The Scourge

by Jennifer A. Nielsen

  "His daughter tested positive for the Scourge--you saw that yourself!"

  "Unless she didn't," I said, my mind finally putting all the pieces together. "Della wasn't sick until Warden Brogg gave her that drink when she was in the cell with me. I'd stake a bet that the test was the first dose of poison. And every sip of that medicine has made her worse. The disease and the medicine are the same thing--one is just stronger than the other."

  "Lies!" the governor hissed.

  But I shook my head. "They are your lies, Governor Felling. There is no disease in Keldan. There is no disease here in the Colony." Now I looked directly at the woman beside me, her eyes wild with fury. "There is no Scourge."

  Behind me, Warden Brogg froze at my accusation, enough that I was able to pull my arm away from him. The governor had nearly frozen also. I knew I was right.

  "There is no Scourge," I repeated. "If you want someone to get it, then they will. Or if you want someone to pass their test--maybe friends or supporters who are blind to how evil you are--then no spindlewill goes into their drink. You knew the moment you grabbed Della Willoughby that she would get it, because you planned it that way!"

  "You don't know anything!" the governor finally spat out. "Three hundred years ago--"

  "Maybe there was an actual disease three hundred years ago, or maybe not. I doubt we'll ever know for sure. But Della told me the disease is different now than it was back then. You know what I think, Governor? I think you wanted everyone to believe that disease had returned, and you figured out poisoning people with spindlewill mimicked the same symptoms."

  "Ridiculous!" But if it was, why was the governor's face turning so red?

  "No," I said, "it finally makes sense. River People eat a lot of thrushweed, and that blocks the effects of spindlewill, so I passed the first test you gave me. That's why you cut my arm--you had to put the poison directly into my blood." As the truths came together for me, I began to feel more energized. "That's why the wardens aren't afraid of getting the disease, why you're not afraid to be here. That's why I didn't find any special medicine when I searched the wardens' barracks"--the governor definitely reacted when I said that--"there is no special medicine because there is no chance of you getting the disease! There is no Scourge!"

  After another crack of thunder and lightning, the governor pointed in the direction of the Colony. "People out there are sick, grub, and they are dying of something. Whether you think I gave it to them or not, whether you think it's a real disease or a poison, they are dying. Whatever you want to call it, I call it the Scourge. And there is plenty more of it for you."

  If Brogg weren't still here, I'd have tried to run. I doubted the governor could catch me in that long dress and with all this rain. As it was, I kept my seat until I figured out a way to escape. "There's no Scourge in me. No poison in me, not anymore."

  "We gave it to you once; we can do it again."

  "But spindlewill is becoming harder to find. It won't be long before you have to abandon this terrible plan!"

  The governor smiled wickedly. "We're developing other ways to test for the Scourge, better ways. Our solution is inside the infirmary. I'm glad to show it to you."

  Brogg pulled me to my feet, getting control of both my arms this time. I wanted to kick back at him, but all my tired legs could do was just keep me from falling.

  "Is the infirmary a place to kill your own people?" I asked. "Why would you do that? What could you possibly have to gain by doing all of this?"

  Governor Felling looked at the warden. "Take her away. You know where she needs to go."

  More lightning cracked above us, closer this time. Brogg looked up and hesitated. He didn't want to go out in the storm any more than I wanted to go to the infirmary. Of course, staying here with the governor didn't sound much more pleasant.

  "Is it for power?" I asked. "Keldan is a failing country, one where your days as our leader are numbered. How evil are you, to create a deadly hoax like this, just to hold on to your power?"

  She slapped me across the cheek, then yelled, "What I am doing will save Keldan! It is the only way to save my country!" She looked at Brogg. "Take her to the infirmary's back room."

  His eyes widened. "The back room? No, Governor, I won't--"

  "Obey my orders, Warden Brogg. I never want to see this grub again!"

  "Ani Mells!" I yelled. "If you are sentencing me to death, then at least say my name!"

  The governor looked me over, as if in some way seeing me for the first time. "Take this grub away," she repeated.

  Brogg sighed and opened the door. Rain was pouring down, so thick that I could barely see through it.

  "Don't take me there, Brogg," I said. "Please."

  "Either you face her anger, or I'll have to. Sorry, Ani."

  And almost the moment he stepped out into the storm, lightning hit a tree above us.

  The crack was louder than I could have imagined, and the tree began to fall toward the barracks.

  "Governor, watch out!" Brogg yelled. He released me to help her get out of the barracks.

  The second he did, I ran.

  I stumbled northward, almost blind in the rain. I couldn't have been wetter if I had dived into the deepest river, but that comforted me. I had been wet many times before. I had swum through waters thicker than this rain, with my eyes wide open. I could find my way through this storm.

  Where would Weevil be now? The last I had seen him, he was still being held by the warden. Were they keeping him somewhere? Or would he have been released when the other Colonists were sent into the prisons early? Was there any chance he had escaped and gone to the caves?

  The storm beat down on me with a violence I'd never felt before, not even in the worst storms the river country produced. I vaguely wondered if this was the kind of storm that had brought down the ship that had carried Weevil's father.

  By the time I got to the Colony square, it was empty. The Colonists would all be in the prison, sheltered and safe. Weevil wouldn't be there, though. Hopefully not Della either, because I could not risk entering the prison to find her. It was the first place the wardens would look for me. Even now, they were probably spreading out around the island to search for me.

  I had to keep going north.

  When I reached the rocky north shore, the winds had picked up. Raindrops felt like knives on my arms and face, but I couldn't look down or I'd be too quickly lost. Normally I could have withstood the storm, but by now, I was almost too tired to even stand. A powerful gust of wind knocked me down once, my hands and knees crashing onto the sharp rock. Ignoring the stings, I got up, only to be immediately knocked over again.

  I didn't get up this time, not yet. I would in a while, but I needed more strength first. I saw the cave entrance from where I had fallen, but for as weak as I felt, it seemed miles away.

  "Help!" I cried. "Will somebody help me?"

  No one would answer. In all of this wind and with the growing rain and thunder, no one would hear me.

  I got to my feet once more, but my legs wobbled beneath me. It wasn't the wind that brought me down. My legs couldn't do the work.

  I sat on the rocks and closed my eyes. Just take a few deep breaths, I told myself. Then get up and make it to the caves.

  "It's so like you, doing a job only halfway," Weevil said, wrapping an arm around me.

  I opened my eyes as he lifted me to my feet. "Where did you come from?"

  "The caves, of course, though don't tell Warden Gossel because he thinks I'm in the prison, right where he promised to find me after the storm passes."

  "Did you hear me calling?"

  Weevil smiled. "Calling? No, but I've been watching for you. Now come on, let's get inside."

  He almost had to carry me there, and it seemed to me that he did at one point. The water was almost to my knees when we entered the first room of the caves, and up to my ankles in the larger inner room. I could barely slosh through it.

  "You said it floods at suppertime ea
ch day," I said to a woman as we entered. "With this storm--"

  "We can stay until it reaches our knees," she said. "After that, the water outside will be too high to safely leave the caves."

  "How long will that be?" I asked.

  The woman brushed my wet hair out of my face and handed me some smoked fish. "Eat now, child. Then rest while you can. We won't have nearly as long as you need."

  I tore into the food, frustrated that I couldn't get everything in me as quickly as I wanted. As I ate, Weevil assisted me to the farthest corner of the cave, where it was driest. Someone handed him a piece of linen, which he wrapped around my shoulders to help me dry off a bit, though I knew there was little point. Maybe we had minutes, maybe as much as an hour, but I wouldn't be dry before we were forced to leave.

  "The storm might pass," Weevil said. Always optimistic.

  "It might." For now, I didn't care. Once I'd finished the fish, I leaned against his shoulder and closed my eyes. "How's your back?" The rod had struck him three times, hard enough I'd heard its echo in the air.

  "Do you remember the time I got trampled by that wild boar?"

  It had taken Weevil over a week to walk straight again. I winced. "It was like that?"

  "Not really. But every time he hit me, mostly I just thought about how I wished Gossel could be trampled by a wild boar too, just once." He put his arm around me now, drawing me in closer. "The sting will pass soon."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Don't be. You saved me from something so much worse." He shifted against the cave wall, probably to protect his back. "What happened with Governor Felling?"

  "She doesn't like me much."

  "That's ridiculous, everyone likes you," he replied. "Well, except for Farmer Adderson. And the people you sing to in the towns. And the Colonists who dumped out their medicine, and the wardens and their evil governor who've imprisoned us on this Scourge Colony."

  I tilted my head up at him. "There is no Scourge, Weevil. There is no disease."

  He pursed his lips, then said, "I wondered about that while I watched you on the treadmill. You've never been so strong. It was like you'd never been sick."

  "Because I never was," I said. "Not from a disease anyway."

  He humphed. "That discovery won't endear you to the governor, I'm sure." He chewed his lip a moment while he considered that, then added, "Why is she doing this?"

  I shrugged. "She claims it's the way to save Keldan, but how can it? Although she hates the River People, this started long before she came after us. Her personal enemies were brought here too, but only a few people compared to the total number who have come through this Colony. Most of them are just ordinary townsfolk, like Jonas or Clement or Marjorie. How could taking ordinary people help Keldan?"

  Now Weevil shrugged. "What are we going to do?"

  "If we remain here, the wardens will eventually find us. The governor already gave her orders for me, and it wasn't to throw me a party."

  He smiled. "That's too bad. In this storm, it'd be an exciting party."

  "After the storm passes, we have to get off this island as quickly as possible. Maybe we can sneak aboard the governor's boat, when she goes home tomorrow."

  Weevil shook his head. "Too risky. Did you see how many wardens she brought with her? We'd never avoid them all."

  "The boats that we used to come over here?"

  "They'll have been pulled back to Keldan already. This island was designed as a prison, and the governor knows that."

  I exhaled in frustration, and Weevil drummed his fingers against the cave walls to think. He said, "We'll find a way off this island, I promise. Once we leave the caves, I'll look for a boat while you continue resting."

  I didn't even argue. "A rest sounds nice. I climbed a mountain for you today, Weevil. A thousand-mile mountain."

  He brushed a hand over mine. "And if it takes walking this island a thousand times, I will find us a way home. Now sleep."

  For the first time, possibly ever, I obeyed him without argument. If I were not so tired, I would have argued, and probably won. Yet as I fell asleep, I decided that he deserved to win, maybe just this once.

  Let's go, Ani."

  For all I knew, Weevil had been poking at me for five minutes before I finally responded to him. I sat up and stretched and only then realized that the water around us was over my legs. No wonder I had been dreaming that I was so cold. In this water, I was shivering.

  As we got to our feet, everyone else was already exiting the cave.

  "The storm?" I asked.

  "Worse, I'm told. But it'll slow down the wardens too. How are you?"

  "Better than before." My legs still ached, but as blood began flowing through them again, they were warming. And they were supporting my weight, even as we sloshed through the flooding waters. "I can come with you to find the boat. We shouldn't be separated."

  "We need to separate," Weevil said. "If another boat exists on this island, I will find it, but you have to find Della. We'll all meet again on the shore, where we first landed. If there are no boats, we'll overtake the wardens and steal the governor's boat. I can handle one or two. Judging by the way you look, you could manage any warden over age eighty-nine. Maybe Della can bribe the rest." His head tilted. "Perhaps this isn't a good plan."

  I gave his arm a squeeze as I followed him out of the cave. "Find us another boat, one big enough for all the Colonists, if possible. But be safe, all right?"

  "Of course!" Before we left, Weevil pulled the quilting needles from where they had been stuck into his pants leg. "Take these."

  I pushed them back at him. "I'm no good at lock picking."

  "You might need them to get access to Della. Take them."

  I did and stuck them in the hem of my dress, hoping there were no locks between me, Della, and our boat to freedom.

  "Don't break them, like you usually do," Weevil said. "They're the last two needles my mother has."

  "You're only saying that because I always break them," I said.

  "You're going to get Della?" Jonas stepped up to me. "I'll come with you." He had been waiting for us in the cave's outer room. "I heard what you two have done today, for all of us. I'm ashamed to have been hiding here while you have proved what it means to be from the river country."

  "What it means to be a Colonist," I said. "A lot of people stood in our defense today." Then I smiled at him. "I'm glad you're coming along. I'm not sure I could persuade her to go into this storm otherwise."

  He smiled back, but not at me. He was thinking about her. "Most people don't understand Della the way I do. Whenever she's afraid, she falls back on the things she knows--her money and her father's power. But that's not the real her. She's a good person."

  "We know that," I said. "Now come on."

  Weevil gave my hand a squeeze before we left, promising to meet me at the beach in one hour. I didn't understand how that could be possible. This was a small island, but even in good weather and with no wardens out searching for him, he'd have a difficult time covering all the shorelines. He could never see everything in only an hour.

  But we were running out of time. The reality of that was pressing in on me with increasing urgency.

  Jonas and I ducked as low as possible to run away from the north shore toward the old prison. As the warden had predicted, much of the island was already flooding. We were fine as long as we stuck to higher ground, but one misstep and we'd slip and find ourselves with even greater problems. If that was possible.

  "Be careful," I warned Jonas.

  "You be careful," he replied. "I've stayed out of trouble for two weeks. You don't seem able to avoid it for two minutes."

  I laughed. "I can easily avoid it for two minutes. It's the third minute that always seems to challenge me."

  Once we got to the rear of the old prison, Jonas and I debated the best way to find Della. It occurred to me that I didn't know which of the rooms inside was hers, or even which floor she was on. Probably one of the lower
floors, I guessed. Della would have chosen a place that made it easiest for her father to find her.

  "I should go in alone," Jonas said. "Wardens are looking for you."

  "And you too," I said. "We'll stay together." I didn't think wardens would go into the old prison unless they had to, but they might've been in there searching, thinking that's where I'd taken shelter from the storm.

  We had barely stepped inside the prison when the sounds of people's moans and cries overtook the rain and thunder outside. It was as if the walls themselves had come alive with the pain from the Scourge.

  Not the Scourge. No, this was the result of people not taking the medicine. People had begun feeling the effects of emptying their flasks. I understood. I knew firsthand how awful spindlewill poisoning felt without the numbing effects of the "medicine" concoction to counter the pain.

  I wished Weevil were here with us too. Or maybe not. Weevil's advice had been only to test the thrushweed on Della and then slowly wean her from the medicine. Never one for subtlety, I'd convinced everyone to dump out their medicine. The consequences of that had led us here, sneaking around on a flooded island, through a raging storm, to forge an escape attempt over seawaters that no sane person would ever cross.

  Considering all of that, I was very glad Weevil wasn't here. Jonas didn't know the full potential of my foolishness yet, making him a much better companion tonight.

  "Let's check each room as fast as possible," I said. "Go in quick, get out even quicker."

  I let Jonas look in most of the rooms on the first floor while I kept to the shadows of the hallway. It bothered me to hear so many people hurting and to know that I had played a role in their pain. Even if it was the right thing to make them stop taking the medicine, I still felt sad and wished I had a way to help them.

  "She's not on this floor," Jonas reported.

  So we went to the second floor, but when I glanced out the window, I saw something that made my breath lodge in my throat. Weevil was climbing the vinefruit tree in the yard, the same one that held the cage. Of course that's what he would do. If he needed a place to look around, the old prison was taller, but windows were only on one side of the building and didn't point to any of the shores. From the tree, he'd be able to see far more--if he got up high enough.