Chapter 50
B astion leads the way to the brook, out the abandoned southern gate that opens into mountainous forest.
“Why aren’t people just using this gate?” I murmur, stepping into a mosaic of emerald and shadow. Distant birds call overhead, and foraging animals leave a wake of rustling leaves in the underbrush. “There’s nothing stopping us.”
A biting laugh. “No need for a guard here. The miasma does the job. No matter what direction you go from that gate, eventually you’ll hit a wall of poisonous fog, and you’ll be lucky to survive it.”
Each step into the thickening shadows comes with a shiver and a clenching stomach. I square my shoulders and push on. The luminarium is filling up; more and more will become sick if we don’t trace the source of the infection and stop it from spreading further.
“We’re close,” Bastion says in a surprisingly comforting tone. Like he senses my unease.
I eye him warily and crunch over fallen bracken. “How is your sister faring?”
“She refuses to rest. Up all night, tending to our sick comrades.”
“What a kind sister you have.”
A chuckle. “Why do I feel that’s a slight against me?”
I spare him a blunt look and refocus on the dense undergrowth. Something large moves in the brush behind us and I whip around. Nothing but dense greenery. Bastion stares into the forest too, eyes narrowing.
“Probably a passing deer . Forests like these are full of them.”
He hums and shifts his gaze, gesturing to a narrow trickle of water. “It widens as we go further in.”
The ground muddies the closer we get. I crouch, using magic to pull a drop of water into my palm. “Same toxin in this as the patients have in their blood.” I follow the water. “We’re looking for stagnant areas and unusual growth. Something fish might have consumed.”
“You think the outbreak is to do with fish?”
I think to the case I had locked in the Crucible. The disease wasn’t in the fish the victim ate, but that doesn’t rule out other fish being the cause of water contamination. “I’m not sure. But the scales... It’s possible.”
Damp earth stirs under us as we trek along scouring the brook. Every few minutes, Bastion pauses and glares into the forest beside us. The third time, I follow his gaze.
“Every time you do that, my stomach knots. What are you looking at?”
He waves it off, but as we continue he walks closer to me, holds branches up for me to pass under, brushes stray leaves off my cloak, even sweeps me into a whisking arc when the bank suddenly gives way under my foot. We spin to a stop on firmer ground, his arm around my waist, his lips tilting slyly as he darts another gaze into the army of trees.
I pull myself away from him and back into a trunk. Bastion follows lazily and leans a hand on the bark near my head. He dips his head as he speaks, each word becoming warmer against my skin. “We should take a minute to catch our breaths.”
I snap past him, scowling.
“Such relentless determination.” He follows at a jaunty pace. “How about becoming my husband?”
I halt abruptly, turn, and stare coldly at him. “I don’t think you understand the severity of this outbreak.”
“Sure I do.”
“These types of outbreaks... If not dealt with swiftly, the infection can mutate. At the moment only those consuming the brook water are getting sick, but the more people who get it, the higher the chances of it evolving. Next, people will get it from touching the infected. Then worse, simply by breathing the same air.” I step forward and knock him on the chest. “If that happens, we’ll have another plague on our hands. Tens of thousands will die. There’s no time to waste. Do you understand?”
His smile fades and the eye with the freckle twitches. He chuckles shamelessly. “If it comes to it, we’ll share our last days together. Our lovelights too.”
“You’re insane. You don’t know me.”
“I’ve seen enough,” he says.
“I’m not interested.”
“You haven’t given me a chance.”
I gape at him and point to the foot he’s planted on my shoulder twice already. “I’ve seen enough.”
“Bet I can change your mind,” he says, scanning the trees with a toothy smile.
I clomp along the widening brook.
“Are you rejecting me because of the king?” Bastion asks.
“I have a million reasons to reject you.”
I halt at the changing scent in the air and study the brook. It trickles down brown rocks with moss growing at the sides. It seems harmless, but... I breathe in again. There’s a rustiness in the air, growing stronger and more ominous further up.
Bastion’s grown quiet; he senses it too. He follows at a swift pace behind me. I hold my cloak over my nose as the stench becomes more putrid.
My heartbeat is a series of rampant thumps, my exposed skin a network of scratches as I push through foliage, up an incline, to a level stretch of forest and a pool that glitters under the surface as if layered with shards of shattered glass.
Glass that seems to stir. Glass that carries the sickly scent of decay.
Bastion grabs my arm. “Stop.”
There’s a warning in his voice that urges me to immediately obey.
“The miasma.”
I jerk my head up from the pool to ribbon-like mist stretching through the woods ahead. It moves lazily back and forth like waves on an incoming tide, slowly but surely creeping closer. Behind those tendrils lies the rest of the miasma, a sea that blurs the outlines of tree trunks and thinly veils a dark mass beyond—
“Those caves hold a fortune for the taking,” Bastion murmurs. “If the cloud didn’t kill.”
The backbone of trade for the area.
If there are miracle herbs in there . . .
“There’s even a rumour the shakes unearthed a clump of immortal bone.”
I take an instinctive step forward and Bastion yanks me back by the arm. “Watch out!”
He’s not talking about the miasma. A wyvern, no bigger than a farm dog, is leaping out of the pool. It twists and turns in a spray of water and sinister grace, and its silvery eyes burn in our direction.
Bastion unfurls his whip with a crack. The wyvern dances around the sound and stretches out its pearly wings, spreading its claws with a frightening screech that rattles my bones.
Bastion yells and I duck instinctively; his whip flies above me and slices into the wyvern. It bursts into droplets and falls into the pool, only to rise again.
A crude whip is nothing to a wyvern. The next attack comes faster, wings whirring the stench in the air as it rises above us. Bastion has no defence against its deadly dive—I scrabble to my feet and cast a shield around us.
The wyvern hits it with a violent splash that has me rocking hard on my feet. I slam my eyes shut to concentrate, but I’m exhausted. There’s little left in me.
“Stay behind me,” I command. “If you’re poisoned, I won’t be able to save you.”
The wyvern screeches, the sound agonised and wounded, yet it charges at us desperately, a swoop, a lunge. A claw scratches through, and sharp pain slices through my middle as if the claw had reached me. I buckle, dropping to the damp earth on my knees, my shield wispy and thin, dissolving.
The shimmery shadow of the wyvern circles overhead.
My heart jumps at a sound coming from the woods behind us, and I whip my head towards the trees. Above, the wyvern dives. Bastion throws his arms over his head, and I stare at Quin, mouthing his name.
He staggers into the small clearing, slicing his hand with a knife, and flings his blood at the wyvern in a mighty arc. It hits pearly wings and the wyvern lurches out of its dive, coming for Quin, who casts out more blood, this time catching its mouth. “Halt!”
The wyvern lands at his feet, covering its head with its wings in a swift subjugation.
Quin’s leg gives way; he stumbles and catches himself on the nearest tree. I’m at his side in an instant. His skin is flushed, his breathing tight, but his gaze is steady as it meets mine.
“You’re here,” I murmur, grabbing hold of his arm to steady him.
His gaze flickers to my hand and lingers. “My horse couldn’t make it this far. I heard the wyvern screech.”
“I mean, you’re here .”
Bastion laughs from where he’s lounging in relief beside the pool. “He’s been following us a while.”
Quin grimaces.
It was him I’d heard in the woods. I glance at Bastion. He’d known. “Why didn’t you show yourself sooner?”
“I intended to. Until...” his gaze lands like a hammer behind me.
“What?” Bastion says. “Harmless goading. I hoped you’d charge out in a fit.”
I frown. “ That ’s what that was about?” Quin wouldn’t rise to that. Unless—
I inch closer to him and lower my voice. “You didn’t worry I’d forget your brother?”
Quin’s jaw twitches, and Bastion’s laugh has the wyvern shaking its wings.
“You lost in the end,” Bastion says.
I snap at him. “Be thankful. You’re alive.”
He shuts up with an arched brow my way.
I ignore him and move back towards the subdued wyvern, sending out magic to read its bodily condition. Male. The blood in his veins is pulsing hard, the pressure high, very high. Not just from our fight.
I probe deeper. Strong spells have been used on this animal. It’s like... the wyverns from the royal city. Exactly like the wyverns from the royal city, but...
I drop to my knees and crawl closer. The pearly scales are cracked and brittle at the edges. A miracle he could transform at all.
In desperate defence of his territory, afraid we were there to hurt it again, crazed with disease, he fought with the last of his strength.
He shifts with a pained whine, like a call to a mother to come find him, help him.
I swallow. “This is one your uncle modified. Those spells backfired inside its body. The body has tried to fight it, repair itself, but it’s triggered the spell to adapt. It’s become a toxin. When wyverns become one with water...”
“That’s how this disease is spreading?” Bastion asks.
There’s a heavy weight to Quin’s silence behind us.
My teeth gnash hard, and I swallow a knot of anger. “He’s in agony. We need to put him out of his misery.”
“Can you make him fall asleep?” Quin murmurs, gaze softening on the whining animal.
“I’m exhausted of remedies. I’d need to consume more.”
A whip flashes before my face, slicing down. The wyvern doesn’t see it coming, or doesn’t have the strength to fight if he does. This time, the writhing animal doesn’t burst into water, but falls lifeless, decapitated. Bluish blood pools onto the earth.
No one speaks for long moments.
A brutal death, but there’s kindness in its speed. I push to my feet and inspect the glasslike pool. “There are others in there. We need to get them out and away from the water source. Find somewhere close for a cairn—somewhere on stone; we have to protect the woods and stream from the toxin.”
This close to the caves, it doesn’t take long to find a patch of rock, thinly covered with fallen leaves and soil. We drag the dead wyverns out of the shallow pool one by one. “Careful. Don’t splash or touch them with damaged skin. You mustn’t take in the water.”
When the last layer of scavenged stone is complete, we step away. These poor creatures. I wonder if Quin is thinking of his uncle, of how many lives—human and not—that man has put at risk to dethrone a king. It’s not enough to manipulate earthshakes, to let wyverns kill innocent aklos and aklas in the royal city—now his mutated wyverns are infecting, killing, others. Suffering and dying.
I ball my hands tightly. Through the shimmer of the miasma, in the opening mouth of a cave, I think I see narrow leaves, etched with silver lines. Gildroot. What else lies in its depths? “There are lifesaving herbs in that cave.”
Bastion and Quin look sharply at me, and then at one another. As I take a step on the murky path, they each grab an arm to pull me back.
I try to shake them off, freeing myself only from Bastion’s grasp, and point. “Only dozens of feet away—”
“The miasma could kill you.”
“I’m just one person. What if—”
Quin yanks me around, hard. His jaw is set, his eyes flashing. “If you go in there, if you die , what then?” He shakes me. “They’ll have no chance.”
I grit my teeth and drop my head. He’s right. It’s too risky.
Bastion snorts. “My men will have arrived at the neighbouring towns by now. We should have supplies soon.”
I step back. “Let’s go.”
Bastion goes ahead on foot, to employ more of his men tracing the forks of the brook, to spread the word—water taken from it must be boiled before it can be used for anything, even washing or cleaning house, and crops grown with the water might be infected.
I support Quin back to his horse, where with the aid of a tree he mounts painfully, then holds his hand out to me. I hesitate, not wanting to cause him more strain, but he insists; I slide my cool hand into his large, warm one, and he hauls me up. I swing in behind him, holding onto his hips for purchase.
“Rest,” he commands, and I drop my forehead against his shoulder blades.
“Need to check in with Olyn,” I murmur.
“That’s not resting.”
“There are too many things. There’s something else. You won’t like it.”
“Speak.”
“The regent needs to know.”
Quin stiffens and I sigh against his nape. “It should be you, but... He needs to order a search. If other wyverns are sick like this, they must be found.”
“I can make sure he’s aware. But I can’t guarantee he’ll take action. He may know already.”
We’re contemplative as we ride; the fears of what might happen if the regent doesn’t act to stop further spread make me cold. I grip Quin tighter, focus on the motion of the horse under me and Quin’s warm back. The way it rises and falls evenly, like he’s in control.
At last, I turn my head and blink in the luminarium. Olyn has already spotted us and is racing over the field. Hope floods her face at first sight of me, and I bow my head deeper against Quin’s back. She stills, and the horse shifts, like it senses the flaring tension.
“I hoped you’d gotten out before they sealed the gates.”
“I didn’t, but we found another way.” My voice wavers. “We’re working on getting the herbs.”
She lowers her gaze. “The mother and daughter have scales now. I don’t think they’ll manage the night.”
My hands tighten on Quin’s waist as I tell her to separate them from less critical patients. Place them in a nearby house. “I’ll treat them first. As soon as I have enough to make the spell.” Squeezing my thighs around Quin, I say, “Patients can’t see me empty handed.”
Outside the magistrate’s office, evidence of anger and panic remains. Excrement has been flung onto the building, and many still linger in the courtyard, waiting helplessly for the magistrates to come back and do their duty. Help them.
I slide off the horse and grab Quin’s arm to steady him when he bites back a cry as his leg hits the ground. “Let’s get inside.”
At the top of the stairs before the door, Quin turns to the crowd and points to the speaker’s ledge. “Bring everyone together. There will be news at sundown.”
A wave of murmuring gathers as we move inside.
Quin guides me to the first resting place he sees—a bench placed in the sunlight under a window, long enough for me to stretch out on, separated from the magistrates’ desks by a folding screen. After finding a blanket, I curl up there, closing my eyes to the comforting scratches of Quin writing close by. Can’t help anyone tired. Nothing to do but wait.
“Quin?”
He murmurs, “I’ll prepare all the tea I can find for when you wake.”
“How did you know...” that’s what I’d ask?
The scratches on paper pause. “Let yourself rest now.”
Trust me, his voice says.
My limbs slacken; a deep tired breath whooshes out of me, and I fall into a slumber.