Chapter Eight
Two days passed, three days, four days, and still no sign of improvement in the Rebel Queen—in Tilda. Kiva treated her as well as she could, but without knowing what had led to her current state, it was more a case of trial and error than anything else.
“Her symptoms just don’t make sense,” Kiva complained to Tipp five days after Tilda’s arrival.
They were standing over the woman, with her having been moved to a pallet in the far corner of the infirmary.
Kiva was confident that whatever ailed her wasn’t contagious, so it was safer to isolate her from those already in quarantine.
“She’s not g-getting any worse,” Tipp said. “That’s something.”
“There’s only two days left before her first Ordeal,” Kiva said, “and I can’t even get her fever to break.” She shook her head. “At this rate, she won’t be able to leave her bed, let alone face whatever they have in store for her.”
“Maybe they’ll change the d-date?” Tipp said. “Give her more t-t-time to recover first?”
Kiva sent him a look that made it clear what she thought of that idea.
“It m-might be for the best,” Tipp said quietly. “If she’s going to d-die anyway, at least this way ... it’ll b-be quick, won’t it? And she won’t r-r-really be aware?”
Kiva hated that Tipp was asking her that, hated that the sweet, innocent boy was even thinking that.
As a healer who was glaringly aware of what horrors the human body could be forced to suffer through, she agreed with him.
A quick death was always better in these cases.
But ... ignoring the facts, ignoring what she’d witnessed too many times to count .
.. Kiva’s heart ached as she looked down at the shivering woman.
Don’t let her die.
Kiva was doing her best. But she was failing.
Seeking a distraction, Kiva turned away from Tilda and asked Tipp, “Are you and Mot on speaking terms again?”
“I went and a-apologized like you told me,” Tipp said. “We’re g-good.”
Kiva doubted Mot was so easily appeased. “Can you go and tell him we need a collection?”
“I was hoping Liku would m-m-make it,” Tipp said sadly, his eyes flicking to the closed quarantine door.
“If she’d been allowed to come sooner, she might have,” Kiva stated. She’d long since learned to snuff the burn of resentment toward the guards who didn’t let the prisoners visit the infirmary until it was too late. “Now, go let Mot know so we can clear her bed.”
Tipp took off, and since there was no guard watching the infirmary, Kiva found herself alone with Tilda for the first time since the woman’s arrival.
“Why aren’t you getting better?” Kiva whispered, looking down at the Rebel Queen. She placed her hand on Tilda’s forehead, confirming what she already knew—that she was still burning with a fever.
It was an effort for Kiva to get any fluids into the woman, rousing her from unconsciousness every few hours to force some broth down her throat. Each time, Tilda stared blankly through her unseeing eyes, saying nothing, little more than a limp weight that swiftly returned to sleep.
“You have to stay alive,” Kiva continued whispering as she straightened Tilda’s blankets, tucking them into the sides of the thin mattress. “You have to.”
Don’t let her die .
Shifting a strand of dark hair from the woman’s face, Kiva was just about to go check on her quarantined patients when Tilda’s sleeping body gave a jerk and her milky eyes shot open.
Kiva jumped before her senses came back to her. “Easy, easy,” she said, her heart racing, unsure if the woman even understood. “You’re all right.”
Tilda turned toward the sound of Kiva’s voice. In a split second, she lunged upward, reaching blindly, her hands latching first around Kiva’s shoulders and then shifting inward until they circled her throat—and squeezed.
Kiva was so stunned that she didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late. She tried to fight the woman off, her fingers grasping Tilda’s forearms and shoving with all her might, but the woman’s grip was unyielding.
“Ssssstop,” Kiva tried to say, but she could barely get any air through her windpipe.
She dug her fingernails into Tilda’s flesh, but still the woman didn’t release her.
Desperate, she tried to scramble backwards, but Tilda came with her, the woman’s full weight now hanging from Kiva’s neck and causing her to lose her balance, the two of them tumbling to the floor.
Dark spots began to flood Kiva’s vision, her lungs begging for oxygen. Frantic, she clawed at the woman’s face, but Tilda dodged her nails as if she had some kind of sixth sense, remaining just out of reach, her grip tighter than ever.
And then her hands were gone.
One moment, Kiva’s body was turning limp, her eyes rolling into the back of her head. The next, Tilda’s weight had disappeared, leaving Kiva coughing and spluttering on the ground.
“Are you all right?”
Kiva couldn’t answer, still too busy trying to breathe. But she was aware enough to know that it was Naari who had asked the question, the guard having been the one to pull Tilda away.
Through watering eyes, Kiva saw Tilda wrestling against Naari’s grip, fighting like a rabid creature.
The guard had dragged her until she was pressed up against the worktable, and despite Naari being fully armed as usual—two swords strapped to her back and a plethora of weapons attached to and hidden among her leather armor—she wasn’t reaching for any of them, instead holding Tilda at bay with her hands.
But Naari didn’t see what Kiva could from the ground: Tilda fumbling blindly on the worktable, before wrapping her fingers around the sharp carving blade.
“Look out!” Kiva rasped, her voice like gravel.
Naari moved fast, but Tilda was faster, striking upward toward the guard’s head.
For someone without sight, her aim was scarily accurate, and Naari had barely any time to react.
It was all she could do to release one hand from Tilda and use it to block the blow, the blade sinking into her gloved wrist.
She didn’t cry out or reveal any sign of pain. All she did was fling Tilda around and, in one swift movement, elbow her in the side of the face.
The fight left Tilda in an instant, and she crumpled to the ground, unconscious.
Kiva was still panting for air, startled by how quickly the struggle had ended.
“Are you all right?” the guard asked again.
No, Kiva wasn’t all right. She’d just been attacked by one of her patients—someone she was trying to keep alive, to protect at all costs.
“Are you all right?” Kiva returned, wincing at how much it hurt to talk. She sounded as if she’d swallowed an entire quarry’s worth of luminium dust. Felt like it, too. But still, she was the prison healer, and her focus went beyond her own needs and to the blade sticking out of Naari’s wrist.
Following her gaze, the guard looked down and, showing no emotion, yanked the blade out.
Kiva flinched, even if Naari didn’t. But then she noticed what she’d missed before—there was no blood, not trickling from Naari’s arm, not even on the blade.
Rising, Kiva walked on shaking legs toward the guard and the prisoner.
Tilda was out cold, a pinkish bruise blossoming at her temple from Naari’s blow.
Kiva wasn’t sure which of them needed her attention first, so she took her lead from the guard, who jerked her head at the prisoner, and together they dragged Tilda back to her pallet.
Kiva wasn’t surprised when Naari reached for the shackles on either side of the mattress, binding both of Tilda’s hands before reaching for the chest strap and tightening it over the woman’s torso.
The restraints were attached to all of the infirmary’s beds, including within the quarantine room, but they were rarely used.
Despite what Tilda had done to Kiva, she didn’t like seeing the woman bound, repelled by the idea of trapping someone so completely, even if that someone had just tried to strangle her.
“She’s not going anywhere,” Naari said. “Now see to yourself.”
Kiva looked blankly at the guard until Naari prompted, “Your throat. Do you have something that will help?”
Unsure why Naari even cared enough to acknowledge it, Kiva nodded slowly and shuffled back toward the worktable.
Her lungs burned with every breath, her knees still trembled, but she forced herself to think and reached for a vial of tallowfruit nectar.
Tears sprang to her eyes as she swallowed it back, the citrus tang stinging the whole way down, but the nectar was the best remedy for throat and lung damage.
Kiva considered a dose of poppymilk to help with the pain, but she quickly discarded the idea, needing a clear head right now.
“Your turn,” Kiva said, her voice already stronger than before.
“I’m fine,” Naari replied, remaining in position over Tilda’s bed, as if expecting the woman to awaken at any moment and burst out of her restraints.
Kiva didn’t want to argue with the guard. Everything in her knew how dangerous that could be. And yet ...
“You were stabbed,” she said in a careful tone. “You should let me look at the wound.”
“I’m fine,” Naari repeated, more firmly this time.
Kiva bit her lip. Her eyes swung back to the blade on the table, again noting that it had no blood on it. But ... she’d seen Tilda stab Naari. She’d seen the blade sticking out of Naari’s wrist.
“At least let me give you something to clean the wound,” Kiva said quietly. “You can do it yourself, if you don’t want me to. But you don’t want to get an infection, so—”
Naari turned from Tilda, her dark eyes locking onto Kiva before she stepped forward, her jade earring glinting as she closed the distance between them.
Kiva wasn’t sure if she should back away or not.
She couldn’t read the guard’s expression and feared she’d been too assertive.
Naari didn’t act like the other guards at Zalindov, brutal and unforgiving.
But for all Kiva knew, she was exactly like them.