Chapter 18
In the end, they untied Edmund’s hands and brought Alba back in. They didn’t have much choice. There was apparently only one good way to get the potion into the patient, and it wasn’t orally.
“Don’t be such a baby,” Alba commanded the guard, who was apparently named Taz. “It’s not half so bad as dying.”
“But it itches there, too,” Taz whimpered. Edmund held the man’s hands to keep him from trying to scratch.
Edmund and Alba were the only ones willing to touch the unfortunate Taz. The Dervish saw how the skin of the man’s buttocks practically peeled away when Alba set her hand there and felt his stomach churn, even though he was immune to most diseases.
Although this is a … what did he say … an allergy?
How bizarre. Fisher nearly died when the bee stung him that time, but he swelled up, his skin didn’t fall off.
Although now that I think of it, Bo got terrible hives when she handled metal polish.
I suppose if hives just kept going, this might happen …
He wasn’t the only one who looked away. Otto had swept out again and the two guards left had retreated outside the door.
Foolish of them. Edmund’s free and he could probably take Alba hostage.
Except it’s Edmund, and anyway, as long as the door’s locked, what are we going to do?
Otto doesn’t look like the type to negotiate.
“How long does he have?” Alba asked Edmund in an undertone, when they had finished getting the medicine inside him and sat side by side on the bed, waiting.
“If it doesn’t work? Eight to twelve hours, I should think. The lesions eventually start to form inside the lungs.”
She nodded. After a moment, she said, “Will it work?”
“It should. But even with a full healing temple, and a potion that hasn’t been bouncing around my pack for the last two years, they still lose people. He’s young and strong, though, so I’d say the odds are high.”
“Ah.”
“When he recovers, you’ll want to keep the wounds wrapped in clean linen until they heal.
It will take some time. A lot of his skin will peel in a few days, like a bad sunburn.
I’ll leave you something to wash the lesions with…
” He pressed his lips together, clearly remembering the circumstances that had brought them there.
Alba was silent for a little while, then said, “You have done us nothing but kindness, and we have repaid you with evil.”
“Perhaps Otto will see fit to let us go.”
“You don’t know Otto.”
There was nothing much to say to that. They sat and waited.
Alba cut a sheet into bandages with a tiny pocketknife.
The Dervish wondered if he could get it away from her.
The blade was barely more than an inch long, but that would be enough to cut someone’s jugular, assuming they were willing to lean down behind him with their neck even with his hands, then wait while he tried to stab them by feel.
Edmund asked for water and got it, then came over and held the mug to the Dervish’s lips while he drank. The scholar’s face was tranquil, his eyes laced with despair.
“You hate this,” said the Dervish softly.
Edmund started, the water splashing the Dervish’s chin. “Yes,” he admitted. “I studied healing for a time, but I could not bear…” He shook his head, unwilling or unable to explain what he could not bear.
Their pain, the Dervish guessed. It was not in Edmund’s nature to grow calluses. Every patient he lost would destroy him. Compassion turned into a knife with the blade pointing inward.
“I never studied,” Alba said. She sat very straight, and except for wisps of hair coming loose from the painfully tight braid, no one would guess that it was the middle of the night and that she was keeping vigil over a possibly dying man.
“My mother was the midwife, but she died when I was twelve. People just expected me to have learned everything she knew, as if it came down through the blood.”
Edmund reached out and took her hand. “That is very hard. I’m sorry. If—”
“Edmund,” the Dervish broke in, “I swear to the ancestors, if you try to adopt this one, I will hog-tie you and drag you behind your goddamn mule.”
Alba pulled her hand away. “He’s right. Maybe back then, but I’ve been … complicit … for a long time. The dragon came five years ago and destroyed a dozen fields, killed everyone who tried to stop it. That was when Otto said that we had to feed it to keep it docile.”
“What else were we going to do?” asked Taz from the bed. His voice was slightly slurred. The Dervish shuddered to think what the werkblight had done to the inside of the man’s mouth. “Let it run us off the only land we had?”
“It was fine when it was pigs and sheep,” Alba snapped. “I even understood when Molly broke her neck and they gave her body to the dragon instead of the ground. But the moment they put Harlan out—”
“Harlan was a drunk and a thief! Everyone knew it. We had to do something.” He started to roll on his side to face them, and both Edmund and Alba leapt to pin him down.
“Don’t move.”
“But it doesn’t itch as much…”
Alba and Edmund closed their eyes briefly, with identical expressions of pure relief.
“I don’t care if it doesn’t itch,” Alba said, her tone belying her expression.
“You’re staying right there, unless you want to shuck off your skin like an old coat.
” She brushed her hands off and went toward the door.
“I’m going to go get some more water,” she said firmly, and if the Dervish hadn’t been able to see her face, he wouldn’t have seen the tears.
Otto returned at dawn.
The Dervish had fallen into a doze. It wasn’t very good sleep, but it also wasn’t deep enough to dream, and that was all to the good.
The Dervish could imagine what dreams he would have, now that he was actually imprisoned.
He had slept sitting up, because being bound was just barely tolerable that way.
It was lying down and being pinned that sent him into a wild panic. No surprise there.
When the lock rattled, he came awake at once.
Alba was sitting beside Taz, probably dozing the same way the Dervish had.
Edmund was curled on his side on one of the beds and actually seemed to be sleeping.
The Dervish would have envied him, but after the work he’d done last night, the scholar had more than earned it.
“Well?” Otto asked.
Alba lifted her head. “He lives,” she said, her voice raspy. “I can’t swear that he’ll survive, but he isn’t getting any worse.”
Edmund sat up, rubbing his eyes. “It will be a few weeks until he fully recovers,” he said. “The skin that’s already broken down doesn’t heal, but it stops happening. He’ll need to keep taking the medicine for at least a week, but he can drink it this time.”
“Thank you,” said Otto gravely. And then, to the guard behind him, “Bind his hands. The dragon will wake soon.”
“Seriously?” the Dervish said. “He saved that man’s life, and you’re going to feed us to the dragon anyway?” He had always prided himself on his cynicism, but this felt absurd.
“We are grateful, of course, but the fact remains that the beast must be fed.” Otto’s voice was completely reasonable, a rational man discussing a distasteful but necessary act.
“And if we sacrifice one of our remaining horses, or that donkey of yours, we still must keep you prisoner so that you do not alert others. We cannot afford to feed two more mouths that do not work, and sooner or later the dragon would be hungry again.”
“I understand,” Edmund said. “May I have some water first?”
“Yes,” Alba said, cutting off Otto before he could refuse. “Water we have in plenty.” She took both his hands for a moment, her face intent. “I, at least, will never forget what you have done for us.”
Another man might have rolled his eyes. Otto simply stood, face expressionless, while Alba poured out a cup of water and offered it to Edmund.
The guard tied Edmund’s hands behind him.
The scholar grunted, but didn’t protest. The Dervish, fortunately, had managed to convince the guard earlier that he was not going to be able to use the chamber pot with his hands behind his back, and had thus had his hands re-bound in front of him.
Otto’s gaze strayed over him, but he didn’t say anything.
Not that we’re likely to break free while tied up like this, but it’d be a helluva lot easier if my hands are in front of me.
“Please—” Alba began, looking at them both with her eyes full of anguish.
“No,” Otto said.
The Dervish wondered whether the man had been chosen as leader of the settlement or had simply assumed command by virtue of age or respect or heredity.
Oddly, he could see it either way. Many people would support a leader who spoke firmly and always seemed to know what to do, even if it involved sacrificing strangers to a dragon.
“Doing what has to be done, are we?” the Dervish asked sardonically.
“Yes,” Otto said, meeting his eyes with a gaze as flat as a flagstone. “Though I don’t expect someone like you to understand.”
He was wrong. The Dervish stared into his eyes and saw a man who had done the practical thing, the logical thing, because it had to be done, because he was responsible for so many lives and it was such an easy bargain to make, to hand over a dead body to the dragon instead of a live pig that might go on to feed dozens of people.
The alternative was to admit defeat and to give up the life they had carved out here. Perhaps it had felt wrong not to do it.
But then a day had come when there was a living human being who had to be dealt with.
Not a good one, perhaps. A drunk and a thief, Taz had said.
And Otto, already wondering how to keep the dragon at bay for a little longer, had seen a solution to both his problems and had taken that last step into murder.
“Was the first stranger easy?” the Dervish asked. “After you’d already sacrificed one of your own?”
Otto stepped forward, without a trace of anger on his face, and backhanded the Dervish into the wall.