven," the princess said. "The high shaman said that heaven is taking them away. Since March, no one has gone in. The old woman who brings food puts the bowl twenty paces away, puts it down, and leaves."

Liu Ye glanced at Yang Hu.

Yang Hu jumped off his horse and lifted the tent flap.

That night, the torches that had been chasing them circled the royal court for two hours, only dispersing as dawn approached. Not a single torch went toward the three tents to the north.

A brazier was lit inside the tent.

Su Heng's hands were covered in blisters, the largest of which was the size of a copper coin. She could move her left hand, but couldn't grasp anything with her right.

The cut on Liu Ye's left arm ran from the outside of her upper arm to the elbow, the flesh turned inside out.

"cloth."

"One and a half bolts of cloth," Su Heng said. "Two knives, one spool of hemp thread. That's all."

"Boil water."

The pot on the brazier was taken from inside the tent; it had previously been used to cook meals for patients. Yang Hu scrubbed the pot three times, brought it to a boil, and then put a cloth inside to boil.

He stitched up Liu Ye's wound. The cut on his left shoulder was still bleeding, and when he got to the seventh stitch, the blood dripped onto Liu Ye's arm.

"The general sews his own first."

"If you wait any longer, it won't be able to close properly."

A total of nineteen stitches were sewn. The needles were made from a hairpin taken from Su Heng's head, and the thread was boiled in boiling water three times.

Liu Ye remained silent throughout, until the last needle prick, when she bit her lip until it bled.

"Your arm will develop problems if you go back like that," Yang Hu said. "This stretch is only half an inch away from the tendon."

"Let it fall," Liu Ye said. "I don't shoot arrows with my left hand."

The princess treated Su Heng's hands. She did as Yang Hu had instructed: the blisters should not be broken, and the collapsed areas should be covered with boiled cloth, which should be changed every day.

Yang Hu's three wounds were sewn by Liu Ye with her right hand. She only sewed two of them; the cut on her left shoulder was too deep, and her hand was shaking, so she stopped sewing halfway through.

"We'll sew it up even if it's crooked," Yang Hu said.

After daybreak, the princess took things out of the bag she had brought.

A packet of salt. A packet of fried rice. Half a sachet of yogurt. A small copper kettle.

"Where's the medicine?" Liu Ye asked.

"The medicine is with the high priest," the princess said. "He can't get it."

Liu Ye put down the knife in her hand.

"I have a question for you," she said. "Why did you save him?"

The princess placed the half-full sachet of yogurt on the felt and sat down.

"Three things," she said.

"speak."

"Firstly, my father can walk three hundred steps by himself today. Twenty-two days ago, he was lying in that tent with his stomach swollen like a drum, and he was in pain three times a night."

"And the second one?"

"In those two burning quarters, there was my wet nurse's brother's family of six," the princess said. "They didn't come out. He took in the 147 survivors."

Liu Ye rearranged her injured arm.

The princess moved the small copper pot to the side of the brazier. The pot contained melted snow water, which she had brought from her own tent.

"The third thing is the most important," she said. "On June 28th, the old man in charge of wood carved a piece of wood in front of the nineteen ministers. It was a debt of life. My father's blood was pressed on the wood."

She looked up.

"If he dies in this fire, then that piece of wood will have been carved in vain. No matter how many more pieces are carved after the forty-three sections, it won't count."

She rolled up her sleeves.

"I didn't save him. I saved that piece of wood."

Yang Hu sat by the fire pit listening without interrupting.

His left shoulder was wrapped in cloth, and a small patch of blood seeped through it. He pulled his sleeve down to cover it and stood up.

At the other end of the tent, people were lying on two rows of felt mats.

Eleven people, in two rows. Four of them were covered with felt, the rest were not. There was a row of bowls on the ground, the contents of which were dry, from yesterday or perhaps the day before.

From the moment they entered until now, those people have remained lying down, and not one of them has sat up to ask who they are. Two of them are humming softly, and one is coughing incessantly, stopping and starting intermittently, the pauses being even more unsettling than the coughing.

The one at the very back was no longer moving. Su Heng went over to take a look, then came back and shook her head.

"One after another," the princess said. "The earliest was in March, and the most recent one was brought in five days ago."

"Which side of the royal court did they originally live on?"

"The northwest corner, the area near the river bend."

Yang Hu glanced in that direction but didn't ask any further questions.

He walked over and squatted down in front of the one furthest to the side.

He was a man in his thirties, his cheeks flushed red, his eyes half-open.

"The translator is gone," Liu Ye said from behind. "General, he couldn't understand."

"The princess understands."

He reached out and pressed under the man's armpit, then flipped his eyelids over before asking his first question.

"When did the heat start?"