The Prison Healer

by Lynette Noni

  Naari snorted her disbelief.

  “You’re a guard,” Kiva conceded, throwing her hands out to the sides. “You’re meant to incite some level of intimidation. That’s the whole point of your job.”

  “Guess I just wasn’t born to work in a place like Zalindov,” Naari mused.

  The words prompted an icy feeling to spread throughout Kiva. Naari had already been at the prison much longer than most of the other female guards over the years. And while Kiva had acknowledged that her limb difference would make it harder for her to get a protective role elsewhere, that didn’t mean it was impossible. But the idea of her leaving . . .

  “At least you wouldn’t have to worry about catching your death somewhere else,” Kiva made herself say, ignoring the dread filling her. “I’m surprised you didn’t ride the first wagon out of here once we realized the sickness was spreading.”

  Naari made a pensive sound, but then said, “I’ve never been one to leave when things get tough.” She lifted her prosthetic hand and wiggled her fingers at Kiva. “What kind of person would that make me?”

  Kiva didn’t respond, though she did feel as if a weight had lifted off her chest. At the same time, she was alarmed, since the fact that she feared Naari leaving meant she’d grown closer to the guard than was wise. But she also had no idea how to reverse that, how to put a stopper in the friendship that had somehow formed between them. Worse, she didn’t know if she wanted to. And therein lay the real danger.

  It wasn’t surprising that, in her desperation to believe her family was coming for her, she’d latched on to another source of comfort, of familiarity. Her family—and the rebels—had let her down by not arriving before the second Trial. That didn’t mean they weren’t still out there, strategizing another plan to free both Kiva and Tilda, but Kiva couldn’t ignore the resentment brewing within her, the sense of abandonment that had been creeping in for ten years. She still loved her family, of course she did. But she couldn’t deny how disappointed she felt—and had felt, for a decade. Her growing relationship with Naari had helped to cover that, to stifle it deep down.

  . . . And her growing relationship with Jaren, too.

  “What’s on today’s agenda?” Naari asked as they passed the barracks and continued along the path.

  Grateful for the distraction, Kiva answered, “All the farms—animals, including dairy, as well as vegetables and grains.” She ticked off her fingers as she spoke. “And the slaughterhouse.”

  Naari whistled through her teeth. “That’s a lot.”

  “We need to catch up, since you all decided to become overprotective nursemaids on me yesterday,” Kiva said pointedly. She knew they’d meant well, but people were dying. Just as they had nine years ago. Just as her father had. She refused to see anyone else she cared about fall victim to this illness. “If I get enough samples today, I’ll spend tomorrow testing the rats. I think that’s the best way to do it.”

  “A day of collecting, followed by a day of testing?”

  Kiva nodded. “That way I’ll lessen the risk of missing any symptoms, or confusing any of the test subjects. I’ll narrow the options down place by place until we find the origin.”

  “We may get lucky and today will be all you need, if it comes from the farms.”

  “That’s the hope,” Kiva said. “The sooner we figure out where it began, the sooner I can look into stopping it.”

  “How?”

  Heaving her bag of collection flasks higher up on her shoulder, Kiva wondered what her father might have done, but came up empty. “I’m not sure yet. Once I know the origin, that’ll hopefully give me an indication of what’s needed to treat it.”

  “What if it doesn’t? What if you can’t figure it out?”

  Kiva made herself adopt a light tone as she shrugged and said, “Then we all die, I guess.”

  Naari arched an eyebrow, and Kiva caught the expression from her peripheral vision as they walked side by side toward the entrance block.

  “Remind me never to come to you for encouragement,” Naari muttered under her breath.

  Kiva hid her smile, but then said, “Almost every sickness can be treated. Whether it can be cured is something else entirely. But given the symptoms I’ve seen, I’m confident one can be found for this, whatever it is. I just need more information.”

  And her father had just needed more time. She was sure of it. Faran Meridan was the best healer Kiva had ever known. He would have figured out how to cure the sickness, eventually. Perhaps he did, and that was why it ended up vanishing soon after his own death. But he’d left no research, no instructions. So now it was up to Kiva to figure it out.

  “And what about your next Trial?” Naari asked as they approached the gates. “Have you started thinking about it yet?”

  It was hard for Kiva not to think about it. She’d barely survived the Trial by Fire, and that was with magical help. She had no idea what the water Ordeal would require of her, no idea how she might endure it.

  “I have twelve days to worry about that,” Kiva answered. “My priority right now is making sure we’re all still alive then.”

  Naari sent Kiva a sidelong glance before waving to the guards up in the watchtowers. “Then let’s get you what you need,” she said. “After you, healer.”

  And so, for the second time in a week, Kiva stepped outside the prison, praying she’d find what she was searching for.

  * * *

  The rest of Kiva’s week was spent following a pattern that began to repeat itself, to her unending frustration.

  After the farms and slaughterhouse, she’d spent the next day as she’d told Naari she would, testing the rats and watching for any signs of change.

  When no symptoms presented themselves, Kiva asked Tipp to round up extra vermin, and the following day, she and Naari ventured out of the prison for more samples. This time, they headed north toward the Blackwood Forest, a trek that took them even longer than their journey to the quarry. Once there, Kiva collected samples from the lumberyard and even the forest itself, along with the rail carts that transported the timber back through the prison gates and out of Zalindov to Vaskin and beyond. From wood chippings to tree fungi to flower pollen to fluffy moss, plus the usual stagnant water puddles and mud, Kiva collected anything that might create an ideal viral or bacterial environment. But when she spent the next day testing the rats, they again showed no signs of illness.

  Having completed her collections outside of Zalindov’s walls, Kiva’s attention switched to inside the prison.

  On Friday, nearly a week after her fire Ordeal, Kiva headed to the luminium depository, a large rectangular building in the south of the grounds, just inside the gates. She didn’t need Naari escorting her anymore, since she was within the grounds, but the guard still accompanied her to the storage facility and the adjacent processing factory. Kiva wasn’t sure if Naari was curious about the research or if she simply wanted to keep spending time with her. Once or twice, Kiva had inwardly questioned the guard’s motives, even going so far as to wonder if she was somehow aligned with the rebels, watching over Kiva for the sake of Tilda. Another possibility Kiva entertained was whether Rooke had assigned Naari to protect her—or to spy on her. But neither option sat right with Kiva, and with little evidence for either, she decided she was better off not worrying about whether Naari was going to stab her in the back, metaphorically speaking. Perhaps literally speaking, too.

  There was, however, one burning question Kiva still had about the guard, and that was regarding her relationship with Jaren. Even though Naari had firmly stated that she would never cross that line, Kiva still had doubts, especially when she discovered that Naari was tasked with monitoring the tunnelers anytime she wasn’t guarding the infirmary, and therefore she saw Jaren a lot more than either of them had let on. Try as she might, Kiva remained suspicious of the easy, relaxed way in which they interacted. While she wasn’t one to objectify the human body, Kiva had seen Jaren without his tunic on. She’d felt hi
s arms around her, his lips touching her forehead, his hands entwined with hers. Hell, she’d slept wrapped in him, his warmth and strength surrounding her all night, keeping her safe and protected in her own Jaren cocoon.

  The memories brought warmth to Kiva’s cheeks, and she scolded herself for being so ridiculous. If Naari had lied about being intimate with Jaren, then that was between the two of them. Kiva didn’t care. She didn’t.

  She did, however, become very good at lying to herself.

  * * *

  The samples from the luminium depository were cleared after testing the rats the next day, and Kiva’s concern grew as the list of places left to check continued to shrink.

  “Don’t worry ’bout it, luv,” Mot told her on Saturday night when he and his morgue workers came to collect another load of the dead. “Yeh’ll figure it out. Yeh always do. Just like yer da.”

  Mot had never met Kiva’s father, but he would have heard all about Faran Meridan from some of the older prisoners, much of which was supposition, Kiva assumed. But still, tears crept to her eyes at his words, because he was right about one thing: her father never would have given up until he’d solved the problem, even if it killed him. Which, in this case, it had. But Mot wasn’t wrong—Kiva was just like her father. And she wouldn’t give up, either.

  “Forget about the sick for now,” Mot went on. “What about yer next Ordeal? Any ideas what yeh’ll face? Do yeh have a plan?”

  Kiva had been thinking about it all week. After much consideration, she’d come to the conclusion that the third Trial would likely involve Zalindov’s aquifer, the huge underground reservoir that the tunnels fed water into. Nothing else could offer the same kind of drama as the first two Ordeals—or the same kind of danger. Most prisoners couldn’t swim, so Kiva would be expected to drown. However, no one knew where she had grown up, with the swift, deep Aldon River running adjacent to her family’s cottage just outside of Riverfell. Nor did they know how many hours she and her siblings had spent honing their swimming skills. Granted, it had been a long time since Kiva had used hers, but her confidence was enough that she felt marginally less worried about the coming Trial than any of the others.

  That didn’t mean she wasn’t still terrified.

  In the first two Ordeals, she’d had the support of the Vallentis royals, the prince’s elemental power saving her life—twice. Kiva still couldn’t reconcile how she felt about that, how she felt about them, since their family was the reason she’d lost ten years of her life to Zalindov, the reason she’d been torn from her mother and older siblings, the reason her father and brother were dead.

  And yet . . . Kiva would have perished by now if not for Prince Deverick saving her life—twice.

  No matter how much she wanted to hate them, all of them, Kiva couldn’t. But she also couldn’t forgive them, not for all the elemental magic in the world.

  She did, however, wish for some of that elemental magic to help with her final two Trials. Especially since she’d given up believing that the rebels would make a second strike at the prison. Cresta was all but vibrating with fury anytime Kiva saw her, which was confirmation enough that their plans had fallen apart. They would need time before trying again, time that Kiva didn’t have. It had been a fool’s hope from the beginning, and yet it had helped her get through the first two Ordeals. But now, without the rebels, and without the royals, her hope was in herself. Whether or not she survived the Trial by Water was wholly dependent on her own skill, her own strength, her own will to succeed.

  To Mot, however, all Kiva answered was, “I’m working on it.”

  The old man sent her a weathered, piercing look. “I’ve been speakin’ with Grendel. We think it’ll be down in—”

  “The aquifer,” Kiva said, nodding with agreement. “That’s all I can come up with, too.”

  “They could, o’ course, toss yeh down a well,” he said, scratching his stubbly chin, “but no one’d really see yeh drown. They’d just ’ave to pull yer corpse up after, all waterlogged and bloated. That’s borin’. Same for anythin’ in the shower block. We can’t all fit in there to watch, can we? But the tunnels ’ave plenty o’ room for an audience, even if we won’t all be able to see much.” To himself, he murmured, “Better get down there fast for the best view.”

  Kiva knew he was trying to help, but still, her stomach roiled, especially when she noted the hint of excitement on his face, as if he was looking forward to seeing what would happen. When he caught her pale expression, his own shifted, remorse and shame tingeing his features.

  “Don’t yeh fret, Kiva luv,” Mot said. “I’ll have me a think on what might help yeh. Plenty of remedies for endurance, but I’ll ’ave to get creative with lung expansion and oxygen absorption and the like. Yeh leave it with old Mot, I’ll sort yeh out.”

  The smile Kiva sent him was wobbly. “Thank you.”

  The old man replied with his own brown-toothed grin. “Yeh’re a survivor, Kiva Meridan. Yeh’ll survive this, too.”

  And with that encouragement, he hobbled out of the infirmary, trailing behind a cartload of corpses.

  * * *

  The following day, Kiva and Naari set out to collect samples involving food storage and preparation. From the butchery with its bleeding, smoking, drying, and salting rooms, to the grain silos and their sorting factory, to the large underground cellars where the fruits and vegetables were preserved alongside the milk and cheese, Kiva had her work cut out for her. Not only did she have to obtain samples of the foods themselves, but she also had to swab the hand tools that the workers used to do everything from pickling radishes to churning butter to baking bread. The rations allocated to prisoners might have been low, but the guards received three-course meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, so the preparation rooms were bustling with activity as Kiva and Naari attempted to complete their task.

  After moving from the busy kitchens to the empty refectory, they finally returned to the infirmary, where Tipp was waiting, playing with yet more rats. Kiva had no idea how he continued to procure them, and was inwardly horrified by how vast the nest near the crematorium must be. She was secretly relieved that there was no need to collect samples from the furnaces, since no one who went in came back out again.

  No one but her.

  Shaking off the thought, Kiva fed the newest samples to the rats, but after testing them the next day, none revealed any symptoms, and her hopes began to crumble.

  “Tomorrow’s the d-day,” Tipp said when he saw how crestfallen she was that night. “I c-can feel it. Something b-big’s going to happen. Just you wait.”

  Bolstered by his confidence, Kiva set out with Naari again the next morning, this time to test most of the remaining buildings inside the grounds, including the entrance block, the general workrooms and administration, the guards’ barracks and dog kennels, and lastly, the ten cell blocks where the prisoners slept, along with their adjoining latrines and bathing facilities. After this, all she had left to test were the aquifer, pumping station, and tunnels, which she planned to do in the four days remaining before her next Ordeal, should the rats continue to remain healthy. More than ever, she was aware that she was running out of time—and options.

  When Kiva returned with Naari to the infirmary that evening, her bag of samples in hand, she expected to see Tipp waiting with more vermin. They didn’t actually need any more, since the young boy had been so proficient at catching them, but still, it was strange that he wasn’t in the infirmary, since he’d been dutifully watching over Tilda and the quarantined patients on the days Kiva went out to collect her samples. Early on, he’d wanted to join her, especially when she no longer had to leave through the gates. But with Olisha and Nergal providing only minimal care to the sick, Tipp had volunteered to watch over them, something that had filled Kiva with immeasurable pride.

  “Have you seen Tipp?” Kiva asked Nergal as she dropped her bag on the workbench, waving to Naari when the guard gestured that she was taking off, likely heading to th
e tunnels—and to Jaren.

  Kiva reminded herself that she didn’t care. What they got up to when they were alone . . . She didn’t care.

  “Haven’t seen him,” Nergal said, sitting on a stool near the workbench and finger-combing his long blond hair, before tying it at his nape with a leather band.

  “Is he in with the quarantined patients?” Kiva asked, aware of Nergal’s short attention span, and that he often needed prompting.

  “Not sure,” the willowy man said as he stood up and stretched, as if he’d just completed a hard day’s labor. Kiva doubted he’d moved from that position in hours. “Maybe.”

  “Olisha?” Kiva asked the pockmarked woman, who was hastily wiping her mouth after having helped herself to Tilda’s rations, as if Kiva didn’t know about her repeated stealing of the sick woman’s food—and that of the other ill prisoners.

  “Not since this morning,” Olisha answered, one brown eye looking at Kiva, the other drifting lazily to the side. Before Zalindov, she’d owned a pair of spectacles to help with her amblyopia, but they’d been damaged during a riot soon after her arrival, the glass trampled right out of them. She maintained that she could see just as well as anyone, but Kiva often heard her swearing when she knocked things over. “He went out to prune the thistlewort shortly after you left, Kiva dear, but he didn’t come back afterward, so I suspect he ran straight off to get more of your rats.”

  Unlike Nergal, who went out of his way to be as useless as possible, Olisha at least tried to help around the infirmary. If not for her chronic fear of illness and death—and her denial about her fallible vision—Kiva would have been much more grateful for her assistance. Instead, she often found that the two of them only added to her workload. But if nothing else, they stepped in when Kiva was needed elsewhere, and the reprieve they afforded her by covering the night shift was always appreciated.

  “Did he say anything?” Kiva asked Olisha, as the woman subtly dusted crumbs from her tunic. Kiva didn’t care about the stolen food—Tilda was barely managing broth, and was nowhere near up to eating bread crusts—but she did care about Tipp.