Chapter Seven #2
Jaren did so, swinging his legs over the metal bench.
His face was closed, his gaze downcast, as if desperate to avoid eye contact after what he’d just admitted.
He didn’t make a move for his tunic, and Kiva didn’t want him to think she was uncomfortable with his state of undress, so she said nothing other than, “Lucky last,” as she pointed to the cut on his head.
It was strange, doing this with him sitting upright. She realized that she should have kept him lying down for it, but she had no valid reason to make the request now other than that she felt odd standing so close to him.
“Has this wound caused you any discomfort?” Kiva asked as she cleaned away the tunnel dust. “Headaches, nausea, memory problems, sight issues?”
“The first two days were unpleasant, but the pain eased after that,” Jaren said. “Contrary to what you might think, I’m not an idiot. I would’ve come back if I was worried about anything.”
“Hmm,” Kiva said noncommittally.
“I’ve had a concussion before,” Jaren defended as she began removing the sutures. “Twice, actually. I know what to watch out for.”
Given their close proximity, Kiva found it less awkward to have him talking rather than just staring at her, so she prompted, “What happened?”
Jaren shifted slightly, and Kiva sent him a warning look. She was working dangerously close to his eye.
“The first was a riding accident. My horse spooked when I was out hunting, and I fell headfirst into a ditch.”
Kiva considered what he’d inadvertently given away.
He must come from a wealthy family to have been on a hunting expedition.
Usually the sport was reserved for those in or close to the upper social circles.
Sometimes merchants and scholars were invited if they had ties to the aristocracy, but only the most successful ones.
If Jaren came from a high-standing family, it made sense that they’d be unwilling to visit him in Zalindov.
They’d likely disowned him the moment of his sentencing.
“And the second time?” she asked.
“I was teaching my brother how to climb trees, and I slipped.” He winced. “Not my finest moment.”
“You have a brother?”
“Yeah. He’s around Tipp’s age. A bit of a surprise for my mother.” He paused, then added, “I have a sister, too, but she’s older.”
“So you’re the middle child,” Kiva observed. “That explains a lot.”
“A joke? From the prison healer?” Jaren squinted at her. “Are you sure I’m not dying?”
Kiva didn’t deign to respond as she snipped the last stitch, smeared on some sap, and retreated to a safe distance, indicating for him to pull his tunic back on.
“How much longer do you have to stay here tonight?” Jaren asked, his gaze wandering around the infirmary.
She tried to see it from his perspective: the metal benches, the wooden worktable covered with supplies, the thin-blanketed pallets with even thinner privacy curtains for patients who needed longer care.
At the back of the room was a closed door leading into the quarantine room, currently occupied by a few cases of a stomach virus that was going around.
“A couple more hours,” Kiva answered. “Olisha and Nergal will come and take over when it’s time for me to sleep.”
Unlike many of the other prisoners, Kiva’s hours were extensive.
Most laborers worked for twelve hours, sometimes fourteen.
But as the prison healer, it wasn’t unheard of for her to work eighteen hours a day, especially when there were wagonloads of new arrivals.
Olisha and Nergal, the two others who were allocated to the infirmary, shared the skeleton shift each night, but the rest of the time they were shuffled among different administrative tasks depending on where they were needed.
Unless Kiva was desperate for added support during the day, the three of them rarely worked together, which was perhaps another reason why the two older prisoners were so incompetent.
They had no one to teach them how to treat the more complicated health concerns.
“Here,” Kiva said, retrieving a small jar of aloeweed gel from her supplies and handing it to Jaren.
He turned it between his fingers. “What’s this?”
“It’s for your hands,” she said. “You should’ve come to see me about them sooner.”
Jaren cocked his head to the side. “Is that your way of saying you missed me?”
Kiva felt her eye twitch. “It’s my way of saying they’ll only get worse if you don’t look after them.”
“Fair point,” Jaren said with the hint of a smile. “And I guess we don’t know each other well enough for you to miss me yet.”
Another eye twitch. “There’s no need to add yet to the end of that. We’ll never know each other that well.”
Jaren’s mouth hitched up into a crooked grin. He jumped down from the bench, the move bringing him much closer to Kiva. Her instinct was to step back, but she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, so she remained in place.
“Maybe if you—”
Whatever Jaren had been about to say was interrupted when Tipp bounded through the unguarded door and into the infirmary.
“Kiva! D-D-Did you hear?”
“Hear what?” she asked, spinning toward him.
“There’s a n-new arrival!”
“What? Now?” Kiva said, frowning. Not only was it still the dead of winter, but it was also nighttime. Never in Kiva’s ten years of imprisonment had a new inmate been delivered so late.
“Yes! And you w-won’t believe who they’re s-s-saying she is!”
Before Kiva could ask, Naari appeared at the entrance to the infirmary, her face tight. Close behind her came two other guards, both male, carrying a stretcher upon which was what looked like a bundle of oddly shaped rags in the vague outline of a human.
“Out of the way, boy,” one of the guards snarled at Tipp, who quickly scampered toward where Kiva and Jaren stood.
“You, healer,” the second guard barked at Kiva as they unceremoniously dragged the limp weight of the ragged-clothed human off the stretcher and onto the metal bench Jaren had vacated.
“You have a week before she’s to face her first Trial.
We want a good show, so do what you can to fix her before then. ”
And then the two male guards took off into the night, one of them giving Tipp a forceful shove as he walked by, prompting Kiva to dig her fingernails into Jaren’s forearm to keep him from lunging after the man.
She shook her head firmly at him, and the stormy look on his face darkened before he let out a sigh and moved to ruffle Tipp’s hair.
The young boy was nowhere near as upset as Jaren—a shove was the least of what the guard could have done, and Tipp knew it.
Leaping into action, Kiva approached the unconscious woman, listening in as Jaren asked, “What did he mean about a Trial?”
To Kiva’s surprise, it was Naari who answered, having remained behind when her fellow guards departed. “This woman has been sentenced to undertake the Trial by Ordeal.”
Kiva, who had been reaching for the rags obscuring the new arrival’s face, froze and spun back to look at the guard. Jaren, too, was staring at Naari with incredulity, though there was also something else in his expression, something Kiva didn’t know him well enough to read.
Noting their reactions, Tipp asked, “What’s a T-T-Trial by Ordeal?”
No one spoke.
“Guys? What’s g-going on?” Tipp demanded. “What’s this T-Trial thing?”
Kiva slowly turned from Naari to the young boy and said, “The Trial by Ordeal is only ever sentenced to the most dangerous of criminals. The last time it happened was something like twenty years ago.”
“Thirty,” Jaren said, his features tense as he looked toward the unconscious woman that Kiva remained frozen above.
“B-But what is it?” Tipp asked.
“Four elemental tasks—called Ordeals—to determine a person’s guilt: Trial by Air, Trial by Fire, Trial by Water, Trial by Earth,” Jaren answered, as if reading from an archive. “If the person survives, they’re deemed innocent.”
If Kiva hadn’t been so shocked by the woman’s sentence, she might have questioned the origin of Jaren’s knowledge.
She herself had heard whispers throughout her years at Zalindov, legends of prisoners who had received the unforgiving sentence.
But she’d known nothing of the Trials prior to her arrival.
“Elemental t-tasks?” Tipp’s forehead was bunched. “But only the r-royal family has elemental m-magic these days.”
“The tasks might be inspired by magic of old,” Jaren continued sharing, “but it’s said that if a person is truly innocent, they’ll be able to make it through the four Ordeals without needing any kind of power.”
“So ... if this woman d-does these Trials, she’ll be able t-to leave Zalindov? Free?” Tipp asked, looking awed by the thought, as if he wished it for his own future.
“No one has ever survived the full Trial by Ordeal, Tipp,” Kiva broke in softly. “One or two of the tasks, maybe. Just enough to lull them into a false sense of security. But never all four.” She whispered to finish, “It’s a death sentence.”
Jaren nodded grimly in agreement.
Tipp paled, then looked toward the unconscious woman. He bit his lip and said, “I guess that m-makes sense, if she r-r-really is who they think she is.”
Kiva finally unfroze her fingers to remove the cloth from the new arrival’s face. “Who do they think she is?”
It was Naari who answered as Kiva drew the rags away, revealing the woman’s features.
“It’s believed that she’s Tilda Corentine,” the guard said. “The Rebel Queen.”
Kiva’s heart stopped as she stared down at the middle-aged woman.
Straight nose, thick lashes, dark hair and brows.
Her tanned skin had an unhealthy tinge to it, and when her eyes opened for a brief second before fluttering shut again, they were milky white.
The woman was blind, and, with her both shivering and sweating at once, it was clear that she was very ill.
All of this Kiva took in within the space of half a breath, because that was how long it took for the shock to hit her.
“King Stellan and Queen Ariana want to make an example out of her,” Naari went on, “especially since she was captured while recruiting more followers in Mirraven, and Evalon doesn’t have an extradition treaty with them, given the tenuous relationship between our two kingdoms. The best the king and queen could do was petition to have her sent here, where justice could be served, even if it meant they couldn’t interrogate her beforehand.
” Naari looked at the sick woman. “Though ... in this state, I doubt she would have been able to reveal anything, even if they’d been able to intercept her before arrival. ”
Kiva was having trouble drawing air into her lungs. This blind, sick woman—the most wanted person in Evalon—was now in Kiva’s care. The Rebel Queen . And not only that, but—
“W-What’s this?”
Tipp’s voice drew Kiva back from her panicked thoughts. She spun to find him plucking something from the ground—a small scrap of parchment.
“I think it f-fell out of her blanket when they m-moved her off the stretcher,” he said, unfolding the parchment and squinting at it. He turned it on its side, then upside down, and a sinking feeling hit Kiva’s stomach.
“Let me see,” she said, her voice croaking slightly in the middle.
“It’s nothing. Just some d-doodles,” Tipp decided, but he handed it over as requested.
Kiva’s heart rate skyrocketed as she saw the familiar coded symbols and translated what they said.
The message was clear:
Don’t let her die.
We are coming.
Kiva’s breath caught as those final three words repeated in her mind.
We are coming. We are coming. We are coming.
No longer a vague promise of one day, but imminent .
Her family was coming. Finally, after waiting so long, they were coming . For Kiva—but also for Tilda.
They were coming for the Rebel Queen.
Kiva swore inwardly. The woman might very well not last the night, and even if she did ...
For ten years, Kiva had followed her coded orders. But for the first time ever, she had no idea how to do what she was told. Because even if she could save Tilda from her illness, there was no way to keep her from her fate.
Her death was coming, one way or another. And there was nothing Kiva could do about it.