Radi sucked in a startled breath. A few of the people in the other cell turned their heads to stare at Calev.
“I’m guessing that isn’t a good thing,” I said.
“No,” Radi said. “He should already be dead. I’m surprised he’s not. The kyros is…” He eyed the guards and let the words fall into silence.
“I only wanted to assure him that I was telling the truth,” Calev said. “I’ve made a mess of everything I’ve done since I entered this city. The kyros said he wanted to think about what to do with me.”
My news, news of home, thrashed around in my chest like a screaming rabbit ripped open by a fox. I had to tell him. Even though he looked ready to break into a thousand pieces already, shame cracking his features and movements. He needed to know about the fever.
“I came here to get you,” I said. “To bring you back fast.”
Calev cocked his head, listening.
My throat burned, and my happy tears from earlier began to sting my skin. “Kinneret is dying.”
He went still, his hands frozen at his sides. It looked like he’d stopped breathing.
“She has a fever.” The truth scraped claws against my heart. “Many have already died from it. It’s the same one that killed our parents. But if you go to her, if you’re with her, she’ll find the strength to heal. She’ll fight it and win.”
“Did your aunt come over from Kurakia?”
“We sent a rock dove, asking her to come and try to heal Kinneret and the others. But it takes time for word to get across the Pass this time of year.”
Nodding, Calev paced a small circle, his hands in his hair again. “She can’t heal herself.”
I shook my head. “She tried. She’s too weak. She keeps thinking she hears Mother and Father. Then she wakes and is crushed by their loss all over again. The fever has her mind.” I squeezed the bars until the pain of it stopped my tears.
Calev’s gaze snapped to my face. He didn’t have to say a word. I knew exactly what his eyes were saying.
We have to get out of here now.
“Enough talk,” the guard barked in trade tongue. He knocked the hilt of his dagger on our cell door. “More noise means less food.”
The people in the cell between Calev and us shifted apart and Calev disappeared from view.
I breathed out and looked at the ceiling. “Radi. What can we do?” I whispered.
“I don’t know. He won’t listen to us. None of them will.”
We tucked ourselves into the far corner, away from the humming madman and the guard who walked the strip of dirt in front of the cells.
“If I could get word to my family,” Radi said, “maybe my cousin Bash could bribe the guards. Such a slight offense as yours…I don’t think they’d come after you. More important worries on their minds. But your brother-in-law, well, his offense is great. I don’t know, Avi. I don’t know what we could do even if we weren’t trapped alongside him.” Radi’s eyes were serious, burning.
Shaking, I took his hand, held it to my chest. “Thank you for caring. I’m so, so sorry you’re here because of me, because of us.”
He gripped my fingers and his mouth tried to smile, but only managed a lift on one side. “I made my choices. This isn’t your fault. Or your brother’s.”
He set his forehead against mine and we shared a breath. He was still a stranger, but a stranger I was glad to have on my side.
7
Calev
The moon hid behind billowing clouds, leaving us prisoners in the gray night. The floor of the cell was nothing but cold dirt, and though all I wanted was to rage my way out of this place and back to Kinneret, exhaustion dragged me into a fevered dream.
We were on Kinneret’s boat.
The small dhow dipped in the water and the one triangular sail snapped in a burst of sudden wind. In my dream, the hull was just big enough for us to lie down beside one another.
“What are we going to dream about, Calev?” Kinneret’s voice was low and teasing in my ear.
In my mind, her breath flowed over my temple as she pressed the length of her strong legs, stomach, and chest against me.
I shivered.
She smelled like sea salt and the night flowers that lined the path away from town. Her eyes were almost the same light color, contrasting with her dark skin. She thought Miriam’s dark eyes were prettier, and maybe they were, but Kinneret was Kinneret. Her coloring meant little. She could’ve had purple spotted eyes and I’d still think she was perfect. Perfect for me, anyway.
“Tell me,” she whispered in my dream.
I decided to show her instead of wasting time talking.
Her lips parted slightly as I kissed her. A warmth stirred deep inside me, and I smiled into her jaw, then the long column of her neck, pulling her closer. She was so soft and had so many angles and curves.
I was lost. I was found.
Still dreaming, my hand drifted over her stomach and my thumb passed over the arch of a rib, the smooth skin. She made a noise, a gentle exhale, and I couldn’t stay still. I moved onto my elbows and cradled her beneath me, her head in my hands.
“This could prove an embarrassing kind of dream to have in a prison cell, my love.” Her laugh made her body buzz against my hips and chest.
I planted a kiss under her earlobe where her pulse beat, then slid a hand to her lower back, her shirt crumpling under my palm. She wrapped her arms around my neck and tangled her fingers in my hair, grabbing a little roughly. A grin tugged at my lips.
“I don’t care,” I said into her soft, soft skin.
“Yes, you do.”
“No. I really don’t.” I aligned our bodies and inhaled, my stomach smoothing across hers. “And I think we need less clothing on. Now.”
She put hands on my chest, her eyes widening. “Something’s wrong.”
I sat up. The boat melted away.
Everything in the dream was black except for us.
Kinneret’s face paled and she looked at her hands. Her fingers curled into skeletal claws.
She gasped. Or I did.
“What’s happening?” I patted her head and came away with strands of her hair. My stomach twisted. “Are you sick?”
When I met her eyes again, her pupils dilated. She fell back. I caught her. Bones pressed through her skin and a scream built inside my throat.
“No!”
The nightmare shattered and I was awake again.
And then I saw the cell door, the rising sun over Akhayma’s military training field, and Avi’s worried face peering through the bars two cells down from mine.
I turned, kneeled in the corner, and vomited.
“Bring him some water, please!” Avi called out to the guard.
The man grumbled but opened my cell door and handed me a sloshing bowl of cool liquid. Surprised that he cared, I drank a sip, but couldn’t manage the rest, instead setting it on the ground. I wiped my mouth with my sleeve and stood on shaking legs, hoping the guard’s behavior meant something positive.
Radi and Avi stood staring through the bars.
“You all right?” Radi asked, kindness in his eyes.
I nodded, my skin throwing off the scent of fear and my mind shoving out images of Kinneret’s skeletal hands in the dream.
The guard was sharpening his dagger on a whetstone, and the brass studs on his leather vest reflected the Holy Fire in the bowl beside a plate of chicken.
“Do you know my story?” I asked him quietly. I had to get out of here.
He stopped and glanced my way. “Old Farm. Or maybe not.” A shrug lifted his shoulders.
“My father is the chairman.”
“Rich boy.”
“Yes, I am.” The words left a bitter taste on my tongue. “And I could make you richer.”
“How is that exactly? From what I can tell, you are trapped in a cell and have nothing but the ratty tunic on your blessed back.”
“For now. But when I leave here—”
“N
o sign of that happening anytime soon.”
Avi and Radi came forward, listening from their cell.
“It could happen right now,” I said. “There could be men on their way here to release me, to apologize, to send me on my way to do Old Farm business.”
The guard went back to sharpening. I raised my voice, just a little.
“Then you’d be the same. Stuck in this lowly position. Guarding filth. No glory here, hm? Unless you count the redistribution of waste materials.” I wiggled my eyebrows at the chamber pot by the door.
Standing, the guard narrowed his eyes. “Do you want to be beaten? Because I can arrange that. Even from my lowly position.”
“Or,” I whispered as he came close, “you could leave my door and that one over there open before you leave and find yourself the lucky recipient of a rich, unnamed uncle’s gift in five days when I’ve had time to return home unscathed and put things in order. No one would need to know if you used the silver wisely, slowly.”
I almost sounded like Oron. He would’ve sworn or made it all seem even dirtier than this bribery attempt really was.
Dagger in hand, the guard rubbed his chin with a knuckle. “It’s tempting. We’ll see, blessed, rich boy. We’ll see.”
Every bit of me wanted to beg, to tell my story, to paint a picture of Kinneret and her suffering and try to play on his sympathy. But my time with Oron had taught me that some men had no sympathy. Maybe this stone-faced guard was one of those sad souls. I retreated before I ruined my chance at success.
A new guard jogged up to the older guard. They traded some words and the old guard started toward the city. He looked over his shoulder and pursed his lips, shaking his head a fraction. My heart fell. I held tight to the bars to keep from sliding to the ground. Avi and Radi whispered together, Avi’s frown making everything worse.
I’d failed. We were stuck.
The new guard opened Avi’s cell and jerked her arm, holding out shackles. Radi stepped forward, but the guard shouldered him back expertly. With Avi in chains, the guard welcomed another guard into the cell and they grabbed Radi, ringing his wrists in metal too.
I slammed a hand on the door as the new guards shackled Radi and Avi.
“Where are you taking them?”
The guards’ silence flooded my mind with the nightmare about Kinneret—her hair falling from her head, the grip fear had on her voice.
Avi looked at me with big eyes.
A shudder wrapped around me.
The shorter of the two guards led them away—To their punishments? To their deaths?—and it was as if Kinneret’s life drained step by step, heartbeat to heartbeat.
A shout built in my lungs, and I unleashed it, seeing red.
The taller guard kicked the door. “You should behave. I’m to take you to the kyros for your sentencing.”
My hands fell to my sides.
Avi and Radi’s silhouettes blended into the walls’ shadow as the city took them.
I stepped back, trying to keep my frustration in check as the guard opened my door. He linked my hands with thick, steel shackles engraved with the Kyros Meric’s title. I was marked as his property. No better than a cow, fit to be used or slain as he saw fit.
The kyros wasn’t sitting at the high table in the main tent this time. Instead his general and his wife Seren regarded supplicants with serious eyes, explaining the kyros wasn’t well today.
While a middle-caste woman detailed who she believed had murdered her husband and a high-caste man my age explained a bad trade with one of the steppe’s noble clans, my heart jumped from erratic, jolting beats to sluggish rolls that left me dizzy.
Kinneret, I will get back to you. Be strong. Be strong.
Finally, it was my turn.
My knees hit the carpet.
The general’s aged voice rumbled through my spinning head. “Stand. Give your name.”
Putting a hand on my knee, I managed to straighten. I raised my chin and did my best to give him the look my father would’ve. “I am Calev ben Y’hoshua, son of Old Farm’s chairman, Y’hoshua ben Aharon.”
“You spoke out against the kyros, Calev ben Y’hoshua.”
“I am sorry, General, and Pearl of the Desert.” I knelt again. “It was an accident born of frustration.”
Seren waved a hand so I would rise up. “Tell us your story, Calev ben Y’hoshua. Not about the agreement and the robbery. Tell us about your connection to the girl and boy who threatened the kyros's peaceful home with a dangerous and disrespectful stunt on the top of the Kyros Walls.”
“Please, will you tell me where they are? Where they’ve been taken? She is my Intended’s sister. The man, the boy, he is a friend of hers. The girl, Avigail, came here to bring me home. My Intended, Kinneret, is dying of a fever.”
“The girl and boy are being questioned by the lower bench. As a favor to my new husband. Are you a healer of some sort?”
“No.”
“Then this is all a story to waste our time,” the general snapped.
“Avi believes that if I go to Kinneret, she’ll heal. She’ll be able to fight the fever until her aunt, who is a healer, arrives.”
“Why?” Seren’s look intensified.
“Because we love one another.”
The general made a noise and crossed his arms, but Seren’s eyes narrowed and she asked me to tell her more.
“I don’t know if Avi is right,” I said. “I’ve seen plenty in the last year to let me know there is much in the world that is…difficult to understand. Maybe she’s right. Maybe my love for Kinneret can save her. I’ll do anything to try it. It’s all I have to give.”
“Love is all you have to give,” Seren said in a whisper.
I nodded. “Yes, Pearl of the Desert.”
The general jerked a hand at some men. “Take him back to the cells.”
Seren opened her mouth to say something, but no words came out. Her silence took my breath and made the world seem too heavy to bear. Was she going to save me? I would likely never know.
8
Avi
Rain trampled down from black clouds and onto my head where I stood, back in our cell. I’d thought it hardly ever rained in Akhayma. My heart chilled.
Had Calev’s luck run out?
With shaking fingers, I rung out my hair, then braided it again. Radi stared into the training fields, unblinking. I put a hand on his arm, feeling like I’d known him for so much longer than I had.
“What are you thinking?”
“About Meekra. About how we might drive the guards crazy until they decide to send a message.”
Leaning against the bars, I searched the cells for Calev. He stood at the front, near the door, his forehead pressed into the metal and rain dripping off his chin and the scant beard growing there.
“Calev.”
He didn’t move. I eyed the guards, not wanting to push our luck. Some more important looking people had questioned us while Calev spoke to the kyros. They’d frowned and murmured to themselves, then sent us back here. At least we weren’t dead yet. I supposed Calev had nothing to share since he’d been silent as stone when we got back, only gasping in relief to see us alive.
“Calev!” His head turned and one hand slid down the bars. “Did you see Pearl of the Desert’s handmaiden?”
His eyebrows drew together as Radi came up beside me. I stood closer, enjoying his warmth in the wet, chilly rain.
“Maybe. There were several there serving…”
Radi pushed into the front corner to get closer to Calev. “Was there a girl named Meekra? Or something like that?”
Calev shook his head. “I didn’t hear any names. Why?”
“She’s my cousin,” Radi said. “Distant cousin. I don’t think she knows. I thought maybe if she was told we were related, maybe Pearl of the Desert would be more apt to listen to our story.”
The man at the back of our cell hummed more loudly. He sounded like angry bees. I hoped he wasn’t going to str
angle us in our sleep. Not that I could sleep.
“Ask to send a message to her,” Calev said.
I rubbed my temples. “We did. They won’t. But I’m going to try again. Guard!” I called out, heading to the door. “He has a message for Pearl of the Desert’s handmaiden, Meekra. This is her cousin, Radi.”
Radi put a hand over his heart and smiled tentatively. He blinked silver raindrops from his thick, black eyelashes.
The middle-caste guard ambled over. “Fine. Fine. What is this message? You better not be wasting my time. The others will never let me hear the end of it.”
“We’re telling the truth. This is important.”
“He really is Meekra’s cousin?” Respect and not a little awe flavored the guard’s question. That would work to our advantage.
“She is very close to his branch of the family.” I was lying almost as well as Oron. “If she finds out Radi is here, she’ll definitely want to talk to him.”
“Why are you just now mentioning this?”
I gave him my best glare. “We told the other guards.”
The guard looked at his boots, kicked the bottom of the door.
“What can I tell you to persuade you to send the message?” Radi cocked his head.
The guard’s puffy eyes flicked up. “Where was she born?”
Radi winced, then smoothed his face with a hand. “Akhmim.”
The guard lowered his head and stared at Radi like he could somehow see through him. “I’ll send a boy with a word. You better be telling the truth. What do you want the message to say?”
“That her cousin Radi has been wrongfully imprisoned and he knows something that will help her lady ease the kyros’s worry about Jakobden.”
“I doubt the boy will even get through, but fine, fine. I’ll send it.” With a nod, the guard ambled away, waving a hand to a stablehand wandering through the training fields.
I squeezed Radi tightly. “Thank you.”
His smile warmed me even more than his body.
Fever: An Uncommon World Novella Page 5