Chapter Three
Kiva didn’t dare move a muscle until the guard returned minutes later. With her was a young boy who she motioned past her and into the room. The moment his eyes found Kiva, his freckle-splattered face brightened, and a big, gap-toothed smile stretched across his features.
With bright red hair and wide blue eyes, Tipp looked like a burning candle.
He acted like one, too, full of energy and crackling with passion.
At eleven years of age, nothing ever seemed to faze him.
No matter the ridicule and frustration he suffered through every single day, he always brought light with him wherever he went, always had a kind word and a gentle touch for the prisoners who needed him the most. He was even pleasant to the guards, regardless of how rough and impatient they were with him.
Kiva had never met anyone like Tipp, certainly not in a place like Zalindov.
“K-K-Kiva!” Tipp said, rushing forward. He looked for a moment as if he might try and hug her—as if they hadn’t seen each other in years, rather than days—but he resisted at the last second, reading her body language.
“I d-didn’t know what Naari was b-b-bringing me here for!
I was s-s-s-s-s—” He pulled a face and tried a different word. “I was w-worried.”
Kiva looked to the guard, unsurprised that Tipp, friendly as he was, knew her name. Naari. At least Kiva would no longer have to think of her as the amber-eyed woman.
“The healer needs assistance, boy,” Naari said in a bored voice. “Go fetch her some clean water.”
“On it!” Tipp said enthusiastically, lunging for the pail, all elbows and knees. For a moment, Kiva feared that the bloodied, muddied water would end up all over the infirmary floor, but Tipp was out the door with his load before she could warn him to be careful.
An awkward silence descended, until Kiva cleared her throat and murmured, “Thank you. For getting Tipp, I mean.”
The guard—Naari—nodded once.
“And ... for the other night, too,” Kiva added quietly. She didn’t look down at the raw burn marks on her arm, didn’t draw attention to how some of the guards had decided she was to be their entertainment that night.
It wasn’t the first time.
It wasn’t even the worst time.
But she was grateful for the intervention, all the same.
Naari nodded again, the repeated action stiff enough for Kiva to know better than to say more. It was strange, though. Now that she knew the guard’s name, she felt less trepidation, less ... intimidation.
Careful, little mouse.
Kiva didn’t need the echo of her father’s warning. Naari had the power of life and death in her hands— Kiva’s life and death. She was a guard of Zalindov, a weapon in her own right, death incarnate.
Giving herself a mental kick, Kiva shuffled back toward the surviving man, busying herself by checking his pulse. Still weak, but stronger than before.
Tipp returned from the well in record speed, the wooden pail filled to the brim with fresh, clean water.
“What happened t-to them?” he asked, pointing to the two dead men as Kiva began to gently wash the living man’s face.
“Not sure,” Kiva answered, glancing at Naari briefly to gauge her reaction to them speaking. The guard seemed unconcerned, so Kiva went on, “This one was covered in their blood, though.”
Tipp peered thoughtfully at the man. “You think he d-did it?”
Kiva rinsed the dirty cloth, then continued wiping away layers of muck. “Does it matter? Someone thinks he did something, otherwise he wouldn’t be here.”
“It’d make a g-good story,” Tipp said, skipping off toward the wooden workbench to begin gathering the items Kiva needed next. Her face softened at his thoughtfulness, though she was careful to school it into indifference before he turned around.
Attachments were dangerous at Zalindov. Caring only led to pain.
“I’m sure you’ll make it a good story even if it isn’t,” Kiva said, finally moving up to the man’s hair.
“Mama used t-to always say I’d grow up to be a b-b-bard,” Tipp said with a grin.
Kiva’s fingers spasmed on the cloth, her heart giving a painful clench as she thought about Tipp’s mother, Ineke, for the first time in three years.
Having been accused of stealing jewelry from a noblewoman, when Ineke was sent to Zalindov, the then eight-year-old Tipp wouldn’t let go of her skirts, so he was thrown in the wagon with her.
Six months later, Ineke got a cut while working in the slaughterhouse, but the guards wouldn’t let her visit the infirmary until it was too late.
The infection had already spread to her heart, and within days, she was dead.
Kiva had held Tipp for hours that night, his silent tears soaking her clothes.
The next day, red-eyed and puffy-faced, the small boy had said only five words: She’d want me t-to live.
And so he had. With everything within him, Tipp had lived .
Kiva was determined he would continue to do so— outside of Zalindov. One day.
Dreams were for fools. And Kiva was the biggest fool of them all.
Returning her attention to the man lying before her, she slowly worked the tangles from his filthy hair.
It wasn’t long, which helped, but it wasn’t short either.
Kiva debated whether it would need to be shaved, inspecting it closely.
But she could see no sign of infestation, and once the blood and dirt were gone and it began to dry—revealing a rich golden color somewhere between blond and brown—a lustrous shine became more noticeable.
Healthy hair, healthy physique. Both rare in new arrivals.
Again, Kiva found herself wondering what kind of life this man had come from that had led him to fall so far.
“You’re not g-going to swoon, are you?” Tipp said, appearing at her elbow with a bone needle and spooled catgut in hand.
“What?”
Tipp nodded down to the man. “Swoon. Because of h-how he looks.”
Kiva’s brow furrowed. “How he ...” Her eyes flittered to the man’s face, taking him in properly for the first time. “Oh.” She frowned deeper and said, “Of course I’m not going to swoon.”
Tipp’s mouth twitched. “It’s all right if you d-d-do. I’ll catch you.”
Shooting him a look, Kiva opened her mouth to retort, but before she could get a word out, Naari appeared right beside them, having approached on swift, silent feet.
A quiet squeak left Kiva before she could help herself, but the guard didn’t shift her eyes from the man lying on the metal bench.
No, not a man. Now that he was clean enough to reveal his features, Kiva could see that he wasn’t fully grown yet. But he was no longer a boy, either. Perhaps eighteen or nineteen—a year or two older than she was, give or take.
When Naari continued to stare down at him, Kiva did the same.
High brows, straight nose, long lashes .
.. the kind of angles a painter would be in raptures about.
There was a crescent-shaped cut over his left eye that needed to be stitched, deep enough that it would leave a pale scar on his honeyed skin.
But otherwise, his face was unblemished.
Unlike the rest of him, as Kiva had learned upon washing his flesh.
His back was littered with crisscrossed scars, similar to her own and those of many other prisoners who had endured a flogging or two.
But his scars didn’t have the characteristic look of the cat-o’-nine-tails; Kiva didn’t know what kind of whip had left such welt-like wounds, but the damage was limited to his back, with few other marks on the rest of his body, save the fresh ones he had obtained during his journey to Zalindov.
“Are you g-going to swoon, Naari?”
Tipp’s words drew Kiva’s attention, and she sucked in a sharp breath at realizing he was questioning the guard.
Prisoners should never question the guards.
Worse, he was—he was teasing her.
Kiva had tried to protect Tipp as much as she could since his mother’s death, but there was only so much she could do. And now, after this ...
Naari’s amber gaze finally moved away from the young man’s face, narrowing as she took in Tipp’s mischievous grin and Kiva’s poorly suppressed fear. But all she said was, “He needs to be held down in case he wakes.”
Kiva’s trapped breath fled her lungs, relief making her dizzy, even as she noted where Naari’s gaze had moved to and saw what was in Tipp’s other hand. The scalpel, already heated, the tip sharpened to a white-hot point.
Of course. Not only did Kiva have to patch the young man up, but she also had to carve him.
The question was, which to do first? But apparently the guard had already chosen, her new proximity all the motivation Kiva needed to reach for the blade rather than the needle and spool.
Those would come after, hopefully once the guard returned to a safe distance.
“I c-can hold him,” Tipp said, stepping around Kiva to the young man’s other side. He seemed oblivious to the danger he had just miraculously avoided, with Kiva’s desperate warning look rolling right off him.
“You take his legs, then,” Naari ordered. “This one looks strong.”
Strong. The word churned in Kiva’s gut. There was no way he would be allocated to the kitchens or the workrooms. He would be tasked with the hard labor, there was no doubt about it.
Six months, he would have. A year, if he was lucky.
Then he’d be dead.
Kiva couldn’t allow herself to care. She’d seen too much death in the last ten years, witnessed too much suffering. The fate of one more man would change nothing. He was just a number—D24L103, according to the metal band already fastened around his wrist by the transfer guards.
With the first stroke of the scalpel along the back of his left hand, Kiva ignored the renewed itching of her thigh and reminded herself of why she was doing this, why she was betraying everything a healer was meant to be by deliberately harming others.
We are safe. Stay alive. We will come.
She hadn’t heard from her family since the last note, and with winter well and truly under way, she didn’t expect to hear anything until a steady flow of prisoners arrived again come spring. But she still held on to their most recent words, the assurance, the demand, the promise.
Kiva did what she had to—she healed people, but she hurt them, too. All to stay alive. All to bide time until her family could come for her, until she could escape.
This young man ... he was one of the better ones to carve, making her guilt easier to bear.
Since he was already unconscious, she didn’t have to look into his pain-filled eyes as her blade dug into his flesh, didn’t have to feel him shaking beneath her touch, didn’t have to see him look at her like the monster she was.
Tipp knew—he’d seen Kiva carve too many prisoners to count, and he never judged her for it or looked at her with anything other than understanding.
The guards didn’t care about her task, they just wanted it done quickly.
Naari was no exception, not even when she’d first arrived.
However, of all of them, the amber-eyed guard was the only one to ever show a hint of disgust. Even now, her jaw was clenched as Kiva sank her blade into the young man’s flesh, with Naari’s gloved hands pressing his shoulders into the metal slab lest he awaken.
Kiva worked fast, and when she was done, Tipp was ready with the pot of ballico sap and a fresh scrap of linen. As if now satisfied that the new arrival wasn’t at risk of moving and ruining his freshly carved Z, the guard retreated to the door, reclaiming her position without another word.
“It’s a shame about the c-c-cut on his face,” Tipp said, as Kiva finished wrapping the man’s hand and began to make her way around the rest his body, adding sutures to the open wounds as she went and applying the antibacterial sap over the top.
“Why’s that?” Kiva murmured, only half listening.
“It’ll ruin his p-pretty face.”
Kiva’s fingers paused midstitch over the cut she was closing on his right pectoral. “Pretty face or not, he’s still a man, Tipp.”
“So?”
“So,” Kiva said, “most men are pigs.”
There was a loaded silence, the only sound being a quiet huff from Naari at the door—almost as if she were amused —before Tipp finally said, “I’m a man. I’m not a p-pig.”
“You’re still young,” Kiva returned. “Give it time.”
Tipp snorted, thinking she was joking. Kiva didn’t enlighten him. While she hoped Tipp would stay as sweet and caring as he now was, the odds were against him. The only man whom Kiva had ever held any respect for was her beloved father. But ... he was one of a kind.
Not allowing the nostalgia to overwhelm her this time, Kiva quickly and efficiently finished sealing the rest of the cuts on the young man’s abdomen and back, double checking that there were none on his legs before moving to his face.
It was then, just as she lowered her bone needle toward his brow, that his eyes opened.