by Beth Cato
I looked to the commander of our guard. “The tanks must be opened and the rods withdrawn.” Like the copper and wooden medician wands we carried at our sides, these tanks contained rotating spindles that the Lady had blessed within the sanctity of a circle. Water flowed through slowly enough that it was thoroughly sanitized before it reached the spigots.
It took mere minutes for the soldiers to unbolt the lid and dismantle the steam-powered motor mechanism of the spindle. The long rod was lifted out.
“It’s been replaced,” Miss Leander said immediately, her voice hollow. “There’s no enchantment on it.” Around us were mutters and gasps, the soldiers’ fear shifting to anger.
I mounted the ladder to inspect the rod up close. At a glance, the sheen of water looked a lot like the glisten of magic, but I touched it and found no warmth of inlaid enchantment. I said nothing as I climbed down.
“They did maintenance two or three days ago,” Miss Leander said, as I rejoined her. “Only on these tanks.”
“ ‘They,’ meaning Officer Wagner and his crew?”
She shook her head, scowling. “I still don’t believe he had anything to do with this. Maybe it was one of his men.”
“Which would mean that as commanding officer, he would still bear responsibility. Come along.”
I sent the men at our disposal to the tanks that serviced the healthy side of the camp. Magic was evident in the sparkle on the lifted rod. The soldiers immediately reinstalled it and went on to the next, their spirits buoyed. This was good news. It meant there was an immediate source of pure water though it would quickly be exhausted by the number of needy soldiers.
“It’s a symbolic attack,” Miss Leander said. “The war started because of water rights.”
“Their motivations aren’t our worry. We needed to know the source, and now we do.” I walked away and stopped. Miss Leander had stayed in place, frowning at the water tanks. A low airship thrummed overhead.
“The Wasters didn’t simply remove some of the enchanted rods, or steal our herbs,” she said, the latter in a whisper. “This is more. It’s not dysentery, or cholera, or any of the enteric illnesses that strike a camp because of natural zymes in the water. I know the songs those maladies create. This is new, something different. It’s intentional poison.”
I nodded. Wasters were worthy of many expletives, but for a certainty, they were not stupid. I reached into my satchel for pen and paper. I did not trust this news to travel accurately by mouth. It took a few moments for me to write a letter to the Lieutenant Commander now in charge of Five, and another to be expedited to base camp. All water tanks, all medician storage, must be guarded.
I finished, rather pleased with myself. Miss Leander was unusually skilled, but her focus had been myopic. I had done what was required and inspected the tanks to find the problem. The crisis was not over, but we could proceed from here.
Miss Leander had wandered a short distance away to pace the embankment just behind the water tanks. Her wand and satchel smacked her hip with rhythmic beats. “There’s no way to know where the water was poisoned. It could have happened in the tanks when the medician rods were removed, but the river is the ultimate source. But how far upriver? Where?” She stared across the water at the white slope.
“That doesn’t matter if the rods function.”
“But there will always be men who lazily fill their canteens from the river or go bathe—”
“In which case, they get what they deserve,” I snapped. Why couldn’t she let things be? “It’s not as if we can put water samples in a circle and listen for zymes. We—”
A trumpet’s blast echoed across the shallow valley. We froze for a split second as horror sank in, but we quickly shifted out of our paralysis. Miss Leander unholstered her wand from its loop as I did the same with mine, the two of us relying on the weapons we had on hand.
Cantonment Five was under direct attack.
We ran through the tent-lined avenue. Around us, soldiers scampered for their duty posts—and then we crossed to the stricken side of the camp. Men unable to stand dragged themselves behind barrels and sandbag walls, loading rifles with trembling hands. Others remained prone in snow that persisted in the shadows of the lane.
Miss Leander quite suddenly spun like a Mendalian dervish and threw herself to one side. I had a split second to wonder why, then the brown blur of a riderless horse lunged from between the tents.
I had no chance to dodge. I crashed into the horse, its shoulder as solid as an iron mooring tower. My backside met the dirt, the gray sky whirling as if viewed from a child’s spin-about. Trumpets and hoofbeats and yells took on a tinny cast. I touched my head and found sticky warmth.
Then Miss Leander was over me, her hands yanking me up. “The blood was the horse’s, not yours. You just have a concussion, thank the Lady! It’ll pass by the time we reach the wards.” She dragged me forward.
At that moment, I hated her, this most brilliant student of mine. For her vocal and fervent faith in the Lady, for the sensitivity that warned her of the horse’s approach by the cry of its blood, for how she lorded her blessed insights over me without even intending to.
Before I found Miss Leander, I had been the most powerful medician in Caskentia. My aptitude at a young age even enabled me to have an audience before the late King Kethan. Now it was as though I wore the customary headmistress title of Miss Percival simply because I had borne the name for so long, the way one wears shabby clothes because of sentimentality and good fit.
I gritted my teeth, trying to stave off petty thoughts and the wobbling of the world. I forced my legs to run, stiff and old as they were. Pops of gunfire lit up the edge of the camp ahead. I wondered if the entire front line had fallen, or if this had been a decisive spear’s point to penetrate the trenches to Five’s weakest side.
No matter their goal, ours was simple: protect our patients.
We entered the outer yard of the wards. The deluge had worsened in our short time away. Ahead of me, Miss Leander balked like a horse at gallop jerked to a sudden stop. She could hear a full symphony in off-key agony.
This time, I took her by the arm. “You can still shoot.” It was not a question.
She nodded. Cold as the morning was, sweat coursed meandering rivers from her temple to jaw. “It’s been years, but yes. If I must.” She’d likely mutter apologies all the while.
I disarmed a soldier who lay slack-jawed in a puddle of expulsions. Most men in the yard were either unconscious or too weak to assist in our defense—which was for the best, in a way. Many would have placed their guns to their own mouths rather than face capture by Wasters, who were known for their perverse brutality.
Still unsteady, I stepped as carefully as I could around bodies on the ground. Something felt wrong. I patted my hip. My medician wand was gone! That absence could be fatal amidst a zyme contamination like this. I’d need to recover it promptly.
The walls between the reception and moribund wards contained shrouded logs of dead men stacked like cordwood, five bodies high. All my years at the front, amidst this endless cycle of wars, and I had never seen the like.
“Miss Leander, Miss Percival!” called one of the soldiers, breathing hard. I recognized him as one of our escorts to the water tanks. He motioned us behind a stack of crates.
“Figure them Wasters’ll head this way. They’s executing any sick man they see on the ground. Easy pickings here.”
“Oh Lady,” murmured Miss Leander. “Mercy upon them.”
As a medician, a mentor to several generations, I had never voiced my frustrations with faith. I knew undeniably of the Lady’s power. I felt its wonder every day. But her mercy—that I doubted.
I checked the chambers of my gun. “Prayers later, Miss Leander. Ready yourself.”
A concussive blast shuddered through the camp. More pops, nearer. I r
aised the Gadsden .45 in my grip, my wrist steadied by the corner of a crate.
The brown dungarees of a Waster flashed into view as the man ducked around a tent. I fired. Blood sprayed from his forearm—a mere flesh wound. A pathetic shot, courtesy of my concussion.
The soldier next to us fired his rifle. The Waster spun, a hole gaping through his chest, then flopped to earth.
Gunfire pattered close by, and far away, and all around. More bombs boomed from the ridge. We waited. Tension ached through my ready arms. Hooves clattered into the yard.“Hold! I’m looking for Miss Percival!” called a familiar voice. Captain Yancy. At least he still looked to me, not Miss Leander.
“Here!” I called.
He rode closer. “The Wasters are in retreat, m’lady! They had a force of their best, but we held them off. It seems they expected most of us to be sick as mutts.”
“You medicians. You saved the camp, even if you can’t cure us all.” The raspy voice came from a soldier at our feet. Miserable as he was, he looked up with the most tender of smiles. “Miss Leander, she told us to stop eating and drinking right away. She sent away for help.”
“Not fast enough. Not enough,” said Miss Leander, voice breaking. She slipped the gun into her apron pocket, her gaze distant.
Miss Leander, Miss Leander, all praise Miss Leander. I heard it like a child’s singsong taunt. Gritting my teeth, I assessed the soldiers in the yard. We needed a new plan of attack for our own battle.
I assembled the medical staff. We gathered what little bellywood bark we had for priority cases, and I ordered the reception tent to be cleared. We had just begun the reorganization effort when the battle wounded began to stagger in.
These soldiers, we could aid. I staged men in lines at the operations tent, with Miss Leander assigned to bring the most urgent cases to the front of the queue.
As for the poisoned men, we housed them in the moribund tent. Healthy soldiers were assigned to provide them with fresh water. Those who suffered the most were dosed with morphine. All we could do was keep them hydrated and comfortable. Beyond that, they were under the Lady’s care, such as it was.
At some point, the Lieutenant Commander came by. He informed me that a search was being conducted tent by tent for any Wasters or ill men, and that we had done an admirable job. It was the sort of poppycock expected to be said in public during a crisis.
The line of the injured dwindled. Poisoned men continued to die—though that, too, had slowed down. I estimated the number of dead in the thousands. A barracks had been commandeered to house the bodies.
As I made my rounds, I soon became aware that Miss Leander was missing. An orderly informed me that she had departed with a small escort.
If she had retreated to meditate on the Lady and assuage her guilt, I planned to be livid. Such regrets could and would come later. They always did, the way a cold draft pierces a building.
I gathered my own cadre of guards, and we traced her path back through camp. I recognized the area where I had collided with that horse, and ordered a quick search for my wand. I imagined how it must have flown from my hand at impact, and looked inside the nearest tents.
It was in the third that I found the body, and recognized the insignia. This man had not succumbed to enteric illness. I called over one of my men. “Fetch Captain Yancy immediately.”
Just minutes later, the Captain arrived with his full retinue. We stood over the corpse of Sanitation Officer Wagner.
“Arsenic, no question,” I said. Wagner’s hands had the blue tint of oxygen deprivation, his skin shrunken by dehydration in a way not dissimilar to the other sick soldiers. Most every Caskentian camp had seen such suicide cases, often among officers. A quick search of the tent uncovered Wagner’s own admission of guilt recorded in a note. He confessed he’d been paid a bag of coins by a Waster and intended to use the money to move his family south and out of Caskentia. He had thought that the contamination was meant to merely sicken men, not kill thousands.
Miss Leander needed to see this note later. She needed to know the cold truth. Perhaps it would pour some much-needed common sense into her brain.
“If he’d gone through court-martial, we would have burned him.” Captain Yancy shrugged. “Now we can’t even give his body to the dogs.”
I nodded. “Arsenic causes unimaginable agony, but his dose was high, his symptoms brief. If he had any sort of honor, he’d have endured the same prolonged misery he wrought on his peers.”
“Sir! M’lady!” called one of the privates. He stood amidst Wagner’s luggage. “Is this the missing bellywood bark?”
“Let me see!” I gasped in relief. “Oh! Rush this to the wards. It must be sanitized as a precaution. With this, we can save hundreds more men.”
“Yes, m’lady!” After a nod from Captain Yancy, the soldier dashed away.
“All my men looking, and here you find Wagner, and with him the missing healing herbs.” Captain Yancy gazed upon me with something akin to adoration. I couldn’t say I minded. “This is something of a miracle, Miss Percival.”
Miss Leander would undoubtedly credit such good fortune to the Lady. Perhaps that was true. Perhaps this was the Lady granting me a small measure of gratitude for doing her work. I had even recovered my wand nearby.
“I absolutely agree, Captain. Now if you’ll excuse me.” I had earned my miracle, but now I had a rogue medician to find.
My inquiries led me and my guards back to the water tanks, and beyond. Her group stood out like black cats against the blank hillside about a half mile away. The pickets were none too pleased that we were following the others across the pontoon bridge and up the hill. I didn’t debate the foolishness of leaving the camp so soon after an attack. My escorts had their guns in hand as we trudged upward.
The snow was rendered deep gray by the afternoon shadow of the peak above. There were no trees. On this side of the Pinnacles, the bleakness of the Waste was already evident. This snow seeped into soil that could grow little more than sharp grass that made most beasts sick.
Miss Leander had set out her medician blanket. The sewn edge of the woven honeyflower stem circle glinted on the enchanted white fabric. On either side of it, she had used ground honeyflower to form smaller circles. These would likewise attract the Lady’s focus for healings though these were far too small to encompass human bodies.
“Miss Leander!” I called. “What is this nonsense?”
She faced me, her fingers tangled together at her waist. “Miss Percival! If this works, maybe it will help. But I don’t know. Oh Lady, I don’t know.”
“If what works?” I looked between the blankets and her soldiers, several of whom held metal buckets. By the strong stench, it seemed one contained vomit.
“You said earlier that water couldn’t tell us if it carried poisonous zymes. Those words have itched in my brain ever since. What if I could hear poison itself?”
“You cannot because it’s impossible.”
She shook her head like a horse trying to slap away flies. “Nothing is impossible for the Lady. She’s connected to all life, even zymes—”
“Miss Leander, do I need to repeat the fundamentals you should have learned as a child? Zymes are living beings that require a magnifying scope to be seen. We cannot hear them, only the cascading consequences they create within a body.”
Avoiding my glare, Miss Leander took a bucket from a soldier. The contents sloshed. She set it in a circle on the snow, then grabbed another bucket. The soldiers looked unsettled by this confrontation between us.
“I sanitized these buckets with my wand before filling them,” said Miss Leander. “One has expulsions from a sick man. One has water from the river, just downstream. These two have snow from the slope here. Guards sighted Wasters in this vicinity about three days ago, and they exchanged gunfire. It makes me wonder . . .” She set another bucket in a
honeyflower circle.
“And I wonder how many men are dying because we’re not in the wards,” I said.
She flinched as if I’d struck her. That gave me a petty sense of satisfaction. “I must try this, Miss Percival.” Her tone was soft. She knelt within her medician blanket. Snow crunched and squeaked beneath her as she folded herself into an Al Cala position.
I felt the profound urge to grab her by the arm like an unruly child, drag her back down to the camp. But no. She could look like a fool and get this charade over and done.
“Lady,” she whispered. The heat of the Lady’s magic flashed against my skin. The soldiers made a collective gasp of surprise.
“We need your help, Lady. You know how these men have suffered from poison. Please, grant me your insight. Help me find the source.” Her voice was muffled, her face pressed to kiss her blanket.
After a moment, she sat up, expression puckered in a frown. I turned away, ready to return to the wards. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her stand and step across the still-activated circle. Power lapped against me. The intensity crackled like a bonfire.
Such sheer power was not normal. Not even for Miss Leander.
She stooped to touch a circle that contained another bucket. Another ripple of heat passed over me. “Please, Lady. Grace me,” she said, tone reverent. An instant later, she gasped, touching her ears. “Oh, Lady. Oh my.”
“What is it?” I asked, stepping closer.
“I—I hear something. Like hundreds of mice, gnawing at wood. There’s a rhythm to it.” Tears filled her eyes. “It’s the zymes. I can hear the zymes.”
“That’s not possible.” And yet, I knew it must be true. Deceit of this nature wasn’t in her.
I had devoted my entire life to the Lady’s work, to teaching her magic, her majesty. Now Miss Leander—this mere girl—had succeeded in this?
Miss Leander was not listening to me. She was listening to music that no medician had ever heard before. She moved from circle to circle, whispering as if in a conversation with the Lady. With her glistening white robes against gray snow, she was a figure worthy of a stained-glass window in a cathedral.