Thorns of Decision (Dusk Gate Chronicles) (33 page)

 As he eased up on the reins, Skittles slowed to a trot, and he was glad he hadn’t loaded her up with the saddle bags as he’d originally intended to. She had broken a sweat, but seemed to have enjoyed the workout as much as he had. They stopped at the river so she could have a rest and a long drink before going the rest of the way to the tent clinic on the outskirts of the village.

William paused before he entered the tent, looking off in the distance toward the burned-out site of the clinic building. From where he stood he could see several people digging through the rubble, trying to salvage what items they could, and hauling the ruined wood and debris away. They hoped to get a new building erected before the end of carperos – autumn, and at least finish the half that served as Jacob and Essie’s home before days began to grow chilly.

Inside the tent, he was surprised to find Nathaniel alone with several patients. “What’s going on?” he asked, looking around at what appeared to be a mother and her three young children, two boys and a girl, all of whom looked close to the same age, somewhere between six and eight cycles, though one of the boys was definitely the oldest of the three. The boys sat together on one of the two portable cots they’d set up; the younger one had a fresh bandage wrapped around his lower leg.

“Oh, hey Will,” Nathaniel said, looking up from where he stood over the little girl’s cot, listening to her chest with his stethoscope. “Glad you’re here. This is Mara Halpern,” he nodded toward the mother who stood by her daughter, “and her little girl, Clara. The boys are Wesley and Darren.”

“Hello, Mrs. Halpern,” William said, looking at the woman. When she turned her face to him, he was surprised at how frightened she looked, and at how dirty she was. The three children were filthy as well. “I’m William.”

“Yes, hello Prince William. Please, call me Mara.”

He nodded. “What’s going on?” he asked again.

Mara’s lower lip trembled as she glanced around at her three children.

“They just got here about ten minutes ago,” Nathaniel said. “She brought them here because Darren over there fell near the fire pit and got a pretty good gash on his leg. But Clara has had a bad stomachache since yesterday, and she’s been getting worse.”

William looked down at the little girl for the first time. Her face was pale and sweaty; she looked like she was nauseous and hurting. He watched Nathaniel gently prod at her abdomen, and when he touched the lower right quadrant, Clara cried out. He looked up at his uncle in alarm.

Nathaniel looked at Mara, his gray eyes shining with the kindness and empathy that William strove to emulate. “We are going to take care of you and your children, Mara. Everything is okay; you’re safe here. But William and I are going to step outside and talk for a minute, okay?”

The woman didn’t look convinced – if anything she looked more frightened, but she nodded.

“Appendicitis?” William asked, once they were outside.

“That’s what it looks like. I want to get some blood and look more closely to be sure. We just don’t have half of what we need here without the clinic.”

William closed his eyes, turning his head toward the sky, trying to breathe, and silently berating himself for not loading Skittles down with more supplies for the trip here. “The castle is the closest real clinic. Do you think we have time to get her there?”

Nathaniel shrugged. “I have no idea, and I don’t even know what the bigger risk would be – that it’ll rupture and she’ll become septic on the way, or the risk of doing it out here over a dirt floor without half the supplies we need...”

“Who knows what kind of infection she could get from that,” William said. “And out here we wouldn’t be able to treat her as well if she did.”

“So we try moving her,” Nathaniel sighed. “We’re going to worry that poor woman half to death. She’s from Philotheum.”

William’s eyes popped wide. “Another one? How did she get here?”

“I guess there’s another small group camping out somewhere not far from here. There are two more children, one older and one younger back at the camp with her husband. They thought we’d be less likely to harm a woman, so she brought the kids here by herself. That little boy in there has a cut that needs at least five stitches, but thank the Maker that he got hurt this morning, or she would have never brought Clara before it was too late.”

William thought he might be sick. “She thinks we would hurt her husband. She’s not going to trust us taking her and her kids back to the
castle
.”

“I had just gotten her to trust me a little,” Nathaniel said, putting his hand over the left side of his chest, where William now knew there was a tattoo that marked him as a member of the Friends of Philip. “But she looked pretty afraid again when you walked in.”

“Where are Jacob and Essie?” William asked.

“Jacob is over helping at the clinic site – there was no need of him here when he left. But Essie went out to a farm about half an hour from here to help the midwife with a twin birth.”

“All right, well, I’ll go get Jacob while you talk to Mara. See if you can convince her to let us treat Clara at the castle.”

*          *          *

Half an hour later, William found himself alone at the clinic with Jacob and the three Halpern children. His muscles were tight with anxiety as he looked at the little girl’s gray-tinged face. He understood their mother’s concern. She didn’t want them to take her and her children anywhere without getting her husband first.

Although she’d decided to trust Nathaniel, she’d been wary of Jacob and William. He had seen the difficulty of the decision ravage her features just leaving the three children here while Nathaniel took her to find her husband. She’d almost taken Wesley with her, but the boys had put up a huge fuss about being separated. William, worried enough about helping Darren with his cut, had just barely convinced her to leave the brothers together.

After she left, they went to work over the little girl. Jacob tried to keep her calm while William got an IV started. Among the many other things the clinic was short on, they were out of valoris seed powder – a mild remedy that William usually used to alleviate minor pain and help keep patients calm.

Fortunately, they did have enough pain medication on hand that once the IV was in, Clara was able to fall asleep. Once she had, William helped Jacob carry some supplies outside so that he could get one of the wagons ready to serve as a temporary ambulance.

 They were certain now that it was appendicitis, and though they very much wanted to get Clara to the castle clinic to perform the surgery, they talked and made plans for an emergency appendectomy here if it became necessary.

As he loaded some blankets and pillows up onto the bed of the wagon, William looked up at Jacob. “Do you think they’re going to trust us long enough to get Clara back to the castle?”

Dark, heavy circles hung under Jacob’s eyes. He suddenly looked so much older that it was hard for William to believe that his cousin was only five cycles his elder. “I think it’s hard for anybody to trust anyone they don’t know right now, Will.”

William frowned. “Do you trust them?”

“I do,” his cousin sighed, “but only because I saw the woman’s tattoo. Half a cycle ago, the Friends of Philip was something I’d just barely heard a few stories about, and now, I’m starting to distrust anyone who doesn’t wear the symbol.”

William’s eyes widened. “Have you joined, Jacob?”

“No. I’ve thought about it. I do support their mission – I want the kingdoms reunited more than anything.”

“So what’s stopped you?” William felt strange himself about the issue – he wasn’t sure what he thought.

“I know it’s bad, but when I first heard about all of it, I thought of it as a Philothean issue – they’re the ones with the wrong people in the castle – why should it be our problem?”

He heard the ‘but’ in Jacob’s voice. “What changed?”

“This!” said Jacob, throwing up his hands in the direction of the tent that now served as his clinic. “The people I’ve met who are Friends of Philip, who want what I want – who believe in the right thing enough that they’re risking their lives for it. The first time I thought of joining, Essie and I both thought it was too dangerous. Why risk it? Why become a target if people found out?”

“You’re already a target,” William pointed out, glancing toward the horizon at the old clinic.

“Yeah, I am. And even if we weren’t already being attacked, just for helping people, just for doing
the right thing
, Essie and I are both starting to realize that we can’t just stay out of it and go about our own business, and still be the people we want to be.”

William frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean – look at what’s going on, Will. There are hundreds of these Philothean refugees now – they’re huddled in these camps, they don’t have the things they need, and they can’t find shelter, and
why?
Most of it isn’t because of a few dozen evil people from Philotheum who actually mean harm to them. It’s because of all the people who ‘don’t want to get involved,’ who just want to stay in their safe little villages and pretend that everything is okay. Or worse, they want Stephen to close the border and for the whole kingdom to look the other way from the things that are going on over there.”

William swallowed hard, a strange feeling forming in the pit of his stomach. “I never thought of it that way.”

“Until recently, neither did I. Now I can’t stop thinking about it. This isn’t the world I want my child to grow up in.”

William raised an eyebrow.

“Yes, Will, Essie and I are expecting a child. We just found out, right before all of this happened.”

*          *          *

Back inside the clinic, while Jacob finished getting the wagon ready, William approached the two little boys, the supplies he’d readied hidden in a small, covered box.

“Hey guys,” he said quietly. “Do you want to see something fun?”

Wesley, who was the oldest, eyed him warily, but nodded along with his younger brother who, even with a leg that was hurting him, was enthusiastically curious.

Even though he hadn’t loaded the saddle bags this morning, William was never completely empty-handed when he arrived at a clinic. He reached into the small, leather pouch he always carried, and withdrew a toy. It was a small puzzle-game he’d bought in Bristlecone, a brightly-colored cube covered in small squares. He took a few minutes now to show the boys how to twist and turn it, trying to match up the colors on each side.

They were fascinated. He let them play with it for several minutes, showing them a few tricks and getting them comfortable before he patted Darren softly on the knee, just above the bandage that Nathaniel had wrapped around his leg.

“Hey buddy, can I take a look at your cut while you play?” he asked, purposefully keeping his tone light.

Darren nodded, still absorbed in the game, but Wesley’s attention immediately honed in on what William was doing. He gave the protective older brother a friendly smile, but the boy relaxed only a little.

Darren whimpered when William tugged gently on a part of the bandage that had gotten stuck, and Wesley’s glare turned angry. “Don’t hurt my brother,” he said.

“I’m just looking at it right now,” William said, as he examined the cut. Nathaniel was right. It was going to need several stitches. He looked up at Wesley. “Hey, can you help me with something over here for a minute?”

“What?” the little boy asked, when William had gotten him out of his younger brother’s earshot. “What are you going to do to my brother? You’re not going to make him cry and then go to sleep like my sister, are you?”

William’s heart did a little flip at the boy’s concern. “We only gave your sister a little medicine to make her sleepy because her tummy was hurting so much,” he said. “We’re going to fix it soon, but right now the best thing she can do is rest. She’s going to be okay.”