Exsanguinated

by D. K. Holmberg

  “Maybe, for now, you keep it,” Alec said. “I have enough of a supply, and with Bastan able to harvest it, I don’t think I’ll run out, at least not anytime soon. Besides, we might need you to have such clarity of thought. We might need you to be able to come up with answers.”

  Jalen studied the jar for a long moment, and the knit of his brow hinted at a debate warring in his mind. “I don’t love the idea, but you might be right.”

  He took the jar and slipped it back into his jacket pocket.

  “There’s another reason you should have it,” Alec said.

  “And what is that?”

  “You have to be tested soon. You might need it to help make sure you pass the promotion.”

  Jalen frowned. “You don’t think I could pass without it?”

  “I don’t know. I hear one of the people who will be testing you will be quite rigorous in the questions he will ask.”

  “Maybe that person would be interested in offering me a hint as to the questions that will be posed.”

  “Maybe, but probably not.”

  Jalen flashed a smile. “I’ve been spending most of my time in the library here, reading practically everything I can.”

  “I think you’re going to be fine. From what Master Carl says, you are the brightest student he’s ever worked with.”

  “Only because he refused to work with you.”

  Alec shrugged. “He and I have never been on the best of terms. I don’t think he particularly cares for my father.”

  “You need to get past that,” Jalen said.

  “We can work together. You don’t need to worry about that.”

  “That’s good. I wouldn’t want to think that you would let your irritation with each other prevent you from helping to lead the university.”

  Alec smiled. “It’s not so much me that you need to worry about.”

  “Don’t worry. I had the same conversation with Carl.” Jalen glanced toward the door. “You intend to go to the ward and work with your friend?”

  “I told her I would mentor her.”

  “Would you want company?”

  Alec looked at Jalen suspiciously. “Why?”

  He flushed slightly. “It’s not like that. I just thought that with as busy as the hospital has been lately you might want another set of hands.”

  “I won’t turn down help, and I’m sure that Beckah would enjoy having you there as well.”

  Jalen pulled the jar out from his pocket and opened it, pulling out a piece of meat. He handed one to Alec and then took one for himself and popped it in his mouth. As Alec chewed the meat, he wondered if he would ever get used to the bitter taste. He hoped he wasn’t reliant on it for long enough to find out. But with as much as they had to do, with as much danger as there was with Helen and the other Scribes still on the loose, he needed every bit of clarity he could summon. And if that meant consuming eel meat, that’s what he would do. For now.

  But maybe there was another way. Maybe he could find the cure, but to do so, he needed to find Helen and have her tell him what she had added to the easar paper mixture that day.

  If he couldn’t, then he might just have to accept that this was how he would always feel. He would have to accept that he would be forever reliant on the eel meat, and he would have to hope that there would not be any long-term complications to his consumption of it.

  Jalen watched him, and Alec tried to smile and appear confident, not wanting his friend to worry about him, but he doubted he was successful. At least Sam didn’t seem quite as concerned, though maybe she wasn’t showing her concern. Knowing Sam, she worried about him as much as he worried about her. With what she planned, he feared for her safety.

  Alec shook himself. The eel meat had given him a boost of strength, and he grabbed his jacket from a hook behind the door and headed out of his quarters with Jalen alongside, making certain to close—and lock—his door as he left.

  As they made their way down the back stairs to the hospital ward, neither of them said anything. When he stepped inside, the air had the familiar strong medicinal smell, but there was something else mixed in it, an odor of filth and rot that had not been present the last time Alec had been here.

  Something new had come to the university.

  Alec took a deep breath. “It’s time to get to work.”

  2

  Search For a Scribe

  The hospital ward was busier than it had been in a long time. Nearly fifty more cots had been brought down, crammed into the existing space, and people on them were in various states of alertness. He paused at the wide double doors, resisting the urge to look over to Jalen, and looked for where he could be of most use.

  “This is your fault, you know,” Jalen said.

  “That we’re here?”

  “That it’s so busy.”

  Alec smiled. “Good. When I was first studying here, there were times when the hospital ward was almost slow,” Alec said.

  “You won’t make nearly as much money.”

  “I’m not sure that the wealth generated by the university was always well spent.”

  “No? How else could they buy easar paper?” he asked with a smile.

  It wasn’t until recently that Alec understood that was the purpose of the funds generated by the university. If he could truly find an alternative source of easar paper, if he could make it himself, then there would be multiple advantages, not the least of which being that there would be less of a need to charge exorbitant fees for healing. How many people in the city would be benefited? Quite a few more than were now.

  “Think of all the things the physickers missed seeing because they refused to treat them,” Alec said.

  “I didn’t get to treat anything,” Jalen said softly.

  Alec glanced over. “That was your choice.”

  “I had to hide the fact that I was a Scribe. My family… we were all Kavers. My sister was the first Scribe, and she was never going to rule. There had to be continuity for the city.”

  “Are you so certain that you and Lyasanna were the first Scribes descended from your family?”

  “There were no others.”

  “That you know of.”

  Jalen shrugged. “It’s possible others preceded my sister and me. If they did, they kept it concealed the same way I did.”

  “I don’t understand why you would conceal it. Especially since the university council has as much influence as it does.”

  “It’s for that very reason that I didn’t want to reveal what I was. I didn’t want to complicate the structure in the city. As far as anyone knows, it is the Anders family that rules, not the university council. And for the most part, the Anders family does rule. It’s only when it comes to certain things that the university has the authority.”

  “As far as you know,” Alec said.

  “As far as I know,” he said. “It is complicated.”

  “It doesn’t have to be,” Alec said.

  “I didn’t think you wanted to get involved in politics.”

  “I never did. I was content spending my time at the university, and before that, at my father’s apothecary, doing everything I could to heal.”

  “And look at you now,” Jalen said.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you are drawn into what you will be drawn into. Sometimes, you get to choose how you get involved, and other times, it’s chosen for you. I know you didn’t necessarily want this, but it suits you.”

  “Master physicker?”

  “Master physicker. University council. Chief Scribe.”

  Alec shook his head. “I can’t be the last.”

  “I know you want Eckerd to do it, and likely he will, but you haven’t been corrupted by the university system the same way the others have been. You have been apart from it, and I begin to think that might be beneficial.”

  Alec breathed out, wishing he didn’t have to be asked to be Chief Scribe, but maybe it did make sense for him to get i
nvolved.

  He saw Beckah working along a row of cots and made his way toward her. She had the record of one of the patients in hand and was skimming the page.

  “What can you tell me about him?” Alec asked, looking down at the man lying on the cot. He did a brief survey, identifying him as a person in his mid-thirties, with sun-darkened skin suggesting that he worked outdoors, and based on the dirt under his nails, perhaps near the steam fields. It suggested to him that this man was from the outer sections, which meant he was someone who had only recently been allowed to come to the university. He breathed regularly, though every so often, his breathing paused. A grimace came to his face, though he said nothing.

  Beckah looked up from the records. “It says that he was brought here after suffering from some sort of ingestion. He was found along the outer canals, practically near the steam fields,” she said, wrinkling up her nose as she said it.

  Alec was surprised she would still feel that way, especially since she had gone with him to Caster, and she knew he didn’t feel quite the same way about people that others felt were lowborn, especially not after spending as much time with Sam as he had.

  “He moans at times but hasn’t really been awake.”

  “Could he have inhaled too much of the steam?” Jalen asked.

  Alec pulled down the man’s jaw and looked in his mouth. There was no sign of scalding at the back of his throat that he would’ve expected with the steam. He looked up his nose, searching for any other signs that it might be steam toxicity, but could find nothing. He checked the man’s pulse, and it was regular. He lifted him, rolling him so that he could examine his back, then looked at the skin on his arms and legs and stomach but found nothing there, either.

  “It’s possible,” Alec said.

  “I don’t know much about steam inhalation, not from the steam fields. But I did read something a while back that reminds me of this.”

  “I doubt that anyone knows much about it,” Alec said. “The university never allowed people like that to come here to be studied.”

  “If it is simply an inhalation, won’t it resolve in time?” Beckah asked.

  “It’s possible, but if there are any strange substances in the steam that his body has now absorbed, it might not. It might be more than what he can tolerate, and it might be that he needs something more than simply supportive care.”

  “You could try a combination of enbar fruit and boiled jissom oil,” Jalen suggested.

  Alec glanced over, smiling. “That might be effective. It would certainly sooth his tissues, especially if they are inflamed from the steam.” He looked over to Beckah. “Beckah, do you think you could help Jalen find the necessary items?”

  Her eyes widened slightly, and she glanced at Jalen before nodding quickly.

  When they left, heading back to the supply room, Alec made a few notes on the record. He moved on, joining a group of junior physickers, and looked at the patient they were working on. The patient was clearly sick, with pale skin and sunken eyes.

  “What happened here?” Alec asked.

  “Master Stross, you don’t need to focus on this one. She is beyond our help.”

  Alec frowned. “Beyond our help? Why would that be?”

  “She has nearly been exsanguinated. She was discovered in the Loran section and had lost quite a bit of blood by the time she reached us,” said Thed, a junior physicker.

  Loran was a merchant section. It surprised Alec that they would come across someone who appeared to be lowborn in that section. Crime wasn’t common in sections like that, but it did happen.

  “How much blood was estimated to have been lost?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “What about the person who brought her?”

  “They didn’t say,” Thed said.

  “Did they comment on how much blood they saw where they found her?”

  The junior physicker shuffled his feet. “I guess… I guess I didn’t think to ask.”

  “It’s helpful to know how much blood loss there has been. If you have a sense of the amount of blood loss, you can determine whether there’s anything that you can do.” He checked the woman’s pulse and found that it was thready but intact. “And she still has an adequate pulse. With appropriate supplementation and hydration, it’s possible she can recover.”

  “Even with significant blood loss?”

  “I have seen people who have lost quite a bit of blood come back with appropriate care. Most of the time, it needs to be only supportive.”

  “Is there anything that can be done if they’ve lost more blood than that?”

  Alec looked over at Thed. “There are rumors of physickers who have tried blood donation, but that was only tried in extremis. Supposedly, they were trying to save one of the Anders and were willing to do anything they could to do so.”

  The recollection made him wonder whether he would do the same thing for Jalen if it were to come to that. He had never considered blood donation as a viable option and had often felt the same way as Thed, that there wasn’t much that could be done, especially when someone was as far gone as this patient.

  “What was the mechanism of injury?”

  Thed pulled her arm out from underneath the blanket, and Alec saw a sutured laceration across her forearm. “Whatever was used to injure her cut through one of the main veins.”

  Alec examined the arm. A wound like that would have to be either very lucky—or unlucky—or intentional.

  Alec turned his attention back to the woman. He had seen another person exsanguinated recently, and with what was taking place with the missing Scribes, as well as the Kavers that Helen commanded, he worried that maybe there was a connection. Could it be that Helen had found another Kaver and had taken her blood to continue with whatever she had planned?

  “Why don’t you see if you can learn anything more about this woman. Find out who she is, who she knows, and anything else that you can learn.”

  “Master Stross?”

  Alec nodded.

  “What will that do?”

  He sighed. He didn’t want to worry the junior physickers, and as far as he knew, none of them had trained as Scribes, something they wouldn’t discover about themselves until they were farther along in the university. There was a testing, though if they were to discover more Kavers, maybe that testing would need to be expedited. Rather than worrying Thed, Alec decided to try a different approach.

  “There is often much that can be understood about a patient when you see where they come from.”

  “See? You want me to go out to the Loran section?”

  Alec shrugged. “There were several times when I would leave the university to discover what I could about patients.” He smiled at Thed. “It would be the kind of initiative that might gain you more recognition.”

  Thed nodded and then made a few notes on the woman’s record before turning away.

  Alec continued on through the hospital ward. There was something good about spending his time there. It was something that felt right, reaching out and seeing who he could help and who he could make a difference with. It had been too long since he had spent any amount of time at the university, and it had been too long since he had felt as if he could be useful as something other than the person who had discovered easar paper. In the ward, he felt a sense of purpose.

  That was why he had struggled with doing anything other than working as an apothecary, or now as a physicker. Even though he had a connection to Sam as her Scribe, he felt a calling to heal.

  He stopped and saw a few more patients, looking at the notes and making a few of his own, offering suggestions for treatment. But as a master physicker, there was an expectation that he wouldn’t complete the treatment himself, short of any sort of surgery, and even in that, he didn’t have the necessary skill to be allowed to operate. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to, anyway. He enjoyed his time working with Master Eckerd and learning how to operate, but he found it much more rewarding to use his knowl
edge differently.

  He made a circuit of the ward, nodding to some of the junior physickers he knew, surprised that there were fewer students than he expected, before catching up with Jalen and Beckah near the back of the ward. They were talking quietly, mixing the berries and the oil, and bringing it to a boil. Alec watched, standing off to the side and not wanting to interfere. Beckah needed to do this, and maybe she needed the time with someone other than him to help guide her.

  And maybe there was something else he needed to do.

  He left the hospital ward with something of a heavy heart. It was different coming here now as a master physicker. When he’d been promoted to full physicker, he still continued to help others, having essentially skipped the level of junior physicker, which was when physickers spent the most time on the ward. Time on the ward, understanding just what could be done for the patients, was what drove him. It was where he felt he had the most purpose. During his first months at the university, if he wasn’t in the library studying, he’d been in the ward, and though he had been viewed strangely, people understood. If he were to do that now as a master physicker, there would be a different perception because master physickers weren’t supposed to be as hands-on.

  Alec tried to shake his melancholy as he made his way to the library. There was one place that he hadn’t explored since his latest promotion. The library had a room devoted to master physickers, a place only those with a certain rank were allowed to access. Alec had been so busy of late that the idea of exploring that hallowed room hadn’t even entered his mind. But with the wards in order and having to wait for his latest batch of easar paper to dry, he figured it was a good time for him to go.

  He passed through the library, nodding to a few of the librarians. They were both full physickers and incredibly skilled researchers. When he reached the door to the masters’ section of the library, he paused with his hand on the doorknob and took a deep breath before stepping inside.