36. Trust Me
Chapter thirty-six
Trust Me
He should have recognized that spiced scent right away. Imalroc twisted free of Tefka’s grasp and bounded toward the door to the second room.
“Imalroc!” Tefka shouted from where he stood at the top of the stairs. “What are you doing? Don’t go in there!”
He crossed the threshold, squinting as his eyes adjusted.
Curtains hung over towering windows, banishing the light.
There were no lanterns or candles, and it took him a moment to spot the figures slumped on a pair of overstuffed couches arranged beside a low table.
No threats apart from that smell coiling in the air.
Master Calteak lay flopped awkwardly over an armrest, while a petite woman sat opposite him, her chin sunk to her chest. A girl in a cloud of white lace lay with her head in the woman’s lap, her face barely visible beneath her dark curls.
Teacups and half-finished scones littered the table. Imalroc glanced at the dregs in each cup, his mind whirling.
He understood why Almatra had taken them for dead. Breath hardly moved through them, and only the occasional twitch beneath their eyelids suggested life remained.
No way to tell how long they’d been like this.
But if any of their servants discovered them, anyone sensible would have fled the house, the same way Tefka and Almatra had run.
They’d go for help, and the Red Guard would be waiting to hear their panic.
The Guard would take the sleepers. A daylight kidnapping that no one would protest.
Imalroc spun and lunged back into the hallway and down the stairs. Tefka was poised beside the doors, watching anxiously for him.
“Earthbound gods,” Tefka exploded. “You didn’t need to be exposed to it! Get outside!”
They clattered down the front steps to where the soldiers stood in a loose circle around Almatra.
“Their servants know of their condition; it’s why the house is empty,” Imalroc said. “We need to send soldiers to the nearest village to stop them.”
“Yes.” Tefka was pale. “They might spread it. This must be contained. It’ll cause a panic across the felds.”
Imalroc shook his head slowly and clenched his hands around the scabbard, but Tefka was too busy giving orders to notice him. He sent the soldiers off toward the two nearest settlements, leaving only Martau, who crouched beside Almatra, trying to comfort her.
“I touched them,” she moaned, scrubbing her hands over her thighs again and again. “I thought they were dead. But they were alive, a little at least, only none of them would wake. And I touched them.”
Imalroc closed his eyes and pictured Rerdas and his cousin, their coppery curls catching firelight as they ground dried ingredients into potent dust. Wusterroot. Pokeweed. Ginger and salt and firewicks that grew beside water.
They’d passed some along the Sidradell. If the other ingredients were in the family’s pantry stores…. But there might not be time. He opened his eyes.
“It’s alright,” Martau soothed, although he sounded nearly as shaken as she was. “We’ll go to Sol Serene—”
“We can’t,” Tefka said softly. “The three of us went into that room and breathed the air… and we can’t go anywhere near the Advocate until we know we can’t spread it.”
Almatra’s eyes were feverish. “Then what do we do?”
“We need to get them out of the house and into the jungle,” Imalroc said. “We don’t know how long we have before the Red Guard shows up to take them.”
The others gaped at him. Martau said weakly, “Don’t you know why they’re like that? You must’ve heard of the sleeping sickness.”
Imalroc ground a toe into the gravel. “There’s no such thing as the sleeping sickness.”
Almatra shot up. “Did you not just see those three—”
“They’re not sick; they’re drugged.” He forced a breath, trying to keep the words from pouring out too quickly.
“I can’t explain how I know this; there’s no time.
But I swear to you, this is a political play.
We’ve no idea how long it’s been since they drank the tea, and the Red Guard could ride up as we speak.
We need to get the family out of the house and hidden, and then administer a purging tonic. ”
They looked at him as though he were deranged.
“How can you be sure?” Tefka asked.
“I… I promise, I’ll explain everything once we have time, but we need Calteak first.” He gulped in another deep breath and pushed the rest of the words out. “Please. Trust me.”
All three of them looked at each other, and then back at him.
Tefka studied him. “What do you need me to do?”
Imalroc’s lungs flattened in his chest beneath the sudden crush of gratitude. He couldn’t dwell on it; it’d turn him into a blubbering idiot. “Help me carry them out. Hide them in the trees.” He bolted back toward the house, Tefka on his heels.
They took the stairs at a run. Tefka was hesitant at the doorway, but he followed Imalroc into the room. “It’ll take us a few trips to carry them,” Imalroc said over his shoulder. “Calteak first.”
“His daughter first,” Tefka said quietly.
Imalroc hesitated, and then nodded.
“We can get all of them.” Almatra’s voice drifted from the hall, strangely muffled.
Imalroc whirled. Almatra and Martau had come back inside too, although they’d tied bits of cloth over their faces.
“I can carry the wife, Martau will carry the child, and the two of you get Calteak,” Almatra continued, ignoring Imalroc’s watery grin at her materializing in the doorway.
For a moment, he just stood there, a grinning, swaying fool. Watching his friends forge into the room despite their fear, hesitantly reaching for the sleepers.
They believed in him. He’d given them no satisfactory explanation, and yet here they were, because he had asked.
Imalroc pressed his lips tight and swallowed. He had to drag his arm over his eyes quickly before grabbing Calteak by the shoulders.
They maneuvered carefully back down the staircase and across the open, grassy area that surrounded the house.
Safely ensconced beyond the treeline, Imalroc propped Calteak against a thick tree-root snaking out from an enormous trunk.
The root was as wide and sturdy as a wall, and Calteak was well hidden from view.
“Now what, sir?” Martau deposited the girl beside her father and peeled his makeshift mask down.
“Do you know what firewicks look like? Wusterroot?”
Martau nodded. “There were firewicks near where we crossed.”
“Wusterroot won’t grow in this area,” Tefka said. “But they might keep some dried in the house. A big place like this usually has a stock of apothecary supplies.”
Imalroc nodded. “Martau, you go for the firewicks. Almatra can keep watch for the Guard’s approach in front of the house, and Tefka and I will search their stores.”
They scattered, Martau plunging into the greenery and crashing away, while he, Tefka, and Almatra flitted back toward the steps.
It didn’t take long to find the rest of what they needed.
He and Tefka raided plentiful shelves, piling supplies into bowls.
There was no time to boil water, and rising smoke would be an easy marker for the Red Guard.
They found a pump in the kitchen and slopped cold water into a pot.
Imalroc hauled it into the forest with his friends jogging alongside him.
Imalroc laid everything out on a thick oilcloth. A snapping sound reached him, and he jerked up, pulling the sword from its scabbard. Nearly skewered Martau as he burst out from among the leaves, his knees muddy and a scratch bleeding on his cheek, his arms full of a bundle of bright orange plants.
“Faster than I’d hoped,” Imalroc said, casting the sword aside.
Martau was too out of breath for a response, but he thumped down beside the oilcloth and beamed at Imalroc.
He couldn’t dry everything out as the Toriems always had. With a rock, he crushed the ingredients for the purging tonic into a bowl. Kept his lips sealed against the curdled smell, but his eyes stung and swam as roots and leaves turned to pulp. Brown juice splattered his wrists.
When he’d pounded it into a sludge, he poured what he hoped was the right amount of water into it and mixed the whole thing. It was chunkier than the stuff Rerdas had spooned into Uralta, but it might work.
“Right,” Imalroc said. “We’ll split this between them.”
Almatra bundled cloth around each of her hands, but she helped tug Calteak’s slack mouth open so that Imalroc and Tefka could trickle the runny concoction down the feldlord’s throat. He twitched, swallowed convulsively, and let out a hoarse sound.
“Apologies for my friend’s absolutely foul cooking, milord,” Almatra mumbled. “Smells like rotten feet.”
“Don’t talk about Tefka like that when he’s right there to hear it,” Imalroc chided, and Almatra snorted.
“There’s something wrong with both of you,” Tefka’s brow furrowed as he examined a spasm in Calteak’s cheek.
They dosed the others, which sent the child into a coughing fit so loud Imalroc had to resist the impulse to muffle her, half-convinced the Red Guard would follow the sound.
All four of them watched the sleepers. If this didn’t work, he hated to consider what his friends might think.
It had taken Uralta so long to show any signs of improvement after they’d begun to administer the purging tonic.
But Calteak and his family had not been drugged for so long.
They were dressed in fine clothes, prepared to host guests.
If they were lucky, they’d only had a single cup of the stuff.
“Someone in the Calteak household has done this,” Imalroc said darkly. “Someone prepared the tea with the drug. We need to investigate among the servants.”
Almatra had refastened the cloth across her face. “How do you know about this?”
He busied himself checking on the girl. “It’s… there’s a pattern with the sleeping sickness. Everyone fears it because death always follows it. But all the people who’ve died of it recently are Kuraya’s enemies.”
“If that’s true,” Tefka said, “I imagine it would significantly change things for the Feld Council. No one has brought evidence like that against Kuraya.”
Almatra straightened, her eyes fever-bright. “If one of the servants admits to drugging Calteak on the queen’s orders, the debate will be over. We’ll get our fight.”
Imalroc almost asked how the Council would respond to learning that the queen had orchestrated a slaughter in the Eastern felds and disguised it as a Draalish attack.
Why couldn’t he say it? He hadn’t trusted Tythe completely when they’d finally met, but he trusted Almatra and Tefka.
They believed in him enough to run directly into the teeth of their own fear.
And now he was squatting in the jungle, lying to them by not saying anything.
All to protect a man who had not protected him.
He cleared his throat. But a knot lodged in his chest, aching. The words didn’t come.
Calteak groaned and jerked, knocking a shoulder into the root behind him. One eyelid cracked, and then the other.
The feldlord slurred something at them.
Tefka hurried to prop him up higher against the root. “My lord? Can you hear me?”
Calteak blinked, frowned, and jerked back. “Where…” He closed one eye, squinting around. “Too bright.”
“You may be in some danger, my lord,” Tefka said. “We’ve taken you and your family from the house for safety.”
“My family,” Calteak rasped. “Where are they?”
“Right next to you,” Almatra said.
“What happened?” The man groaned again, but he was sounding more alert with every breath. “Who are you?”
“Captain Tefka Quinn of the Southland Army, my lord. We were set to meet today, and came upon you and your family asleep, with all the servants gone from the house and the door left ajar. My fellow captain, Imalroc, said you’d been poisoned.”
“Poisoned? Impossible. We were taking tea and… and… a bit of afternoon drowsiness came over me…” His heavy brow furrowed.
“Your servants believed you’d been taken ill. They’ll have gone for help, and some of them might go to the Guard.”
Calteak frowned, massaging his head and closing his eyes. “They know better than that.”
Imalroc shifted impatiently. “Some of your servants may not be as you believe. And even if they all could be trusted, the Guard can use rumors of something amiss. That’s all they’ll need as an excuse to come through your door.”
Almatra narrowed her eyes, staring at him. “You still haven’t truly explained how you know all of this. Where did you get this information?”
Reluctantly, he met her gaze. His heart beat loudly enough that he was sure Almatra could hear its guilty hammering. He could betray the people who fought alongside him with silence, or betray Rerdas’s secret by giving it away.
He and Rerdas were finished, and maybe never should have begun in the first place. It shouldn’t be a hard decision.
“I…” He swallowed, looking between his friends’ dubious expressions. “Listen. There’s something I need to tell you about Kuraya.”