The Clinic

by Cate Culpepper

  “Remember, we’ve lost the cover of night,” Jess called after them, straightening slowly from her crouch by the firepot. “Keep under cover, and stay within whistle call.”

  “We hear and obey, oh liege.” Kyla waved.

  Jess waited until their soft footfalls faded in the morning air, then walked to the neat stack of backpacks and removed an armload of blankets. She reached for the canteen in Camryn’s frame, but Brenna’s hand darted in ahead of hers and lifted it out.

  “Is there some reason you don’t want those two to know you’re out on your feet?” Brenna sounded annoyed, which concealed her worry. She twisted the cap off the canteen and handed it to Jess.

  Jess swirled the cool water on her tongue. “Don’t exaggerate, Brenna.”

  “All right, I won’t exaggerate if you won’t be a macha butch idiot,” Brenna said politely.

  She led Jess over to a protected corner of the rock shelf and snapped one of the blankets out over the shaded stone. Jess lowered herself onto it stiffly and rested her stinging back gingerly against the rock. Brenna rummaged through her own pack until she found her medical kit.

  Jess eyed the small black case warily. “You brought needles out here?”

  “Just the big, thick, dull ones.” Brenna slipped a thermostrip from its packet and tapped it on Jess’s lower lip until she accepted it glumly.

  Jess’s face was haggard, the cobalt blue of her eyes muted to the stormy indigo of the sea. Brenna didn’t need the strip to know the fever had returned. The brush of her fingers down the side of Jess’s face told her that much. She measured her pulse at the throat.

  Funny how you could feel defenses lowering, Jess thought, like a fence of shields around you dropping one by one. Brenna’s cool fingers on her skin ushered a pleasant tingle through Jess’s chest. Her breath was soft and warm on her throat.

  Brenna checked the thermostrip to confirm the verdict. “You’re heating up again. Why don’t you crash for a while? We’ll wake you when breakfast is ready.”

  “Someone needs to stand watch,” Jess mumbled.

  “I will, until the kids get back.” Brenna smiled and shook her head. “Listen to me. I sound like a mother.”

  “Shann says that’s what being adanin does to you.”

  “Do you want one of those painkillers?”

  Jess shook her head, eyes closed. “Probably need it more tonight, before we move.”

  “Jesstin.” Brenna hesitated. “Why did you tell Kyla and Camryn that I saved your life? Did you mean the CPR, after you—?”

  “You wouldn’t let me die. You called me back.”

  Brenna had no response to that. She checked the healing burn at the base of Jess’s throat, then opened her shirt to examine her bruised ribs. Her cool hands moved carefully over her tender side, then slipped the shirt down one of Jess’s muscular arms. “Here, lean. Best let me check your back while we have some privacy.”

  “It’s better. Just don’t poke anything.”

  “No poking,” Brenna promised. The welts and whip cuts striping Jess’s back were less livid but still warm and tender to the touch. She applied a mild salve with careful fingers, then eased the cloth back in place.

  “I was wrong, Jess.”

  Jess blinked and focused on Brenna’s still face. “About what?”

  “I hadn’t admitted that yet. Out loud or to you. I’ve been saying it in my head for weeks.” Brenna stared out over the sandstone shelf. “I was wrong to believe Caster. I closed off all my instincts…what I knew was right, for way too long. I let her convince me that what was happening to you was necessary, that I had to let you be hurt. Surviving was everything to me, Jess. And I am so…bloody sorry.”

  “I am too. Sorry we both had to go through it.” Jess’s voice was gentle. “That part’s over now, Bren.”

  Brenna nodded and played with the trailing edge of Jess’s shirttail. “Do you think we’ll ever get past it?”

  “Do you think you’ll ever allow my touch?”

  Brenna’s eyes rose to her face, filled with such lost sadness Jess felt every shield she’d ever forged topple like dominoes.

  “How can you want me.” The way Brenna said it, it wasn’t a question. “I’m pure City, Jesstin. I was born there. I’ve lived there all my life.”

  “And I was born in Tristaine.” Jess winced and eased herself higher against the stone. “I’ve had the blessings of choice, and I’ve chosen you. You were never the City’s, Bren. You wouldn’t be here now if you were.”

  Jess took her hand, and Brenna felt a quiver of subterranean thirst.

  It had been there between them, since the first night in the Clinic’s detention cell, this odd quickening in the blood. At first it had been possible for Brenna to ignore it in the haze created by duty and anguish and alcohol. But the Clinic and its white lab coats were far away from this morning’s shaded ledge.

  She felt her body relaxing against Jess’s warm side. The strength left her arms as she leaned into her and rested her head carefully on her bare breast.

  Jess swallowed and heard the dry crackling in her throat in spite of the water she drank minutes before. She stared down into the soft hair at her throat, Brenna’s sweet weight keeping her safely anchored to the rock. She felt the light brush of eyelashes on her breast as Brenna closed her eyes, and she let out a shaking sigh.

  Brenna rested. She felt the cadence of her own pulse slow and settle into the gentle, steady rhythm throbbing beneath her cheek. The beat was still there, still strong. They all were, in spite of Caster’s worst.

  *

  “I miss storyfires.” Kyla smiled dreamily, staring into crackling flames in the center of their circle. “Also that wine Constance makes from our vineyard.”

  “Jocelyn’s bread.” Camryn was stretched out on her back, her long fingers twined beneath her head. “Night hunts.”

  “Real coffee,” Jess added.

  “My dogs.” Kyla peered at her hand, frowning. “You know there’s not a single dog in the City? And they call us barbarians.”

  “Rae’s mutton stew.” Camryn’s voice was reverent.

  “Morning swims in the lake,” Kyla said.

  “Real coffee,” Jess sighed.

  Kyla snorted and slapped Jess’s thigh.

  Kyla was more demonstrative than either of Tristaine’s warriors, Brenna noted, but all three Amazons clearly relished being within hand’s reach again. Kyla and Camryn were hungry for Jess and she for them. They needed to hear each other’s voices and share laughter again and breathe the same free air.

  A visible weight had lifted from Jess’s shoulders, and the eyes that had been so guarded behind Clinic walls sparked with life in her sisters’ company. Those eyes still held a glassy sheen, but the food seemed to have beaten back Jess’s fever for now.

  They were finishing a light meal of the dried jerky Jodoch supplied and the fresh berries Cam and Kyla found by the river. Brenna had to resist urging more on the two youngest in their party. Camryn was as painfully thin as Kyla after weeks on Prison rations. There had been little talk of their time there, or of Jess’s tenure in the Clinic, for which Brenna was grateful.

  “What else?” Even sitting in this close circle, Brenna was keenly aware of her outsider status, but these memories of Tristaine called to her nonetheless.

  “Archery tournaments,” Jess offered. “Creaming Camryn at archery tournaments.”

  “Racing horses.” Camryn grinned. “Watching Jess get dumped racing horses. Kyla, will you stop messing with that?”

  “Can’t help it.” Kyla was scowling at her palm again.

  “Here, you’re just making it worse.” Cam pulled Kyla’s hand to her knee, but she snatched it back.

  “You can’t get it, Cam. You don’t have any fingernails left after clearing fields for—”

  “I’m just looking at it.”

  “That’s not looking, that’s squeezing. Camryn, ow, dang it!”

  “You two sounded exactly like th
is when you were five,” Jess complained. “What’s the problem?”

  “Oh, brains here,” Camryn jutted her chin at Kyla, “grabbed hold of a thorn bush to pull herself out of a ditch, and now she’s got this big bloody spike in her hand.”

  “Spike,” Kyla groaned. “Camryn, it’s a sticker. I have a sticker in my hand,” she told Jess.

  “Want me to take a look?” Brenna asked Kyla. “I’m pretty good with spikes.”

  “We can manage,” Cam said. “Thanks.”

  “It’s up to you, adanin,” Jess told them. “But I’d think if you could manage, it would be out by now.”

  Brenna shifted over to sit closer to Kyla. “I promise not to cut it off.”

  “Yeah, I guess we better.” Kyla shook out her stinging hand. “Thanks, Bren.”

  Camryn moved a few inches to make room for Brenna, her eyes downcast.

  “Let’s see.” Brenna lifted the girl’s hand into her lap and tilted her palm toward the light. The embedded thorn was an angry darkness in the pad at the base of her thumb. “Uh, Camryn’s right. That’s a spike.”

  Kyla groaned again.

  “Maybe you should just put something on it.” Cam peered over Kyla’s shoulder. “Leave it for Shann to dig out.”

  “Good idea,” Kyla said quickly.

  “We won’t see Shann for days, Ky,” Jess reminded them. “Maybe weeks.”

  “This really should come out now.” Brenna tipped Kyla’s hand to see the reddened area more clearly. “Camryn, would you bring me my kit? It’s in the blue pack.”

  Cam unwound her long limbs reluctantly and got to her feet.

  “Shann would probably just put a poultice on it,” Kyla said feebly.

  “Shann would go after you with her rusty dagger,” Jess corrected. “Have courage, lass. Brenna’s got a skilled and tender touch.”

  Brenna accepted her kit from Camryn with a smile of thanks and began arranging her supplies. After sterilizing a needle and tweezers, she dabbed a mild cleanser onto a folded cloth and patted it gently across the pad. The girl’s hands could have belonged to a dishwasher twice her age, Brenna noted. Exposure to the harsh detergents of the Prison’s kitchen had left them blanched and rough.

  Kyla was emitting a series of sighs, her eyes fixed on the distant horizon in preparation for the agony to come. Jess curbed a smile, but Camryn shifted closer to her lover and clasped her other hand tightly.

  “I hate needles,” Kyla explained to Brenna. “Also pain of any kind.”

  “Runs in the family.” Jess linked her long fingers around one raised knee and grinned at Kyla. “Remember when Dyan fell butt first into that rosebush last spring?”

  Camryn’s face lit up. “Man, I didn’t think that many thorns could stick in one human ass! She bellowed like a speared boar.”

  “Shann had to chase her around their cabin three times, waving her pliers,” Kyla added, and she was grinning too. Their laughter was healing.

  Brenna patted Kyla’s wrist. “You all right?”

  “Oh, sure.” Kyla dried her eyes with the back of her free hand. “Just memories, you know. It’s okay, Brenna, I’m ready. Go ahead.”

  “I’m done.” Brenna patted Kyla’s palm with the cleanser. “Your spike came out around the time Dyan fell into the bush.”

  “Get out!” Kyla stared at her hand, pop-eyed, then showed it to Camryn. “Brenna, you’re a genius!”

  Camryn’s eyebrows arched.

  “Let me slap on a Band-Aid. You’ll want to keep it clean.” Brenna smoothed the small bandage in place deftly. “I trust all Amazons don’t make their medics psychotic, like your strange friend over there.”

  The fond light in Jess’s gaze warmed Brenna better than the weak rays of the sun, but her increasing pallor was a reminder of how long it had been since any of them had any real sleep.

  Jess seemed to read her mind and climbed painfully to her feet. “We’ve got ground to cover tonight. Let’s get some rest.”

  “I don’t want to close my eyes on you.” Kyla slipped her arms around Jess’s waist and pulled her close. “I’m afraid you’ll disappear again.”

  “I’ll be here when you wake, adanin.” Jess winced as Kyla’s arms tightened, but she rested her lips in the girl’s hair. “I’ll take first watch, Camryn, if you’ll spell me after—”

  “I’ll take first, Jess.” Camryn shook out another blanket over the shaded rock to form a pallet for her and Kyla. “Old women need their sleep.”

  Jess groaned, but didn’t protest.

  “You can tap me next,” Brenna offered. “If standing watch just means screaming my head off if I see anything, I can do that.”

  Camryn glanced at Jess, who nodded.

  Their packs held only so much room for blankets. It was share them or sleep on dusty stone. Brenna surreptitiously helped Jess settle on the second pallet, then lowered herself next to her, trembling with fatigue. She suppressed a moan as she stretched out, trying to find a position her aching muscles would tolerate.

  “This is like trying to sleep on a riverbank beside a flopping trout,” Jess griped.

  “Well, now I know how one feels,” Brenna muttered. She rolled over carefully and blinked with surprise to see Cam’s sneaker an inch from her nose. She craned her neck to see the serious face above them.

  “Jesstin, I found a ledge with good sightlines above that brush there. You can crash. Nothing’s getting within a mile of us without being seen.”

  “Tristaine has no sharper eyes,” Jess said. “I’ll sleep well, Cam.”

  “Good. Uh, thanks, Brenna,” Camryn mumbled. “For Ky’s hand.”

  Brenna smiled. “Sure, Camryn. Glad I could help.”

  She was asleep before Camryn mounted the ledge.

  *

  Sometime after the sun crested noon and began its journey west, Jess moaned in her sleep.

  Cam frowned and lifted herself from the stone lip of the shelf where she stood watch, then saw that the woman sleeping beside Jess had awakened at the low sound.

  Camryn watched Brenna feel her sister’s face, then her hands. Jess lay on her side, gripped by such vicious chills Cam could see her shaking from the ledge. Brenna pushed down the blanket, then opened Jess’s shirt. She unbuttoned her own green sweater and lay down again, resting her bare breasts against Jess’s to warm her. She slipped a supporting arm around her shoulders as she pulled up the blanket to cover them both. Brenna rested her head on Jess’s shoulder.

  Camryn watched them silently for a while, then returned to her watch.

  *

  The two stallions charged each other, trumpeting screams of rage that sounded almost human. They met in a terrible crash of flashing teeth and powerful, churning kicks, shattering the peace of the pasture with the fury of their battle. Around them, the herd milled in fearful chaos, raising clouds of dust as their bodies thudded together, their hooves trampling the sparse grass in panic.

  Brenna awoke instantly, every vestige of sleep banished in one quick, shivering burst of alarm. Her hand reached immediately for Jess, but swept across an empty blanket.

  “Jesstin’s gone, Brenna.” Camryn pushed herself away from the rock wall and went to her, puzzled by her expression.

  “W-where is she?”

  “Don’t freak. I don’t mean gone gone.” Camryn glanced over her shoulder at Kyla, still sleeping yards away. She turned back to Brenna, then averted her gaze. “I thought I heard something. Some kind of motor. I woke Jess, and she went to check it out.”

  “I’d better check her out.” Brenna realized the young Amazon was studiously avoiding looking at her bare breasts, and she blushed slightly as she pulled down her shirt to cover them.

  “No need, Brenna. Jess is pretty careful.”

  “Yeah, I know. But she’s been through a lot.” She groped for her shoes beneath the blankets, then climbed to her feet.

  And sat down again with an ungainly thump. Every muscle in Brenna’s body screamed regret for last night’s up
hill flight with a full pack. She was certain for a moment that she would throw up, but the nausea receded as quickly as it hit. Chills racked her, and her hands shook. The back of her throat was raw and ached for the sharp bite of whiskey.

  “Hey. You all right?” Cam frowned, her hand almost touching Brenna’s head before she folded her arms. “You look worse than Jess did, and that was pretty bad.”

  “Just waking up,” Brenna managed. “This is me in the morning.” She laced her shoes, shaking the last of the dream from her mind. “Which way did she go?”

  “The sound came from the north.” Cam nodded toward the trees. “Uh, don’t get lost out there, all right? If you don’t find her fast, come back and we’ll regroup.”

  They had laid camp that morning barely out of the foothills, not far west of the river that had been their rendezvous point. To reach the rock shelf, they’d had to travel a long stretch through open land, and Brenna looked back over that vista now. She scanned the sunlit reaches of the foothills, searching, the crisp air clearing the fog from her head. She heard a splashing sound and turned quickly, then plowed through a barrier of hedge brush.

  The distant figure was kneeling in the frigid current of the stream, which swirled and tumbled around her thighs. Jess had obviously immersed herself fully more than once, and her hair hung in soaked strands around her face and throat. Brenna stared at her from the riverbank, appalled.

  Her fever must have rocketed while they slept, Brenna thought. There was no telling how rational Jess’s thinking had been when she sought out the icy water. She was trying to cool her body fast, a primitive and dangerous instinct. She was apparently unconcerned that she was subjecting her weakened system to a horrendous shock, and completely in the open beneath a cloudless blue sky.

  “Jesstin!” Brenna gave the empty heavens a fast search, and then she jumped off the shallow bank and into the river. She staggered when her sneakered feet hit the smooth rocks of the riverbed, but her athlete’s reflexes steadied her. Her ankles went numb with the immediate, stinging cold of the water, small waves slapping up to her knees.

  “Jess!” Brenna slogged through the gentle current, alarmed that Jess didn’t seem to hear her. “Hey, look at me!”