The Bonemender's Choice (19 page)

She swept her eyes over him with frank scorn. “I did not think to see such cowardice in a Tarzine captain.”

All eyes, crew and passenger, were on the captain. He blustered
and bridled, stung by the insult, groping after a reply that would salvage his pride and his men’s respect.

Yolenka let him stew in his own anger. Then her features softened, became almost pleading, and she touched his arm hesitantly.

“Your pardon,” she said. “I spoke wrongly. There is no cowardice in protecting your crew.”

The captain, on the verge of smacking her arm away, stopped in confusion. The poor lout, thought Féolan. She’s playing him like a bag of
reneñas
. Yolenka continued, all humble supplication.

“They are children. They have suffered great evil, and it is due to them that Turga is killed. Now their fate rests in your hands. Will you not save them?”

Agonizing moments ticked by. The captain shifted his weight, scratched at the stubble under his chin. Met Yolenka’s liquid golden gaze. Straightened briskly.

“I’ll clean out my things,” he announced. “But...” He pointed a finger and swept it stiffly across the little group. “You lot will eat and sleep on deck. And any one of you has the least complaint, even a bloody hangnail, you’re confined to the cabin.”

Y
OLENKA PERCHED ON
a coil of rope, her ruined finery tucked around her legs, and systematically worked a comb through her tangles. Derkh sat beside her, feeling the movement of the ship underneath him—a familiar motion this time, cheering even. The seas were calm as sunset approached, the breeze billowing the sails playfully. They had just lost sight of land. Derkh watched Yolenka’s fingers move briskly through the strands of hair, let his eyes travel over her golden features. What if she had not returned? He still
felt weak from the fear of it, and from the relief that had washed through him when he first caught sight of her galloping breakneck down the narrow street on a lathered horse, people scattering in her wake. His lips curled into a private grin at the memory.

“What? You are smiling because dinner arrives, I hope.” Yolenka scowled. “Will this captain never feed us? I am near to falling down starved.”

“When did you eat last?” Derkh was hungry too—their quick midday meal had been a small chink in a yawning gap.

“Not anytime this day.”

“Yolenka...” Where to start? Maybe not the beginning—he wasn’t sure he was ready for the story of Turga’s death. “How did you get out of there?”

Yolenka glinted up at him. “There is guard I know. I make a deal.”

Eternal night. Did she have to joke about it like that? Heat rose in his face, and Derkh was glad for the sunburn that hid his angry flush. I’m too jealous, he thought bleakly. I will never survive her.

“Never mind, I don’t want to—”

She laid a hand on his arm. “Stop now. Is no need for making that red face more red. I win much gold from him in
reneñas
. I offer it back to him if he let me out harbor gate.”

“The harbor gate?” Derkh hadn’t noticed another gate.

“Yes, is gate at harbor side. Not for travelers. For ship’s cargo. Is always locked except for loading times.” Her look was stern now. “I have much trouble to return here. I circle around far from stronghold to escape searchers. Very rough country in darkness. I think, I never reach Niz Hana in time, you leave without me. Then when I find road again, what do I see?”

Derkh made a sudden guess, darted a look and saw in her brilliant smile that he was right.

“A broken cart, some dead men. Not you dead, is good sign. And then not much farther, I find horse, all ready for a rider.”

They sat in silence for a bit, close now to the heart of what had happened between them.

“There is something else I find.” Yolenka spoke so softly, her face veiled by a down-sweep of hair, that Derkh could barely make out the words. “You are not on the ship.” Her voice was wondering.

He shook his head. “No,” he said, “I wasn’t.” He waited while she hooked the sheet of hair behind her ear and raised her head to meet his eyes.

“I was ready to go back and find you,” he said. “I love you. Wherever you are, that’s where I want to be. I want to be your man.” And then, because it was Yolenka and because of what he had endured in the past week, he thought he had better be perfectly clear. “Your only man.”

“You
are
my only man,” she said, and for once there was no hint of teasing in her tone, but a low fierce passion. And she twined her arms around his neck, and right there on the busy deck he kissed her, and he didn’t let her loose until the whistle finally called them to eat.

The black water closed over her head and poured cold and oily into her mouth. It cut off all air, all light, and pushed her deep below the surface. She sank into utter blackness, drowned. At the bottom, Luc waited for her, his white throat gaping and closing in the current like gills.

With a harsh rasp Madeleine sucked at the air, pulling it through the painful swollen flap of her throat and sobbing it out again. She was weeping, and the more she gasped and cried the more her throat clenched shut. It was her dream all over again, only without any water.

“Maddy, easy now.”

Aunt Gabrielle. Madeleine felt the woman’s arms about her, felt her warm calm presence enter her.

“I can’t breathe!” She heaved, heard the breath rattle grudgingly into her lungs. “I can’t—”

“Nice and slow, love. Try like this.” Gabrielle adjusted Madeleine’s position, tipped her head back just a little in the crook of her arm. Something seemed to relax in her throat. “Little soft breaths.”

She needed more than little breaths, needed great rushes of air to chase away the dream, but Gabrielle breathed with her and as she grew calmer the air flowed back. Panic softened to confused sorrow.

“I’m dying,” she murmured. “Like Luc. His throat opened up, and he died. Because of me. My throat is closed up, and I’ll die too. Like Luc...”

“No, Madeleine.” Gabrielle’s voice was firm, like her mother’s almost. “You are not going to die. We are going to keep your throat open, and you will live.”

Madeleine didn’t know if that was true. She knew she had never been so sick, that “sore throat” didn’t remotely capture what was wrong with her. She thought if she drifted back to the dark, not-quite-sleep that filled her mind with bizarre dreams and bright wheeling colors, she might not awaken. She tried to hang onto
her aunt’s voice, but she was so tired. And her throat—she could not endure the sensation, not just the pain but the horror of it, her own tender tissue become monstrous.

Gabrielle’s voice faded away, but Madeleine felt the warm bright light flooding into her and knew her aunt was with her. Here was a better place to go than the dark dreams of her illness. She hung on until she felt cradled in Gabrielle’s warm presence, and then she gave herself up to sleep.

Y
OLENKA TAPPED ON THE CABIN
door and pushed it open.

“Gabrielle?”

It was dark in the little room, just one wall lamp casting a small pool of light. Yolenka could make out Gabrielle’s form sitting close by the girl’s bed. She was hunched over her patient, head drooping.

Fallen asleep, thought Yolenka. Like Féolan. Not used to staying up all night.

She laid down her tray and lit another lamp. Then she crossed the floor and laid a hand on Gabrielle’s shoulder, shook it gently.

“Gabrielle, wake up! I bring dinner.”

She felt the other woman start under her hand. Gabrielle straightened. She looked bleary.

“Sorry to wake you. Féolan asked me to make sure you ate.” Yolenka smiled. “Is good. Captain get fresh stores at Niz Hana market.”

“Well...” Gabrielle seemed reluctant, her gaze turning back to Madeleine. “Yes, I guess I had better, at that. Thanks.”

She ate, as they all had, with the steady indiscriminate efficiency of the very hungry. Neither of them spoke while Gabrielle loaded in the first restorative mouthfuls.

“Where’s Féolan?” Gabrielle asked.

“He say he is very tired and is going early to his bed,” answered Yolenka.

Gabrielle’s spoon paused on its way to her mouth and her brows creased, but she said nothing. Yolenka shrugged. “We will all join him soon. My bones are wanting death.” She guessed from Gabrielle’s startled glance that the expression hadn’t translated very well into Krylaise.
My bones long for the grave
, meaning heavy with the need to rest. Oh well.

“How is the girl?” she asked gently. Death was, perhaps, not the best word to use in a casual expression right now.

Gabrielle shook her head. “She lost a lot of ground during that ride. The membrane on her throat is really big now. It’s making it hard for her to breathe.”

Yolenka nodded. “Yes, I have seen that,” she said softly.

“I was thinking...” Gabrielle’s features were wide awake now, her green eyes dark and intent in the lamplight. “That membrane—it could suffocate her, couldn’t it?”

Yolenka gave a reluctant nod. “It happens sometimes.”

“Do your healers ever remove it? If it impedes the patient’s breathing, I mean? Could I not peel it away like a scab?”

Yolenka was shaking her head so hard her hair swung across her face.

“No! No, you must not!” Every child knew this. “You cannot pull aside the Veil. Beyond the Veil lies Death.”

Gabrielle stared at her. “But why? What happens? Is it because of the bleeding?”

Yolenka tried to think. It was folk knowledge in her country, not something she had ever seen done. What had her mother
told her? “There is bleeding, yes, but that is not the problem. Whenever it has been tried, the patient dies soon after,” she said. “They say the Veil is angry and sends an evil spell on the patient, but that is just...”

Gabrielle didn’t know the Tarzine word Yolenka resorted to, but she thought the phrase “country nonsense” might be close.

“But the danger is real,” Yolenka insisted. “The patient loses his muscles, he shakes, his heart stops. He dies.”

“His heart...” Gabrielle stared into space, her face still and closed. The remains of her dinner lay forgotten on the tiny side table. Long moments ticked by so that Yolenka wondered if her presence had become an intrusion. She had just reached across to gather up the tray, when Gabrielle spoke again.

“Yolenka, could you stay just a bit longer? I think I am close to understanding something here.”

Yolenka sat down. She didn’t know what Gabrielle thought she could do—children either recovered from the Veil or they didn’t, and there was little the most skilled healer could do about it—but if Yolenka’s sketchy knowledge could be of help, she would share it.

“You say when the Veil is removed, the patient’s whole body collapses? His heart stops, his limbs...”

“Yes, is like the sickness that was in his throat goes all through him.”

“Like a poison,” suggested Gabrielle.

Yolenka had a vivid uncomfortable memory of Turga convulsing at her feet. What would this gentle woman think of what she had done? But her idea was right.

“Yes,” she said, “I have seen poisoning. Is like that.”

It was remarkable the change that had come over Gabrielle. All signs of fatigue were gone. Her face was excited, eager even.

“I need to get to work now, Yolenka,” she said. “Thank you—for the food and even more for your knowledge. If my idea is right, and I pray it is, you may have just saved Madeleine.”

Strange woman, thought Yolenka, as she eased the door shut. Gabrielle was slumped over the girl’s bed again, to all appearances fast asleep. A ghost-chill ran up Yolenka’s back.
Not asleep
. Yolenka wasn’t sure what Gabrielle was doing, but it was something very different from sleep.

L
IKE A POISON
. Gabrielle had always felt there was some ominous power to this disease that she was not touching. What if it was a poison? What if that membrane, the Veil, was not only infecting Madeleine’s throat like any other illness but making a poison that spread throughout her body? It would explain why Gabrielle made so little progress as she worked. It would explain why removing the membrane was deadly—maybe that released the poison in a great flood, and the open wound on the throat absorbed it all at once. The poison would rush through the bloodstream and enter all the vital organs...

So, she could not pull aside the Veil. But she could look behind it. She would go there and discover the secret that lay behind its protective skin.

She calmed her own urgency, let her breath come slow and steady and weightless as thistledown. She let the little room fade away, let herself float on the swell and fall of the ship. She let the healing light fill her until it seemed the glow of it could brighten
the darkest deepest crevice in the ocean floor. Then she let that light pour into her niece, taking her inner vision with it.

S
HE HAD IT NOW
. This illness, this Gray Veil, made a double attack. Madeleine’s throat infection was real and aggressive, and Gabrielle’s fight to push back its spreading inflammation had not been useless. But it had not been half enough. For the hateful membrane on Madeleine’s throat was also making a powerful toxin. Even knowing what to look for, it was barely discernable in the infected tissues—like looking for a glimmer of candlelight in a room full of lamps. But as the membrane grew, so did the quantity of poison that oozed from behind its leathery surface. And like a dead pigeon in a well that taints the drinking water and sickens a whole village, the poison seeped into Madeleine’s blood, causing harm everywhere it traveled: heart, liver, kidneys—no wonder she had sickened so quickly!

But she was young and strong, her own body fighting hard against the invasion. There was no lasting damage yet. And Gabrielle knew what she was fighting now. For the first time in two days, she was confident that Madeleine would live.

The membrane was held at bay, and her circle of light would hold for a time. Madeleine’s breath was slightly obstructed and uneasy, but not to the point of true suffocation. All of Gabrielle’s power now could be trained on the evil alchemy taking place on the underside of the membrane.