Rider of the Crown

by Melissa McShane

  Finally the competitions were over, and Imogen handed out prizes: an elegant Ruskalder longsword for Karel, who leered at her when she laid it in his hands as if she’d done something intimate; leather and brass belts for the wrestlers; a fur cape for the pole-climber, who looked very cold in his skimpy clothing. Imogen thought he would look better if he ate more. The tiermatha escorted them back to the skorstala, Areli coughing more frequently now. As soon as Hrovald left them for the privacy of his room (and, Imogen thought, his mistress), Imogen turned on Areli and said, “How long has that been going on?”

  “Just this morning. It’s just that my throat’s so dry,” Areli said, and coughed again. It sounded wet, not dry.

  “You look like you’re coming down with something. I think you should take a rest day tomorrow.”

  “Hrovald won’t like it.”

  “He’ll like even less having a member of his tiermatha coughing and wheezing and looking feverish.” Areli’s eyes were over-bright and her cheeks were flushed. She coughed again behind her fist.

  “All right. Kionnal can keep me company.”

  “I said a rest day, not a screwing-each-other’s-brains-out day.”

  “We do have self-control, Imogen. Besides, the way I feel, sex sounds like too much work.”

  “You really must be sick.” Imogen swatted Areli’s punch away.

  Imogen thought there were fewer people at supper that night, but remembered the warriors were throwing a celebration for the winners at the camp. She wondered why Olof of Sjoven wasn’t there; it wasn’t like him to miss a meal. Then she accidentally caught Karel’s eye, and he gave her a lascivious look. She glared back at him and forgot everything else. I should be grateful he’s not leering at Elspeth.

  The skorstala was, to Imogen’s surprise, empty the next morning except for Hrovald, who was tearing into a steak so raw it was almost bloody. “Where is everyone?” she asked.

  “Gone,” Hrovald said. “You should have been up earlier. Going to take a lot of work, treating everyone.”

  Imogen was confused. “Where did they go?”

  “Home. Don’t want to stay where illness is, do they? Feel free to kick out anyone whose room you’ll need for an infirmary.”

  “What—there’s sickness? I don’t understand.” She felt as if she were missing half the conversation.

  Hrovald shoved a chunk of meat into his mouth and chewed. “Not usually this slow, are you, wife?” he said around his mouthful. “Sickness. Here. In my house. Chiefs ran away like little girls so their men wouldn’t catch it, though it’s probably too late for that. It’s your job to care for the sick. So get to it.”

  “But—what sickness?”

  Hrovald swallowed and chased the steak with a mouthful of beer. “Lung fever.”

  Chapter Nine

  Areli had lung fever. Two days later, so did Kallum, Lorcun and Dorenna. Imogen could only watch helplessly as her friends coughed and choked on the fluid filling their lungs. Hrovald’s insistence aside, Imogen had no experience treating sick people and had never even heard of lung fever before coming to Ruskald. Once again she had to depend on Inger’s competent, soothing presence. Imogen learned how to administer medicine to someone who was coughing so hard she could barely breathe. She learned how to change bedding and clean up those so delirious with fever they couldn’t use a chamber pot. She learned how to support someone through a coughing fit, to make room in an already crowded chamber for one or two or six more beds, even to cook a thin gruel to sustain people whose appetites had disappeared with their good health.

  Imogen remained healthy. She’d never been sick with anything more than a runny nose and hoped her robust good health would continue. She was even more grateful that Elspeth didn’t seem affected either. The last thing she needed was the Tremontanan King’s heir coming down with this potentially deadly illness. However, after the first frantic day, when new cases came in from the camp and the household every hour, things settled down. Imogen hoped that meant everyone who was going to catch it had already done so.

  Three days later, they had their first fatality.

  Imogen cried over the warrior, though she hadn’t known him, and watched as two men—could they catch lung fever from a dead body?—carried the young man out wrapped in the sheet he’d lain on when he took his last rattling breath. Then she stripped the rest of the bedding, laid out fresh, and waited for someone else to need a dead man’s bed. She knew it was morbid thinking, but after five days of fitful sleep and worry over Dorenna, who was much sicker than the rest of the stricken tiermatha, she couldn’t help wonder how many more people would die before this thing ran its course. She refused to imagine Dorenna might be one of them.

  Her life became a constant round of medicine, gruel, chamber pots, dirty bedding, clean bedding, and bodies. More bodies every day. She didn’t have time to worry about Elspeth and was actually happy the girl was spending all her time in Hesketh’s company. The boy was a sniveling waste of air, but if he kept Elspeth entertained—or was it the other way around?—he must not be so bad.

  She’d put the tiermatha in a separate room, the first four now joined by Maeva and Revalan, and told the healthy ones to lock themselves in their barracks and stay away from anyone who was sick. They protested, and she shouted, “Shut up and listen! We don’t know why some people get sick and others don’t. We just know the sick ones all had contact with other people who had the illness. I will not watch any more of you end up in that room, do you hear me?”

  Kionnal slammed his fist against the wall. “You can’t keep me from her,” he growled. Imogen stared him down until he turned his head away. She laid her fingers on his arm, and he jerked it away.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I really am. I promise if…if it gets bad, I’ll come for you. I swear.” Kionnal still wouldn’t look at her, and no one said anything. She left the room so they wouldn’t see her cry. Then she went back to the rest of her tiermatha.

  Inger told her it wasn’t as bad as it looked. Imogen thought it looked pretty damn bad. At least the febrifuges worked, and everyone except for Dorenna was conscious and clear-headed. They just coughed. It was a cough that sounded as if their lungs were being torn from their bodies, and from the looks on their faces it felt as agonizing as it sounded. Sometimes the coughs brought up mucus, and Inger said that was good too. The only thing she wouldn’t reassure Imogen about was Dorenna’s condition. Dorenna had been delirious for almost a day, and her brown hair was dark with sweat now the fever had broken. When she coughed, it was in a series of short, barking hacks that brought up no mucus and made her moan in pain when they stopped. Imogen sat beside her friend, taking her hand and squeezing it for some sign Dorenna knew she was there. No response. Her hand was dry and hot, which meant the fever was coming back, and Imogen wasn’t sure she could get Dorenna to take another dose of febrifuge. She laid Dorenna’s hand down gently on the blanket and stood up.

  “Where’s Kion—” Areli’s question was interrupted by another bout of hacking.

  “In the barracks with the others. I made him stay away so he wouldn’t catch it. He wanted to come.”

  Areli nodded. “Glad you made him stay away,” she said with a weak smile. “He’s such a baby when he gets sick.”

  “Not tough like you.”

  “No, I—” She coughed again. “I’ll be back on my feet soon. I feel better already.”

  Imogen felt her heart lift and had to suppress her unfounded hope. “You’ll be fine soon.”

  “Is Dorenna…?”

  Imogen looked back at that corner of the room. “No change.” She didn’t believe in lying to her tiermatha. Suppose she gave them false hope and Dorenna—she refused to complete that sentence. She patted Areli’s hand and said, “I have to get back to the main room. Do you want some water?” She poured water for Areli and supported her head while she drank it, then returned to the other room to discover someone else had died while she was gone. She no longer cried for each d
eath. There had been seventeen in eight days. Was that a lot? She didn’t know. She wondered how bad it was in the rest of the city.

  She didn’t see Hrovald at all. He’d locked himself and his mistress in his quarters and ordered food left in the hallway and isolated himself in every other way. She kept track of Elspeth to reassure herself the girl was still well. She didn’t need her wandering around the makeshift infirmary being useless and pretty. Imogen took a deep breath to dispel those cruel thoughts. It was possible Elspeth was good in a crisis, but Imogen needed her to stay away more than she needed another pair of hands, however competent they might be.

  On the tenth day, Imogen entered the infirmary to see Inger sitting beside a young warrior, helping him eat some gruel. “You think your washing water is going to help a fellow get well?” he teased, making a face. His eyes lacked the feverish glitter, his skin wasn’t flushed, and when he coughed, it was a normal sound, not the great hacking tearing noise she was used to. Inger looked at her, then eased the man back onto his pillow and drew her out of earshot.

  “Yes, he’s over the worst of it. Don’t get your hopes up. It’s more usual for people to stay sick with this for two weeks to a month, and the ones who get it worst don’t fully recover for a month or so after that. You need to face reality so it won’t kick you when you aren’t looking.”

  “But that man is well?”

  Inger sighed. “Seems like. We can thank the gods he pulled through. Or whatever you heathens worship.” She smiled a crooked smile, and Imogen smiled back. It felt rusty, but she hadn’t lost her smile entirely.

  People still died, far too many people, but fewer than at first, and there were fewer still new patients. And others began to recover. Three weeks after she fell ill, Areli’s cough disappeared, and one by one the tiermatha began to recover and rejoin their comrades. All except Dorenna, who continued dangerously ill. Imogen was grateful Kallum and Areli could take over watching her so Imogen could get some rest; she trusted Inger, but couldn’t bear for Dorenna to be left alone with no one she loved watching out for her, especially if…the worst happened.

  But the day came when there were so few beds filled Imogen could actually retreat to her bedroom and, fully clothed, sleep in her own bed for more than two hours at a time. When she woke, she felt rested the way she hadn’t in a month. She stretched, reveling in the silence. It was shameful of her, resenting the noise the coughing patients made, but it was such a horrible noise, and it was so nice not to hear it—

  Just as she thought that, she heard a cough outside her room. She sat up and groaned. Was some sick person wandering around up here, and why had Inger let that person get away? She got out of bed and went to the door. There was no one there. She looked at the door across from hers. A horrible dread struck her. She knocked on the door and entered without being asked.

  Elspeth lay on her bed, curled up on her side and clutching her knees until her knuckles were white. Her eyes were closed, her face was flushed, and tears streaked her cheeks. As Imogen watched, she raised her head from her pillow just an inch or two and coughed a great, wet, hacking cough. She whimpered when she was done, but showed no awareness that Imogen was in the room.

  Imogen swore. She rushed to Elspeth’s side and picked the girl up, cradling her like a kitten. “No, no, no,” she heard herself chanting as she went carefully down the stairs and into the infirmary. She couldn’t put Elspeth in there. There were too many other sick people. She crossed the infirmary with her burden and went into the room where Dorenna still lay. The beds hadn’t been made. “Sorry, sorry,” she whispered, laying Elspeth down on a bare mattress, then rushed about finding linens and a clean pillow and making up a bed for her. Nightgown, she needs a nightgown, she thought wildly, and rushed back out and ran into Inger. “Get her a nightgown,” she snapped, and Inger ran off without asking questions.

  Imogen began undressing Elspeth, carefully, as each movement made the girl whimper again. Imogen knew the first stages of the illness were painful, but none of her other patients had reacted so vocally to being moved. She told herself it was just that Elspeth was so small, not that her illness was severe. Why hadn’t she paid more attention to the girl? How long had Elspeth lain there untreated? She removed Elspeth’s shoes and rolled her gingerly on her side to unbutton her dress. Inger returned with a nightgown and helped Imogen take Elspeth’s dress off, then her undergarments, which were made of cotton rather than the silk Imogen was accustomed to. There were a few spots of blood on her pants—didn’t she finish her monthlies just a week ago? Imogen thought, but didn’t have time to worry about it now. They put the nightgown over her head and eased her into the bed. Elspeth opened her eyes and looked right at Imogen. “Don’t let him touch me,” she said, then closed her eyes as another coughing fit struck her. Imogen held her close to her chest as she weakly sobbed when it was over.

  “It’s all right, you’re going to be all right,” she said, and had an irrational but vivid picture of herself explaining to the Tremontanan King how she’d let his sister die. That will not happen.

  Inger brought the febrifuge in a small cup. “No, you have to drink it all,” she insisted gently, and Elspeth gulped it down and made a face. Imogen thought it must be good, if Elspeth was able to react like that, but then she had to hold the girl while she coughed and coughed until her lips went blue and Imogen had to strike her on the back to get her to take a breath. They propped her up on pillows and withdrew a few feet. As if in sympathy, the semi-conscious Dorenna hacked and coughed a few beds over.

  “It’s bad,” Inger said in response to Imogen’s unspoken question. “She’s too little to have many reserves for fighting this. If we can’t get her to eat, she might end up starving instead of coughing herself to death.”

  “I’ll make her eat,” Imogen said. “I refuse to let her die.”

  “That’s in the gods’ hands, not yours.”

  “Then I’ll have to tell the gods they can’t bloody well have her.”

  “Let’s hope they don’t listen to your blasphemy, heathen that you are.”

  Imogen left the care of the other patients to Inger and busied herself entirely with Elspeth and Dorenna. She made up one of the beds for herself and caught naps when she could, sleeping restlessly, jerked awake by her patients’ coughing. She told herself coughing was good. Silence was…not good. She fed Dorenna once a day, most of it going down her front, but enough going into her that had it not been for her worsening cough, Imogen would have felt relief at her progress. But Dorenna continued delirious, and her coughs grew wetter but stopped producing mucus, and Inger’s face when she looked at the woman was impassive, which meant nothing good.

  Imogen fed Elspeth as often as the girl would let her, despairing of getting her to eat even the smallest bite of the gruel. Elspeth was periodically aware of her surroundings, but at those times she clung to Imogen as if terrified, and Imogen didn’t have the heart to push her away. More often, she was delirious, and they couldn’t get her fever to break. Her coughing shook her slight frame and seemed to hurt her terribly. Had Imogen not already cried out all her tears, she would have wept for the girl’s pain.

  A week passed. Dorenna was unconscious all the time now. Elspeth’s face grew sharper as she lost weight despite Imogen’s best efforts. Inger insisted they cut her hair off in the hope it would reduce her fever. The febrifuges started to work, but the fever returned as soon as the dose wore off. They tried taking her outside and packing her in snow, but it made her cry out in agony, so they brought her back to the bed and continued dosing her. She coughed, and coughed, and brought up wads of phlegm, and it didn’t seem to make a difference.

  Two weeks. Imogen sat by Elspeth’s bedside, nodding off and waking every time the girl twitched. She hadn’t slept for almost forty-eight hours, she thought, but exhaustion was the least of her worries. Dorenna was worse. She didn’t cough as often, but remained unconscious, and the gruel Imogen spooned into her mouth just dribbled back out again.
Elspeth’s fever was currently in abeyance, though her monthly bleeding had started again, or maybe those first few drops had been an abnormality. Imogen was too exhausted to think about it further. She wiped sweat from Elspeth’s forehead and tried to remember the last time she’d seen the sun. The windows were all covered because sunlight bothered the patients’ eyes. Imogen wished she could go outside for even a minute, but if she was gone when Dorenna….

  Elspeth coughed again, and Imogen wiped her mouth. More fluid. Inger said that was good, that if she could bring up whatever was choking her lungs, they wouldn’t be so full of fluid that she couldn’t breathe. She sat back and took a deep breath. The room was silent.

  It was too silent.

  Imogen felt her heart pound painfully, just once. She left Elspeth’s side and went to Dorenna’s bed. She looked far more peaceful than she did when she was awake, those delicate features looking as if they’d never heard of a sword, or a knife, or that trick she did where she dislocated her opponent’s shoulder and…Imogen couldn’t think anymore. She reached out to touch Dorenna’s forehead, and shrieked when the woman’s eyes opened and blinked at her. “Imo?” she said. “You scared me.”

  Imogen burst into tears and dropped to her knees beside the bed, gathering Dorenna in her arms and rocking her back and forth. “Imogen, you have to put me down, I—” She coughed, but not as painfully as before. “I hurt. And I feel so weak. How long have I been here?”

  Imogen struggled to control herself. She gently laid Dorenna back on the pillow. “A long time,” she said. “Six weeks.”

  “Damn,” Dorenna said, staring at the ceiling. “I am so far off my training regimen I might as well start over.”