by Beth Revis
Grey tugged at my arm, and I reluctantly turned to follow him. But another boat a few slips down caught my eye, and I pulled free and raced over to it.
Carso had told me when he dropped me off at Blackdocks that I could go back home on his boat at any time. I knew I couldn’t really leave—there was too much work to be done at Yūgen, but it would still be nice to see Carso. Maybe he had news from home.
Only Carso wasn’t there. “Hello?” I called. I was certain it was his boat.
“Interested?” a girl’s voice asked. I turned as Carso’s sister, Dilada, approached. “Oh,” she said, surprised. “Nedra. I didn’t recognize you.”
“Where’s Carso?” I asked. I’d thought Dilada was going back to her family’s farm after her job in the forest.
Grey moved beside me. I knew I should introduce him, but I was more focused on Carso’s absence.
Dilada nodded toward the bay. “Remember when I went to the forest?” she asked. “I helped clear the trees. D’you know what it was for?”
I shook my head.
“Pauper’s grave.” Her eyes grew distant. “The whole field.”
“Dilada,” I said, sorrow sinking in my belly like a stone thrown in the water. “Where is Carso?”
She stared in the direction of the forest. “Sold the farm. Selling the boat.”
For the first time, I noticed which dock we were standing on. A small section specifically for people to line up their boats in the hope of a quick sale.
“I’ve got another job lined up,” she added. “Berrywine’s factory. Furniture making.”
I tasted bitterness on my tongue. This was exactly the fate Carso hadn’t wanted for his sister. But what were her other options? She was about my age. What would I do if my entire family died and I had nothing left but my wits? Factory jobs were hard, but they came with a bed to sleep in and two meals a day. It was something, at least.
“How did he . . . ?” I started.
Dilada looked at the ground. “Blackness in his feet first,” she said. “He hid it from me for a while, till he couldn’t walk. We paid an alchemist to take away some of his pain.” A corner of her mouth lifted up. “There was that at least.”
The Wasting Death. The same disease that had taken Dilada’s parents.
Worry twisted up inside me. Dilada’s village wasn’t that far from my family’s. And Papa traveled through it, selling his books.
“Are you looking to go back to your village?” Dilada asked me. “I can take you, if you need to go now.”
Grey stiffened beside me, but didn’t speak. I wondered—if I decided to leave, would he ask me to stay?
“No,” I said. “I can’t. I have work to do here.”
The words gave me courage I didn’t know I had. This was why I’d come to Northface Harbor, to Yūgen. This was why I spent my days in the library and the labs, my nights working with Master Ostrum. I wanted to go home—I wanted it so much that it hurt—but I was useless in the north. Here, maybe I could help find a cure.
* * *
• • •
“Go away.” Master Ostrum didn’t even look up at me as he pointed to the door.
“There’s still work to do,” I protested.
“Not today.”
I ignored him and tried to maneuver around the desk to the small door behind it. But Master Ostrum shifted his chair, blocking the entry to the laboratory.
“Nedra,” he said, his voice kinder this time. “You just did some excellent alchemical work. I’d debate on whether or not it was needed, given the girl’s condition, but nevertheless, you transferred her pain away. Not many fully trained alchemists could handle that.”
“Are you saying the amputations in the quarantine hospital are done without any kind of pain reduction for the patient?” I asked, horrified.
Master Ostrum shook his head. “I’m saying that most alchemists would have taken shifts on a procedure like that. You more than proved you’re ready for this work today.”
“Good. Let’s continue,” I said, trying to go into the lab again.
“Take a break. I don’t want you to push your body and your mind to the limits. I need you sharp. Tomorrow we go deeper.”
“Today,” I insisted, but the fight was leaving me.
The giant bell in the clock tower chimed.
“Don’t you have a study group now?” Master Ostrum said, deflecting me.
I hesitated. I’d attended a handful of Salis’s history study group meetings, and quite enjoyed the debates and new perspectives I’d learned. But as active as I’d been in the meetings for the first half of the month, in the last few weeks, I’d dropped them. There was too much work to do in the present to dwell on history. But Master Ostrum was right. I was bone-weary after the morning’s alchemical work.
“Go,” Master Ostrum said, sensing my doubt.
“Tomorrow,” I said, making the word a promise.
He bowed his head. “We resume tomorrow.”
Because the study group was in the same building as Master Ostrum’s office, I was only a few minutes late when I reached the meeting room.
“Oh,” Salis said, appraising me with her eyes. “We didn’t know you were attending today. Take a seat.”
I felt the admonishment in her voice, and my cheeks burned. I hadn’t meant to hurt the other girls’ feelings by ignoring the group; I’d just grown increasingly focused on my private labs with Master Ostrum.
“For those who’ve been absent,” Salis continued, shooting me a pointed look, “we’ve already discussed Wellebourne’s motivations and major battles leading up to the desecration.”
This was all subject matter I knew, although I did regret not getting the girls’ take on it. Wellebourne had started off as loyal to the Empire, striking out for an unknown and unpopulated island to lead a colony and expand the Emperor’s territories. After a rough winter with little aid, he decided he’d be better off leading his own independent nation and tried to rebel.
One of the other girls in the group plopped a book on the table and started rifling through the pages. Her name was Flora, and she was originally from the mainland. “One thing we have to consider is the abundance of dead people easily accessible to Wellebourne at the time.”
She slid the book around to show us an illustration with vivid details of a snowbound village in the early colony. Many of the houses weren’t fully constructed; the colony had arrived later than anticipated on the shores of Lunar Island and hadn’t been prepared. Forefront in the illustration was a row of dead bodies enshrouded with snow. The ground had been so hard that it had been impossible to bury those who starved and froze to death.
My fingers brushed one of the illustrated corpses. The hands and feet of the man were black—frostbite—but it reminded me of the girl in surgery today. A flare of pain washed over me, an echo of what I’d felt when I aided her, and I was left breathless.
Flora slid the book to the other side of the table so more could see. “We have to wonder, if the bodies were not present, would Wellebourne have . . .” She seemed reluctant to finish the statement.
Salis took the book from another girl’s hand, flipped past a few pages, then held it up for everyone to see. The illustration now showed a man, his head tilted at an abnormal angle, his eyes blackened, his shoulders slumped asymmetrically.
“I don’t think a man sees a dead body and thinks to raise it,” Salis said. “I think a man wants to raise the dead and acts on it when the opportunity arises. You’re trying to humanize him, Flora, and make excuses for what he did. But can you look at this and really think he was just responding to the environment?”
“I’m not trying to say it was okay!” Flora protested. She shook her head so violently that the little golden daffodils hanging from her ears smacked against her cheek. “But it’s worth considering. Would a man commit a
crime if he never had access to a weapon? Would Wellebourne have raised the dead if there weren’t so many that winter?”
“I think,” I started, then paused as every girl turned to look at me. I began again. “I think that it depends on when Wellebourne started contemplating rebelling against the Empire. If he wanted to rebel before the winter wiped out so many colonists, then he was always a necromancer, just awaiting an opportunity, as Salis said. But if the death of so many colonists was the reason why he wanted to rebel, then he became a necromancer in response to the tragedy around him.”
Salis shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Either way, he crossed a line when he used alchemy to raise corpses to fight his battles.”
I frowned. It did matter, though. Before I could argue further, Salis dropped the book on the table with a loud thunk. “We all know necromancy is wrong,” she said, and the others all nodded. “Instead, let’s talk about the revolution. Because whether or not that was wrong . . .” Her eyes shifted to me. “I want to know what Nedra thinks.”
“About . . . revolution?”
Flora nodded eagerly. “Surely someone from the north would have a different perspective.”
“Why does my background matter?”
“The northern villages have a different attitude about Wellebourne than the south. And that shapes everything, even the way our government is today.” Salis spoke with authority, although I doubted she’d ever been in a village like mine.
I couldn’t keep the doubt from my face, but as I looked at the serious faces of the girls before me, I gave her words some thought. Wellebourne’s revolt had started—and ended—in the north. The capital shifted from Hart to Northface Harbor, and the former rebels were left to farm their way out of poverty. “It was a century and a half ago, though,” I said, still musing over her words.
“Not that long, considering the Allyrian Empire has been around for nine hundred years,” Flora said. “Lunar Island has only been settled for one hundred and forty-two years.”
“One event in history,” Salis said, her voice rising with passion, “ripples down and affects an entire nation.”
Lunar Island is a colony, not a nation, I thought.
“Because Wellebourne started his rebellion in the north,” Salis continued, “the north lost the capital. Because the capital moved here, this city rose in power. The harbor shifted—boats came here, and with the boats came trade.”
“The north didn’t advance as quickly as the south,” Flora said, picking up the conversation. “They stayed farmers—they stayed poor.”
My cheeks burned. I knew the girls weren’t mocking me or trying to say I was poor, but it stung. I looked out at the group of eager girls. “I promise you, we’re not all sitting in our huts plotting a revolution.” I laughed, but I was the only one who found this humorous. Flora sat back in her seat, disappointment etched on her face.
“What do you think it would take?” Salis asked finally.
“For what?”
“To mobilize the north.”
I gaped at her. “In a rebellion? Against the Emperor?”
She inclined her head, the barest tilt, waiting for me to answer.
“I . . . I don’t know?” I said. “Why are we even discussing this? I thought we were studying history.” When no one answered, I continued, “If you want to talk about what’s happening now, speculating about a revolt against the most powerful man in the world is a waste of time compared to the actual problem of the plague.”
Salis didn’t refute me, she just arched an eyebrow in my direction.
“Aren’t you mad he’s not doing more?” Flora asked. “It’s a bit like Wellebourne’s problem all over again, isn’t it? Emperor Aurellious let the people of Lunar Island freeze to death, and so Wellebourne rebelled. Emperor Auguste has done nothing to help stop the plague, and so . . .”
She let her voice trail off, the implication heavy in the room.
“One change leads to another,” Salis said as the clock tower’s bell started tolling.
THIRTEEN
Nedra
As soon as Master Ostrum arrived for the morning session the next day, Tomus’s hand shot in the air, his chin tilted up. Master Ostrum didn’t acknowledge him, but Tomus spoke anyway. “When are we going to have our internship at the Governor’s Hospital?” he demanded.
“There will be no internship at the Governor’s Hospital,” Master Ostrum said. Everyone in class started talking at once, but Master Ostrum’s voice rose above them. “Instead, I would like you all to volunteer at the quarantine hospital.” He picked up a sheaf of papers. “Here are timetables of shifts. The alchemists there need help—you saw yesterday how serious this is. Cases of the Wasting Death are piling up.”
From behind me, Salis’s voice piped up. “But sir, isn’t there a chance we would get the Wasting Death if we volunteered there?”
Master Ostrum leveled her with a glare. “There is,” he said. “Which is why every volunteer will take the proper precautions.” He went over the herbal supplements that would be provided for us—wortroot and gold flower to boost the immune system—as well as the heavy screenings, including an inspection of our crucibles, to identify early infection and hopefully treat the illness before it grew.
We all knew, however, that there was still a risk involved.
“I’m not going there,” Tomus said, and I could tell he was putting words to thoughts most of the other students had. “It’s not worth it. Just get us internships at the Governor’s Hospital.”
The Governor’s Hospital treated the sick just like any other hospital. But the difference was in the types of patients. The Governor’s Hospital catered to the rich: old women with colds who decided they needed round-the-clock care; children of wealthy families who were overprotective and needed assurances that the sniffles weren’t the plague; men who attempted gardening as a gentleman’s pursuit and needed blisters lanced.
“Here’re the schedules for the quarantine hospital,” Master Ostrum said, ignoring Tomus. “Anyone who works a shift need not attend any lectures that day.”
Then he left.
For a moment, everyone waited. We were used to lessons with Master Ostrum in the morning, directives on what to focus our studies on. Not this abruptness. Master Ostrum hadn’t even given the class information on the day’s lectures.
Tomus was the first to stand. He made a show of loudly picking up his bag, clomping over the hardwood floors to Master Ostrum’s desk, selecting a timetable, and crushing it in his fist. He let the wadded paper fall into the wastebasket by Master Ostrum’s chair and left the room. The others started moving as if they awoke from a trance, but while they didn’t make a show of rejecting the quarantine hospital’s schedule as much as Tomus had, none of them picked up a paper for themselves either.
Grey stood, and I found that my breath had caught as I waited to see what would happen next.
He went to Master Ostrum’s desk and picked up a timetable.
I let out a sigh of relief before I crossed the room and did the same.
Grey was waiting for me outside the classroom. “If we hurry,” I said, “we can catch the first ferry.”
His eyes were on the paper. “I . . .” His voice trailed off. “I think I’ll go after midterms. I have to finish my essay.”
I couldn’t hide my disappointment.
“I will,” Grey insisted. “I promise.”
“Yeah.” I shouldered my bag and headed toward the gate. “Okay.”
* * *
• • •
When I arrived at the hospital, a potion maker gave me a quick tour of the different wings.
“You can start with elderly care,” he said, pausing in the corridor that led to the east wing.
“I’m only here for the Wasting Death,” I said. “I’m not volunteering for anything else.”
The potion maker looked down his nose at me.
“I was sent by Master Ostrum,” I added, “and I came prepared.” I showed the potion maker my golden crucible in my bag, the one I’d made myself, etching in the runes with my own hands under Master’s Ostrum’s guidance.
“Your funeral,” the potion maker said, dumping me in the west wing.
The alchemists and potion makers of the communicable disease wing were more harried than anywhere else. New patients arrived with every ferry, and already they were pulling beds from other parts of the hospital to double and triple occupy the rooms. There was talk of evacuating the mental illness ward to make room, and anyone who didn’t have the Wasting Death upon arrival was sent away to one of the other hospitals.
I approached the check-in desk. Two potion makers were talking with the receptionist, their heads bent over a news sheet.
“Hi,” I said.
“Be with you in a minute,” the receptionist replied, not taking his eyes off the paper.
“‘In an unprecedented move, the governor has declared a state of emergency,’” one of the potion makers read aloud. “‘The Emperor has made no comment, yet continues his residency in the palace.’”
“Bit odd, that,” the other potion maker said. “If I were him, I’d hightail it back to the mainland.”
“This is going to be trouble for us,” the first one said. “The more people hear about this sickness, the more they’ll come here when they have nothing but a cold.”
“I can help with that,” I said.
They finally looked at me.
I held up my golden crucible. “I’m a volunteer.”
“You’re an alchemist?” The first potion maker looked me up and down, her eyes taking in my plain tunic and lack of sapphire-colored robes.
“Soon to be,” I said. “I’m in Master Ostrum’s class, at Yū—”
The potion maker breathed a huge sigh of relief, drowning out my voice. “One of Ostrum’s, thank goodness. If you said you were from Pushnil, I’d send you back. But Ostrum can actually teach. Any more of you volunteering?” Her eyes skimmed past me, looking down the hall crowded with patients.