He recalled Jou being there briefly earlier on, but he’d been far too sick to talk to her and he thought she had said she would come back later. He had been too miserable to care about it then, and was too weary and confused to ask about her now.
Finally, after who knew how many hours, he wasn’t quite as nauseated, though his head pounded horribly and his body still hurt. There was sharp, almost intolerable pain in his hips and backside and he had no idea why. Vyoti returned to help him sit, and gave him some sweetened bland tea which Karik found he could finally keep down, though his throat was raw and his stomach and chest ached from all the heaving. Vyoti laid a hand on his forehead as Karik cautiously sipped the tea. “Ah, you’re cooler. Feeling better?”
“I’m not dead, that’s about it. What happened to me?”
Vyoti wouldn’t meet his eyes as he wrung out a cloth. “We think you were drugged—from the symptoms, I would almost be certain it was with gerot or gerot mixed with something else.”
“Drugged...how? Why?”
Vyoti gave him a sympathetic look, and wiped Karik’s forehead as he answered. “You’ve been assaulted, Karik. Captain Romi and Lep Wepizi found you unconscious in the street...with injuries.”
“Ah-assaulted?”
“Yes. The injuries are...of a sexual nature.”
At first Karik couldn’t make any sense of his words, they were so unexpected. It was almost as if Vyoti had started to speak some other language. “Y-you mean...rape?” he whispered, his thoughts fracturing into a million pieces as he realised what Vyoti meant.
“Yes. At least that’s what it appears to be.”
“I d-don’t remem-member ah-anything.”
“That’s the drug,” Vyoti said gently. “It’s notorious for the effect it has on the memory. But you’re safe now, and you don’t seem to have had too high a dose of it since you’re recovering already. Gerot can kill—often has done. At least you’re lucky in that respect.”
Karik could only stare as he tried to process this information. It made no sense. He refused to accept...how could he have been...and not remember.... He clutched at his arms to stop himself shaking. “I wuh-want to be ah-alone.”
“I understand,” Vyoti said. “I’ll be at my desk. Try and rest, drink more of the tea. I’m sorry about this, Karik.”
Karik ignored the advice to drink more tea, setting it aside so he could hide under the covers. His body...the pain...he knew Vyoti wasn’t lying...but how? It made him want to vomit all over again.
Jou came by again, how much later he didn’t know or care, but he refused to talk to her, so she left. He couldn’t bear to talk to anyone. How could he trust anyone? How could he face anyone? Why couldn’t he remember what happened? How could something this awful just...disappear?
He managed to sleep again, but when he woke, he ignored Vyoti when he asked how he was. Karik didn’t want to eat, or drink, or talk. He just wanted to...hide. And for the pain to go away—it felt like someone had shoved a hot poker up his arse, and for all he knew, someone had. Vyoti offered him pijn but he refused it—he didn’t want to be drugged unconscious again.
Sometime later, he heard low voices—male voices. He pulled the blankets closer around his ears and pretended he couldn’t hear them at all, hoping they would think he was asleep.
A scuff of chair against the tiled floor, and creaking wood, told him someone had taken a seat by the bed. He continued to ignore them.
“Karik? It’s Romi. I know you’re not feeling very well, but I wanted to visit, tell you what we’re doing to try and find the person who did this.” Karik pulled the blankets tighter around himself. That was enough confirmation for Romi that he was listening, unfortunately, so he continued. “Wepizi and the local soldiers have been out searching since last night. No one saw anything, unfortunately. It would help if I could ask you some questions—I know this is hard for you to talk about.”
Know? How would he know? Karik pulled the blankets away from his face. “G-go away,” he said, giving Romi his fiercest glare.
“I will in a minute,” Romi said in a mild tone, clearly not intimidated. “But if you could help me with this, it might stop whoever it was doing it to someone else. It’s bad enough it’s happened to you, but someone who’s prepared to drug and...attack...a complete stranger is very dangerous. I want them caught. We all want them caught.”
Karik closed his eyes again. If he didn’t have to look at anyone...he was trembling again and he couldn’t control it at all. “I d-don’t remem-member ah-anything.”
“What’s the last thing you do remember? Before you woke up here, I mean.”
If only his head would just stop hurting, it might be easier to recall. “The b-barracks,” he said finally.
“Do you remember going to the market with Jou?” Karik shook his head. “What about supper with Soza?”
Soza.... Karik shook his head again, fighting down a sudden bout of nausea. “Nuh-nothing. S-s-sorry.”
Romi didn’t seem annoyed, which was a relief. “It’s all right. Vyoti warned us about this. We’ll keep searching, be sure of that. Now, what I’ve told people is that you’ve been drugged and attacked, but not how. You don’t need to tell anyone unless you want to, and right now only I, Wepizi and Netu know—Netu half-guessed and since I wanted him to make sure you didn’t suffer any after-affects, I told him the truth. He won’t tell anyone else. I haven’t....” He cleared his throat. “Um, I haven’t told Soza either...do you want me to?”
“No!”
Romi looked taken aback, and Karik himself didn’t really know why he’d been so vehement. “As you wish. I’ve told him you’ll need time to recover and you’ll be here until further notice. I owe you an apology, though it’s not really adequate considering—”
“Wuh-why?”
“You would never have been attacked if I’d stuck to my decision to have you both stay here as I’d planned. I let Soza annoy me into agreeing to something I shouldn’t have, and I let you down, let you down unforgivably. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again. You’re part of my team, and you deserve my protection same as anyone else. I’m very sorry,” he said, bowing his head.
Karik stared, completely and utterly lost for words. He couldn’t detect the least sarcasm or hostility, and Romi seemed quite genuinely regretful. He huddled down into the blankets again, wishing Romi would go away. Amazingly, the man took the hint and stood up. “I’ve asked Jou and Netu to keep an eye on you, see if there’s anything we can do. I won’t bother you unless you want to speak to me. Would you like me to send Soza to you?” Karik shook his head—he didn’t know why, but just the mention of Soza’s name made his stomach curdle. None of it made sense at all. Maybe if he went back to sleep, he’d wake up and find it had all been some horrible nightmare. But he had a feeling it wouldn’t work like that.
~~~~~~~~
Wepizi was waiting for Romi as he came out of the infirmary—they were to eat together and Romi wanted the latest information about the investigation. “How is he?” his friend asked as they began to walk across the yard.
“Shocked—sick. Poor bastard—doesn’t remember anything since early afternoon yesterday, which doesn’t help us at all. I tell you, Wepizi, if I knew who was making that drug or selling it, I’d strangle them.”
“It’s evil, I agree, but there’s always someone who wants to bend others to their will and unfortunately, gerot has that effect. If Karik had been given more, we could be looking at a murder, not just an assault.”
“Then at least we can be grateful for that, but I don’t think he feels all that grateful to be alive,” Romi said, recalling Karik’s red and miserable eyes set in a far too pale face. “Did you discover anything?”
“Not a thing. Those boots make no sense. Why would someone attack Karik and throw his boots a good two hundred yards from where we found him? I can’t believe the attack happened where we found them—there would be too much risk of discovery.”
“But equ
ally, he can’t have been attacked where we found him either.” Romi rubbed his chin. A search of Soza’s room had revealed nothing, but oddly, the boots had been found where Wepizi was sure they had looked before. “If someone had stolen the boots, they wouldn’t discard them later—there was lots of wear left in them, and they were well-made. Valuable if you didn’t own a pair.”
“Perhaps someone realised we were searching for them,” Wepizi said, then he sighed. “I hate to admit it, my friend, but I don’t think we will find out who did this. We will keep looking, but without an obvious suspect, no witnesses, no evidence and no memory of the events from the victim, we’re stuck. It’s an offence against Sephiz, both the crime and the fact we will have to see the criminal get away with it.”
“I promised Karik we’d keep looking, but I think you’re right. Poor bastard—it shouldn’t happen.”
“I’ve been talking to the people here, who have more experience of such matters—they say the victims of such attacks are worse off than most, since they can’t even console themselves with the knowledge they fought back. We need to reassure Karik that this wasn’t his fault.”
“No, it wasn’t. A healer, a son of a healer, wouldn’t take a drug carelessly, so he had to have been tricked. How that happened, I don’t know—we’ll probably never know, damn it. If only that pissing Soza had gone with Karik last night.”
Wepizi stroked his moustache and gave Romi a thoughtful look. “His behaviour is odd, don’t you think? When I questioned him, he was much more annoyed than worried, and principally concerned with the inconvenience to him and any possible delay to the expedition. It wasn’t the behaviour of a friend, let alone a lover.”
“Well, you know what I think of him, and nothing that bastard does surprises me anymore. Karik doesn’t want to see him, so at least he’s not deluded enough to think Soza would be of any use in this matter.”
“It’s the strangest relationship I’ve ever seen,” Wepizi said disapprovingly.
“I know what you mean. Come on, the others will want to know the latest.”
Karik’s popularity with Romi’s people made discretion difficult. Putting visits off for a day or so would be easy, but after that it was only natural they would want to see him for themselves, and they were naturally worried and curious about what had happened. His only choice was to be as frank as he dared. In answer to Reisa’s question about Karik’s condition, he was blunt. “He’s sick and still very shaken. At the moment, he just wants to be left alone, and we should respect that for however long it takes him to accept what happened.”
There were nods of sympathy all round. “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Kepi said. “It’s vile.”
“It’s worse when you don’t know what happened and can’t explain it to yourself,” Wepizi said. “The kindest thing you can do for Karik is to let him set the pace. None of us know what this will be like for him, so there’s no point in demanding a quick recovery.”
“Will we have to delay our departure?” Taz asked.
“Almost certainly, so I expect you all to make the most of the steam rooms and good food while you can,” Romi said. His words were met with rueful grins. “And none of you is to imply to Karik that any delay is on account of him. If he asks, the official line is that Wepizi and the officers here want more time to look over our maps and we want to gather more information about the mountain routes.”
“I notice that pissing Soza hasn’t been around,” Netu said darkly. “Some damn friend he is.”
“Yes, well, maybe it’s best he’s not. I don’t want any of you discussing any of this with him, and if he’s got questions, he’s to come to Wepizi or me. Karik’s confidence has taken quite a knock and I don’t want that bastard inflicting his usual level of tact and diplomacy on him.”
“He’s more likely to make Karik cut his own throat,” Sibu said. She and Jou had come into more than the usual amount of caustic comments from Soza—the man didn’t like women at all, which was another reason to think he was a waste of air. “Permission to make him fall into a ravine, captain?”
“Denied, soldier,” Romi said, as the others grinned. “He’s not worth the paperwork.”
“He’s not worth much at all,” Pali said, his friends Matu and Tiro nodding at his words. “You’d think the naturalists were the only specialists on the team, to hear him talk.”
“Well, fortunately, I don’t listen to him, so don’t worry about it. Now, tell me what you’ve been up to today.”
And that was as much as Romi could do for Karik, at least for now. The man continued to refuse visitors, even Jou, and Romi didn’t press the issue. He got reports twice a day from the healer Vyoti or his staff, who said that Karik’s physical injuries were healing well, although mentally he was very low, had a poor appetite and spent most of the time lying on the bed pretending to be asleep. He was also obviously distressed by the holes in his memory, and unwilling to talk without a lot of prompting. Romi wondered how Karik would cope with the rest of the journey, and was trying to think of a diplomatic way of suggesting he returned to Tsikiugui with Wepizi’s two soldiers and the collections. He couldn’t come up with anything that wouldn’t be outright proof to Karik that Romi thought he wasn’t up to his job, and he didn’t want to do that to the poor sod.
The young man who had been with Karik the day Romi had met him at the market called and was most anxious about his condition. He was told Karik couldn’t have visitors, and he left a note with his best wishes in it for his recovery. That was more than Soza did—he avoided the barracks, and other than two brief notes, made no enquiry about Karik at all. As Wepizi had said more than once, it was very odd—it couldn’t be helping Karik’s mental state, but if they were to lie and claim that Soza had been solicitous, it might do more harm. What a pissing mess.
He’d told Soza that Karik would be staying at the barracks until they left, and Soza hadn’t protested, although he’d firmly stated his intention to stay at the inn, which suited Romi fine in the circumstances. He’d retrieved Karik’s pack and had it stored safely for him, though he didn’t know when he would leave the infirmary.
Five days after the attack, Romi was surprised to see Karik walking slowly along the verandah, clearly headed towards the sleeping quarters. He hurried over to him. “Oh, you’ve been released.”
Karik stared at his feet. “Y-yes,” he said, almost in a whisper.
“Can we have a chat then? I’d just like to know how you are, how you’re feeling.”
Karik’s cheeks went pink, and for a moment, Romi was sure he would refuse, but then he said “Yes” again in a quiet voice, and followed Romi to a bench against the wall.
Romi noted the care with which he sat. “Are you sure you’re healed enough to be out of the infirmary?”
“I’m fuh-fine.”
“There’s no hurry, you know. Wepizi’s got some additional work to do here and we won’t be leaving for at least a week.”
“I’m fuh-fine.”
“Well, that’s good.” Karik still hadn’t looked at him. “We, uh, thought you might still like to sleep in the infirmary, with it being more private...or we could put a cot in an office.”
Karik’s head snapped up. “I’m fuh-fine! L-leave m-me al-alone.”
Romi raised his hands in appeasement. “Look, I’d be worried about anyone on my team who was hurt, not just you. It’s my job to make sure you’re all right. I’m not trying to pry or hurt your feelings.”
“I’m fuh-fine,” Karik said in a dull voice, looking at the ground again.
“If you’d stop repeating that, I might be more convinced. Karik—you know you’ve no reason to be ashamed. This isn’t all that uncommon a crime in Visiqe, unfortunately. It’s not because you did something.”
“Wuh-we d-don’t know, b-b-because I c-can’t remem-member.” Even with this strange stutter he’d suddenly acquired, the bitterness was more than clear enough.
“All right, we don’t know—we’ll proba
bly never know because we don’t have a witness or any clues. But I know you, I’ve seen you work—you’re not the kind of person to behave in a foolish fashion, or invite trouble. I think this is just bad luck, compounded by my lack of foresight. It’s not going to happen again, and then we’ll be out of Visiqe soon.”
Karik made no response to his words, and continued to look steadfastly at his boots—those puzzling boots which still bothered Romi a good deal. “Is there anything anyone can do?” Romi asked gently. “Would you like to talk to Wepizi?”
Karik shook his head. “I’m fuh—”
“Fine, yes, you said.” Romi sighed. “Let me at least show you the quarters and get your pack for you. Would you like Jou to show you around?” Another headshake. “All right. It’s this way. The food’s good, if you’re interested,” he said, then winced at his own insensitivity—Karik probably wouldn’t want to eat too much until he was completely healed. “There’s a decent library too—nothing like the academy, I imagine, but you might like to take a look.” Even that bait failed to raise any interest.
The sleeping quarters were larger than the ones in Tsikiugui, but fortunately almost deserted at this time of day. Romi’s team had been allocated a corner, and without asking Karik, he assigned him a space at the very edge of the other sleeping pads. “Latrines through there. Steam room over on the right—no one will mind if you want to bathe during the day. We don’t have to follow their routine.”
Karik faced the wall, apparently examining his coat. “S-Stop b-babying me.”
“I’m not, I’m honestly not. Look—if it had been anyone else hurt, and they were coming to the barracks for the first time, would you expect me to just throw them at the quarters and leave them to get on with it? Will you at least look at me?” Reluctantly, Karik turned, his eyes stormy. “Now, listen to me. It’s my job to look after you. You’ve had an injury like any other, and I’ve got to make sure you’re fit and well, same as I would for anyone else. Just as we accommodate the women’s monthly cycles, and Reisa’s piles, and the fact that Pali farts like an urs beast. We work around all those things, and make sure no one feels they can’t do their job because of something I’ve forgotten to consider. I know you and I haven’t got on, and I don’t expect you like me any better than you did when we started this journey. But damn it, if you think I’m happy that you’re hurt, you don’t know the first thing about me!”
Staying Power (Darshian Tales #3) Page 26