Ginn Hale - Lord of the White Hell book Two

Elation surged through Kiram's exhaustion. He bolted to his feet and, grabbing a lamp, started out the infirmary doors.

"Kiram?" Scholar Blasio gazed at him with gentle worry. "What are you doing?"

"I'm going to bring your brother back to you." Kiram grinned. "Don't wait up for me."

In the tower storage room Kiram moved between the dozens of disused mechanical cures like a moth searching for a flame. In one only a few glass panels were viable, but among them was exactly the sequence of incantations that Kiram needed. He jotted notes and then moved to another broken machine. As he found more and more of the pieces he needed his pulse raced faster and he laughed to himself, half delirious with exhaustion and excitement. Steadily his notes grew into an exact design for the parts he required. He mapped everything out: where each glass panel and iron screw would come from and where they should go.

When he at last stumbled from the tower, he found morning light illuminating the marble staircase and glowing through the vast halls of the academy. In the infirmary everyone was sleeping until Kiram entered and let out a wild crow of triumph. Then only Donamillo remained motionless in his bed.

Kiram bounded gleefully between the cots while Elezar and Nestor stared at him and Javier shoved his tousled hair back from his face. Kiram waved his notes and explained everything much too quickly. He smirked at Donamillo's mechanical cure and feigned punching it. For a moment even Javier looked at him like he might have gone mad.

"You're off your nut, underclassman." Genimo shook his head at Kiram.

"No. I am on my nut! We can do this. We really can." Kiram tried to calm down but only his excitement was keeping him awake and on his feet. "We can rebuild Donamillo's mechanical cure using the parts from his old machines up in the tower. If we do it right we'll be able to exactly reverse the effect. We'll be able to force Donamillo back into his own body. I've worked it all out! We're going to beat the bastard at his own game." Kiram held his notes out to Javier. "The strength of youth farts in the face of age and experience, ha!"

Scholar Blasio's brows rose with worry, but Javier took the notes and carefully read through them.

"This will work?" Javier asked. Thin red scratches slashed his pale skin, bandages wrapped his deeper wounds, and shadows darkened the hollows of his face and yet the hope that lit his expression made him beautiful.

Kiram nodded and his head felt like it was bouncing on a spring.

"Then we'd better get started." Javier turned to Elezar and Nestor. "It's going to be heavy lifting and I think the staff might give us some trouble-"

"I'll talk to the staff," Blasio assured him. "Just do what you have to."

"I'll get my tools-" Kiram started for the doors but Javier caught his shoulder and spun him back around.

"Have you slept at all?" Javier asked him.

"Not yet but-"

"Then rest." Javier pushed him to a cot. "We'll gather the things you need. Once it's all here, I'll wake you to put it all together. You're going to need your sleep for that."

Kiram would have objected but lying down just felt so very good. He decided that he would rest his eyes for a few minutes just to placate Javier and then get right back to work. He rested his head on his pillow and closed his eyes. An instant later a thoughtless deep sleep took him.

The clang of metal and swearing nearly woke him. His eyes fluttered open, and he caught a glimpse of Javier and Elezar muscling huge pieces of iron through the infirmary doors. Nestor tugged a thick coil of wire into the room behind them. Then Kiram's lids dropped and he slept on.

In the heat of afternoon Javier shook him awake. Kiram groaned and slowly dragged his aching, stiff body out of the cot. His hands were a mess of abrasions and bruises. And he suspected that his face wasn't much better. At least he wasn't the only one. Javier, Nestor and Elezar all sported welts and scratches from last night's encounter with the jays.

Though Kiram couldn't see why several deep scratches slashed across Scholar Blasio's forehead.

"The birds are getting worse. They're mobbing just about anybody," Nestor announced. "And it's getting dark outside, even though it's only noon."

The shadow curse was drawing closer.

Suddenly he was very awake. Hundreds of machine parts greeted him as he surveyed the infirmary. Last night when he'd been writing it out on paper, transforming Donamillo's mechanical cure had seemed so simple. Now the physical reality of all that metal, glass and wire loomed over Kiram.

Javier handed Kiram his notes and his tools.

"Can you still do it?" Javier asked and Kiram knew that Javier was afraid that Kiram's plan had been more the product of delirium than realism.

"I can do it," Kiram assured him.

He didn't waste time but went straight to the heart of the matter, wrenching apart the iron ribs and smashing out the glass panels that needed to be removed.

"Let me help with that." Elezar hefted up one of the braces that Kiram had struggled with.

"Thanks."

"Anything I could do?" Nestor asked.

Kiram put them both to work, hauling, lifting and bracing ungainly machine parts. Javier however stepped back from them all and knelt on the floor, writing curling Bahiim symbols in tight columns. As Kiram spliced new wires into the stripped harness of Donamillo's mechanical cure, Javier enclosed them in protective wards.

Genimo offered to help, but he worked too slowly and too sloppily for Kiram to use him. Fortunately Scholar Blasio asked Genimo to help him with Donamillo's body. Genimo seemed far more suited to dribbling water between the old man's lips than aligning delicate glass panels.

The raucous screams of blue jays became so constant that Kiram stopped hearing them. But the growing darkness outside the windows gnawed at him. He disregarded the stew Genimo brought him in favor of his work.

Javier looked like he was going to insist but then the infirmary doors flew open and Master Ignacio charged in with a bleeding groom in his arms. Ignacio took all of them and the chaos of machinery in with a single sweeping glare.

"Blasio!" Ignacio shouted. "This boy needs your help. NOW!"

Blasio bolted from his brother's bedside and rushed to help Ignacio lay the groom on one of the cots. As they laid him back Kiram felt bile rise in his throat. The young man was nearly cut in half: bowels hung exposed from a bloody, gaping wound.

"What the hell happened to him?" Elezar demanded.

"Some demon tore him open in the shadows of the orchard!" Master Ignacio turned his furious gaze on Javier and his hand went to his sword hilt.

"It wasn't my doing." Javier stood straight and met the master's glare directly.

"It wasn't!" Scholar Blasio insisted. He met Ignacio's gaze for only a moment and then looked back down at the groom. "It's my brother's handiwork. This and Fedeles Quemanor's madness, and even the murder of the groom last year. He's done so much harm." Blasio's voice broke and he turned away.

"What in the name of God are you talking about?" Ignacio demanded. Blasio looked too close to tears to speak. He simply shook his head, then lifted a sheet and laid it over the unmoving groom. Then he turned and sat beside his brother's body.

The groom was dead, Kiram realized.

"If you'll listen I'll tell you, Master Ignacio." Javier cautiously stepped closer to Ignacio.

Ignacio studied Javier and then nodded.

While Javier spoke with the war master, Kiram tried to put the dead groom out of his mind. Red stains seeped up through the sheet that Blasio had laid over the body. In the heat of the afternoon the smell of blood and death saturated the air.

Kiram focused on the last glass panel, wedging it into place and then ever so carefully screwing in the brackets that linked it to the curving ribs. With that done, he stoked the fire of his own steam engine. Heat radiated from the boiler and Kiram tossed in more wood.