Alex Bledsoe - Burn Me Deadly

The door opened and a kindly gray-haired woman wrapped in a robe held up a lamp. She saw Nicky’s pale, sweaty face and immediately stepped aside. “First room to your left,” she said. “Put her on the table.”

One of the apprentices, a young woman clad in a thin sleeping gown, appeared rubbing her eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“This girl’s been poisoned,” the older woman said. “Get water heated for a bath. Put sea salt and draw-weed in it.”

The apprentice understood the urgency and scurried to obey. The older woman followed me into the small examination room, opened the red robe and scowled at Nicky’s skimpy loincloth. “Did you buy her for the evening and things got out of hand?” she snapped at me.

“No,” I said. “She’s not a whore; she’s just a girl who got in over her head and fought back.”

She looked at me oddly. “Mr. LaCrosse?”

I nodded.

“I didn’t recognize you without the bandage around your head. You should reconsider whoever gave you that haircut, though. Here, make yourself useful and light the other lamps.” As I followed orders, she lifted the girl’s eyelids, sniffed at her shallow breath and checked her pulse at her throat. Exposed this way, askew and covered in unhealthy sweat, Nicky looked even more helpless, as Laura Lesperitt must’ve looked to Doug Candora. He hadn’t hesitated then, either.

“We never officially met, but I’m Mother Mallory,” the woman said. “I assisted Mother Bennings on your case, goddess keep her soul. So who is this?”

“Her name’s Nicky, and that’s really all I know about her.”

“Well, we’ll do what we can,” she said, and turned away from me. I was being dismissed.

I cleared my throat. “I’m not leaving,” I said with certainty.

“You can’t help.”

“I’ll try to stay out of the way.”

She started to protest again, then nodded. “Pick her up and follow me, then.”

We went into the next room, where the apprentice had a large tub filled with water above a low-burning fire. Mother Mallory removed the skimpy loincloth and I placed Nicky, now totally nude, in the bath. The water was already hot. She looked like a deathly ill child, small and pitiful. Her eyelids fluttered and she tried to speak, but made no coherent sound.

“Keep the fire going at this level,” Mother Mallory said to the apprentice. I understood the treatment; if Nicky could sweat out enough of the poison, she might survive it, although it could still do permanent damage. If I’d gotten her here sooner, or known what the poison actually was, an antidote might’ve been provided. Under the circumstances, though, this was her only real chance.

“There’s nothing to do but wait,” Mother Mallory said sadly. “I suspect, from the smell, that she was given an extract of six-devil tea, but I can’t be sure. And if it was more than fifteen or twenty minutes ago, the standard antidote would have no effect.” She tenderly stroked Nicky’s tangled hair. “It all depends now on how large a dose she ingested, and how strong she is.”

The apprentice, her nightgown clinging translucently to her sweaty form, returned with two stools. “If you’re going to wait,” she said to me, “you might as well sit down.”

I took off my jacket and unbuckled my empty scabbard. I placed the stool in the corner where I could see Nicky’s face and settled back into the notch of the two walls. I yawned and closed my eyes for just a moment.

I snapped awake when a hand shook me. “Hey.”

The scribe looked down at me. He had a kindly, easy smile and eyes that were clear and sharp. The tight curls at his temples were white. He was at least my age, maybe older, and radiated a calm, seen-it-all demeanor. The other scribes I’d met over the years had a scholarly, chilly air befitting their isolation from the world’s concerns. This one seemed more grounded. “Sorry. Hate to wake you up, but we need to talk.”

I looked around. I couldn’t have been out long; Mother Mallory still sat beside the tub, and Nicky hadn’t moved, although the apprentice had changed into a less revealing tunic. The room’s air was hazy and smelled sickly-sweet, the same odor I’d caught on Nicky’s breath. I knew nothing about six-devil tea extract; I wondered if it was toxic in steam, too. I stood, wincing at the door-kicking ache in my leg and hip, and yawned.

“We’ll be out in the courtyard,” the scribe said. Mother Mallory nodded. I followed him outside, where the summer night air felt cool and dry compared to the sickroom.

“Come on; let’s have a smoke and exchange stories,” he said, and led me into a courtyard. Neat patches of herbs and flowers showed in the moonlight. The windows of all the other patient rooms were dark.

He reached into the shadowy space beneath a stone bench and withdrew my sword. “No one from the house showed their noses after you left. I stayed and watched until people started yelling inside.”

“I bet they did,” I said. Marantz and the others would have returned through the tunnel.

He handed me my sword. “The girl that important?”

“No,” I sighed, suddenly bone tired. My scabbard was still inside, so I leaned the sword against the nearest wall. “Just that the people who hurt her hate being embarrassed by things like me taking her out the front door.”

“Your daughter?”

I shook my head. “Just a friend.”

“Name’s Harry Lockett, by the way,” the scribe said, offering his hand.

“Eddie LaCrosse.” His grip was strong. The scribes I’d met in the past had weak grips, betraying their fear that they might injure their writing hand.

He caught my reaction. “I didn’t come up through the scribe academy,” he said with a laugh. “It was more of a mid-life career change. That’s why I don’t shake hands like a six-year-old girl.”

“And why you know where the safety is on a Shadow Slasher III.”

He laughed. “I’m more interested in what you know, Mr. LaCrosse. Like why Prince Frederick of Muscodia is living in an old whorehouse in Neceda.”

I shrugged. “I was as surprised as you. I suppose he’s a dragon worshipper, like the rest of them.”

“Then it makes some sort of sense,” he said seriously.

“It does?”

“Sure. You know anything about the history of this area?”

“No. I’m not from here.”

In a stentorian voice he proclaimed, “Long before men came to what we now call Muscodia, this whole area was the domain of the dragon.” This was how scribes recited their stories in royal courts, and even now it made me stand up straight, like I was a little boy back in the throne room with my father.

A window opened somewhere and a sleepy female voice said, “ Shut up! ”

Lockett grinned. “I know, hard to believe, but it’s true,” he said in a normal voice. “Ever wonder how the Black River Hills got their name?”

“From the Black River?”

He mock sighed in annoyance and began packing a pipe with dark, serrated leaves. “Okay, okay. How did the river get its name?”

“I heard because it’s so deep in places the water looks black.”

“No. There were originally two names, the Black Hills and the Black River. They got combined over time, and their origins were lost. Both came from a time when the river and the hills were black with accumulated ash.”

“From dragons breathing fire?”

He grinned. “Now you’re catching on.” He held the pipe in his teeth, struck a flint over it and sucked until the flame caught. “Want to hear the story?”

I looked back at the door to the hospital. I could do nothing for Nicky; going after Candora right now certainly would not help her. I really wanted to talk to Liz, but that thought sent warning hackles up my back. I felt adrift. So I said, “Sure.”