by Sharon Shinn
Again, Beatrice and Berric exchanged glances. “What?” Kirra demanded. “What did I just say?”
Beatrice answered. “There’s a boy. The son of one of our farmers. He’s fallen sick and no one can help him. Your father sent out a physician, but he didn’t have an antidote. And there was a healer who passed through not a week ago—a mystic, like you. She couldn’t fix him. She said nobody could.”
Kirra felt her heart grow smaller. “What does he have? Did she name it?”
“Red-horse fever,” Berric answered.
Kirra nodded and felt all her pleasure in the evening drain away. “I’ve heard of that,” she said. “Even come across it once or twice. I haven’t met a mystic who’s been able to cure it.”
Beatrice’s voice sounded frightened. “None of you? Why would that be?”
Kirra shook her head. “I heard someone in Ghosenhall guess that it comes from somewhere else—Arberharst or Sovenfeld—that it’s a kind of fever brought in by one of the trading ships. Our magic only seems to work inside Gillengaria. The farther a mystic gets from these shores, the weaker his power gets. So if this is an infection brought from somewhere else—” She shrugged. “Our magic won’t help.”
“It’s a terrible disease,” Beatrice said. “The physician said it sometimes takes people as much as a year to die from it. Everyone he’s seen has died. And most of them have been children.”
“I’ve heard the same things,” Kirra replied.
“Well, then. We won’t ask you to see him. We thought—but if you can’t do any good—”
“I’m willing to go,” Kirra said. “To try. I just don’t want to get anybody’s hopes up.”
“You’re so strong,” Berric said hopefully. “Maybe you’ll be able to do something the others can’t.”
“I’ll try,” she said again. “When should we see him?”
They decided that Beatrice and Kirra would set out the next day, as it didn’t seem advisable for Berric to travel even a short distance from the house. Their moods had all been depressed by the topic of illness, but they revived a little upon eating more pie. The hour was late by the time Kirra started yawning.
“I’m sorry—goodness, that’s rude—but I think I’m getting tired.”
Beatrice was laughing. “Of course. You’ve been up since dawn, I imagine. I’ve put you in your old room, of course, and feel free to sleep in as late as you like.”
Within the half hour, Kirra found herself comfortably ensconced in the familiar room of heavily flowered wallpaper, multiple layers of patterned rugs, and an ornate bed piled high with pillows. She was undressed and under the covers in record time. The long day had made her truly exhausted; she was instantly asleep.
KIRRA and Beatrice rode out shortly after breakfast the following day, both of them enjoying the bright sunshine that was pleasant now but promised heavy heat before the month was out. Kirra laughed and talked easily, but she felt herself getting more tense as the thirty-minute ride progressed. During her roving days, she had spent some time studying traditional medicine at institutions in Ghosenhall and Rappengrass, and what she couldn’t repair with magic she often could cure with science. But red-horse fever was beyond her capabilities; she was pretty sure of that. Worse, it culminated in a gruesome, lingering death that was agony for everyone—patient as well as family.
She had heard horrifying tales of children and ancients being left to die, put out on a winter night or left behind on some infrequently traveled road. She supposed that poorer families, in particular, didn’t have the resources to lose a pair of healthy hands in the care of someone who would not recover; there were too many chores to do, too many other uses for that person’s energy. But there might have been another side to it—a man who knew he might linger in pain for another six months might ask to be put outside on an icy night, preferring the quick, hard death to the slow, impossible one. She didn’t know what she would choose if her own options were so grim.
They eventually arrived at a small, well-tended cottage, bright with flower gardens. It was owned by a couple who had rented the property for years from Beatrice and Berric. Kirra thought she might even have met them before.
However, she did not recognize the woman who came out to greet them, her face still with long-held grief, her hair pulled back into a knot clearly designed to keep it out of her way. She said a quiet hello and asked them to tie up their own horses, as both the boys were out helping their father in the field. With a word of thanks, she accepted the basket Beatrice offered and led them both inside.
The sick child lay in a narrow bed in a small room at the back of the house. Kirra was glad to see the window was open to let in the fresh air and brisk sunshine. The boy, who looked to be about ten, was propped up in bed, playing with some string game that changed patterns as he moved his fingers. His face was pale and all his bones looked sharp. He was concentrating very hard on the string.
“Davie, here’s a mystic come to see if she can help you any,” his mother said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “It’s serra Kirra, Lady Beatrice’s niece. Isn’t that something, a fine serramarra coming all the way here to see you?”
Davie glanced up without much interest. His eyes were rimmed with red, and a little pus had gathered in the corners. “Hullo,” he said. “I don’t think you can help me.”
Kirra pulled up a chair and sat next to him. “Maybe not,” she said. “But maybe I can make you feel a little better while I’m here. Do you mind if I touch you? Sometimes that tells me what’s wrong inside someone’s body.”
He shrugged and kept folding and refolding his string. Kirra leaned a little closer and ran her hands lightly over his shoulders, his head, his chest, his legs. She could feel the fever running through his body, just under the skin; she could sense it like a skein of venom threading its way through the red weave of blood. There should be a way to change it, she thought, alter its composition from poisonous to pure. But she could not locate its source, could not tell what infected organ pumped out a continuous deadly stream. She pressed harder on Davie’s stomach, poked a finger between his ribs, but the disease remained elusive. She could not identify or dissolve it.
“How long have you been sick?” she asked him, but he didn’t answer.
“Three months,” his mother said at last.
“Anyone else in the house come down with symptoms?”
“No. But a young girl over near the village . . . She died last week. She’d been sick a little longer than Davie. They didn’t know each other, though. Davie said he didn’t even know what she looked like.”
Kirra nodded. “It doesn’t appear to be contagious. I’ve heard of cases where several people in a family all got sick, or in a town, but it doesn’t seem like it passes from person to person the way some fevers do.”
“Some people think so, though,” the mother said darkly.
Keeping her hands on the boy, Kirra glanced over her shoulder at the mother. “What do you mean?”
The woman gestured toward the window. “Some of our neighbors. When they heard Davie was sick, they wanted us to take him to the island.”
“The island?” Kirra wondered if that might be some countryman’s euphemism for death. “Where’s that?”
Beatrice answered. “Off the lower coast of Danalustrous, there’s a little place called Dorrin Isle. Mostly fishermen live on it. About six months ago, some folks set up a community there for people sick with red-horse fever. I think a couple dozen patients are there by now, some with their families, some by themselves. The physician told me he and some of his students were going to go out there and spend a week or two.”
“Even though they can’t cure the disease?”
Beatrice was quiet a moment. “Not to cure,” she said. “To study the bodies afterward. For the students to learn—about cadavers.”
Kirra was filled with a welling of distaste that felt as toxic as the fever in this boy’s body. “That’s horrible.”
“Maybe they�
�ll learn something,” Davie’s mother said. “I wouldn’t mind so much if something good came out of it.”
She was right, but even so, Kirra found the very idea opportunistic and coldhearted. She turned back to concentrate on Davie. Well. She could not reverse the fever, she couldn’t even find its source, but she might be able to mitigate its effects, at least for a short time. She concentrated again on the silver current of corruption running through the boy’s veins and imagined it turning pale, turning pink, evaporating. She put her hand over his eyes, forcing him to close them and abandon his string game, and she pushed the fever down, chased it out of his skull. She laid a fist on his chest and squeezed her fingers tight, and the cramped bundle of his heart imitated her, shaking off its sluggish rhythm. The lungs she cleared with a sweep of her fingers. The accumulated pain she eradicated with a touch of her palm upon his throat.
When she lifted her hands, Davie was staring up at her, his busy fingers lax in his lap. “What did you do to me?” he demanded.
“What? What did you do?” his mother repeated fearfully.
Davie sat up straight in bed, twisted his head from side to side. “I feel funny—I feel good. What did you do to me?”
“By the Pale Lady’s silver tears,” the woman whispered. She was crying. “You’ve cured him.”
Kirra stood up, her sober face enough to make the woman reassess. “I haven’t. I don’t even know if I’ve bought him much time. I’ve taken away the pain, slowed down the infection, maybe. But it’s still in there. It’ll go to work on him again. But he’ll feel better for a few days, at least. It’s all I could do.”
Davie was actually on his feet, laughing at the way his wasted legs buckled under him. “Mama, look, I haven’t been able to walk for three weeks! And I’m hungry. What’s in the kitchen?”
His mother gazed at Kirra and then at her son, halfway across the room now, his hand out to the wall for support. “No one else was able to do even this much for him. No one could even take away the pain. How can I thank you?”
Kirra shook her head. “Don’t thank me. He’ll be sick again soon. But maybe—for a few days—”
“He’ll be my boy again,” she said. “My boy.”
And without another word to her visitors, she followed her son out of the room, catching up to him in the hall and laughing. Kirra saw her put her arm around him and guide him toward another room. The kitchen, no doubt. Where she would make his favorite meal for him one more time and watch him while he bolted down every bite. And maybe tonight, when his brothers came home, he’d wrestle with them before the fire, or race them across the field. And maybe, so happy that her son was out of pain for a day, the woman would turn to her husband for the first time in months, offer him the affection she had been too tense to summon up since the child fell sick. Maybe the respite, though brief, was bountiful. Maybe it would ease the whole family through one week, or two, give them back a measure of peace, remind them that love could be free of pain.
Maybe not. Maybe the gift would be unbearably bitter as it broke in their very hands, as the illness returned with redoubled force, choked the child’s lungs, twisted his limbs. Maybe magic was a bright sparkling lure that drew the unwary deep into haunted and inescapable woods, where monsters and demons lay in wait. Maybe it would have been better for Kirra not to have come here, better for her not to possess magic at all.
Dark thoughts. Kirra shook her head and tried to clear the gloom from her mind. “I guess we’re not needed here any longer,” she said, trying to make her voice light. “I suppose we’ll show ourselves out.”
SHE stayed another day with Berric and Beatrice. Nothing else so dramatic occurred, though she and Beatrice rode out that afternoon and met a few of the other tenants. Berric had improved rapidly overnight and was even able to navigate the stairs without much trouble, marveling aloud at the impressive magic Kirra had in her hands.
“I can’t cure everyone,” she said when the topic came up again at breakfast as she prepared to leave. “I didn’t cure Davie.”
“Still, I envy you,” Berric said. “I wish I had your kind of magic.”
“You do, a little,” she said. “When I was a girl, you were something of a shiftling.”
Berric grimaced. “I could alter my appearance a bit—change my hair color. Make myself look thinner. Not much else. And I can’t even do that anymore.” He held out his hand as if to prove something, so Kirra obediently looked down at his fingers. “See? Nothing. I can’t even make my age spots disappear.”
Beatrice sighed. “I never even had enough magic to alter the expression on my face,” she said. “That would be a useful skill, I always thought! Change your grumpy look to a happy one. You could still be grumpy, but no one would know it.”
Kirra smiled. “I’ll have to try that. Perhaps at the banquet next week. I’ll show everyone a smiling face, but I’ll only be able to fashion it by magic.”
They parted with many expressions of affection, and Kirra promised to visit next time she was in Danalustrous. “You’re leaving again soon, then?” Berric asked, waving to her from the porch as Kirra sat astride her horse.
Kirra laughed. “I imagine so. I planned to stay a few months, but already I can tell—” She shrugged. “But I’ll try not to be gone so long this time.”
“We’ll look for you when we see you again,” Beatrice said.
“I’m sure it will be sooner than you think.” Another wave, a nod to her escorts, and she was on the road back to Danan Hall. Not as glad to be returning to her father’s house as she was glad simply to be in motion again.
CHAPTER 9
AS far as Kirra was concerned, nothing of much interest had transpired while she was gone. The house was still in a state of constant turmoil as servants and tradesmen worked toward readying the house for the grand event. Donnal was still gone. Casserah was still too busy being fitted for gowns and writing thank-you notes for her many birthday gifts to have much time for her wayward older sister. Kirra thought she very well could have stayed with Berric and Beatrice another few days and no one would have noticed she was gone.
But she was glad enough to be at Danan Hall a few days later when a package arrived from Ghosenhall, accompanied by a letter from Cammon. She had never seen his handwriting before and couldn’t guess who had written to her until she flipped the page over to see the signature on the bottom. Even more mystified, she turned the letter back over to read it.
The letter began without any formal salutation.
Justin would not rest easy until I assured him you had made it safely to Danalustrous. But I told him when you arrived—yes, I can tell such things, even from this far away!—and he finally relaxed. A few days later, a package arrived from Merrenstow, addressed to Justin and filled with presents from Romar Brendyn. Wasn’t that kind? He sent Justin the most beautiful dagger—I don’t’t think any of the other Riders has a blade so fine, and Justin will not step out of the barracks without it. He sent me a shirt such as the great lords wear—the finest material I’ve ever had against my skin. I’m torn between never wanting to take it off and never wanting to put it on, because I don’t want to ruin it! I suppose he thought I was very ragged while we traveled. Little does he know that I always look so disreputable, but I wrote him right off to thank him anyway.
The last package was addressed to Donnal. Justin and I couldn’t figure out how to open it without leaving behind any traces, so I have no idea what’s in it. I wish I were better at things, but it seems I can only read people. Anyway, we’ve sent it on for you to give to Donnal.
There was nothing for you in the packet, but maybe he sent you a gift directly. Or maybe he thought such a thing would not be appropriate—I never know what sort of behavior is considered proper among the aristocracy. But we thought Donnal should have this right away. We have no idea when you’ll be in Ghosenhall again—though I, at least, wish you were back right now! Justin doesn’t seem to care one way or the other.
Kirra coul
d imagine Cammon laughing as he wrote that last line, and the thought made her own face brighten with a smile. Though nothing else about the letter amused her so far. Gifts from Romar Brendyn! Kind, indeed, especially since the two that had been described were thoughtful presents chosen with a real eye toward pleasing the recipients. She was dying to know what was in Donnal’s package and hoped a respect for privacy would prevent her from opening it before he returned.
She didn’t expect any gifts for herself, oh no. Didn’t want any. Inappropriate, indeed, on every level. One might reasonably give tokens to servants or vassals who had performed a heroic service—that reflected well on both the giver and the receiver—but one didn’t pass out trinkets to unattached women with whom one had spent a certain amount of time under highly unusual circumstances. No one would think well of that.
