Biton took another shaky breath and reached out to clutch the edge of Korinna’s dress. “It’s my mama and papa. They’re sick.”
“You’re a brave boy to come and tell us,” Korinna said with a reassuring smile. “I’ll go fetch the healer and we’ll take her to your parents.”
She glanced at Aeson again, and he nodded. “I’ll wait here with him,” he said, smiling too, but it seemed to be more for her than the boy. She brushed his shoulder with her hand before leaving.
The healer, an old woman named Nysa, lived in a little tower on the wall, with her own herb garden in the courtyard below. Since they didn’t know what kind of illness had struck the tanner and his wife, she brought an entire healing kit along with her, a heavy basket stuffed with packets and jars of medicine. Korinna offered to carry it but the healer clutched the basket as if it were more precious than gold.
The tanner’s cottage was easy to find in the village, standing some distance apart from its neighbors to keep the smell of curing hides from disturbing the other villagers. But when they were still some yards down the street from the home, Nysa put her hand out and stopped the rest of the group.
“Don’t go any closer,” the healer warned. “This is no ordinary sickness.” She pointed at something along the ground near the cottage.
Korinna looked where the healer was pointing and saw a creeping black fog across the ground, despite the sun high in the clear blue sky. “What is that?”
Nysa’s face had turned pale, and she cupped her hand to her forehead, invoking the gods’ blessing. “Tryphaestos save us,” she said in a shaky voice, praying to the god of healing. “It’s miasma, bringing the Black Death upon us again. You must fetch the priest and pray that he can drive it away before it spreads any farther.”
Korinna had never seen miasma before; the last time it had struck, she was only an infant, but she’d heard stories about the destruction that followed in its wake. “Where is Father Isokytres today?” she murmured to Aeson. She knew the local priest traveled out from his shrine on a weekly rotation, visiting all of the villages under his protection, but in her moment of panic, she couldn’t remember which one he was scheduled to be at.
Aeson licked his lips nervously. “Um, Sestyn, I’m pretty sure.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Take the boy back to the manor, and I’ll go.”
Korinna put her hand on top of his, grateful for the comfort, but she shook her head. “I’m a better runner,” she said with a faint smile. “I’ll get the priest. Go tell the guards to quarantine off this area—if anyone needs shelter, they can come to the manor.” She stepped closer, craning her neck to whisper in his ear. “Try not to let my mother hear about this yet.”
Aeson bent toward her, and his eyes locked on hers as if he was trying to convey some message to her by look alone. The air between them was charged with something Korinna had never felt before. But when he finally spoke, he only said, “Yes, my lady.”
Korinna forced herself to clear her mind, tied her skirts up at her waist to be out of her way, and took off running without another look back. She stretched out her legs and took deep breaths, pacing herself as she followed the road north. Sestyn was only the next village up the river, but it was five miles, and she needed to save her strength to make it the whole way. Slow and steady would serve her better than an all-out sprint.
***
Before long, she was past Anoberesovo’s familiar fields and out into the wild land between the villages. The main stone road was flat and even, with sloped sides so the rainwater trickled off instead of pooling, easy to run on and relatively safe. It followed the river’s west bank and the trees which grew along it were trimmed back regularly for wood. Typically, the only wild animals here were birds and raccoons, small creatures who hid at the first sound of a human’s approach. People regularly traveled back and forth along the road without a second thought.
But if there was miasma in the village, wyld magic had already encroached on their homes. Korinna didn’t know where wyld magic came from, whether the curse of demons or the forces of nature gone horribly wrong, but she knew it brought devastation to humans and their way of life. Every year, priests blessed the boundaries of each village, driving back the wyld with the power of the Gods; the destructive magic fought back to reclaim their settled lands, with dangerous monsters to kill people and livestock, and plants that grew rapidly to choke their cultivate fields. Sometimes, entire villages were lost, swallowed by the wyld. Sometimes people won back more land and founded new settlements, but these were rare. They were outnumbered—barely one-tenth of the land belonged to the humans, and the wilderness surrounded them on every side.
Korinna stayed on the alert as she ran, peering into the shadows under the trees and listening for sounds above her breathing and the slap of her feet along the road.
Once she heard a rustle in the brush, too large to be a raccoon or squirrel, and her heart rose into her throat—but then a deer bounded across the road and disappeared into the trees. Korinna slowed a little, breathing heavily to recover from the scare, but she did not dare stop. She pushed on to the north.
By the time she reached Sestyn, her mouth was dry. She rested long enough to drink water from a spring that ran just outside the village to join the river, then splashed more on her face and the back of her neck. The water refreshed her and cooled her skin. If she could get a little food for the noon meal, she’d be in good shape to run back to Anoberesovo that afternoon.
A villager directed her to the schoolhouse, where she found Father Isokytres in the middle of a lesson with his young students. She bowed respectfully and waited for him to excuse himself from the children. There was no need to frighten them all with her news.
The priest drew her aside, just outside the building, and listened patiently to her desperate story. When she’d finished, he sighed and nodded. “I’ve heard some news of miasma spreading out from the capital into the villages,” he said sadly. “I didn’t think it would reach so far north this quickly, but we can’t predict its movements. I’ll get my things and come do what I can.”
Since the priest traveled between villages, his things were already packed in a small carry sack, but he stopped by one of the cottages where a kind matron offered them both food for the road. Korinna gratefully accepted two grape leaves stuffed with rice and lamb, a small bag of dried figs, and a skin of water, thanking the matron for her hospitality. Sestyn wasn’t part of her mother’s estate, but country people were always kind and shared what they had.
Korinna ate her food as they walked, but there was a knot in her stomach from the priest’s earlier words. “This disease started in the capital?” she asked him when they were away from the village. The city was supposed to have the strongest protections from wyld magic—what hope did the rest of them have if the city was struck with the Black Death?
Isokytres shook his head. “No one ever knows where it starts. It could have come from Sympaia to the south, or somewhere else.” His long legs walked quickly down the road, but she still chafed at their speed, wishing she could run as she had come. “I will do my best to keep it from spreading further, but I am only a humble village priest of a small shrine. This miasma has never been fully eradicated—it comes back every ten or fifteen years, just as deadly as before.”
Korinna swallowed the last bite of food without really tasting it. “And the Black Death that it brings,” she said, turning the bitter words over in her mouth. “Can it be cured?”
Isokytres made a sign to ward off evil when she spoke the name. “With tender care and solemn prayer, some of the patientsIsokytres do overcome this illness.” He looked up to the sky as if searching for strength. “Alas, in most cases, it is fatal. We do the best that we can, but the Fates measure the length of our lives, and no mortal can choose when our cord will be cut.”
Korinna wanted to ask more questions, but the priest fell silent for the rest of the walk back to Anoberesovo, his lips moving in prayers to the gods.
She kept her mouth shut and watched the trees on either side of the road instead. She was a little safer on the return trip since it was part of a priest’s duties to drive away the monsters, but she still wouldn’t be taken by surprise. Dark powers had touched the land and some of the light seemed to have gone out of the world, even on the sunny afternoon.
When they got home, Isokytres went to the tanner’s cottage alone and Korinna went back to the manor to help out the families who were pushed out of their homes by the quarantine. She hoped they’d had early enough warning to stop the miasma before it was too late She couldn’t bear the thought of anyone in her village dying from this terrible sickness.
***
The first few days, Korinna didn’t see any of the patients who had been struck by the illness, because the priest and the healer kept a strict quarantine at one end of the village and wouldn’t allow anyone else to come near. She did her part to help deliver supplies to the edge of the restricted area, but she was too far away to see anything, no matter how she craned her neck and tried to peer into the shuttered houses.
But it wasn’t long before she found out why the illness was called the Black Death. The miasma spread until it covered a third of the village, and soon the sickness had hold of many families. Worse, some of the ones who had come to the manor for shelter early on fell sick. Black spots began to spread across their bodies, a terrifying sight; they burned hot with fever and cried out at hallucinations, often claiming to see monsters that weren’t there.
Korinna refused to be frightened of the illness in her own home. She declared the manor another quarantine zone, and sent away all of the household staff who were still healthy, although no one was permitted to leave Anoberesovo—she didn’t want to infect the other villages nearby. The steward, Myron, set up emergency shelters in the hay barns that offered little comfort, but at least gave them a dry place out of the rain. Korinna personally helped tend the sick in the manor, bringing them clean water and the thin broth that the healer recommended for nourishment, reassuring each one and praying for the wyld magic to leave their bodies.
The work kept her busy all during the day and often late into the night, leaving her exhausted. But it was better to be occupied with the mindless work than give herself more than a moment to worry about what might happen. Because one of the first people who fell sick in the manor was Pherenia.
Korinna cursed her foolishness for letting people shelter in the manor and exposing her mother to the illness, even though the healer said it wasn’t her fault. She thought her heart would stop that awful morning she’d found Pherenia collapsed on the floor next to her bed. At first, she’d thought her mother had only fallen, but then she saw the telltale black spots already creeping up her fingers and toes.
Every moment that she wasn’t working, Korinna knelt on the floor in prayer. “I know it’s a selfish request,” she murmured, addressing every god that she could name, and apologizing to the ones that she couldn’t—it was said there were five hundred gods of Seirenia, but even most priests didn’t know all of them by name. “I don’t wish death upon any of them, but please, at the very least, spare my mother. I can’t imagine living without her.”
A week after the miasma first appeared in the village, the deaths began. Brave volunteers went from house to house to collect the dead and cart them away. There was no chance for proper funerals with mourning processions and music—the victims were burned on mass pyres and the ashes scattered far away from the farm.
As the priest had promised, a few of the patients recovered, and this gave Korinna a small hope to cling to. The black spots left their bodies completely, and within a few days, their strength had returned, allowing them to return to work as if they’d never been sick. But there was no way of predicting who would live or die—sometimes small children got better while their parents perished, sometimes it was the very old who were spared for another year, and others fell in between. No treatment or prayer was proven more effective than another. It seemed the gods bestowed Their favor for reasons known only to Them.
Still, Korinna thought that someone might know something outside of their little village, a secret to dispelling this dreadful illness. She couldn’t watch her mother waste away each day and not try everything she could to improve her chances. She wrote a desperate letter to the duke, pleading for his help to save Pherenia—but then she didn’t know how it could reach him. If there was illness in the city, too, there was no way she could ask one of her people to risk themselves by going there, and she dared not leave her mother’s side herself.
One morning, when she went to the gate of the courtyard to pick up the supplies left by villagers outside the quarantine, she found Aeson waiting for her. He looked different without his squire’s uniform—the plain villager’s clothes were looser, but his shirt was open at the collar, still giving a glimpse of the developing muscles of his chest and broad shoulders. His face showed the same strain they all felt since the illness had started, but he lit up with a smile at the sight of her.
Korinna took a cautious step back from him, fearful that some miasma might cling to her from the patients she tended, although she couldn’t keep a small smile off her own face in return. “You shouldn’t have come this close,” she warned him.
Aeson closed the distance between them and lifted his hand, but stopped just short of touching her. “I, uh, I was worried about you,” he stammered out. “I wanted to know if there was anything I could do to help.”
Korinna saw concern and eagerness in his eyes, but she was afraid of taking advantage of his feelings. “Myron tells me that you’re already a great help by giving an extra hand in the fields.” The steward left her regular reports along with her supplies, and he’d written that the squire worked hard to take the place of those who were incapacitated by the sickness. Even with the miasma, the usual work of the farm must go on—animals and crops wouldn’t wait, and the food for her patients had to come from somewhere. “I can’t ask anyone else to come into the manor. The blacksmith just got out of bed yesterday, and he’s already started to give me some help, so my work will be a little lighter from now on,” she added brightly.
She didn’t add that some of her patients had already passed away, too, so there were fewer bedsides for her to tend. She could not dwell on the dead or she would succumb to despair.
Aeson nodded. “Thank the gods that he was spared,” he said reverently. He ran a hand through his hair, which was growing out of the short regulation cut of the guards. “And your mother—how is she doing?”
Korinna looked at the ground. “Growing weaker.” The blackness had spread up Pherenia’s arms and legs, and a new spot had appeared on her mother’s cheek, marring her face. She barely recognized the emaciated woman lying in her bed. Yet Pherenia still clung to life longer than many of the others had lasted. Where there was life, there was hope.
Aeson cleared his throat nervously. “Could your father—I mean, His Grace—could he do something? If you told him what was happening?”
She shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know…” She took a shuddering breath. “Father Isokytres told me there’s no known cure, and even if the duke had some miracle, I don’t know if he still cares enough to save her. I haven’t heard anything from him in a while.”
He finally got up the courage to take her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “I’ll go to the city personally and demand his help. He has a duty to protect you and your mother, if not the rest of us. Write a letter and I’ll go.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Korinna said, shaking her head. Her hand tingled with warmth at his touch, but she wouldn’t let that sway her. “There’s sickness in the capital, too. I can’t ask you to risk yourself like that.”
He leaned down so his face was bare inches away from hers. “You’re not asking me, I’m insisting. Please, Korinna,” he murmured. “Let me do this for you.”
Shivers ran up her spine when he spoke her name, but the feeling was not unpleasant. Sin
ce they’d left school, he always called her “my lady”, but this wasn’t like when they were children together. “I don’t want anything to happen to you,” she found herself saying, and realized that her concern for him was more than just her protective feeling for all of her people. She cared for him. And yet the possibility that the duke could actually help them was the only chance she could see to save her mother.
Fortunately, she’d been keeping the letter she already wrote in her pocket while she was trying to figure out how to send it. She pulled it out and pressed it into his other hand. “Please be careful.”
Aeson clutched the letter to his chest like it was a precious relic and nodded. “I can’t run as fast as you,” he said with a slight smirk, “but I’ll go and come back with a reply as quickly as I can. And I promise to be careful.”
He started to pull back, but she refused to let go of his hand. She put her other hand around his neck and drew him down closer into a kiss.
Warmth spread through her when his lips met hers. He tasted faintly of salt and something else she couldn’t name. After a moment’s hesitation, his arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her against him and deepening the kiss. For once, all other thoughts fled her mind, the concerns melting away as she lost herself in the sensations of his embrace.
When Aeson finally released her, she was breathless and dizzy. She stepped back for support from the cool stone walls of her manor. “May the gods guide you on your journey,” she prayed, her eyes locking with his.
He smiled down at her. “May They protect you until I return. Good-bye, Korinna,” he added, rolling her name on his tongue.
Korinna lifted her hand in farewell, but she had to close her eyes as he turned and jogged away to the main road. She couldn’t bear the sight of him leaving.
The Duke's Daughter Page 3
