30. THIRTY #3
The medic’s sharp eyes turned toward Mastico.
“Low pulse. Dehydrated. But stable. I expect he’ll recover with fluids and”—the doctor’s brows rose so high they nearly filled in his receding hairline—“not fighting any rally matches and staying up past the highmoon, fathom that. Has he shown any indication of injury or illness?”
Niklaus would be a fool to lie now. “He, ahm, injured his back.”
The medic rolled Calver carefully, and with surprisingly little effort for a man half his size.
He pulled a set of shears from his bag and cut through the shirt from top to bottom, pulling it away from the skin.
Niklaus stared for as long as it took for his mind to comprehend—and threaten the contents of his stomach.
Mastico brought a fist to his mouth. Kian’s mouth was open.
The silence shouldn’t have stretched so long. It felt like ages.
“Call for a stretcher,” the medic said.
It wasn’t the burns. It was everything else. Calver’s skin was so ridged, scarred, matted, it was hard to tell whether any of it had been whole before the explosion. Strange, raised shapes sat beneath the burns and blisters. And in some places…gleaming metal pierced through.
“Vabem,” Mastico asked the medic. “What is this?”
“The burns are fresh. They risk infection. The rest...” The medic—Vabem—pulled a glove over his hand and grabbed a magnifying instrument from his bag. He brought his face inches from Calver’s marred skin. “This scarring implies surgical insertion.”
“Why would he do it? Is it religious? Ritualistic?”
“This is not self-inflicted. The mounds here—well, I’ve heard of them but never seen them in person. They resemble the barbing system the Tera’thians use for corporal punishment.”
Niklaus shied at the invasion of privacy. It was no wonder Calver had shrunk away from contact like he had something contagious. He swallowed. “You mean like…?”
“Torture. The damage is old, though. The tissues long since healed—as much as they could.”
Mastico’s brow furrowed, eyes shifting quickly. “Search his forearm,” he commanded.
Vabem rolled Calver’s sleeve and pivoted his forearm until something shiny caught the light from the tent’s Aetech lamps: a brand, in a language Niklaus recognized but couldn’t decipher. An escaped Tera’thian slave. Escaped, because no Tume’amic lived past their teens.
“A Tera’thian,” Kian spat.
“A—a Nelfinden,” Niklaus stammered in defense, though he couldn’t be certain.
Who, now, had twisted their tale? What was real?
What was a lie? He’d trade everything he possessed to know, given the chance, but there was nothing in his pockets, no scrap of dignity to his name, and the chances themselves had long since run dry.
He spoke on hope alone. “He’s fighting against the Tera’thians.
” Hope was a feather on any scale against logic.
The stretcher came, towed by two medical aids. It took four of them to load Calver onto it. Niklaus turned to follow him out the flap.
“Meyernes, stay. I have questions.”
Niklaus was sure he was sweating. His head pounded. “Yes, Mesu.”
“Be seated.”
“Yes, Mesu.”
Niklaus returned to the low-set table. Kian and his father sat across from him.
“I need honesty from you, if it is a virtue which you have ever possessed. What arrangement do you have with that man?”
“He doesn’t work for me. I hardly know anything about him,” Niklaus rambled. “But—but wherever he’s come from, whatever he’s doing here, I don’t think he’s trying to manipulate you.” Was it still honesty if he believed it to be true but also knew it not to be the truth?
“And he wasn’t involved in your defacement of Red Wing property this morning? Are those burns coincidental?” Kian demanded.
Niklaus had sworn he’d acted alone when they interrogated him at highsun, but denial would be pointless now.
“No. No, the burns were from today. He created the explosion, not me. He’s been trying to convince me that the plates have been tampered with.
He needed someone to listen. I was his only option. ”
Doubt clouded the Major General’s face. Limtush had been right. No one would ever take Niklaus seriously again. And why should they? He was at the point in his lunacy where he wasn’t even sure if he was arguing for the right side.
“Please, if you would only—”
The Major General waved a hand, as if he was washing Niklaus from the things he had to deal with. “You are dismissed.” His eyes shone with wetness.
Niklaus opened his mouth to argue, but Kian shot him a stone-cracking stare.
Argue further, and Niklaus would be put behind bars for treason—there were already bound to be accusations.
Which made him ask himself the same question he always came back to: why did it do this, life?
Cast him a glance over its shoulder and beckon him into its room, only to slam the door on his outstretched fingers?
He stood and left the tent, praying that somehow, miraculously, he hadn’t made a poor bet in deciding to ultimately trust Calver.
He might as well have prayed for another shower token.
Self-doubt, like his own desert stink, clung to him like a highsun shadow, and the relief of night seemed very far away.