by Beth Revis
Fare turned to me. “I’m sorry, Nedra,” she said. “But I have to be sure.”
She waited for her meaning to sink in, and when I nodded, she followed me to a semiprivate hallway where I unbuttoned my shirt, showing her my bare chest. I kicked off my shoes. Fare sank to her knees, carefully inspecting my feet for signs of the plague.
“Oh, sweetness,” she said finally, standing and hugging me. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
My bag felt heavy, the ashes of my parents waiting inside.
Chimes rang throughout the hospital. I looked at Fare, confused. These were not the normal bell tolls of the clock tower giving the hour. I realized for the first time that while some patients had been hustled to the mainland on a separate boat, the hospital wasn’t as overcrowded as I’d assumed. On the contrary, it was almost empty.
“Fare, what’s going on?” I asked.
“Come with me,” she said.
The hallway was bustling—but not with patients. Aides and potion makers, as well as a handful of alchemists, headed to the main door. In the foyer, I saw Alric, Ernesta still with him. She moved slower now, and he settled her on a chair before running up to Fare.
“Why did you leave Ernesta like that?” I asked. Fare tugged at my arm, pulling me to the door. The bells kept ringing. “Ernesta?” I shouted, louder, but my sister didn’t even look up. I yanked free from Fare. “What’s going on?” I demanded.
Fare grabbed for me again. “They’re closing the hospital.” She tried to pull me forward, but I stood firm as the other hospital workers streamed past us. “Come on, Nedra,” Fare said. “We have to get on the boat.”
“Closing?” I couldn’t wrap my brain around it. “But—there are patients. My sister—”
Fare leaned in close. “We’ve left a case of tincture of blue ivy,” she said. She pulled me a few steps closer to the exit. More people had paused now, watching me. I recognized many of them. I’d worked with almost everyone at the hospital during my volunteer stays.
“Is Nedra sick?” an aide named Cor asked Alric.
He shook his head. “Her sister’s here,” he said.
“Aw,” the man said. “Damn shame.”
“Tincture of blue ivy . . . for the pain?” I asked, still not fully understanding. I looked behind me. The crowd of workers was gone now, except for the dozen or so waiting for me to follow. But there were still patients everywhere. Some wandered the halls, peering behind doors. Many just lay or sat where they had been left, too tired to move. These were the worst cases of plague. The hopeless cases.
Ernesta looked up at me. I saw a small bottle in her hand. Looking around, I saw bottles in all of the patients’ hands—tincture of blue ivy had been passed out like candy. A few of the patients were already unscrewing the tops.
The tincture would cut the pain. But one needed only a few drops. An entire bottle . . .
“No,” I said, horror dawning on me.
Fare and Alric leapt to action, both of them taking me by an arm. I struggled against them, throwing Alric off, but not Fare. “You want them to kill themselves?” I asked, my voice pitching to a scream.
“We have to go,” another potion maker said. I forgot her name, but I recognized her face.
“No!” I screamed, breaking free and running toward Nessie. She looked up at me.
“The hospital’s too crowded!” another aide said. “We don’t have a choice!” His words were ridiculous. The hospital was nearly empty now.
“We can take her to Whitesides,” I said. “To the Governor’s Hospital!”
Fare yanked me around. “They’re not taking plague patients there,” she hissed at me. “Not ones this far gone.”
“How many?” I choked out.
“There are thirty left, with the new arrivals,” Alric said. “Just thirty.”
“Just thirty?” I spat. “That’s thirty people you’re leaving to die!”
“Nedra, we have to go,” Fare said firmly.
She pulled at my arm again, but I jerked away and made a dive for Ernesta. “Not,” I started as one of the larger aides grabbed me around my stomach, “Without. My. Sister!” I kicked at him, screaming in frustrated rage, angry tears springing to my eyes. Alric joined the fray, and Fare, and someone else, a potion maker who flirted with me sometimes during breaks. I bellowed, kicking out, scratching Fare across the face, making the potion maker wheeze when my foot connected with her stomach, but I didn’t care, they had to let me go, they couldn’t just expect me to leave my sister here to die.
Alone.
I was losing ground.
“Don’t drink that!” I shouted as Alric and Fare and the others pulled me to the door of the hospital. I lashed out, grabbing the heavy mahogany, holding on as long as I could, my fingers slipping on the smooth wood. “Nessie! You hear me? Don’t you drink that! I’m coming back for you!”
I lost my grip, and the others pulled me to the boat, holding me so tight that my bucking body never touched the stones. The alchemists already on board tutted at me, some sympathetically, but I didn’t care. “How could you?” I spat at them as the skipper pushed the boat away. “How could any of you?” I stood up, the boat wobbling. I think they thought I would dive over the side, swim back to the quarantine hospital. A few people even reached for me, aiming to hold me back, but I shook them off.
“The Emperor gave the order,” one of the alchemists said. It was Frugal Frue, the alchemist who had been stingy with potions. I wondered if he knew how much tincture of blue ivy had been left behind.
“The hospital is closing,” another alchemist said. “And besides”—she turned her head toward the huge castle-like building—“none of them would have made it anyway.”
FORTY-EIGHT
Nedra
I refused to speak to any of the traitors on the boat.
As soon as we disembarked, I tried to board a ferry back.
None would go to the island.
Fine, I thought. I’ll steal a boat tonight. I’ll go back on my own.
But first there was something else I needed to steal.
I barely registered the walk up to Yūgen. Mentally, I stoked my rage, preparing to pry the iron gates apart myself to get to campus—but I didn’t need to.
The gates were already open.
School had resumed. Posters littered the gates detailing new methods to protect the students, including strictly enforced potion regimens, no off-campus activities allowed, screening for visitors, and no visitations to any hospital, even for medical students. I wondered how many parents kept their children at home regardless.
I marched onto campus, the feeling surreal. Everything felt so aggressively normal—students casually walking from the cafeteria, study groups gathering by the library. I wondered what day it was. How long had classes been back in session?
Didn’t they know that everything was different now? That the world had ended already?
I ignored the graveled paths that intersected with the lumpy iron statue of Bennum Wellebourne and went straight to the administration building. I stormed down the stairs to Master Ostrum’s office and grabbed the doorknob.
Locked.
I rattled the metal, pulling on it, but it didn’t budge. My open palm slammed into the frosted glass window on the door, and it shook so violently it nearly cracked. I kicked at the wood, cursing, and tried the handle again. As I pulled away, the door opened.
“Nedra?” Master Ostrum looked surprised to see me.
I pushed past him. “I need your crucible cage,” I said, heading straight to his laboratory. The office door slammed behind me.
He grabbed my shoulder and pulled me around. I spun away from him, but paused. My chest heaved with exertion.
I caught my reflection in one of Master Ostrum’s gleaming gold crucibles lined on the bookshelf.
H
air wild and unkempt, body dusted with white lice disinfectant, grimy dirt and soot streaking down my face. My eyes were wild and red-rimmed, my lips cracked with small spots of blood at each corner of my mouth. I looked down at my hands. My nails were jagged, caked in grime, the cuticles ripped. I didn’t remember the last time I changed clothes. The last time I bathed.
“I need your crucible cage,” I said. The voice reverberating throughout the office didn’t sound like my own. It sounded hoarse, cold, broken.
“What happened?” There was nothing but concern in Master Ostrum’s eyes, sincere worry at what I had become in the weeks since he’d seen me last.
What would Grey think if he saw me now?
It was with a numb heart that I realized I didn’t care. I didn’t care what Master Ostrum thought, what Grey would think. None of that mattered. None of it mattered at all.
“You’re right,” I told Master Ostrum. “The plague is necromantic. It will take a necromancer to stop it.”
Master Ostrum frowned, deep lines etched into his forehead. “I’ve thought that, too. But it will not be you.”
Didn’t he understand that it was already too late?
Clomping boots echoed throughout the hallway outside Master Ostrum’s office. He jerked around like an expectant dog on alert. “Go to the lab,” he ordered.
I went around his desk, stepping up into the lab. I closed the door behind me, but not all the way.
“Open up!” a loud voice called. “By order of the Emperor’s Guard!”
My hand clenched. I backed away from the door, deeper into the laboratory.
Master Ostrum hesitated.
The Emperor’s Guard pounded on the door again, and the glass window shattered, dozens of shards skittering across the floor. Master Ostrum cursed, reaching for the door as the guards stormed in.
I ran to the center of the laboratory, my fingers scrambling along the wooden planks, searching for the hidden panel. I opened it as silently as I could, although the shouting in Master Ostrum’s office would hopefully block any sound. I tossed my bag into the cool, earthen hole of the subbasement. It landed with a thud, and I bounded down the ladder, pausing only to slide the floor panel back into place.
“Don’t go in there!” Master Ostrum shouted as the laboratory door opened. There was a scuffle, a thud against the wall, books falling from the shelves.
Feet overhead.
The boots of the Emperor’s Guard thundered into the laboratory. There was hardly any light in the little subbasement, but I knew what was there. And what I wanted. As the guards searched the lab and Master Ostrum’s office, I rifled through the shelves, finding the small wooden box that housed the copper crucible.
Above me, an authoritative voice rang out. “Phillious Ostrum, you are under arrest.”
Master Ostrum sounded indignant. “On what charge?”
“On treasonous use of alchemy,” the master of the guard said.
The silence that followed felt thick and heavy.
“Say it,” Master Ostrum said in a disgusted voice. “Don’t be a coward.”
“You are under arrest for necromancy,” the master of the guard said, his voice cracking on the last word.
There was a scuffle then, and Master Ostrum shouted—far more loudly than was strictly necessary. “Be careful, you oaf!” His voice carried down toward me. “You’ve cut me. Now my blood is all over this table.”
“If you will not go willingly—”
“I’ll go, I’ll go,” Master Ostrum growled. “Try not to destroy any more of my lab.”
He’s doing this for me, I thought. Leading away the guard before they find me. Letting me know his blood has spilled.
“I know why you’re doing this.” Master Ostrum’s voice came from his office now, but was loud enough to carry down to me. “I’m being damned for my blood. But you’re fools. I’m the only person who could have helped you.”
Not the only person.
“My daughter and my wife both died of the plague,” the master of the guard said. “And the Emperor says the plague isn’t natural, that it’s caused by someone like Wellebourne.”
“Still scared of the word?” Master Ostrum mocked.
A heavy cracking drowned out whatever else he was going to say as the guards slammed their fists into Master Ostrum’s body again and again.
* * *
• • •
It was hard to tell how much time had passed. After Master Ostrum was carried away, some of the guards remained behind, shuffling papers, moving books, shaking out boxes. Their footsteps pounded over me. I strained my ears to listen for the big clock in the tower, wondering how long Ernesta had been alone in the quarantine hospital. Wondering if she was still alive.
Have faith in me, I prayed. I’m coming. I had all the ingredients now. I could make a necromancer’s crucible. I could become a necromancer. If a necromancer had created the plague, surely one could stop it. I would find a way.
I can save you.
* * *
• • •
After the last guard left, I counted to a thousand. Then I counted a thousand more.
I climbed up the ladder, my bag strapped to my back. The floor panel crept open.
It was dark.
Debris and papers shifted as I slid the floor panel all the way open and crawled out. I readjusted it, then kicked some books with broken spines over the entry. Father would be so disappointed in my treatment of books lately, I thought. Then I remembered where my father was.
I moved to the table with a streak of red blood across it. Clever of Master Ostrum to alert me to its presence. I used a glass slide to scrape some of the blood from the table, then let it drip into the bottom of the copper crucible I had retrieved from the subbasement.
The price had been paid. The copper crucible, once empty, now contained a bony, dried-up hand. The crucible cage I needed.
Outside the lab, I heard a sound. Glass crunched. I froze.
Someone was entering the office.
FORTY-NINE
Nedra
“Hello?” A voice said softly in the dark.
“Grey,” I breathed.
He didn’t hear me. Flickering candlelight flowed into Master Ostrum’s office, and I stepped out of the lab.
“Who—” Grey started, cursing. The candle shook in his hand as he let out a relieved sigh. “Nedra,” he said. “I’ve been wondering when you’d return.”
“I arrived today,” I said, keeping my tone neutral. I stuck to the shadows, remembering my reflection.
“Is everything all right?”
I laughed aloud, perhaps a bit hysterically.
“Nedra?” He stepped closer; I shrank further back. “Are you okay? How is your family?”
A knife to my heart, twisting. I couldn’t answer. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s my appointment time.” Grey looked around him. “But I guess it’s true.”
“That Master Ostrum was arrested? Yes.”
“For treason?” Grey asked. He searched for an oil lamp, finally finding one on Master Ostrum’s desk. “That’s the rumor anyway. That he was secretly performing necromancy.”
Grey turned away from me and lit the lamp behind him, the steady flame providing more light than his feeble candle. His back stiffened. He didn’t look up at me as he asked, “That’s not what he had you doing, right?”
“No.” My tone remained neutral, my face remained in shadow.
“Because the rat—”
“I have not raised the dead,” I said. “Nor has Master Ostrum.”
He mumbled something.
“What?” I asked.
“I said, you can’t know that for sure. About Ostrum, I mean. They say the Emperor himself decreed his arrest.”
“Master Ostrum isn’t a nec
romancer,” I insisted. “And we couldn’t perform necromancy even if we wanted to. We don’t have an iron crucible.” Not yet. “But, Grey,” I added, “you know that the plague is necromantic, right? A necromancer started this, and it will take a necromancer to finish it.”
“Have you ever wondered,” Grey said, looking around the smashed office, “if it could be the same necromancer?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Ostrum is one of the best alchemists on Lunar Island. He could be showing off. Start a plague . . . then end it. Be a hero.”
I stared at him for several moments. “That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said,” I snapped.
“You’re too close to him,” Grey protested. “He likes the fame. The prestige.”
“Yes, that’s why he became a teacher. For the lucrative pay and the respect.”
“Nedra,” Grey said. “While you were gone, Ostrum presented at the court. He talked about his legacy, he rambled on about the importance of preserving history—it was weird, to be honest. The Emperor started an inquiry because Ostrum was dancing around the subject of necromancy. In court. In front of everyone. Like it was nothing.”
“Master Ostrum.”
“What?”
“Master Ostrum,” I repeated, subtly stressing the word. “Show some respect.”
Grey shook his head. “We’re going to be reassigned,” he said. “Probably Professor Pushnil. Or Professor Xhamee. That would be better. More connections.”
“Sure. Connections,” I said, my voice hollow.
Grey crossed the room and, for the first time, seemed to actually see me. “Oryous’s stars, Nedra, what happened?” He stroked my ratty hair, his fingers falling to my face. I could feel the dirt and grime that stood between us. “Is this berrilias powder?”
“For lice,” I said as he wiped the white dust from his fingers.
“Lice? What happened in your village?”
“I was at the hospital for that bit,” I said. “After—”
“But you said—” Grey frowned. I hadn’t said I was all right, that my family was fine. He’d just heard in the silence what he hoped to be true. “Nedra, what happened?” His question was gentler this time, his attention finally focused.