The Son In-law They Mocked Found The Lost Vault

CHAPTER 30: BLOOD ON THE STONE

Adrian fell to his knees on the cold rock.

"Marcus." He grabbed his friend's shoulders and turned him over, as gently as he could with his burned hands. "Marcus, look at me. Look at me."

Marcus's eyes were open. They were wide and wet and confused, like a child waking from a bad dream. His face was white in the starlight. His mouth opened, but at first nothing came out.

Then he whispered, "Adrian?"

"I am here. I am right here."

"Something hit me." Marcus sounded surprised. "It hit me so hard. Like a horse kicked me." He tried to lift his head. "Did I fall in the river?"

"No. No, you are on the rocks. Lie still."

Adrian looked down. The dark stain was spreading across Marcus's shirt, on the left side, below the ribs. It was coming fast. Too fast. It ran out from under him and over the pale stone and dripped slowly into the black water of the river.

Helen dropped down beside them. She did not scream. She did not cry. She pulled off her gray coat, folded it into a thick square, and pressed it hard against the wound with both hands.

Marcus cried out in pain.

"I am sorry," Helen said. "I am sorry. I have to push hard. It stops the blood." Her voice was steady, but her face was white. "Adrian. Put your hands on top of mine. Push down. Do not stop, no matter what he says."

Adrian put his bandaged hands on top of hers and pushed.

Marcus screamed again. Then he started to shake. His whole body, shaking and shaking on the cold rock.

"It is so cold," he whispered. "Why is it so cold?"

"Because it is night," Adrian said. "Because we are on a mountain. Hold on, Marcus. Hold on."

Behind them, lights were coming on in the houses. Doors were opening. People were running down toward the river with lamps and torches, shouting. The farmer who had given Adrian his shoes. His sister. Two of the elders from the tower. They stopped at the edge of the rocks and stared down at the three of them, at the blood running into the river.

"A doctor," Adrian shouted up at them. "Is there a doctor? Please!"

The farmer's face was gray. "There is no doctor in Bell Stone Town. Only the old herb woman. She can fix a cut hand. Not this."

"Then where is the nearest hospital?"

"Down the mountain. The city." The farmer shook his head slowly. "Six hours by road. Maybe more in the dark."

Six hours.

Adrian looked down at Marcus. At the blood soaking through Helen's coat, even with their hands pushing down. At his friend's lips turning a strange, pale color.

Marcus did not have six hours. Everybody standing on that riverbank knew it. Nobody wanted to say it.

"I know a doctor."

The voice came from the dark trees at the side of the path.

Mei Lan walked out into the light of the torches. Her red coat was wet at the bottom, as if she had come through the river. Her face was very calm.

"Where were you?" Helen said, without looking up. "Where were you when somebody shot him?"

"Across the river," Mei Lan said. "Following the man who did it. I lost him in the trees." She looked down at Marcus. Her calm face did not change. But her eyes did. "He is losing too much blood. If we wait for the city, he dies."

"You said you know a doctor," Adrian said. "Where?"

"In a village up the valley. An hour by road. Less if I drive fast." Mei Lan crouched down beside them. "He is old, but he is the best doctor I have ever known. He has taken bullets out of people before. Many times. He does not ask questions."

"Then take us. Now."

"I have a truck," Mei Lan said. "Hidden behind the mill." She paused.

Then she looked straight into Adrian's eyes.

"But I want something first."

Adrian stared at her.

"The feather," Mei Lan said. "The bronze feather from under the bell. Give it to me, and I will drive you to my doctor right now. Refuse, and you can wait six hours for the city."

There was a silence. Even the people holding torches went quiet.

Helen lifted her head. Her eyes were burning. "You are a monster," she said. "You would trade a man's life for a piece of metal?"

Mei Lan did not look at her. She kept her eyes on Adrian. "I told you at the tea house, Princess. I want what is mine. Your grandfather owed me. I am collecting." She held out her hand, palm up. "Well, West?"

Adrian did not think about it.

That was the strange thing, later, when he remembered this night. He did not think about it at all. Not for one second. He did not think about his grandfather. He did not think about two years of searching, or about the tower, or about the song, or about lying under the bell in the dark looking up at a thousand years of writing.

He only thought about Marcus. Marcus in the small tea shop in the old market, two years ago, laughing at one of Adrian's terrible jokes until tea came out of his nose. Marcus lending him money on the night he could not pay his rent, and pretending it was nothing. Marcus on the pier with a split lip. Marcus in the tower, shouting the wrong answer on purpose.

He reached into his pocket, took out the bronze feather, and put it into Mei Lan's hand.

"Take it," he said. "Now drive."

Mei Lan looked down at the feather in her palm. For a moment, she did not move. Her face did something strange. Something Adrian could not read. Surprise, maybe. Or something softer.

She closed her fingers around the feather and put it inside her red coat.

"Lift him," she said. "Carefully. Keep pushing on the wound."

The truck was old and loud and smelled of oil. Mei Lan drove it like a woman who was not afraid of anything, up a narrow dirt road that wound along the side of the valley with a cliff on one side and nothing on the other. The headlights jumped up and down over the rocks. Every bump made Marcus cry out.

He was lying across the back seat with his head in Adrian's lap. Helen sat on the floor of the truck, pressing her coat against his side with both hands, her arms shaking from how hard she was pushing.

"Talk to him," she said. "Keep him awake."

So Adrian talked.

He did not know what he was saying. He just talked. About the old market, and the tea shop with the broken door, and the old woman who ran it who always gave them extra cakes because she thought they were brothers. About the night they stayed up until sunrise trying to read a page of old writing and got it completely wrong and laughed so hard they fell off their chairs. About the winter they shared one coat between them, taking turns.

"I remember," Marcus whispered. His eyes were half closed. "The coat. You always gave it to me. Even on your turn."

"You were always colder than me."

"Liar." Marcus almost smiled. Then his face twisted. "Adrian. Lily. If I do not..."

"Do not say it."

"If I do not make it. Please. Find her. She is so small. She is nineteen, but she is so small. She laughs at everything. Even when the needles hurt, she laughs." Tears were running down the side of his face into Adrian's lap. "She does not know what I did. She does not know I sold you. Please do not tell her."

"I will not tell her anything," Adrian said. His own eyes were burning now. "Because you are going to tell her yourself. When you are better. When we find her. You are going to sit by her bed and tell her everything, and she is going to be angry with you, and then she is going to forgive you. Like I did."

Marcus looked up at him.

"You forgive me?" he whispered.

Adrian thought about it. Really thought. The two years. The lies. The monthly envelopes from the Hans. And then the pier, and the page, and the tower.

"Yes," he said. "I forgive you, Marcus."

His friend closed his eyes. He was still breathing. But very slowly now. Very softly.

On the floor of the truck, Helen looked up at Adrian. Her hands were covered in blood. Her face was white. But her eyes were soft, and wet, and full of something he did not have a name for.

Then the truck stopped.

The village was very small. Maybe ten houses, scattered across a dark hillside. Mei Lan pulled up in front of the biggest one, an old stone house with a wooden gate and a single lamp burning in the window. She jumped out and ran to the door and banged on it with her fist.

"Uncle Su! Uncle Su, wake up! It is me!"

The door opened. An old man stood there in a long gray sleeping robe, with a lamp in his hand. He was very thin and very straight, with a short white beard and round glasses. He looked at Mei Lan for one second.

"Little Lan," he said softly. His voice was full of surprise. And something else. Something like love.

Then he looked past her at the truck. At Adrian and Helen lifting Marcus out of the back seat. At the blood.

His face changed at once. All the softness went out of it. It became the face of a doctor.

"Inside," he said. "The table in the back room. Quickly. Boil water. Bring every clean cloth you can find."

They carried Marcus in. The old doctor moved fast for a man of his age. He cut away Marcus's shirt with a pair of scissors. He looked at the wound. He touched Marcus's neck, feeling for his heartbeat. Then he looked up at them.

"Out," he said. "All of you. I work alone."

"Is he going to live?" Adrian asked.

The old doctor looked at him over his round glasses.

"I do not know," he said. "Ask me in two hours. Now get out of my room."

He closed the door in their faces.

They stood in the small front room of the old stone house. Nobody sat down. Nobody spoke. Helen went to a basin of water in the corner and began to wash the blood off her hands. She scrubbed and scrubbed, even after they were clean. Mei Lan stood by the window with her arms crossed, looking out at the dark.

Adrian could not stand still. He walked around the room. It was a simple room. A wooden table. Two chairs. A shelf of old medical books. A dried flower in a cup. On the wall, a few photographs in wooden frames. Old ones, black and white and brown, faded by years of sun.

He did not mean to look at them. He was just walking. His eyes just moved across them, the way your eyes move across anything when your mind is somewhere else.

A young man in a doctor's white coat, standing in front of a hospital. The same man, older, holding a baby. A group of nurses laughing on some stone steps.

And then a bigger photograph. A family.

It had been taken in a garden, beside a fountain. A tall man in a dark suit stood in the middle, straight and proud, with one hand on a silver-headed cane. He was younger in the photo, with black hair instead of white. But Adrian knew him at once. He had seen that face only three nights ago, on a dark pier, smiling in the headlights of a car.

Mr. Han.

Beside him, a thin boy of maybe fourteen, in a small white suit, with a red flower pinned to his chest. He was smiling a warm, perfect smile. Even as a child, his eyes were cold.

Victor.

And on the other side of Mr. Han, holding his hand, was a little girl. Maybe ten years old. Black hair cut sharp at her jaw. Dark, quick eyes, staring straight into the camera, not smiling at all.

Adrian felt the floor move under his feet.

Slowly, he turned around.

Mei Lan was still standing at the window. But she was not looking out at the dark anymore.

She was looking at him. At his face. At the photograph on the wall behind him.

And she did not look surprised at all.