Although she knew where it was located in the village, Tiji had kept away from the makeshift clinic until now, quite certain the fastest way to get infected with a disease was to hang around other diseased people. After writhing in pain for a while as the stomach cramps twisted her gut, Tiji finally forced herself out of the cottage and headed along the path toward the village, stopping several times to either vomit or evacuate her bowels into the undergrowth. She was feeling wretched, but was reasonably confident that if she could make it to the doctor, she’d be able to get some of the tonic he was handing out so generously.
The sun was well up by the time she reached the edge of the village, the main street stretching out before her like a quest she didn’t have the strength to undertake. At the other end of that muddy street, and another street over, lay relief from the pain, and an end to the draining effects of every bodily fluid she owned trying to forcefully eject itself.
Tiji stopped to vomit again, wondering what was left inside of her to be rid of and then staggered forward. Relief was only a street away.
All she had to do was reach it.
The sun was fully risen by the time she reached the small house the visiting doctor was using as his clinic. It was too early for him to be open, so the line of humans and Crasii waiting to be treated had yet to form. She wondered if they’d make her wait or if she could see the doctor now.
It’s not like he’s going to have to spend much time diagnosing what’s wrong with me.
She decided to try her luck. After stopping on the veranda step long enough to vomit up something that looked like a liquefied internal organ she probably needed to go on living, Tiji made it to the front door. She knocked on it weakly and was more than a little surprised when it was answered almost immediately.
“Where in the Tides have you been!” the human man—presumably the Port Traeker doctor—demanded. “I’ve told you about wandering off—” He stopped ranting when he realised he wasn’t addressing whomever he expected to be standing there at the door. “Who are you?”
Tiji’s answer was to vomit again, all over his shirt. She clung to the door frame weakly.
The doctor looked down at his shirt in disgust. “Tides, you creatures are revolting,” he muttered taking a step back. “Wait there.”
He disappeared for a moment and then came back carrying a bottle of the precious tonic. He pulled out the stopper and offered her the bottle. “Here, take a swig.”
Tiji nodded and accepted the bottle with relief. The creamy tonic smelled foul, but she was sure that any minute now, the doctor would be wearing even more of her innards if she didn’t do something. She didn’t hesitate before putting her lips around the neck of the bottle and taking a deep swallow.
The tonic burned all the way down, and she gagged a little, but surprisingly, she managed to keep it down. The doctor watched her drink it, nodding.
“More,” he commanded, when she lowered the bottle from her mouth. “You need a good-sized dose for it to be effective.”
Grimacing, she did as he bid, taking another swallow of the burning liquid. When she was done, he took the bottle from her and stoppered it.
“Is . . . there anything else I should . . . do?”
“Don’t die on my veranda,” the doctor said, and then he turned and called, “Jojo!”
Unsympathetic bastard. She wondered what criteria they used in the Senestran Physicians’ Guild to rate their members’ compassion and charity. Perhaps that’s why they sent him here, she thought. To teach him some humility.
Tiji sagged against the frame as a feline Crasii appeared behind the doctor. Had she been feeling better, Tiji might have hissed at her—she never liked or got along with felines—but she was too ill to care.
“Get rid of it,” the doctor told the ginger and white feline. It wasn’t until the Crasii approached her that Tiji realised she was the “it” the doctor was referring to.
“I don’t . . . need help,” she gasped, moving to the railing. Tiji didn’t have the energy to worry about the doctor’s abysmal bedside manner or the feline’s intentions. She supposed the Crasii was the doctor’s bodyguard. With the creature close behind her, Tiji used the wooden railing to support herself until she reached the step, and then gingerly lowered herself until she was sitting, hoping that if she waited a little, the tonic might have a chance to work its magic. After that, she might feel well enough to head back through the village to the cottage.
“You can’t stay there,” Jojo said behind her.
“Just gimme . . . a minute . . .”
The feline studied her for a moment, and then shook her head. “Only a moment. If I come back and find you here later, you won’t like it.”
Tiji forced herself to look up at the Crasii. “You could disembowel me right now, you wretched cat, and I’m not sure I wouldn’t thank you for easing my pain.”
The feline frowned, but didn’t react to the insult, which was a little surprising. “Just don’t be here when Doctor Cydne starts his rounds for the day,” the feline warned. “Otherwise, I will disembowel you.”
The feline turned away, muttering something that sounded like “Stupid lizard” but Tiji didn’t really care what she thought. Closing her eyes, the little Crasii rested her head against the veranda post, somewhat concerned to discover she could still feel the burning in her throat from the tonic. Somehow, that didn’t seem right, and her stomach was clenching as if she was about to vomit again. She hoped she didn’t, and not only because she didn’t think there was anything left inside her to puke up. Tiji was certain that if she sicked up the tonic, the feline would be back to disembowel her.
She was also fairly sure that the Crasii-hating, uncaring doctor wouldn’t give her another dose.
By sheer force of will, she kept the tonic down, but stayed sitting on the step. Having sat down, she doubted she had the strength to stand up again, and the cottage felt as if it was back in Torlenia, it seemed so far away . . .
Sitting up with a jerk, Tiji realised she’d dozed off. The sun was even higher in the sky. At least, it seemed to be. It was a bit difficult to tell, it was certainly hotter, but her eyes were blurry and she couldn’t seem to focus them. She looked around but nothing was clear. The street in front of the house was a strip of darkness, the other cottages vaguely rectangular shapes breaking up the green. Tiji could just make out a figure walking toward her, but couldn’t make out enough detail to determine anything other than its human outline. The approaching human paid her no attention in any case. He . . . she—Tiji couldn’t tell—stormed straight past her, slamming the door to the cottage open . . .
“You heartless monster!”
Tiji tried to sit up a little straighter, her head spinning. She felt drunk. The voice yelling the insult was female. Tiji silently cheered her on. Apparently, she’d witnessed the doctor’s rude dismissal of his Crasii patient a few moments ago.
“You can’t speak to me like that!”
“You don’t deserve to be spoken to any other way, you unconscionable bastard! You and all the rest of your Tide-forsaken, murdering, Physicians’ Guild!”
Tiji didn’t hear the doctor’s response because whatever the doctor was saying didn’t matter as much as the fact the woman was yelling at him in Glaeban. Shocked to hear that language here in the Senestran wetlands, Tiji turned and crawled on her hands and knees across the veranda toward the door, to the sound of shattering glass.
“Patients should always expect the worst,” the Glaeban woman continued scathingly. “That way, if it happens, they’re prepared. Did he teach you that?”
It seemed as if the woman was telling off someone else besides the doctor. Maybe the feline was in trouble too.
“And so they should be prepared, you monstrous excuse for a human being,” the woman was saying. “Because you’re not curing the Crasii with your generous medical care and your wretched free tonic, are you? You’re putting them down!”
Tiji was close enough to the door to hear the doctor’s
response now, the enormity of what this woman was accusing him of not quite registering in her fevered mind.
“They are diseased and their diseases spread to the human population,” the doctor said. “We provide a peaceful transition into death, which is more than their Tide-forsaken swamp fever will give them and we’ll save countless human lives in the process.”
“A peaceful transition!” the woman cried in disbelief. “Tides, you’re feeding them raw wood alcohol!”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“Because I know the symptoms, Cydne,” she said. “It might look like swamp fever to the ignorant, but no swamp-borne fever ever caused someone to go blind.”
Tiji heard footsteps inside the house followed by the sound of even more shattering glass and the sound of a struggle. She crawled through the open door and felt something sticky on the floor. It smelled foul, and it made her eyes burn and she cut herself on something sharp when she inadvertently put her hand in it.
“Jojo, stop her!” the man’s voice was shouting from further down the hall, punctuated by the sound of even more shattering glass. “That’s all we’ve got left!”
“Good,” the female voice shot back. “That means you’re done poisoning innocent Crasii.” Her brave words were followed by a cry of pain. Tiji wondered if it meant the feline had attacked the human woman . . .
And then another thought occurred to her . . . Poisoning? Tiji smelled the stuff on her hands and realised it was the tonic. With vision too blurry to make out any detail, she felt her hand and managed to extract the sliver of glass that was stuck in it. Somewhere, in the midst of her muddled thoughts, she realised what the discussion meant.
The tonic . . . it’s not a cure. Tides . . .it’s a death sentence.
Desperately, Tiji stuck two fingers in her throat, trying to purge her body of the poison. It was useless. Not only did she not know how long it had been since she’d swallowed it, the fact that her eyesight was already going meant the toxins were well on the way to doing their job.
Wood alcohol. Tiji knew little about it except that it could kill you.
She heard something that sounded like a struggle and more footsteps, which seemed to be getting louder. Lacking even the strength to hold herself up on her hands and knees, Tiji collapsed into the sticky mess that was the broken bottle of tonic, not caring that it made her eyes water,
“Tides!” she thought she heard someone exclaim as they came into the room, perhaps the Glaeban woman. “Is this another one of your patients?”
“Leave her be, Kady,” she heard the feline say. “She’ll be dead soon enough.”
The human woman must have ignored her. Tiji felt gentle hands turning her over, and then a horrified gasp . . .
“Tiji?”
And that was the last thing she heard before the blackness took away her pain.
Chapter 30
Arkady shook the little Crasii urgently, trying to revive her, but she’d lapsed into unconsciousness. Her silver skin was grey and dull and her breathing was already beginning to labour.
“Did you dose this one, too?” Arkady demanded of Cydne, her eyes filled with unshed tears. She couldn’t conceive of what might have brought Tiji to this place. Torn with guilt that she might be here now, infected with swamp fever and dying of wood alcohol poisoning, because the little Crasii had somehow managed to follow her, Arkady scooped Tiji up in her arms and carried her to one of the pallets they’d set up for human patients.
Cydne stood watching her, hands on his hips, his eye watering from the reek of the spilled tonic. He was furious she’d broken the remaining bottles of tonic, and fairly sputtering with indignation over a sick Crasii being placed in a human bed. “You can’t put her there!”
“The Tide take you, Cydne Medura,” she said, not even bothering to look at him. She focused her attention on Tiji, ignoring the pain from the deep scratches Jojo had inflicted on her face and shoulder while trying to stop her breaking the rest of the bottles. Concentrating on the little chameleon also meant she didn’t have to continue the body-count she had going in the back of her head, listing all the Crasii she’d smilingly dosed with Cydne’s deadly tonic these past few weeks.
“Do you know this creature?” Jojo asked. Despite attacking Arkady on Cydne’s command, she seemed to hold no ill-will toward her fellow slave.
“She used to belong to a friend of mine.” Arkady rolled Tiji on her side, unsure what else she could do for her. It was one thing to recall the symptoms of wood-alcohol poisoning, quite another to remember if there was a cure. She was fairly certain there wasn’t one, because she remembered that the miner her father treated who had the same symptoms had died a slow and painful death, as had poor Pedy less than an hour ago.
“You’re not going to leave her to die there!” Cydne was insisting behind them.
Arkady behaved as if he wasn’t in the room. She might be a slave, but she wasn’t going to be a willing accomplice to any more murders.
“Did you hear what I said?” he demanded, all but stamping his foot in frustration at her continued defiance.
“Are you the doctor?”
They both looked up at the voice. Arkady hadn’t noticed the door was still open. Neither had Cydne, it seemed.
Jojo inexplicably dropped to her knees.
“Come back later,” Cydne snapped at the young human girl standing in the doorway. She was dark-skinned, dressed in a plain, undyed sleeveless tunic and looked no more than seventeen. “We’re not seeing any more people for the time being.”
“Perhaps the good doctor would see me?”
Another woman stepped out from behind the girl, followed by an older woman, who seemed to be in her thirties. But it was the second woman that drew Arkady’s eye. She was stunning. Fair-skinned, with pale eyes and long blonde hair that reached down past her waist, she had a presence about her that marked her as someone not to be trifled with. Like the dark-skinned girl, the women wore simple homespun tunics, but that did nothing to detract from their inherent nobility. Jojo lowered her forehead to the floor.
“Get up,” Cydne said to the feline, kicking her with his boot. Then he turned to their visitors. “I beg your pardon, madam,” he said, realising he was in the presence of humans who might be of the same class as himself. “I thought your servant . . .”
“Medwen is not my servant,” the woman said. “You are the doctor from Port Traeker who’s been so generously treating the Crasii with his tonic, are you not?”
“I am.”
“I’m interested in what miraculous ingredients you’ve discovered that can cure something as devastating as swamp fever.”
“If you’re looking for something to treat a member of your own family, my lady . . .” Cydne said, looking a little puzzled. “It’s not good for humans, though—”
“It’s not that good for Crasii, either,” the older woman cut in. “Unless of course you’re either ignorant beyond comprehension, or trying to kill them.”
Arkady glanced down at Tiji, relieved to see she hadn’t worsened in the last few moments, and then looked to Cydne to see what he’d do. The doctor said nothing, which could have been guilt or it might have been simply because his accusers were all women and Cydne really wasn’t that good at dealing with women.
“It’s poison,” Arkady confessed, as Cydne seemed to have been struck mute. “I gather it’s all part of the Senestran Physicians’ Guild’s grand plans to prevent swamp fever reaching the cities. Kill it at the source.”
The women turned to look at her. “Who are you?”
“I’m his makor-di. He’s had me doling that wretched tonic out like new-year’s ale ever since we got here. I only just realised what it is. So I broke the rest of the bottles.”
The blonde woman glanced down at the sticky puddle on the floor and then nodded to the dark girl, who headed into the house to look for proof Arkady was telling the truth. The older woman pushed past Cydne and came to stand by the bed. Jojo hadn’t m
oved from her prostrated position on the floor.
The blonde woman glanced down at Tiji and shook her head. “Tides, it’s the Lost One Azquil brought back on his last trip.”
“Is she dead?” the dark girl asked as she came back from checking the rest of the house.
“Not yet.”
“There’s another crate of the stuff out back, but the slave was telling the truth. All the bottles are broken.”
“Who are you people?” Cydne demanded, finally finding his voice. “You can’t just barge in here like this. I am a member of the Senestran Physicians’ Guild! Jojo!”
The feline made no move to respond to Cydne’s command, which Arkady thought was extremely odd.
“You are a contract killer,” the blonde woman said to Cydne. “And we are the Trinity. I am Arryl, this is Ambria and this is Medwen. We protect the Crasii and deal out justice to those who would harm them.”
Tides . . . Arryl, Ambria and Medwen . . . No wonder Jojo has been struck dumb . . .
“You’re immortals,” Arkady blurted out before she could stop herself.
Arryl turned to look at her, clearly surprised. “You’ve heard of us?”
Arkady nodded mutely, not sure how she was going to explain how she knew of them.
Fortunately, Arryl didn’t seem interested in explanations. “Then you’ll know I’m serious when I tell you that your little expedition into the wetlands to spare the human population of the cities from swamp fever by murdering every likely Crasii carrier has earned you more than our enmity. It has earned you as slow and painful a death as you have inflicted on countless innocent Crasii until we discovered the true purpose of your tonic.”
“I beg your pardon!” Cydne cried indignantly. “You can’t do that. I’m a doctor. I’m a member of the Medura House—”
“You’re a common murderer,” Medwen, the dark-skinned girl said with contempt.
Despite the death sentence just passed on Cydne, Arkady couldn’t help but stare. This was the immortal Cayal had once slept with; he’d once posed as her husband. The one he claimed he had a soft spot for. And the exquisite Arryl . . . she was the one who’d rescued Cayal in Magreth and taken him to the Temple of the Tide where he was eventually made immortal . . .
The Palace of Impossible Dreams Page 21