Chapter 25:The Hunter and the Hunted
The next morning arrived with the particular quality of light that belongs only to the hours between darkness and true dawn—when the stars still clung to the western horizon but the eastern sky had already begun its slow transformation from black to deep blue to the palest gold. Ye Guanda was helped from his bed with the careful ministrations of someone handling something both precious and broken. Servants dressed him in two layers of clothing—an acknowledgment that fever burned within him even as the morning air outside carried winter's persistent chill—and then transferred him with elaborate caution into the waiting carriage. As the vehicle began its journey, jolting over the uneven cobblestones with the characteristic roughness of city streets at dawn, Ye Guanda opened his eyes within the thick fog of drowsiness that had claimed him. The pain that had been mercifully numbed by his high fever during the night's darkest hours gradually returned with the cruel precision of morn...
