Page 92 of The Cinders

The entire workshop tilted.

A weight stacked itself on his eyelids, forcing them down, while the noodles churned themselves in his stomach.

‘What…what…’ he slurred; his teeth nipped at his uncooperative tongue.‘You…done…’

But he knew the answer to a question his lips couldn’t form.The unpleasant tang in the noodles hadn’t come from inept cooking alone.

Too late, Lim realised the only idiot in this room was him.

A clatter made his ears ring.His fingers clutched at empty air.

The bowl had fallen from his grasp; he didn’t recall letting go.

Lim sought to pull away from the herbalist.The room tilted again, wildly this time, and he toppled from the stool.Crashing against the floorboards that seemed to roll like waves beneath him.

These stupid eggs had poisoned him.

A long, sickly groan made all his bones vibrate; a noise that was his, but weak and faded.

‘I told you the lotion as well would be too much,’ the herbalist whined, his voice like a pin scraping Lim’s skull.

‘How are we to know what a yaoguai can endure?’Chen’s voice had an unpleasant echo Lim wanted to curl away from.‘You said you’ve never dealt with one.’

Lim listened, dribbling his rage.A yaoguai?They thought he was a monster?Theywereidiots after all.

‘Chen, you said we were subduing him, but we may have killed this man.’

‘He’s no man, nor is that prince.You saw that light, when he put those shoes upon the prince’s feet.’

Lim moaned.How could two bumbling monkeys such as these two have kept themselves so hidden in the garden?He clamped his lips shut against the bitterness that rose to the back of his throat; he’d been too fixed on the prince, and Xian had been overcome by his troubles.

‘I saw a light, but it may have come from the water bowl, the brass catching the sun.’The herbalist’s protest came like the buzzing of insects; chasing Lim down into the pit of his demise.He’d kill them, monster or not.If he died, he’d find a way back from the afterlife and punish them for stealing him away from Xian.

‘The sun was too low for it to have caused that reflection.Did you not see how he slipped from his shackles without a key, then pretended to be my prisoner?’Chen screeched like a raven.‘And I’ve stared into the eyes of evil, Huang.I was threatened by the prince in the foulest language you can imagine, and it was because of this creature.He is the familiar of that Cursed Prince, I’m certain of it.There is an unnatural closeness between them, you saw it as well as I.Subduing a sorcerer’s familiar weakens their power.Any fool knows that.’

‘I’m a fool for getting involved.This not subduing, Chen!I aided you because you promised me shoes for my family and your gardens to grow more herbs, but now you have placed me in peril by having me kill a sorcerer’s pet?’

‘He may not die.This may be a trick.’But even Chen didn’t sound convinced.‘I promise you, the mandarin will thank me for this, and he’ll see his mistake in inviting the misfortune of that prince to this court.I’ll be rewarded, and share that reward with you.’

If Lim were not dying, he’d have sworn never again to underestimate how dangerous stupidity could be.But he was slipping away; his body spreading like melted iron.His leaden eyes closed with a fierce desire to sleep.

The men spoke over him.Their words bubbled and popped in Lim’s ears; no sense to be made of them.

Hands touched him, his low growls of warning dying behind his lips.Lim’s shrinking world jolted and dragged.

Metal clanked, robes rustled, men grunted with efforts Lim could not see from where he drifted down into the abyss.

Wood creaked, a heavy weight slamming.

‘Here, we must bolt him in.He may rise again more foul, asjiangshi, perhaps?’

Lim would take a more lethal form than a hopping zombie if he returned.He willed his arms to move, to claw at the hands that held him, dragged him, from a life he was not ready to leave.

But his bones had dissolved in the encroaching darkness.

The world was stolen from beneath him, and he was sent hurtling downwards.Lim crashed into a world that was hard as packed earth and stank of leather, where bleak oblivion awaited him.

CHAPTER THIRTY