Walking on Water

by Matthew J. Metzger

  “Drink.”

  That word, Janez had taught him. The cup tilted. The mead sank down.

  “You may sleep here tonight,” Hauser said, knowing full well it was pointless. Mindless chatter, however, might comfort them both. He brought a blanket. Held tucked it around himself and then turned those great pale eyes back to the body in the bed.

  “Dead?”

  The word was quite unexpected. Where had he learned that particular one?

  “No,” Hauser said gently.

  “No dead.”

  “Not dead.”

  “Not dead,” Held echoed and lapsed into silence once more.

  Hauser was no fool. Simple, he’d told Janez back then, and the king a few days later, but it was clearly false. Held was no simpleton. Simply foreign. From where, Hauser doubted they would ever know—doubted, by the way Janez had looked at him, that Janez even cared to know now. But that gaze was intelligent. That rope he’d heaved around the mess of leg had undoubtedly saved Janez’s life. Hauser got the impression that young Held had much invested in saving that particular life.

  Sighing, he rolled his neck. The powder would take effect in half an hour or so, and then he would move the boy to a pallet and get some rest himself. If the prince chose to die during the night, there was nothing anyone could do now.

  A commotion at the door made him frown—more wounded, no doubt, if the physics and herbalists in the harbour had finally admitted they were no doctors. But the frown turned to a scowl when the door was cracked open and an anxious face squashed between cap and chinstrap squinted at him through the gloom.

  “The, ah, His Majesty, ah—”

  “God Himself is wiser than to disturb a surgeon at his work, sir,” Doktor Hauser said sternly.

  The squashed face turned a sickly green. “But—but the King, sir—”

  “A spine, my dear man, I’m sure you have one.” And when the sentry could only make a strangled noise of distress, he harrumphed, “Fine!” and shoved him back into the hall. Stepping after, the doctor shut the door quite firmly behind him, a wooden barrier between his patient and his lord, and stood before the king in his open shirt and bloodied breeches.

  A king who had aged a thousand years.

  In any other mood, even Doktor Hauser would have yielded to the bloodshot eyes that met his own. The king seemed three hundred, not thirty-three. His hands grasped stiff and arthritic at Hauser’s shoulders, and his mouth fumbled for words in a haggard face. His clothes were still smeared with rusty stains where he had cradled the broken body to his chest. His fingers were still the same claws they’d been on the torn overcoat.

  Yet Hauser’s mouth tightened.

  “I will send word in the morning,” he said.

  “He lives. He lives.”

  “For the moment.”

  Something flared in those familiar blue eyes. Something jagged and infected, oozing pain and pus like a diseased wound.

  “Doktor—please—my brother—”

  “I would suggest turning your attention to more serious matters, Your Majesty.” Beside him, Hauser could feel the sentry cringing. “The alliance will be broken. Even if he lasts the night, His Highness will be siring no sons. There is far too much damage—”

  “Hang the damned alliance!” Alarik exploded. His hands bit into Hauser’s shoulders making them ache. “Damn the war and damn the bloody lineage! My brother—my blood—I must see him. I must!”

  “You must not,” Hauser returned, but he yielded a fraction. Perhaps Alarik’s priorities weren’t so badly skewed. “He still breathes. I will keep watch in the night.”

  Alarik was shaking his head before the doctor had finished speaking.

  “I must see him. I will keep watch.”

  An eyebrow crawled up the doctor’s forehead.

  “Are you a doctor?”

  “I—”

  “Or perhaps a surgeon?”

  “Well, I—”

  “Forgive me, Your Majesty, but perhaps you have learned the arts of both science and medicine whilst I have been amputating a man’s leg?”

  “Doktor.”

  The whisper was fractured. The break was clean and clear, breaking the word in two, visible to the naked eye.

  Hauser paused.

  The king was no king. He was a man, wearing his brother’s blood, stinking of gunpowder and gore.

  “I will have no kings in my rooms,” Hauser said slowly, “but I may permit a patient’s family.”

  Alarik’s eyes closed.

  “Go and wash. Thoroughly. Cold water and soap. Yes, Alarik, soap! Then, dress again in only white linen—roll the sleeves up, and wash your hands again once you have finished. Then I will permit you to sit with him. But you are no king in these rooms. I outrank, my assistant outranks you—hell, Alarik, the very jars outrank you. One moment of disobedience, one second of risking my patient, and I will not hesitate to barricade that door against you.”

  Alarik simply nodded.

  “Of course, Doktor.”

  “And that includes, Alarik, if the patient does not want you there.”

  Blue blazed as his eyes flew open.

  And then it dimmed.

  “Yes, Doktor.”

  And then, as quickly as he had come, he was gone.

  HELD WAS A bundle of tired limbs and barely open eyes in the chair by the time the knock sounded on the door. A pale gaze flickered up, and Hauser put a finger to his lips before rising.

  The sentries had been doubled. And the king stood before him, scrubbed pink, and dressed in heavy linen underclothes, the sleeves rolled to the elbow.

  “Quiet,” Hauser said sharply and allowed him inside.

  Every other time the king had cause to enter these rooms he’d been full of commentary—a mixture of horror, disgust, and awe at the jars and their collections, at the sawdust on the floor, at the lanterns swinging from the ceiling to aid surgeries when the sun could not be found.

  Tonight, he stepped in—and immediately forgot all but the man in the bed.

  His face—quivered.

  His entire being seemed to collapse, as though the string that held him up had been cut. With a low moan, he stumbled across the room and caught himself on the instrument stand. His hands shook. His back trembled. A hand reached out and then recoiled, and the next moan was broken by a sob.

  And, very faintly, two words.

  “My brother.”

  Hauser watched in silence as a broken man—no king, no leader, just a mourning man—shivered by the bed. The words were repeated once more and then shivered out of existence again.

  The next was simply—sorry.

  An apology to fall on deaf ears. An apology far too late. And too vague. For what did the king, the man, the brother, apologise? Their icy rift? The reckless order? The ball that had torn away the leg and perhaps yet the life?

  Or for anything, everything, that would seep into his brother’s soul and bring him back from the brink?

  Wordlessly, Hauser pushed a stool to the side of the bed and guided Alarik to sit. For a moment, he did. And then after another moment, he pushed himself back up and touched his lips so gently to Janez’s forehead that he didn’t so much as mark the sweat that beaded there.

  “I am here,” the doctor heard, in a whisper softer than the gentle drop from a sleeping man to death itself.

  And then the king’s gaze flickered up and met pale, foreign eyes that stared soundlessly from the other chair. The words changed.

  “We are here. We are here, brother.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  THE NIGHT WAS long.

  Held’s eyes itched, and his brain burned to sleep, but he found he could not. He could barely move from the chair, extending one hand onto the bedspread to tuck his fingers into Janez’s and feel the weak pulse of life under hot skin. He could go no further.

  Alarik stayed also, but his watch was wide awake. He’d come in a blind panic, eyes streaming and voice hoarse, but they’d dried during
the endless vigil, and his voice was a continual murmur, a comfort, a balm in the dark. Held knew not the words, nor the message, but he knew the intention.

  For some hours, the candles burned down, and Janez simply breathed. But when the hourly chimes struck three in the harbour below, he stirred, muscle rippling under Held’s arm, and the king’s level tone changed.

  “Ich bin hier,” he said, leaning forward and resting a hand on Janez’s forehead. “Ich bin hier, mein Bruder.”

  A shimmer of light showed, and Alarik called for Doktor as Janez’s eyes opened. They roamed. His breathing grew louder—a wet rasp not unlike the choking breath he’d taken in Held’s arms upon the roof the world, the very day they’d learned of each other’s existence.

  “Doktor!” Alarik called again, and Janez started. His hand rose from the bed; Held caught it, forcing himself up in the chair to clasp the hot fingers between his own.

  “Held.”

  His name was a rough rasp, and Held squeezed the fingers tight.

  “I’m here,” he said. But of course, Janez would not understand—or even hear, it seemed, for his eyes skated to the ceiling, dull and wide, and he murmured his brother’s name in another hoarse croak.

  “Ich bin hier, Janez,” Alarik murmured, the refrain familiar now to Held. “Ich bin hier.”

  Doktor came, carrying a lantern and dressed in heavy night robes. He spoke quietly, palming Janez’s face and neck, and then he was gone again. Janez barely seemed to register his presence, and fear swelled in Held’s gut. He was sick. His skin had been hot, those nights together in his rooms, but it had been slick. Now, under Held’s fingers, it was rough and dry like beach sand.

  He was very, very sick.

  “Wir sind hier, Janez,” Alarik murmured, his eyes flicking up once to Held before he leaned over the prince’s face and pressed his lips to that bruised forehead. The kiss was tender.

  Janez’s reaction was not. His arm came up, elbow catching Alarik under the chin. He fought, a great cry rising in his throat—and then Doktor was tearing back into the room. The noise stuttered; the body in the bed thrashed, throat gurgling, and Doktor forced a strap between teeth and frothing lips.

  He fitted.

  Held had seen this in mermen infected with great parasites—before the death. He’d seen the savage clawed form of their hands, and the vomit and bile spilling from their lips. Janez thrashed much the same—the blankets curled around him, and his limbs scrabbled where he lay, too senseless to find his aggressors, too maddened by the great heat under his skin to free himself.

  And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it ceased.

  He slackened, like the wind dying from a cloud, and his head rocked free of the strap.

  “Janez!”

  “Kannst du mich hören?”

  Their urgent enquiries went unanswered. Held crept from the chair onto the bed and clutched up one hand to his chest. Had he—no, no, he could not have—

  Doktor palmed his neck again. Held stroked the slack wrist in his grip and found that weak pulse again, jumping in erratic beats.

  “Wasser.”

  Doktor’s command was sharp. To Held’s shock, Alarik turned from the bed and hurried into the dark room beyond them, more servant than king in that moment.

  “Is he going to die?” Held whispered and then swallowed. No, no. They would not understand. “Tot?”

  “Nicht tot,” came the flat reply, and Doktor began to loosen Janez’s clothing. He stripped back the sheets, and Held seized upon the idea. Janez was hot. And the heat made the illness worse, much like with his own kind. If he were cool…

  He helped expose Janez’s flushed skin, until only his sex and the bandaged wounds remained concealed. When the king returned, it was with a great basin of water and ragged cloths. Doktor packed them, drenched and cold, against Janez’s neck and armpits, even against his sex and bloody stump, and then he took Held’s hand and forcibly wrapped the fingers around a dripping rag before lowering it to his chest and wiping the water off there.

  Held seized upon it. Keep him cool. He shook Doktor’s hand off and repeated the motion himself, wetting chest and neck until the rag was rubbed dry, and then returning it to the bowl and beginning again. Around him, Doktor and Alarik talked in low tones. Held caught tot several times, but refused to hear its context. Janez would not die. He could not die. Not now—not after everything Held had lost, every hope Held had pinned onto him—not when Held’s very existence now centred on this man—

  No, he would not die. Held would not permit it.

  Time stretched out there, in the gloomy light of the sickroom. Twice more, Janez opened his eyes, and called for both Held and Alarik; twice more, he seemed unaware of their replies. He didn’t fit again, but he shouted, even screamed, and for long minutes, in one of these spells, Alarik clutched his face in both hands, their foreheads pressed together, and begged alongside him.

  “Wir sind hier, mein Bruder,” he said, over and over, the refrain falling on deaf ears. “Wir sind hier.”

  Janez would only clutch his arm, look right into his face, and ask for Alarik. And the look of pain on Alarik’s face was so sharp, so jagged…

  He was a broken, damp-faced brother, sitting clutching Janez’s arms and whispering fervent prayers as Janez slipped under the fever again and lay quiet. Lay dying.

  Held shook off the thought. He would not lose Janez. He would not lose the man he loved quite literally more than his own life. “He will not die,” Held told himself firmly and started over again with the cloths. If the fever would break, then Janez would live.

  If.

  It burned hot and bright, oblivious to Held’s work and Alarik’s murmurs. Doktor came again when the chimes sounded five times and forced some mixture down Janez’s throat. And truly forced: Janez did not stir. He lay silent and still, his skin aflame, and Alarik, too, had lapsed into silence. He simply clasped one hand between his own, lips resting upon the knuckles, and stared with red-rimmed, dry eyes at the body between them.

  The bells chimed six.

  The bells chimed seven.

  The bells chimed eight, nine, ten—

  A guard came and was sent away. Doktor’s assistant came and went, slipping in and out of the rooms without so much as a glance at the little vigil. Another potion was forced into the unresponsive prince, and the bells chimed eleven.

  Perhaps Held slept. Perhaps he didn’t. Alarik, he sensed, did not. The king sat perfectly still, almost meditating, fixed perfectly in position.

  A chime rang out in the city below—and the skin under Held’s rag shivered.

  He paused, glancing up at the still face. A shadow seemed to pass over it, so very fine and indistinct, and for a split second, panic seized Held’s heart. No. No, no, he could not—he could not—!

  The chest rose again, and the movement shimmered.

  Water.

  Held abandoned the rag and touched his dry hand to Janez’s forehead. It came away damp.

  He was—cooling.

  Cooler. Breathing, but cooler. His skin was slick. No longer the parched texture of sand, but the soft slickness it had been the last time he’d flushed so deeply.

  “Doktor!”

  Alarik’s voice rang out and broke in the middle. The shiver came again, and the lax head rolled. Blue eyes, the pupils mere spots of darkness in that churning sea of every blue that Held had ever known, sought out the sound.

  “Held?”

  Held stroked his forehead and kissed it. He hardly dared…oh, he wanted, but he hardly dared…

  The eyes skated past him. Searching. His name was repeated again, very softly, and Held crooned on some deep-seated instinct.

  “I am here,” he said, safe in his own tongue. “I am with you. And I love you now even more than before, you know, because you have asked for me above any other.”

  Janez would never understand the words. Alarik, by his dumb look, clearly did not either. But the roving gaze ceased, and fingers lifted clumsily.
Held caught them, kissing them in his own manner, and repeated himself gently until the urgency faded from that beloved face.

  Doktor came. Janez seemed unaware of him, or of Alarik, but Held kept murmuring to him, even began to sing one of Mother’s old songs, and he remained calm.

  And soon, he slept.

  Not the shuddering sleep of a fitting man, nor the cut-string placidity of a dying one. But merely—slept. As he had that night in the Winter Palace. As he would any other night, in any other place.

  He slept, and Held kissed Janez’s fingers with his own and knew the worst had passed.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  JANEZ WAS QUITE insensible.

  It was not surprising. He was terribly weak, the infection terribly strong, and Hauser was forced to remove further dying flesh on the second day and cauterise it more savagely than before. Insensible was perhaps best.

  It was causing the king great distress, however. Janez would look right through him, and beg for his brother, his mother—even the father who had had little relationship with his younger son. He would ask for Held, also, but Held must have made a habit of speaking in his own tongue around the prince, for he would murmur or sing to him softly in some other speech, and Janez would quiet again, tame and trusting. He never seemed to know that the voice came from the same man mopping at his forehead with cold rags or holding his hand, but he seemed to know that it meant Held was at least nearby.

  And Hauser was not stupid.

  Wives sat and sang such to dying husbands. Dying husbands calmed at such attentions. That fixed gaze from the very first day had been of no simpleton or spy, but of a suitor. If, of course, it was possible to regard washed-up sailors with no name or home as suitors for princes.

  Alarik seemed either unaware, or uncaring. He had to be driven out of the sickroom to attend to business, but returned with the darkness of each evening without fail, and slept each night in the chair by the bed. Held gave it up entirely and curled on the coverlet next to Janez, his voice the only thing, some nights, that could penetrate the shock and enable Janez to sleep properly.