As soon as Jun stepped into the room, he could smell sickness. It was unmistakable—pungent and cloying. Sweat, blood and vomit, medicinal herbs, incense and stale air. Jun swallowed, dread ballooning in his stomach as his eyes adjusted to the dim confines.
His father lay on a cot, shivering under a pile of blankets despite the heat. Jun stifled a choked noise of disbelief and dropped to his knees next to Li Hon’s prone form. His father’s face was tinged gray and filmed with sweat. He looked much thinner than he had been just a month ago, the sharp outline of his collarbone jutting from underneath loose, papery skin. His lips were faintly blue, his eyes closed. Jun cringed at his father’s breathing: strained, liquid-clogged wheezes that sounded as if Li Hon were struggling to suck swamp air through a thin, hollow reed.
A tumult of questions crowded into Jun’s head. What happened? Why are you here instead of back in Cheon where you’re supposed to be? What’s wrong with you, and will you be okay?
All that came out was a whisper. “Baba?”
“He may not be able to hear you,” came a regretful voice behind him. Jun turned to the doctor, a long-limbed man grinding an acrid-smelling poultice, his back to Jun. “Are you the man’s son?” he asked, without stopping the rhythmic stone scraping of pestle against mortar.
“What’s wrong with him?” Jun exclaimed.
“His lungs are failing,” the doctor said, making no attempt to break the news gently. “The travelers who were kind enough to bring him through the city gates this morning said that he’d been traveling for weeks before he collapsed. He insisted that he had to reach the capital.”
“He walked from Cheon?” Jun could not believe this was happening.
“At his age, and in poor health, with all this smoke in the air from the wildfires,” the doctor said, shaking his head. “Someone should’ve warned him against such foolishness.”
The doctor knelt on the other side of the cot, pulled down the blankets, and rubbed the paste he’d prepared onto Li Hon’s neck and chest. The strong vapor made Jun’s nostrils sting.
“Will that make him better?” It was hard to even put two thoughts together.
“It will ease his breathing and hopefully lessen his pain,” said the doctor, “but that’s about all I can do for him at this point. His fever is worsening, and there’s too much fluid in his lungs.”
“What do you mean?” Jun’s voice sounded confused and childlike in his own ears. He said the words without thinking, as if feigning a lack of understanding would change the answer.
He’s dying.
Jun felt as if the room were tilting. If he hadn’t run away, his father wouldn’t have left Cheon to follow him. If he hadn’t taken all the money in their house, foolish, determined Li Hon could’ve paid for a carriage and lodgings instead of traveling on foot and sleeping outside.
“Please, there must be something you can do,” Jun insisted.
The doctor pulled the blankets back up and gave Jun a long, paternalistically compassionate stare that communicated his dire conclusions more clearly than any words. “I’m a physician, not a god.” He glanced down at the red leather band around Jun’s wrist. “Since you’re a Guardian candidate, I’ll only charge you half my usual fee for coming out here. You can settle the bill with the innkeeper along with the room charge after you’ve made final arrangements.”
The doctor gathered his supplies and departed with heartless finality.
Bubbling panic clutched Jun around the throat. That can’t be right. His father was tough. He’d been the first to teach Jun to fight. He’d earned a living by taking more blows and getting up from more falls than Jun could remember. He couldn’t possibly die like this, struggling to breathe.
Doctor Lim. Jun jerked upright, his mind racing. Just because one doctor had given up didn’t mean that a better healer—one who was breathmarked—couldn’t save his father. Doctor Lim was the head physician at the Guardian’s Tournament for a reason. Jun had seen and felt her ability to manipulate Breath just by laying hands on a person. She could do what others couldn’t. Even Old Man Zhang had believed so.
Li Hon stirred, his eyelids cracking open. “Jun,” he rasped, reaching out a trembling hand. “You’re here.”
“Baba.” Jun leaned forward. He wanted to throw his arms around his father’s frail shoulders and hold him tight; he wanted to scream at him and shake him for being such a reckless fool, coming to Xicheng for no good reason. “Don’t worry, I’m going to find a doctor that can make you better. I know where to go. Just wait here and rest. I’ll be back soon.” He started to his feet.
“Jun, wait.” Li Hon grasped his son’s hand, his grip still startlingly strong. “I’m sorry I held you back. All this time, I only wanted to keep you from making my mistakes. If I hadn’t put martial arts first, I wouldn’t have risked our family. You wouldn’t have grown up without your mother and brother.” Tears gathered in the corners of his eyes. “I couldn’t lose you as well.”
Li Hon’s breathing caught, and he coughed—a deep, wet, painful sound. He turned on his side, hacking into a sodden cloth speckled red and yellow with blood and clotted phlegm.
Jun shook his head adamantly. “I was coming back. I’m sorry that I left the way I did, but I would’ve come back, I just needed to—” To make everything we’ve gone through worth it. To be the best at what they tried to take away from us. He squeezed his father’s hand. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll talk about it later. The tournament doesn’t matter. Just get better so we can go home.”
“I should’ve told you … about … Sai. His gift…” It was getting harder for his father to speak; each word took a whole breath that sounded as if it were forced through a stranglehold. “The two of you belong together. My fault … And your mother … You need to … find them, Jun.”
His father was getting delirious. Jun couldn’t waste any more time. He loosened his father’s grip and whispered, “Hang on, Baba. You stubborn old fool, you can take a cane to my backside for being a disobedient son later—after I save you. Just please … keep fighting.”