Editing Chapter 2 (section)

==As dawn approached...==

...Willow Leaf was rapidly fading.  Her breath became more shallow and irregular, rattling in her chest, and her skin began to take on a gray pallor, even where the black pustules had not yet spread.  Wing worked tirelessly to make her comfortable, aided by the handful of charms that were inscribed in his heart in burning runes of essence.

An hour before sunrise, she began respiring more rapidly, in forceful, labored breaths.  She asked, between gulps of air, “Who are you?  Are you... Lookshy?”

Wing shook his head.  “Marukan, like you.”

A faint smile twitched the corners of her dry lips.  “Not like me... please...”  She opened her eyes for a moment.  “Let me see you, just once.”

He looked around himself, to see if anyone else had heard her.  He knew it was foolish, ridiculous even, to humor such a dangerous request.  If he were to fall to the plague, who would treat the rest of the village?  Even so, Toruna was not in sight, and it was perhaps the last thing he could give her.

He reached up and released the catches at the neck, wincing as he heard the release of  air next to his skin.  He lifted off the helm and set it on the floor beside himself.  His gray hair, normally as light and free as racing cirrus clouds, was damp and pressed against his forehead; his pale skin stretched tight over fine features, a narrow nose and lips.  Dark gray pinwheel irises were set like gemstones in his almond shaped eyes beneath arching eyebrows.

Willow Leaf looked at him for a moment, and suddenly her eyes widened.  She gasped, “Luna!  You’ve come to help us!”

“Wait, I’m...”

“I won’t tell anyone.  Don’t worry.”  She closed her eyes, and for a moment Wing had a vision of her beauty returning, before disease had rent her body.  He saw the blood return to her cheeks and her breath quicken.  “If you want, Lord, I’ll keep trying.  I think I can sleep now.”

Zhou Wing opened his mouth, then closed it.  He picked up his helmet from the floor and held it over his head for an instant.  “You do that.”

He replaced the helmet on his head, and held her hand until she nodded off.  Soon her breath became regular, and as the first rays of dawn crept into the room, he was certain that she would recover.

It was at that time that he heard shouting outside.  He gently placed her hand on her chest and straightened her linens, then stepped outside and closed the door behind him.

“There’s his house!”  The shout came from a tangled mob of villagers striding up the hill to the upper ring.  Toruna shook herself awake and stood beside him, while Zhuang still slept by the dying fire.  The mob was carrying pitchforks and torches, and as it approached he could see that Selara and Yao Ye were leading it.  Ye did not look well; she leaned on her shockpike as she walked, and thick red blood had dripped through her hair down one side of her neck.

Zhou Wing opened his mouth, but Toruna spoke first.  “What is the meaning of this?  Go back to your houses, if you value your health.  Now!”

The villagers stopped as one, looking to their amalgamated leaders.  Selara took another step forward, now just five paces from the house.  “Here is the source of the plague,” she snarled.  “In there lies the man that brought this down on us!  It was no malicious spirit of disease.  Chow Bai was a tomb robber, and he brought cursed gold into this village!  Bring him out to face his justice!”

Toruna turned to Zhou Wing.  “Go and find if this is true.  Be quick.”

He stumbled back into the house, while the crowd resumed their cries of vengeance.  Chow Bai still slept in the corner, and to Wing his face seemed fat with blissful contentment.  He stood over him, black rage boiling through his veins.  He removed his helmet and tossed it to the floor.

“Get up, Bai.”

The man didn’t stir; his cap was still crushed together in his folded hands.  Wing couldn’t stand to see him so peaceful while his daughter suffered a few paces away.  He pulled back his leg and kicked the rider in the gut, hard, and felt the satisfying lift as the man bounced up against the wall he had been sleeping against.  His eyes flew open and he squealed in pain.

“What... hey... no!”

Wing slowly pulled his leg back again; the shouting outside was growing to a fever pitch and he could barely hear Toruna’s calls for order anymore.  “How could you watch your boy die, watch them all die...”

“I’m sorry!”  He covered his head with both arms and rolled into a ball on the floor, terrified by the white apparition armor clad before him.  The gray wheels in Wing’s eyes spun madly, but he lowered his boot to the floor.   “I’m so sorry.  I’m a weak man!  Everyone knows it.  I lost my spine the night her mother died, but I’m still alive.”

“Where is it?”  His voice was terrible, steady and calm, but as rigid and sharp as a scalpel.

Bai crawled across the floor with surprising speed.  In a moment he had pulled a bundle of rags out from under Willow Leaf’s bed.  He threw it with both hands at Wing, who let it bounce off his chest to the floor.  A gold disk the size of child’s fist fell out of the rags, clanking dully on the earth floor.

“I didn’t know!  I did it for her!  When I found the shrine, I saw the gold and thought it would take her away from this.  She’s had to work so hard taking care of us since her mother died, and she was sick all the time.  I didn’t know!”

“Why didn’t you say anything when they got sick?  Why?”  He stepped toward Bai slowly, backing him against the bed.

“I didn’t think it was my fault... well... later I did, but then it was too late!”

Wing felt his fists clenching, felt the power of the exoskeleton responding to his increased pulse rate and the targeting system humming into action.  At the same time he saw the figure on the bed stir.  Leaf turned to face the two, blinking blearily.  “Father?”

Zhou Wing froze where he was.  He picked up the coin from the floor and walked back out the door.

The crowd was nearly at the doorstep; Toruna was facing down Selara and Yao Ye with a cold stare, but the three dozen villagers behind them continued to push forward.  He said nothing.  Silently he lifted the gold coin up into the dawn’s chill light.

Yao Ye shouted in a hoarse voice, “It was him!  Burn down the house!”

With the coin still held above him, Wing spread his other hand before him.  “There is a girl inside, his daughter.  Think of what you are doing!”

“Then bring him out and let him face the brothers and sisters of those he’s killed, or be prepared to face the same fate.”  The enraged and injured girl lowered her shockpike until it touched his breastplate.  Sparks and ghostly traces of essence writhed up and down the ironwood shaft.

Wing reached over with one hand and grasped the head of the pike and brought it up to his throat.  “Don’t do this.  Wait for the circuit rider.  Bai is the girl’s father.  Would you leave her an orphan?”

Yao Ye’s face contorted, her cheeks puffed out and her eyes bulged for a moment.  Wing leaned back slightly from the tip of the pike.  Suddenly she doubled over, dropping the pike as she put both of her hands on her knees.  He leaned over to try and help her up, but then she vomited.

Selara looked down at her, then looked back at the crowd.  Those closest to Ye stepped back as she continued retching.  Taking advantage of the pause, Toruna stepped forward.  She picked up Ye’s fallen shockpike and swept it in a broad arc at the crowd.  Everywhere it pointed, the people scrambled backward.

“Go to your homes.  There are enough bodies on the hill already.”

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