Natalie stood and bit her thumbnail through her kerchief. When had they been separated the past few days? Had he eaten or drunk something she had not? She paced next to his cot as she mulled over every detail of what had happened since they’d arrived in Roseharbor. They rode into the city, they bought honey, and then …
She stopped pacing, flew to his bedside and shook his shoulder. “Jules, look at me,” Natalie demanded. Jules groaned. “Goddess dammit, Jules, I need to know how to fix this, you insufferable man. I need to talk to you. Now.” She shook his shoulder again, cursing the disease and fever affecting his brain. Looking around to make sure no one was watching, she slapped his cheek. “Jules.”
He opened his eyes and stared blearily at her. “Leave me be … you damned … pest of a woman,” he rasped.
She laughed, eyes tearing up. “Jules, when I was in here making sure it was safe for us to Heal and you were in the stables, was there any place you could have gotten the sweating fever? A water or food source you used?”
Jules lapsed into silence; she thought she might have to slap him again. “The feed room … stables … fed ... horses.”
Natalie clasped her hands together. “Thank you, love. That’s all I needed. Now rest, get better and come back to me soon.” She stroked his forehead. She’d have to wait until daylight to search the stables. For now, she’d stay by his side. She gratefully accepted cups of tea and cool cloths from passing Healers. Jules barely roused when she helped him swallow tea and Activated it. She took the cloths and wiped his skin tenderly, willing the fever to leave and his skin to cool. Unbidden, the sensation of running her fingers over his chest in the dark came to her. She sniffed and wiped tears from her eyes.
“I don’t want to fail you,” she whispered to Jules as she wiped his sweaty hair away from his face. “Don’t you die like my Da. You say it wasn’t my fault, but … if I’d just been faster or thought about dehydration sooner or been a better Healer …” she rested her forehead on his, her tears falling onto his face. “Please don’t leave me.”
Natalie’s self-pity kept watch with her as she administered as much hydrating fluids and Activated as much tea as she dared. Time ceased to have all meaning and became an endless cycle of tending to Jules and staring at his face as if to memorize it.
Natalie jumped when she felt a hand on her shoulder; it was Headmistress Gayla. “We need to move him, sweeting. If Aldworth comes back and finds him here, there will be hell to pay. There’s a small alcove near the main supply area; let’s move him there.” A cold lump of dread formed in Natalie’s stomach. The time for their Council of Healers “review” was long past. Aldworth must be combing all of Ismereld for them now.
Together, Natalie and three other Healers moved Jules from the main ballroom to the alcove. Jules groaned as his cot moved; Natalie bit her lip and said several prayers as she carried her corner of the cot, hoping the move didn’t make his health worse and that her ankle held out. With a lot of grunting and not a few muffled curses, Natalie and her three compatriots got Jules settled in one of the curtained-off alcoves near the Healer’s main storage area; hopefully a place Aldworth wouldn’t check should he pay one of his surprise visits. Natalie set about making sure Jules was as comfortable as she could make him and then returned to the main ballroom to thank the Headmistress.
Natalie blinked at the sun’s rays pouring in the ballroom windows; it was dawn.
“Headmistress, could someone keep watch over Healer Juliers? Before he became too ill, he told me how he might have contracted the disease. With your permission, I’d like to investigate,” Close enough to the truth. Natalie bit her lip. She didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up.
“Absolutely, dear.” Gayla turned and issued orders, which Healers obeyed promptly. Natalie admired Gayla’s ability to run an efficient operation. Every single patient in the room received organized and efficient care and the Healing staff listened without question. It was a skill she envied.
“Thank you. I am so grateful to you—for everything.” Natalie put her hand on the Headmistress’s shoulder before limping back to Jules’s alcove. She kissed his forehead. “Wish me luck,” she whispered to his still form. Then, much as it pained her, she stood, swirled her cloak around her and left the palace.
As she stepped into the shade of the palace stables, Natalie reflected that the smell of clean barn, horses, leather and hay might just be a close second to the smell of a library. A long row of stalls lined each side of the palace barn; some had inquiring heads poking out of them, ears pricked in her direction, curious about the newcomer. She walked down the aisle, patting the occasional soft nose and keeping her eyes peeled for anything that might transmit disease. She found Elric’s stall, and after scratching him behind the ears in his favorite place as a greeting, she entered his stall. His water seemed clean. There were flies about. Could it have been flies? No, if flies transmitted this disease, she and Jules would’ve been infected long ago, having camped in outdoors for so many days. Besides, Jules said he fed the horses. She had to get to the feed room.
“Oi, can I help you miss?” demanded a voice from the stall door. “You’re not supposed to be messing with the horses.” A grizzled old man glared at her.
Natalie felt her face redden and a frisson of embarrassment shot through her chest. “Oh, uh, hi. I’m Healer Desmond and this is my partner’s horse. My partner’s name is Healer—I mean this horse is Elric. He belongs to my partner and I was visiting him to be sure he was all right. And you are?”
“I’m Gaffigan, the head groom,” he replied in a gruff voice.
Natalie tried to make the best of it. “Is my own horse, Benji, here? He’s a small chestnut.”
“Yeah, he’s here.”
Not the most forthcoming man. Natalie sighed and did her best to smile charmingly. “I might need Benji’s tack soon. Could you show me where the tack room is please?”
After a few seconds’ silence during which Gaffigan seemed to be figuring out whether she was a horse thief or not, he said. “This way.”
She let herself out of Elric’s stall, closed the door behind her and followed him to the tack room. “Thank you very much. And if I wanted to give him some grain, where is the feed room?”
“The grooms do all the feeding,” Gaffigan grunted.
Obviously, she’d do much better exploring the barn on her own. “Oh, of course. Thank you for showing me the tack room. I’ll go visit Benji and go back to the palace.”
Gaffigan showed her to Benji’s stall. She let herself in and made a big to do, fussing over him and petting him such that Gaffigan rolled his eyes and left them alone. Once he left, she opened the stall door and closed it, hoping to give Gaffigan the idea she’d left, and then she squatted against the front of Benji’s stall and hid. Benji nosed her and nibbled at her cloak, and she scratched his nose and ears.
Her legs had fallen asleep by the time she thought the coast was clear. She stood and peeked over the stall door. The barn aisle seemed empty, so she opened the door as quietly as she could, slipped out and closed it behind her. On the alert for other surly grooms, she headed back toward the tack room. She guessed the feed room was nearby. Sure enough, a large solid door stood across from the tack room. With one last furtive glance around, she unlatched the door and slid it open just enough for her to slide in and closed it right behind her.
If Jules was right, this was where he’d contracted the sweating fever. She searched frantically, fearing discovery at any moment. She checked in the feed bins, up at the ceilings and around the windows. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The feed room was as clean as the rest of the palace barn. She spun around slowly in the middle of the room with her hand on her forehead. She must be missing something. And dammit, she was out of time. The whole city was running out of time.
Something skittered behind her and she turned to the door, holding her breath, praying no one had discovered her. But the door stayed closed. Letting
out her breath, she peered over her shoulder. It was almost like … she walked around to the side of one of the feed bins, squatted and grabbed it by the corner and tried to move it out from the wall as best she could, her sore body protesting.
Something banged against the feed bin, ran between her legs and across the room, making her jump. She put a hand on her pounding heart.
Rats in the barn.
She’d been in another barn this summer where she suspected rats made a home—Oswald’s in Mistfell. Where her parents used to eat. And then they got sick. Rats liked feasting off human food supplies. Rats would love a brewer’s grains, a brewer such as Morley. If diseases lived on rats or if diseases lived in their excrement and if Morley had accidentally transported rats in his cart from Whitestrand to Mistfell to Roseharbor …
Well, it was a theory, but dammit, it was the only one she had that made sense. And theories could be tested.
Natalie limped out of the feed room as fast as she could, closing the door hastily behind her. Gaffigan was on the other side, red-faced and ready to explode.
He did not expect Natalie to take him by the shoulders and give him orders. “You have rats in the feed room and possibly the whole barn. Kill them all and clean the feed room thoroughly. Kill all rats you see anywhere. All of Roseharbor depends upon you doing this, do you understand me?”
Chapter 22
R
N
atalie limped as fast as she could back to the ballroom, cursing her sprained ankle. Spotting Gayla, she beckoned the Headmistress aside.
“It’s rats,” Natalie said, panting from her run. “The disease is transmitted by rats. Somehow, we have to kill all the rats in the city.”
Gayla raised her eyebrows. “How do you propose to do that? Traps? Poison?”
“I don’t know,” Natalie admitted. “I need time to think. How is Jules?”
“He’s started coughing.”
Natalie gimped back to the alcove. A Healer tended to Jules as coughs racked his body. Natalie waited until she could take over his care.
“Jules,” she whispered, “It’s me. I’ve figured out what’s been transmitting the disease. It’s rats. Thanks for telling me to look in the feed room.” She kissed his burning forehead. “Now, do you have any ideas about how to kill every rat in the city? Fast?”
She sat against the wall and adjusted Jules so he lay propped up on her chest with her arms around him. All his teas were within easy reach, and she administered and Activated them when needed. A knot formed in her stomach when she felt how much lighter he was than when she’d hauled him here. “What we need,” she whispered in his ear, “are a bunch of hungry cats. Or I need you to miraculously wake up and tell me how to find Anli and Onlo so they can teach me how to build rat traps.”
She tried to recall when Onlo said they’d be back. Four or five days. How long ago did they leave? Everything was a blur.
“So, my love, how do you catch a city full of rats?” Natalie leaned her head wearily against the wall behind her. Over the next few hours, in between giving medicine to Jules, Natalie came up with ideas, each one sillier than the last. “We could build mechanical cats. We could put a wheel of cheese in City Square and hope they all come for a visit. We could put a thousand tiny huntsman on a thousand tiny horses and hunt the rats down. Maybe Gayla will find the mage who will then magically kill them all with lightning bolts.” With each of her own suggestions, she giggled a bit more, but she had to stop when the giggling made Jules cough.
Dammit, there had to be a way. She grabbed her Healing diary and thumbed back and forth through it. Something caught her eye on a particular page and she flattened the book and ran a finger down the page. “Listen to this Jules, but three hundred years ago, there was an illness like this one, killed only adults in their prime. Children and the elderly were largely spared,” she read her notes aloud to Jules. “Having a strong immune system seemed to work against the human body in this case. As if the immune response overwhelmed the body and it was too much. Children and the elderly, having weaker immune systems, didn’t have this problem. Bloody hell, I didn’t put it in with my notes on epidemics, I put it in with my notes about immune systems,” She dog-eared the page to show Jules the entry when—if he woke up.
It seemed to be a day of discovery. Still, she had yet to figure out how to kill every rat in Roseharbor. Natalie only knew about the spring snare traps Jules had shown her how to make, and those depended on having a tree nearby. Perfect for the rats outside, but for the ones inside houses or barns, she needed another idea. Lack of sleep and the cumulative exhaustion of the past few weeks made thinking feel like wading through mud. Traps and poison, Gayla had said. Traps and poison ... Well, poison might be nice, but people would need to touch the dead rats to dispose of them, increasing their chance of contracting the sweating sickness. And poison might kill beneficial animals as well.
“Dammit, Jules, I’m a Healer, not some builder from Obfuselt. Why didn’t you ever tell me how to contact your friends without the whole Isle finding out?” she grumbled. He didn’t reply, so she stuck her tongue out at him and went back to brainstorming. Would there be anyone else from Obfuselt in the city? If so, how would she find them? Obfuseltans were notorious for being hard to find unless they wanted you to find them. But perhaps there was a builder, an architect, a wood carver—someone she could ask. Maybe she should’ve brought Aaron along after all. He’d know what to build.
But it meant leaving Jules’s side again. Her heart squeezed painfully. She gently hugged him tighter and put her lips next to his ear. “I have to go,” she said, choking on the words. She pressed a kiss to the side of his temple. “Don’t you go anywhere while I’m gone. You fight, do you hear me?”
Slowly, she extricated herself from behind Jules and laid him carefully on his cot. With a final brush of her fingertips across his forehead, she turned and left before she lost her resolve.
She told Gayla where she was going, made sure good Healers were tending to Jules, and left the palace once more.
Stepping into the bright sunlight, Natalie stopped short; she had no idea where to go. Roseharbor was a huge city, one with which she was utterly unfamiliar. Taking a breath, she began asking passersby where she might find a builder or architect. Some people ignored her and some people gave her terrible directions using landmarks in the city she had a wretched time finding. Eventually, with her ankle throbbing and her temper significantly worse for wear, she arrived at the door of one Siaraa Kamal, Builder. She knocked impatiently. After what seemed like an eternity, a tall woman with long dark hair, burnished tan-colored skin and striking topaz eyes answered the door.
“I don’t remember calling for a Healer,” the woman said.
“I’m looking for Siaraa Kamal, Builder. I’m Healer Natalie Desmond and I need to build rat traps. Rather a lot of them, I’m afraid.”
The woman raised her dark eyebrows. “I am Siaraa Kamal, Builder. How does one Heal with rat traps?”
Natalie raised her own eyebrows. “One kills the rats who are killing everyone else.”
Siaraa considered this, then gestured for Natalie to enter. “Please come in.”
Natalie followed Siaraa into her workspace, a spacious, rectangular room with sunlight shining through large windows onto an enormous wooden worktable covered with paper and thin charcoal sticks. Several of Siaraa’s sketches hung on the walls.
Siaraa gestured to a chair. “Please sit and tell me more.”
Natalie sat, wishing desperately she could take off her boots.
“My partner and I followed this disease from Whitestrand to here. The only time we were separated was right before he fell ill. He was in the palace barn, the feed room to be exact. When I went to investigate, I found rats.”
“How certain are you rats carry the illness?”
Natalie raised her hands and let them fall to her lap. “Nothing else fits. When the disease left Whitestrand, it left wi
th a brewer carrying ale. And I am completely certain the disease is not passed from person to person. If I am wrong, then … I am wrong. But I really don’t think I am, and this is the last chance we’ve got to stop it.”
Siaraa steepled her fingers. “So. Rat traps. Even if we design a simple one, who is going to build them—you and me? We have a whole city to cover.”
“Indeed,” Natalie agreed. “I thought about that on my way here. As it turns out, this disease does not kill children. Children—at least children above a certain age—should be able to build a rat trap if it’s simple enough. They have access to their own homes, whereas we do not. Plus, they can often sneak into places adults cannot.”
Siaraa considered this, a dubious expression on her face. “An army of children building and deploying an army of rat traps in the capital city of the Isles.”
“Yes.”
“That sounds absolutely crazy.”
Natalie’s stomach fell.
“My kind of project,” Siaraa grinned and began sketching like mad.
Siaraa’s hand flew over the paper as she muttered to herself, occasionally balling up a drawing and throwing it away in frustration before beginning anew. Natalie paced Siaraa’s workroom, unable to be of use. Perhaps this was how patients and their family members felt waiting while Healers worked—desperately hoping for a good outcome but unable to help in any way.
“Stop pacing; you’ll drive me mad,” Siaraa snapped, not looking up from her work. Natalie slumped in a chair and brooded instead. How close was Aldworth to finding her and Jules? How close was he to building another megalith for Lorelan? What were Anli and Onlo up to? Were her mother and Aaron all right? Had anyone from Solerin responded to her mother? She tried not to think of Jules; any thought of him and she might leave the room and run back to the palace.
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