Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 84840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
I shiver, not from his concern, but from how very cold it feels. “You’re shielding yourself. Good.”
“I spent a long night meditating,” he says, and there’s more behind the simple statement. More than simply absorbing spiritual power. He’s reflected on how he last used his. Our eyes hold, his dark and wistful and pained. He looks away first. “You fear that sickness. Is it—”
“Yes.” I snap towards the horse showing its head around a wall. “You have my things. My books. I need them.”
He grabs my shoulder, pulling me back around, his gaze deepening with fright. “A real plague?”
I look over his shoulder at Olyn, patiently waiting for us with a grim smile. Last night I asked her how many succumb to it. Her answer had me shuddering. I look at Nicostratus and grimace. “Have you seen how thick the smoke is coming off the mountains?” He steers his gaze to the distance where four streams funnel into the sky. “There are more and more each day.”
“Burning the dead?”
“The sky will soon turn black.”
“So many?”
“Half might survive.”
Nicostratus rocks back as if struck, his breath catching. His hands flex and curl at his sides, like he’s resisting the urge to grab onto something—anything—to ground himself. “That’ll destroy the kingdom.”
I move past him and search through the saddlebags until I find Grandfather’s journals. There, I also find my other belongings. My soldad. My clasp. I tuck both into my belt with trembling fingers. They pulse in my hand like a heartbeat. Like Quin’s.
I quickly turn when Nicostratus shifts behind me.
He says, “Surely vitalians can—”
“The scriptions we have aren’t working. Vitalians won’t have an answer to this either.”
I find a broken wall and spread the books out along it, flipping through pages, shivering.
“Surely there’s a cure.” Nicostratus’s shadow lands over my grandfather’s scrawl. “Can’t you find one?”
“You could have all the vitalians in the kingdom work on it, and you may have one in half a year.”
“Half a year! But by then—”
I look up at him. “Exactly. There’s no time for a cure.”
Nicostratus goes very quiet.
I search for the relevant pages, tapping urgently against the paper when I find them.
His broken voice reads a snippet of Grandfather’s words. “Halt the progression.” He looks at me. “How?”
I snap the book shut. “We need to check the villages, now.”
We speak to the sick. We speak to the frightened. We speak to the crying.
A woman clutches a fevered child to her chest, her fingers white from gripping too tightly. “Please, healer—there must be something. Anything.”
A man clings to a doorframe, coughing, red-eyed. “My brother is dead. What do I do now?”
And at the village’s edge, we pay our respects to the burning dead.
We try to get the villagers to wear cloth over the nose and mouth, and we encourage them to remove themselves from their family if they start to feel unwell.
I’m the only one to look after my children and my grandmother. I can’t be sick. I can’t remove myself.
With a heavy heart we ask for directions to the alpine farms and leave them to decide for themselves.
“Why farms?” Olyn asks.
“Because I need to test—” I stop.
A farmer trudges past, boots kicking up dust, eyes wary. “What’dya want?” he growls, stepping away from me. With Nicostratus shielded and Olyn immune, only I have my mouth and nose covered. I can see it makes him uneasy.
“Your animals. Have they caught it too? Which ones are dying? Which ones aren’t?”
“How d’you know some aren’t?”
My heart skips a hopeful beat. “Which is it? Goats? Sheep?”
“All get infected.” He hesitates, scratches the back of his neck, and grudgingly adds, “‘Cept my horses got better fast. The pigs drop like flies. I’ll lose half my yearly taking if this keeps up.”
On a pent breath I step urgently forward. “Let me try and save the healthy ones?”
“Whatcha mean?”
“I’m a healer. I’m looking for a way to help people, but I need to test a theory first. If I’m right, it’ll save your pigs.”
The farmer’s lips thin. “You say you could save the healthy ones?” He hesitates.
“I’ll do my best.”
His face hardens. “Best. So you might harm ‘em?”
My shoulders sag and I grimace. “If so, you’ll be no worse off than you fear now.”
I tell him what I want to do, drawing gasps from Olyn and Nicostratus and a decided shake of the farmer’s head. “Infect the good ‘uns? Get outta here.”
“Listen, please—”
“Off with you! Or I’ll git the constable!”
“This might be the only way. There’s so little time—”
A shadow falls over me.
“Let me try.” Nicostratus’s voice is soft, but the authority in it makes the farmer flinch.
He grips his pitchfork tighter.
“You’d rather lose all your livestock?” Nicostratus murmurs. “Because that’s what will happen.”
I press a hand to his forearm before he can push further. “Go.”
“If you’d just let me—”
“He needs to agree of his own free will. Stay back.”