Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
L ow voices surrounded Quiggs along with a wheezing, rhythmic squishing. His throat hurt. His chest burned as air rushed in expanding his diaphragm. He opened his eyes, confused where he was.
“Good, you’re awake.” Deep-set blue eyes beneath a pair of bushy eyebrows peered down at him, and brown sideburns ran wild from prominent ears to a pointed chin. “I’m Dr. Knowles, medical field specialist for the military and Commander Bronn’s personal physician. Blink if you can hear me.”
It took a minute to get his eyes to blink. Every muscle felt sucked down in mud.
Doctor Knowles waited patiently for the blink. “Splendid. Can you wiggle your left fingers for me?”
His swollen hand made a universally crude and unintentional gesture, but it was all he could manage.
Dr. Knowles chuckled. He was definitely military by the manner in which he ordered Quiggs through a series of movements when all Quiggs wanted was an explanation of where he was and how he got here .
“Your vitals are stable. Your musculature is slowly reviving from the paralytic in the venom. Amazing how you survived thirty-eight stings.”
The mention of stings brought back the memory of the tiny scorpions crawling over his body, of Max racing him to the hospital. He tried to ask if Max had survived, but a tube in his throat prevented speech. The squishing sound came from the manual intubation pump a medic squeezed at the head of the hospital bed. Ironically, Quiggs had adapted the hose and pump from a device in an ancient medical tome. He’d substituted a simple manual pump in place of the power cell. Skipping athletics in favor of inventions had saved his life.
Okay… so vitals, muscles, and his memories were intact.
Quiggs stared down his nose at the tube taped to his mouth, then cut his eyes to the doctor.
“Yes, I believe you can breathe on your own. Please relax as I remove the tube. Commendable device, thank you. What is this territory coming to wasting you as a concubine? I’ll convince Commander Bronn to let you work with my medical team.”
Max was alive. At Quiggs’s agitated blinks, the doctor added in a soothing tone, “Max is recovering from twenty stings. He never experienced breathing problems, but he’ll spend days recovering from the unpleasant side effects. He’s threatened to carve me up for fishing bait for not putting him in a bed beside yours, but he’s bedbound in the next room in no shape to make threats.”
After the tube was removed, Quiggs couldn’t breathe, and he panicked. A vise gripped his chest, preventing him from drawing a breath. Black dots floated across his vision. His hands flapped; his legs kicked weakly. Was the doctor going to stand there and watch him suffocate?
His chest expanded with a loud hiccup, and the rush of air was like sipping flames through his raw throat. His chest caved on an exhale. He hiccupped, caved, hiccupped until an automatic rhythm took over. A foul odor pervaded the room. Had he soiled himself?
The doctor checked his pulse. “You’ll smell like rotting meat until the venom clears out of your system. The smell attracts other scorpions to the feast. But you’re alive, and nothing vital appears digested. Oxygen disables the digestive chemicals delivered with the paralytic, and you had taken your last able breath when the medics intubated you. A nursing team pumped twelve hours keeping you alive.”
Quiggs watched the smooth rise and fall of his bare chest. His skin looked like burnt butter.
The doctor applied a salve to Quiggs’s eyelids, then coated his cracked lips. “The fight’s not over yet.” He spoke in the pleasant voice a doctor used before delivering a nasty surprise to his patient.
The doctor removed the sheet covering Quiggs’s lower body, exposing his burnt butter dick. He ignored the questions in Quiggs’s eyes as the medics wrapped padded straps over his waist and legs and secured them under the bed.
And why the fuck were they fitting him with a cock cage? Masturbating his ugly orange dick was the last thing on his mind. His greased eyes bugged as they slid a ring over his cock and behind his scrotum, then fitted a cage over his penis and connected it to the ring.
The doctor’s voice grew kindlier, a bad omen. “The cage prevents priapism when the muscle contractions begin. You don’t want to spend days with a stubborn chubby, do you? Max refused to wear one. He regrets it now.”
Dr. Knowles shared an evil chuckle with his medical team.
Quiggs felt restless, as if bugs crawled under his skin. His scalp tingled.
“Dig in your heels,” the doctor warned.
The first wave felt as if he were basted with fuel paste and someone cracked a sputternut on his skull. When he opened his mouth to scream, they inserted a leather strap between his teeth.
When the flames and smoke cleared, he expected to find his skin charred black.
The doctor kindly explained. “Anything touching your skin increases the intensity of the spasms, which is why you are naked. The straps are necessary to keep you from running away.”
Why would he run away?
By the fourth wave, Quiggs would have bolted from the bed and jumped out the window had he not been strapped in. His eyes pleaded for the doctor to kill him or administer a pain reliever.
The doctor started to pat his hand, before catching himself. “Sorry, Quiggs, nothing stops this pain. The nerves in your body are reacting as the paralytic breaks down and unblocks them. This causes the cramping in your muscles. The cramps will decrease in frequency over the next two days. Ride the spasms out—don’t fight them.”
The doctor made notes on a chart, shaking his head. “Hell of a way for you and the commander to spend your claiming days.”
Every inch of Quiggs ached: his gums, his scrotum, his toenails. How many hours had passed with him thrashing at the restraints before unconsciousness claimed him?
Someone had removed the mouthpiece. He remembered a cock cage. At the thought, he peeled his lids back to check out the damage below. He looked down his nose and saw a large hand over his chest.
Max rested his forehead on the edge of the bed with his palm light as a butterfly, riding the rise and fall of Quiggs’s bare chest. Tawny sensory hairs on Max’s hairline lifted, as if capturing a movement from Quiggs. He’d never noticed them react until now.
His arms freed, Quiggs placed a swollen hand over Max’s.
Max lifted his head at once, his gray eyes slits in his puffy mottled face. For a long moment, they exchanged the look of comrades who’d engaged in battle with backs to each other as equals.
The moment packed more intimacy than a night of raw sex.
“Welcome back.” Max’s voice was hoarse. He’d done his share of screaming. “I thought I’d lost you. No one survives what you went through. You’re tougher than an old vine.”
When Quiggs struggled to speak, Max shushed him with two gentle fingers over his mouth. “No talking. Your spasms lasted sixteen hours. You’ve slept the last two days. Doctor Knowles said you need liquids first. Any emotional spike up or down will trigger smaller spasms the next few days, so keep calm. I’m not allowed to speak of anything to upset you. Don’t try to think, and don’t ask questions. Focus on healing.”
When Max cranked the head of the bed up, Quiggs’s skin felt as if it would split down his spine.
Max propped him up on pillows. “You’ll be sore a few days. A good thing you wore a cock cage. I had a raging erection for a day. Only part of me not sore afterward was the tip of my glans. Still can’t hold my shaft when I piss.”
Quiggs’s lips curved.
Max reached for a sip cup on a cart by the head of the bed. He wore a pair of baggy black boxers as if he couldn’t tolerate anything clinging to his skin. When Max tilted the sip cup to his mouth, Quiggs scrunched his face. The contents reeked like a plugged toilet.
“It’s a mineral slush. Yeah, it’s bad. But it’ll hydrate you and flush the toxins out your pores. Once you’re hydrated, your skin will peel.” Max’s strong nose shone bright pink after peeling. His arms and bare chest looked like a patch-worked quilt of pink, tawny, and muddy brown. Quiggs’s chest was a mottled brown now. A towel covered his privates. He wanted to peek, but he shot Max a worried look.
“Yours is fine. Mine’s the one looking like a burnt sausage.” Max nudged the cup to Quiggs’s clenched mouth. “You’ll feel stronger when you’re hydrated. I drank a bucket before I could get out of bed and walk across the room by myself.”
As he sipped, Quiggs checked out the room. Soft beige walls and bright movable ceiling globes. A toilet, sink, and shower cubicle in one corner. A wall of cabinets filled with medical supplies .
He finished the slush. Max coaxed and bullied him each time he turned away from another sip.
“An aversion worse than kissing,” Max teased. He gently dried the dribble on Quiggs’s chin. “Orders are a cup every half-hour. When you finally get the urge to pee, it’ll be brown. Wish someone had warned me. I thought my dick had rotted.”
Quiggs hadn’t the energy to snicker. Instead, he drifted asleep.
Max or a medic roused Quiggs every half hour for the slush. He drank what he could, then fell back in exhaustion. Max slept on a second bed placed a step away from Quiggs. If Quiggs stirred, he found Max leaning over him. His ruined voice, as thin and fragile as a cracker, frustrated Quiggs, and markers slipped through his limp fingers. He had questions, like who had planted the nest of boilers on the balcony, but the doctors stressed no excitement to his nerves.
“I’ll tell you what I know when you can handle it,” Max promised.
When Quiggs finally felt the urge to piss, Max guided his shaft to the mouth of a long-necked bottle. Quiggs requested a medic, but Max insisted on tending him, disliking others touching his concubine. As if Quiggs had any modesty left.
Max brushed aside his weak attempt to hold the bottle by himself. “Hands off. I don’t want an eyeful of piss should you lose your aim.”
Quiggs strained but couldn’t produce a stream with Max watching.
“Prude.” Max looked up at the ceiling and recited the prime laws in a loud, boring voice.
Quiggs sighed as a vigorous stream flowed. The stuff smelled as if it could wipe out an acre of vines.
Six days after the straps came off, Doctor Knowles pronounced Quiggs out of danger from spasms, though he couldn’t leave the bed without assistance. Complete recovery required another week of rest and special physical therapy. Quiggs was ready to hear the truth without his body contorting through a finger ring.
“Quit stalling,” he rasped when Max sat on the bed evading questions. “I know the wind didn’t carry those boilers to the balcony.”
“No. Someone planted them.” When his words didn’t trigger spasms, Max shared what he knew.
In all the commotion of banners and torches celebrating the claiming festival, stray workers around the apartment roof went unnoticed. The sticky eggs were speckled gray and blended into the shadow beneath the eave. Whoever planted them needed experience in the far outlands as well as a strong motive.
What disturbed Max’s zoological expert was the timing. Hatching should have occurred days earlier, but the shady eave had slowed the process, meaning Max was not the target. Quiggs was the target, meant to die days earlier, even before he was tossed over the rampart. Stefan would have died with Quiggs had the eggs hatched on time. Instead, a good soldier assigned to the roof to guard Quiggs and Max had died.
Why the boilers and not an arrow? Or poisoned food? Or his throat slit in bed at night from an intruder?
Max had a speculation. With Quiggs confined to the apartment and heralds watching his every move from the ground, the killer couldn’t get near without witnesses foiling his escape. He wasn’t suicidal. He had planted the nest as a back-up plan, then watched and waited. When Quiggs escaped for the bakery, the killer seized the opportunity.
“Why?” Quiggs rasped. His ruined voice hurt from interrupting Max with questions.
“The consensus is you’re the target of extremists scared of the changes your steam invention will bring to transportation. The attack has outraged the people. Even Rosamunde. She’s offered a hefty reward for information on those involved. The First Family believes the extremists may target her next, so she’s in hiding. Unfortunately, her reward has resulted in a flood of information leading to dead ends, wasting time and manpower.”
“All this began after I drew your name.”
“Our business partnership for weaponry isn’t secret. Extremists fear we’ll use them to overthrow the government.”
“They’ll strike again,” Quiggs whispered.
“You’ll stay in the safest place in the territory after leaving the hospital—my barge, guarded by soldiers angered at the loss of one of their own. Accessed by a single ramp. Equipped with a tower on each end and with an archer in each monitoring all directions. You can design weapons on board but take the testing to the fields. I don’t want you sinking my barge.”
Quiggs garbled a laugh. He stared down at himself. “Heh… Lost weight.” Placing his hands on his flatter belly, he walked his fingers down to his loose silky boxers and picked at a piece of peeling skin. “Itches all over.”
“How about a shower and shampoo? You can sit on a stool beneath the spray.” Max dropped his voice to a low, sexy rumble. “Remember the therapy the doctor prescribed for us?”
A blush crept up Quiggs’s ears. The doctor recommended hand jobs in the shower until their ejaculate was clear.
Max stripped, his skin glowing after its peel and his body leaner. Quiggs’s body looked like a molting lizard. He helped Quiggs to the shower, easing him onto the stool. After wetting him down, he applied soap and followed with a scrub brush over every inch of skin.
Quiggs groaned as the brush circled the middle of his back. “Yeah. Yeah. To the right. There. Feels good.”
Max rinsed him off. “Now your hair.” He unraveled the filthy braid.
“Fucking braid,” Quiggs muttered as Max raked his fingers through the long spirals. “I swear if I had the weapons, outlawing braids is the first change I’d enforce.” How often had he cursed that particular law? The attacks started after he drew Max’s name. Everyone knew the commander never submitted and how deeply Quiggs hated his braid. “Max, maybe it’s about my braid. Once I cut it off, the attacks should cease.”
Max tugged a handful of hair pulling Quiggs’s head back to meet his steely gaze. “Your braid is hardly a motive to kill you. Are you hinting to visit a pleasure house?”
“I don’t need to invent an excuse. You promised I could.”
“I promised before I met you. I don’t think I can share you without… without seeking vengeance against the man you choose.”
Pleased at the admission, Quiggs waggled his brows up at Max. “No rule says I can’t lose my braid in an accident. It would be your word with no witnesses at an inquiry, right?”
The suggestion seemed to upset Max. He pulled back, shaking his hands as if his claws tingled. “Uh, Quiggs… I don’t think—”
“Hear me out. I could burn off my braid in an explosion. You could say you accidentally swiped your sword over it while clearing a path through the vines. Or you could say a fin lunged at my dangling braid, forcing you to slice it off before I was dragged into the canal. You pick.”
Max sounded dazed as he dragged his fingers down Quiggs’s itchy scalp. “There’s no point in staging an accident.”
“I’m telling you it’s all about my braid.”
Max held out a clump of hair. “About your braid...”