by Cooke, Chele
“Oh, don’t mind me,” he said through a smirk.
Georgianna glared at him before turning back to Liliah, lowering her voice significantly.
“So what? You’re saying I should tell Keiran about… my sister’s job? So I can have angry sex?” she asked.
“No,” Liliah answered bluntly. “I’m saying that if you’re not willing to tell him something just because it might cause a fight, if you won’t stick around for the bad, how can you ever expect him to stick around and fight for you?”
Liliah was called away by a customer before Georgianna managed to think of a suitable response. Even as the night progressed she couldn’t find a comeback to prove Liliah wrong. The problem was, the longer it took for her to think of an argument to the brunette’s point, the more she thought that actually, Liliah might not be wrong after all.
21 Wrench in the Works
It was late by the time Georgianna finally finished at Crisco and made her way from the Rion district. It felt like stone blocks had attached themselves to her hands and feet, making the walk through the streets long and laborious. While it usually only took a short time to walk the stretch to the nearest safe tunnel entrance, Georgianna felt like she’d been walking for hours before she could finally slip down into the lit main line. Even then, down in the tunnels, in the quiet of the night, it felt like too long a time until she could make the turning unseen into the stretch of Belsa-controlled passages.
The guard recognised Georgianna before she even realised he was there, and proceeded to ramble and panic about a problem down Medics’ Way. Georgianna didn’t stop to find out what the problem was. The fact that a guard was still on post was enough to tell her the Belsa hadn’t been discovered, and despite the aching in her legs, she set off at a run down the tunnel.
Coming into Medics’ Way, Georgianna expected chaos. The way the guard had told her about it made it sound like it was a big problem. However, apart from a pained groaning echoing from one of the cars, all seemed relatively quiet. Still, Georgianna kept hurrying down towards the car, hauling herself up and dropping her bag to the side of the door.
Jaid had her back to her, her short dark hair mussed from being woken up in a rush. Georgianna moved further into the car, trying to see what was going on.
“Wrench?”
Wrench was lying on the bed before her. His dark skin was beaded with sweat, his breath, too fast for Georgianna’s liking, came in quick pants that left no space for anything else. His trousers had been left intact but his shirt, always tattered at best, was torn from neck to hem, lying open across the bed to show a large, purple and red angry welt across his barrelled chest.
“George!” Jaid cried, stepping back from Wrench’s side and reaching into a bucket, pulling out a cloth and wringing it, using it to clean an oozing wound. “Where have you been?”
“Work,” Georgianna answered, stepping closer to Wrench and placing the back of her hand across his stomach to gauge his temperature. “What happened?”
The taught skin across Wrench’s skin was searing hot, radiating out from a weeping wound of burned flesh. Georgianna didn’t even need to hear Jaid’s answer before she knew exactly what had happened.
“Copaq. He came in an hour ago, I’ve not been able to stop the sweats, and nothing will take the pain away.”
Georgianna frowned and moved to her bag. Flipping it open, she dug through it until she found a small, linen bag. She tugged it out, pulling the drawstring open and taking out a shiny, lilac pill.
The copaq didn’t injure like a normal gun. Instead of firing a metal bullet, a copaq, whether one of the small hand weapons or a larger rifle, projected a gel pellet which, though hard when shot, splattered across the skin upon contact. When the gel hit, it sent out a number of electrical charges as it reacted with the skin, slowly fading away as the chemical inside the gel was used up. Even after scraping the gel from the skin, the damage had been done. The Adveni used them mainly on capture missions because the electrical charges shooting through the body made it impossible to run. Unfortunately, healing the injuries was also made difficult, as the Veniche had little with which to counteract the chemical.
“What’s that?” Jaid asked as she dabbed the damp cloth against the welt.
Wrench let out a pained cry.
“Drugs. They’re Adveni.”
“Where did you get Adveni medicine?” Jaid asked suspiciously.
“Compound,” Georgianna explained, stepping past Jaid. “Here, Wrench, swallow this.”
“It won’t help.”
Georgianna and Jaid spun around, the wet cloth slipping from Jaid’s fingers to the floor with a wet slap. Jacob was leaning into the car, his curly hair dishevelled from sleep.
“Jacob, go back to…”
“No, wait.” Georgianna interrupted. “Jake, what won’t work?”
Jacob swung his legs up into the car with surprising agility for someone who had so many healing injuries. He came and looked down at Wrench.
“The cloth, it won’t help. Neither will your drugs. They design it that way.”
“Then what will?” Jaid snapped.
From Jacob’s time as a drysta, Georgianna wondered whether he had more experience with the wounds the weapons created. She didn’t want to think about how Jacob would know about copaq weapons.
“Something cold,” he said. “Wrapped in hyliha leaves.”
“What?”
“It can be anything cold, but the hyliha is what does it. And you should make him drink that water, not wash him with it.”
Georgianna looked at Jaid in confusion. Hyliha leaves weren’t often used for anything important, so why would they work when apparently nothing else would? Jaid didn’t seem too pleased with Jacob’s assessment, and Georgianna was sure that given the choice, she would tell him to go back to the car he currently called home. The man was only twenty-one. He had been fourteen when he was taken by the Adveni. At most, he had three years’ training, not enough to know about different medicines, even if he’d been training as a medic. With all his injuries and the things he had suffered, Georgianna had never even thought to ask him.
“I don’t have any hyliha leaves,” Jaid answered after a moment, crouching to collect the cloth from the floor.
Georgianna watched as Jaid shook off the cloth and dunked it back into the water, wringing it out and moving back to Wrench’s side. Frowning, she glanced back and forth between the three people in the train car, daring them to defy her. During her training, Georgianna had been taught that hyliha was only useful if you had nothing else. It could be used to sooth irritation and to cool the burning of heat, but there were other things that worked better. Hyliha was only used as a last resort until you could get your hands on something better.
Georgianna glanced down at the pill in her hand. She didn’t know what to think. They’d treated men with copaq wounds before and the pill always took away some of the pain. Not all of it, but at least some. Stepping to the side, Georgianna picked up a canteen and shook it. Water sloshed inside the metal, and she moved over to Wrench’s side.
“Swallow this,” she urged, dropping the pill into his open mouth and carefully moving the canteen to his lips.
Wrench swallowed, small sips at first, but within seconds he was reaching for the canteen, grasping it and tipping more water down his throat. Georgianna stared in surprise before her gaze darted to Jacob. He was watching silently, his fingers wound in the material of his shirt. He said the pills wouldn’t help, but here Wrench was, gulping down water like he was already feeling better. Georgianna’s mouth dropped open as a realisation hit her. When she had been healing copaq wounds before, it hadn’t been the pills that were helping; it was the water they used to wash it down.
She pulled the canteen away and dunked it back into the bucket.
“George, what are you…”
“He’s right!” Georgianna cried, bringing the canteen back to Wrench’s lips and letting him take hold like an infant at b
ottle. “The water! I… We need hyliha!”
“George, I already told him, we don’t have any!” Even Georgianna could hear the edge of desperation in her voice.
“No,” Georgianna answered, a smile on her lips. “But Lacie does!”
“What?”
“Lacie has hyliha leaves! I gave them to her for grinding practice!”
Georgianna signalled to Jacob.
“Give him as much water as he can drink.” She turned to Jaid. “I’m going to get Lacie!”
Georgianna was already slipping past them, jumping down out of the train car as Jaid’s desperate cry for her to come back followed, not fast enough to catch her and drag her back inside.
Sprinting down the tunnels, Georgianna turned through the passageways, a stitch burning in her side by the time she reached Beck’s car. She felt energised and awake, the weight in her legs dissipated in her desperation to help Wrench, and elated at a new method of treating his wounds. Leaping up into the car, Georgianna tripped and stumbled forward, straight into a pile of crates stacked against the wall.
The crash echoed and reverberated as Georgianna slid down the wall, landing with a thump against the floor. Before she could right herself, she glanced up to find a gun barrel had been levelled at her chest.
For a second, she stared down the barrel of the weapon before a relieved and admittedly frustrated sigh came from behind it.
“George?” Beck asked, rubbing his hand over his face and blinking to make sure he was right in his assessment. “What the hell you thinking, waking a man like that?”
“Lacie,” Georgianna gasped. “I need Lacie.”
“Huh? Why?”
Lacie’s bleary voice slipped from behind the canvas hanging and out into the main area of the car. Georgianna glanced over her shoulder as the hanging was pulled to the side, Lacie’s mussed hair falling over her face, a shirt large enough for a full grown man hanging down to her thighs.
“Lace!” Georgianna cried.
“George?”
“I need those hyliha leaves. The ones I gave you for practice.”
Lacie blinked and stared back at her sleepily.
“I finished,” Lacie answered, stepping out further into the car.
Georgianna let out a cry of frustration, having hoped that the leaves were still intact. She glanced up at Beck, who looked more than a little confused. The man reached up and rubbed his hand roughly across the back of his neck, surveying the scene cautiously. Georgianna felt awful for waking him up, she knew from Lacie how little sleep he managed to get, but right now it was necessary.
“Where are they?” Georgianna asked.
Lacie stepped over Georgianna’s legs, moving to the other side of the car and collecting up a wooden box. Georgianna clambered to her feet and accepted the box from her, opening it to find the pale green powder, as perfect as if a skilled herber had done it.
She didn’t know if it would work, whether it would be able to do anything for Wrench in this form, but she had to try. If it didn’t work, she could always run and try to find some hyliha in the camps, but who knew how long that would take, especially seeing as she would have to wait until morning.
“George, what the hell is going on?” Beck asked, placing the gun back onto a blanket crumpled beside his chair.
“Wrench has been hit with a copaq,” Georgianna explained. “Jaid was following normal procedure, but Jacob came in and…”
“Jacob?”
“The guy down Medics’,” Lacie explained.
“Yeah, well Jacob said hyliha leaves really help!” Georgianna finished, brandishing the box.
“Should I…”
Georgianna quickly shook her head as Lacie offered to come back. While Georgianna knew that this was a good opportunity for Lacie to learn, she highly doubted Wrench would want to be surrounded by people when he was injured. Not to mention that Beck would probably have something to say about Georgianna dragging the girl off in the middle of the night.
“Stay here, I’ll tell you how it goes.”
Out of the car before she even thought to thank them, Georgianna called back an apology for waking them. She was soon sprinting back through the tunnels.
The change in Wrench’s condition was marked by the time Georgianna pulled herself back into the car. Despite not being gone more than thirty minutes, his breathing had improved and he was not sweating nearly as much.
“Did you get it?” Jacob asked, pausing with his hand and the canteen dunked into the bucket.
“Not exactly,” Georgianna explained. “Lacie had already ground it. It’s been dried and crushed, but…”
“What about a paste?” Jaid asked. “Put some in a bowl with some water? The water’s not cold, but it’s decent.”
Georgianna and Jaid both looked at Jacob expectantly. It was his cure after all. However, he simply stared back in surprise. Then he shrugged.
“No harm in trying.”
Opening the box and grabbing up a bowl, Georgianna tipped a generous amount of the powder in and went to the bucket. Taking the canteen from Jacob, she poured a small amount into a well in the centre of the mound, letting the granules of the powder float in and around the cool water. She handed the canteen back and swilled the bowl, digging her finger into the power and beginning to mix. It smelled just like hyliha trees in the rain, their large leaves working perfectly for protection from sudden downpours during the wash. After a few minutes mixing in most of the granules, Georgianna had the bowl filled with a thick green paste. She stepped to Jaid’s side, nodding to the older woman. Jaid pulled the cloth away, holding it tightly in her hands as Georgianna began slathering the paste onto Wrench’s side.
The man groaned loudly, startling both of them, but then a relieved hiss slipped through his teeth, and he laid his head back against the bed.
“Kid’s a genius,” he moaned, closing his eyes. “Tha’s… tha’s amazing.”
He didn’t stay conscious long, his breathing slowing and his body releasing the tension that had been held within it. By the time he was fully unconscious, Georgianna wasn’t nearly as worried as she might have been. The hyliha seemed to be doing its job and Wrench was beginning to look much better, if that was possible so soon after being hit.
22 Who She Was
Once Wrench had passed out, his copaq wound slathered in hyliha paste, and as much water as he could safely drink in his stomach, Jaid had sighed and slumped back against the wall. The woman, stubborn as she was, having been dealing with Adveni-made wounds for a decade, refused to thank Jacob for his input.
“We’ll see how he’s doing in the morning,” she insisted. “Better not to get our hopes up too high.”
It wasn’t long before Jaid left to go back to her husband, currently being watched over by a guard she’d dragged from duty. Georgianna had grinned in amusement, not only wondering what Beck would think about one of his guards being pulled off duty, but also what the guard themselves had thought about being used as a glorified babysitter. She decided it was best not to comment though. If Jaid hadn’t been there, who knew what would have happened. Georgianna also doubted that any Belsa would comment on it so soon after Jaid had partially lost her husband to the madness of the heat thanks to a Belsa mission nobody knew the details of.
With Wrench passed out on the bed, Georgianna cleared away the bucket and cloth. She closed the wooden box of hyliha powder and tucked it into the top of her bag. She would ask Lacie to make another batch, knowing now how useful it could be. She’d probably test a few other things, but as hyliha was so readily available throughout most of the year, it seemed an incredibly useful trick to know.
Taking a seat on one of the beds, Georgianna pulled out a journal from her bag, its horse-hide cover no longer crinkling in protest the way it used to, worn and supple with years of use. Her brother had given it to her as a present when she chose to take her training as a medic, a place for her to record all she had learned. The inside paper had been changed out three ti
mes since she had received the gift. Once when Georgianna was fifteen and the book had been so full of notes that she couldn’t fit any more into it, not even around the edges where she scribbled tiny things to remember. Georgianna had spent an entire freeze down in Nyvalau organising and rewriting the notes in order.
The next time had been when she completed her training and now, once again the book was full. Georgianna had separated the journal into different sections, one for procedures, one for supplies and their uses, a section for things Georgianna wanted to learn how to do, and one for everything else. Flicking through to the supplies section, she noted down hyliha’s use for copaq wounds before she found the section on copaq wounds and added hyliha, circling it a couple of times.
Georgianna looked up, her gaze landing on Jacob who was swirling his finger around in the hyliha paste, leaning against the wall. Moving herself to the end of the bed, Georgianna smiled at Jacob and nodded to the space next to her. He considered for a moment before he walked slowly over, perching himself delicately on the edge.
“How did you know about the hyliha, Jake?” she asked, closing her journal and replacing it into her bag. “Have you…”
“Not with a copaq,” Jacob answered, cutting her off, though he didn’t look up from the paste. “The cinystalq has the same sort of charge as a copaq.”
Georgianna glanced at the burn on Jacob’s neck, a white scar running down from beneath his ear until it disappeared under his shirt.
“Will his be like that?” Georgianna asked, nodding towards his neck.
Jacob rested the bowl in his lap and reached up, covering the wound protectively.
“No,” he answered. “This wasn’t nearly as bad before they removed the collar.”
“It wasn’t made by them removing it?”
“That made it worse,” he explained. “But I already uh… I had a number of burns there from… from Uyinagh.”
