Chapter 63: Steady
We came through the eastern gate of Hekou at the third notch of the afternoon on the sixth day out.
The watch saw us first, and then the village. Children ran ahead to tell the clinic, and by the time we crossed the bridge the path was already lined with people who had stepped out of their work to watch us pass. None of them spoke. The cohort walked behind me in the loose formation they had carried since the cave, and they did not speak either, and the village watched us go by the way a village watches a hard thing return.
Suyin was on the clinic porch.
She had come out when the children had reached her. She had her cloak on now, pinned at the throat, her hair pinned tight.
I did not stop walking. I crossed the last twenty paces, climbed the three steps, reached into the inner pouch I had sewn into the lining of my cloak before we left, and pulled out the stone.
She looked at it in awe, then nodded and turned, and I followed her into the clinic.
Hao was on the bed where I had left him.
His skin was paler than it had been six days ago. The cloth Suyin had been using to wipe him was folded at the foot of the bed, and a fresh basin of warm water sat beside it. The wet-iron smell I had smelled the morning I left was thinner now, but still there. The film of dark had built into a faint sheen across his forehead and the inside of his arms.
I sat on the stool beside him, and Suyin sat across from me on the opposite side of the bed. The cohort and Bolin stood at the threshold without coming inside.