Chapter 22.5: Epilogue - The Idea
I dropped Lu Fang's body onto the ground.
I wiped the dagger on my trousers and turned and looked at the commons where the militia were disarming the surviving soldiers and Hao was pulling Shan to his feet with his hands bound by rope.
"Bind the survivors and treat the wounded. Treat ours first, then we treat theirs. Someone get Suyin to check Hao's arm."
People moved when I spoke. The village responded to my voice the way it usually responded to Hao's.
In the meantime I walked through the gate and past the road where Lu Fang's cart sat empty, and further beyond the tree line where the northern approach met the open fields.
I made it thirty meters into the trees before I vomited.
I braced myself against a birch trunk and emptied everything in my stomach onto the forest floor, heaving until there was nothing left, and then heaving again because my body hadn't caught up to what I had done. My hands gripped the bark hard enough to tear it.
When the nausea finally passed, I stood still and drew in deep restorative breaths with my forehead against the tree and the dagger still in my hand.
I cleaned the still bloody steel on a handful of leaves and sheathed it against my forearm and wiped my mouth with my sleeve.