3. Zari
Chapter three
Zari
T he ambulance headlights provided the only illumination as Zari made her way toward the vehicle. A military medic stood by its open rear door.
“How many casualties?” Zari asked. “Was anyone apprehended?”
“Don’t ask questions,” he scoffed. “Bad enough we’ve got women like you running around in hospitals. Last thing we need is women getting into military business.”
“If it wasn’t for me, at least a dozen soldiers would have bled out!”
“See. Emotional outbursts like that are why you lot don’t deserve the right to vote.”
Zari bit her tongue as she climbed into the vehicle. Yansin had called her a hero. He probably had no idea how rare praise was for her.
Three wounded soldiers lay on cots. The one closest to her fought with the thin blanket covering him.
“Water…” he moaned. “I’m burning.” His youthful face twisted in pain, his fingers clawing at the bandage wrapping his upper shoulder.
The white bandage, now crimson, was thoroughly soaked with blood.
Every hint of the color brought back the grim rhyme that had echoed earlier.
The Accords stopped the fae from killing…
but Blood Ember was a monster, and perhaps not bound by any peace treaty.
Zari knelt by the soldier and tipped a canteen into his mouth.
He drank with unsteady slurps, be fore slumping back down.
Crusted blood clung to his tanned face and short-cropped dark hair.
Zari scanned his uniform for his name and rank badge. “Lieutenant Bridger,” she said, “you must rest.”
“Call me Tobias.” He mustered a ghost of a smile while she checked where the blood had soaked through the fabric. The gash was as raw as if the attack had happened minutes ago. Why had no one stitched it for him?
“Any chance you remember what happened?” Zari started on the stitches, working as efficiently as she could.
“Can’t remember,” he muttered. “Been trying to. Gotta give a full report to the captain.”
If his captain was still alive.
As soon as the ambulance parked, Zari leapt out and took the stairs to the hospital two at a time, then pushed open the large double doors.
As she did, her shoe smudged a thick line of salt.
Emmett, the clerk on duty, was busy lighting beeswax candles.
Apparently one superstition wasn’t enough for him.
She spotted an old wooden broom, laid crosswise over a chair, and a vase of fresh-picked marigolds.
Each one a ward against fae, as the stories went.
Foolish stories that practical people should know better than to believe in. Yet, the handful of soldiers who remained in the lobby, either guarding it or waiting for news seemed just as superstitious as Emmet, for at least two of them had tucked a marigold into their coat buttonhole.
“I see word travels fast,” Zari told Emmett while she clocked in. Though no one had asked her to, she knew her help would be needed to get through the worst of the night.
Pushing up his horn-rimmed glasses, he nodded. “I’m thinking it’s Blood Ember, back to haunt us once more.”
“As there were survivors,” a crisp, cold voice announced from behind Zari. “That rules out Blood Ember.”
Zari spun. An imposing figure stood in the hospital doorway.
His dark uniform was crisp, without any wrinkles.
Unlike the other soldiers, he wore no cap over his impeccably styled black hair, which matched the sharpness of every other detail, from his white gloves to his high cheekbones and cold blue eyes.
One hand rested on the pommel of an elaborate sword.
The other held a lit cigarette, which he took a deep draw from.
As he exhaled a thin plume of smoke, the soldiers sprang into salutes, all of them chorusing, “Captain Javen, sir!”
She found herself disliking him on sight. Something about him seemed too smug, too confident, especially on a tragic night like tonight.
Striding through the lobby, he reached Zari in seconds. “Are you one of the ones seeing to the wounded, nurse?”
“I am. And I’ll ask you to put that cigarette out.” She found her courage, despite how high she had to lift her chin to stare at him. She’d once had tea parties with generals. A captain shouldn’t intimidate her. “This is a hospital.”
He raised a dark eyebrow, clearly questioning her.
A nurse rushed into the lobby from down the long hall. Her hands twisted in her apron and as soon as her eyes landed on Zari, she gave a sigh of relief. “Oh, I’m glad you’re here. We need help. Something’s wrong! The patients… their stitches… Their wounds are all open again.”
That made no sense. She’d been the one to stitch up at least five of the wounded. Except… She recalled Lieutenant Bridger, in the ambulance, and his open wound. She’d thought it a simple oversight, but now she wondered if it was related to whatever was going on.
“Nurse,” Captain Javen said, with that same dispassionate voice. “Did you not apply silverbane?”
“Silverbane?” Zari asked. The flowering vine had small, heart-shaped leaves that smelled minty when crushed, but she knew no medicinal value for it.
“The attacker used a fae blade,” he drawled. “Which, if you had a scrap of brain, you’d already have realized from the wounds.”
“How can you be sure? The Accords state—”
“Do not quote the Accords to me.” He dropped his finished cigarette and ground it beneath his perfectly polished boot, leaving a dark streak on the white tile floor. “If a wound will not stitch closed, either you can’t manage a needle, or magic is involved. Which one is it, nurse?”
Zari’s face heated. No response came to mind. None, except acknowledging that magic might be at play. “Silverbane,” she said, slowly. Perhaps its power was a secret kept by a select few, like so much else about the fae. “We have some in the garden.”
Captain Javen nodded. “Go, then.”
“How much should I pick?”
“You’re the medical expert,” he replied.
“You’re the one who said we needed the plant.”
“Because, apparently,” Captain Javen said, “that knowledge has already been lost, despite saving many on the battlefields.”
“It was not written about in anything I’ve read.” Her face burned at the sarcasm in his words. She was a good nurse, a skilled one, and yet, Captain Javen made her feel like she was nothing more than playing at the career.
“Textbooks.” He shook his head. “Is that all you know of being a healer?”
“Of course not! I’ve worked here for almost ten years. I’ve taken the entrance exams for the Women’s College of Medicine and passed.”
“And yet you do not appear to be there?”
“The classes haven’t begun.” Zari had also struggled to save up enough for tuition, but she certainly wasn’t going to tell this arrogant man that small detail. “Let’s go get the silverbane. And I’ll have you know I am a good nurse.”
Javen followed her as she headed down the hall and outside. “For the soldiers’ sakes, I hope so.”
The hospital courtyard’s garden had been a favorite lunchtime spot of Zari for years, but she’d never given much thought to the silverbane growing among the strawberries.
Now she wondered if some war-time medic had believed in the folklore and planted the small, flat-leafed plant for similar reasons?
If so, their superstition would save lives tonight .
Zari knelt by the daffodils, reaching out for the first tendril of small green leaves.
Or perhaps, she wondered, the knowledge of the plant was restricted to men in power, and away from us women. There was so little women had been told about the war. So much kept from them, on the false basis they couldn’t handle the truth.
As if no woman had ever faced danger before in her life.
She shook her head and focused on the task. Soon, her bag was half full.
Captain Javen offered no help. Was picking a plant beneath him?
Her father had disliked those sorts of officers who seemed to think their rank absolved them from menial tasks.
Soldiers trust those who go through hardship alongside them, he’d told her.
Even as a general, her father had stayed out in the freezing cold with his troops, and in return, earned their deepest respect.
It was also why he’d died, alongside all of those soldiers, the night Blood Ember attacked.
“Sir,” Zari said, looking at Javen, who stood smoking another cigarette. “This would go faster with a second set of hands.”
He didn’t acknowledge her comment.
She sighed. “If silverbane is so helpful, then why did no one tell me?”
“If?” he asked, raising his brow. “You doubt me? Do you think nothing was learned from over a century of conflict?”
“Why weren’t more people told about it?”
“Because it was assumed the fae would never attack again.” Javen jerked his head toward the open door, as if she were just another soldier under his command. “Enough. The wounded are waiting.”
Her footsteps sounded heavy as she walked inside, her fears swirling within her. Had the Accords only brought a temporary ceasefire, not peace? If so, they might as well melt her father’s memorial for bullets.
Once more squaring her shoulders, Zari walked in, heading straight for the critical care room. A nurse sat by each cot, either applying cold compresses to the wounded soldiers’ foreheads or murmuring reassuring words.
Captain Javen had not followed her .
As she approached Tobias’s cot, he stirred but did not open his eyes. Zari grabbed a handful of silverbane. Crushed between her fingers, the leaves’ sweet scent filled the air. Javen had given no directions; however, she assumed he would have explained a complex process.
After all, he was so delightfully chatty.
Carefully, she placed the crushed leaves on the wound. A hush fell; she heard only her own heart and Tobais’s labored breathing.
What if this wasn’t enough?