Carol Berg - Breath and Bone

“Dizzy,” I said. “Part of that ugly business earlier. I’ll try not to let it happen again. But if I should, just slap me. Kick me. Call me a gatzi spawn and get me moving.”

There was no going back. I shook off the worry, took myself back into quiet, and focused on the plan. “I wasn’t out for long, was I? They didn’t call the watch?”

“Nay. Not yet.”

“Sixth watch. All hail the mighty Gehoum!” When it came at last, the call rippled through the fortress, passed from one voice to another, advancing and receding around each level according to the caller’s distance from our stair.

“I’m going to treat you like a prisoner,” I said, prodding both of us to our feet. “When we reach the prison level, call for your mam to let me know.”

When the watch cry circled the level just below us and came round again to the stair, I bellowed my own, “Sixth watch. All hail the mighty Gehoum!” I grabbed the neck of Jullian’s borrowed shirt and whispered in his ear, “Fight me.” Then I dragged him down the stair as fast as I could, right past the guardsmen changing their posts. “Filthy little beggar,” I grumbled. “Ye’ll sleep in yer cell again tonight, and every night, if I have my way of it. Don’t think to get out of it by whimpering to no one.”

I was afraid at first Jullian hadn’t understood my instruction, but then he set to pummeling my ribs with such ferocity, I had to wrestle him under my arm, and still he would squirm loose. One of the guards we passed on the downward stair laughed and called after us, “Got a feisty one there!”

No one bothered us as we descended into the depths of the fortress, and Jullian had no need to call for his long-dead mother. The stair ended in a circular pit. Torches burned in sconces on the wall, but their light did not illuminate much past three dark openings in the wall. Mighty gods…

Two of the openings were blocked by collapsed walls or ceilings. The third opened into a passage, and from it issued a low keening I could scarce define as human, as if all the pain and despair this place had known had been drawn together into one terrible voice. Stearc’s voice.

I set Jullian on his feet, but I did not release my hold on him. To Gram, I mouthed, and urged him forward, my hand on his shoulder, ready to sweep him out of the way if we encountered trouble.

The passage appeared to be deserted as the boy had said. And as his sketch had shown, his own cell was first inside the doorway. Its position near the exit and its door of open bars had left him better air, if the thick, unwholesome vapors of this place could be named air. Torchlight revealed straw and blankets and a rusty lamp mounted on the wall unlit. Perhaps it had been a guardroom at one time.

But the cells farther down the passage—all but two empty, according to Jullian—had no such amenities. I held my arm over my mouth and nose and worked as hard as I knew how to keep focused. My king lay dying in this fetid darkness.

We arrived at a thick iron door similar to the one on my tower room, only with a slot at the bottom for passing food and slops, and an eye-level grate for observing the inmate. A lung-stripping cough and fevered mumbling from inside the cell were sufficient to set me working on the lock.

Crude, warded by only the simplest magic, it succumbed more easily than the one on my tower door. I dragged the heavy door open, hoping the scrape of hinges would not bring guards running. The stench of sickness and rot escaped the cell in a flood, clogging my throat with bile. Torchlight from the passage revealed a dark form curled on the floor of dirt, rubble, and a scattering of moldy straw.

“Close the door all but a crack,” I whispered to the boy. “Keep watch.”

I ducked through the low door, stepped over a tin cup and an untouched bowl of something manifestly inedible, and dropped to my knees beside the prisoner. He clutched a threadbare blanket around his racked shoulders. The cramped cell felt cold as a tomb.

A cough broke into words. “Milkmaids merry ’neath a cherry blossom tree. Spring comes anon and they’re beckonin’ me.” The chatter of teeth punctuated this rasping singsong.

“Quietly now,” I said, and touched his shoulder. He jerked as if I’d stabbed him. The heat of his fever near blistered my hand, even through blanket and glove. “Can you sit up?”

From the far end of the passage, Stearc’s formless wail sharpened into a bellow of agony. A shudder rippled Osriel’s slender body. “Master’s crying in the hall. Kenty’s never got the ball. All fall. All fall. All fall…”

“He’s been that way since they brought him,” offered Jullian in a whisper. “Out of his head.”

Great gods have mercy. Trying not to twist or strain his joints—Saverian had warned me to be careful—I rolled him onto his back. Osriel was almost unrecognizable in the poor light…more than being grimy and unshaven. His eyes were sunken, his neck swollen, his skin cracked and peeling. I fumbled at my waist for Saverian’s amber vial and broke the wax seal.

Though the prince’s eyes were closed, his unmusical croaking continued. “Grapes die in the fields. Warriors die on their shields. Angels dance in the trees. Gatzi dance—”

“Gram, listen to me.” I lifted him up and cradled his lolling head, shook his chin, tugged at his hair. “I’ve brought you medicine from an old friend of yours. She says you must drink it all, even if it tastes like the dead man’s boots.”

His fevered mumbling ceased abruptly, and his eyes flicked open as if I’d dropped ice in his trews. He squinted in the feeble light, his gaze running from my fingers to my head. “Valen!”

I almost dropped him from the surprise.

His mind, it appeared, was not so sorely affected by his illness as his body. His hoarse expulsion of my name sent him into a fit of coughing, and his body tried to roll to the side and curl into a knot, as if to escape the force of the spasms. Every movement wrenched an agonized grunt from him. I would have sworn he was laughing, too, or sobbing. Or more likely both at once, as Stearc was screaming again.

Trying to cushion his pain, I held Osriel tight until his paroxysm ceased and his shallow, gasping breaths had slowed. “Let’s get the good physician’s potion down you.” I emptied the vial down his throat, stuffed it back in my pocket, and used my teeth to yank the glove from my free hand. Whispering the words Saverian had said would speed the healing effects of the medicament, I touched his forehead and released magic in a tickling flood. Unfortunately we’d have to move him before the remedy could do its work.

“The boy,” he croaked. “He’s in this pit, too. And Stearc…”

“Jullian’s here with us. We’re going to take you out of here first. I’ll come back for Stearc.” Even if the thane had no torturers working on him at the present, I could not carry two injured men at once.

“He can’t last much longer. You won’t leave him here…no matter what…” This was as close to a command as a man in Osriel’s state could give.

“I’ll do everything I can.”

He squeezed his eyes shut and his mouth tight as I helped him to sitting. Shoulders, elbows…his every joint felt hot and swollen. “He has held all these wretched days…giving them some story. They haven’t touched me.”

Once he was sitting up on his own, I scraped together what straw and rubble lay within reach.

“Sorry, I need your blanket.” I snatched it away, near ripping the worn fabric in half, and tucked it around the pile. With a poorly structured inflation spell, the mound somewhat resembled a body.

As I picked up the glove I’d pulled off to work the magic, Osriel grabbed my wrist and held my glowing hand where he could see. His face tilted up toward mine, unreadable in the blue glow. “Two wonders in a single day,” he whispered. “A Harrower gives me a blanket out of mercy, and you appear at my side like Iero’s angel. Did I die when I was not paying attention, or have you come to see to that?”