It didn’t take Sen very long to realize that he’d been mistaken. There were more dead than dying in the village. He just hadn’t recognized the signs. His spiritual sense was attuned to find life and qi. Dead bodies rarely had either. Still, he kept walking. No one else was going to help those people. Even if they’d sent for a doctor, there was little chance of one arriving before everyone was dead. If a mortal doctor came, it was unlikely that they could have done anything for what few villagers remained. Even with his alchemical training, Sen wasn’t sure that he could do anything for them either. The people he could sense were already terribly weak, their lives teetering on the brink. Still, it was possible. Maybe. If he was skilled enough, he might be able to save some of them.
While Orchard’s Reach had never had a true plague, winter had been a terrible time for those on the streets. It had been terrible even for those like Grandmother Lu who could afford some meager shelter. There was never enough food to go around. While Sen hadn’t understood why certain kinds of food were good for people back then, he had understood that not getting enough to eat seemed to make people weak and more likely to get sick. And people did get sick. Entire families would die each winter, and the town guard would clear away their bodies. The guards would grant them the courtesy of a funeral pyre, usually, but Sen had always thought that giving them that wood to stay warm before they died would have been more useful. Those annual deaths had been another reason that Sen didn’t try to make friends. There was no way to know if any particular person, himself included, would still be alive in the spring. Why befriend people you might have to mourn after a season or two?
As if the thought of funeral pyres had conjured one, Sen saw an old man standing by a pile of wood. The shrouded figure on top of the pyre was small, too small. Sen closed his eyes for a moment, then forced a look of calm onto his face. He walked over and stood next to the man. The ground there had been scorched recently and, unless Sen missed his guess, often in recent days. The smell of charred wood and the vaguer smell of scorched flesh assaulted Sen’s nose and it took a supreme act of will to do what he set out to do and not simply flee that odor. The old man stood there with a torch in hand, trembling, unshed tears in his eyes. Sen reached out and wrapped his own hand around the torch, but he didn’t take it. He looked at the old man.
“I will do this thing, grandfather, if you wish it,” said Sen.
The old man looked at Sen without really seeing him. Sen didn’t know what the man was seeing, although he could guess. Memories of that tiny body on the pyre, back when it was filled with life and laughter. The old man nodded and his grip slipped away from the torch. Sen rested a hand on the man’s shoulder for a moment. Then, mustering what dignity and reverence he could, he slowly lowered the torch to the pyre. The wood had been doused with something and caught swiftly. Sen walked back over to the old man, who had tears streaming down his face as he watched the pyre burn.
“She was still healthy for so long,” said the man. “I thought she’d make it. I thought she’d live. Why have the heavens done this to us?”
“I don’t know, grandfather.”
“Please, I,” the man’s voice choked off.
“Do you want to be alone?”
The old man nodded, his eyes never leaving the pyre. Sen gave the man a bow and walked back to the road. The stranger was standing there, a complicated look on his face. Sen’s voice was deceptively calm when he spoke.
“Would you like to say something to me about your honor now?”
The stranger stared at the grief-ravaged old man and the pyre. “No. No, I would not.”
Sen nodded. “Wise. When the pyre burns down, take the man to his home. Otherwise, he might stay out here until he freezes to death. Give him tea. If he wishes to speak, listen.”
“I can do that. What will you do?”
Sen looked at the village, where he could feel the emptiness in so many homes. “I will tend to the dying.”
Sen had been well-trained by Auntie Caihong, who had faced these situations before. She had always been uncharacteristically detached when she spoke about them. As though she was describing something someone else had told her about. As the hours wore on, Sen found himself helpless to do anything for most of the people. If they had been cultivators, he could have saved them all. They wouldn’t have needed to be advanced cultivators or body cultivators. Even if they’d just been qi-condescending cultivators at the very earliest stages, he could have saved them. Instead, all he could do for most of them was brew weak elixirs to ease the worst of their pains. Anything that might have restored them enough to save them would have killed them. They were simply too far gone. As the time drew out and the villagers died, Sen started to understand Auntie Caihong’s reaction a little better. He would need to distance himself from this to ever talk about it, otherwise the helpless rage he was feeling would spill out in every direction.
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As the days drifted together into a haze of misery, Sen found himself building pyre after pyre. He stood watch over those who had no family left. Mothers or fathers who had already watched their families die. The old who had no one left to mourn them. The young who had outlived their brothers, sisters, and parents. He offered the prayers and begged intercession from gods of mercy and compassion. Silently, he railed against the indifference of the heavens. He had known cruelty, but this was worse. To make people watch everyone and everything they had ever cared about crumble away beneath the unknowing and uncaring steps of a sickness spoke to a callous viciousness that Sen found abhorrent. However much he railed inside, though, he kept it there. The dying didn’t need his fury. They needed a kind word and a gentle hand to ease their fear as they faced their last moments.
Sen took solace in the knowledge that he did manage to save three lives. They had been young enough, healthy enough, and he arrived soon enough that he had been able to nurse them through the worst of it. It had been slow work and exacting to a degree that he thought was beyond him. In the end, the desperate needs of the moment had allowed him to find that razor’s edge of balance he needed to keep them breathing. He’d had to build their body’s ability to fight off the sickness first, although he suspected they would have been far more thankful for a swift death. Only after their bodies could fight the illness was Sen able to augment their vitality and strength. The questions came after that, about family and friends. He was as gentle as he could be with the news, but there was no good news to share. He feared the fresh losses might sap their wills to live. In the end, they seemed to find strength in each other, but he heard each of them curse him for not letting them die with everyone else.
Sen had assigned the stranger the less onerous task of burning clothes, bedding, and anything else Sen thought might carry the illness. He had, in a moment of desperate sadness and a need for something akin to normalcy, asked the man’s name. The man had stared at him with vacant eyes for nearly ten seconds before the words came out of his mouth, hollow and lifeless.
“Kong Zi Han.”
Yet, after learning the man’s name, Sen found he had nothing more to ask. His heart and mind were too weary for anything else. They spent a week in that village before the illness had carried off nearly every living soul. The three that Sen had saved, the old man, and two others that the illness had not touched were all that remained. Confident that the three he had treated would survive, Sen simply stepped out of the building where he had been caring for them and started down the road. Kong Zi Han caught up with him a few moments later. The other man looked at Sen in confusion.
“Why do you leave now?”
“Because I could only do more harm by staying.”
“I don’t understand.”
Sen considered his words with care before he spoke. “You probably think those people should be grateful, right?”
“They should be. You saved them. Offered comfort to those you couldn’t save.”
“They may be grateful for that, someday,” said Sen, “but right now they hate me. They likely hate you as well.”
“Why?”
“Many reasons. They hate us both for being cultivators who could so casually ignore the threat of the illness. They hate me for not coming sooner. If I had arrived a week earlier, I might have saved most of the village. At least, they think so. The three I healed hate me for sparing them from death. They think that death would be preferable to living on. They believe I stole something from them.”
“What?”
“The chance to reincarnate with their loved ones. They may be right to hate me for that. Letting them die might have been a deeper kindness.”
“If that’s true, why did you save them?”
“Because I could. Because I’m not a god. I don’t know their fate or their karma. They might have things left to do in this life. I did it because no one else would have even tried,” said Sen, stopping and turning to look at Kong Zi Han. “Mostly, I did it because those people felt abandoned by the heavens. There is nothing worse than feeling abandoned when death looms. So, answer me this. Can you tell me honestly that your master will suffer as those people suffered if I don’t come? Will your master feel as though the heavens have turned their eyes away? If you can, I will listen.”
Kong Zi Han looked back toward what had once been a village and now stood only as a cold monument of death.
“No,” he said. “I cannot say that.”
“Then, return to your master or leave them behind to find another path, but this is where we part ways.”
Turning from the man, Sen walked away, his head down and shoulders sagging beneath a weight he didn’t know how to bear.