Breath of Winter, A Read online

  When I reached the laboratory, I pounded on the hatch with the flat of my fist.

  No response.

  I darted a glance over my shoulder. Nothing was there. The hall was empty, except for me.

  Use what the gods gave you, Zuri. Think.

  I snapped my fingers. The chimes. Braden had triggered them from outside the bastille. He must have pressed a button or pulled a lever from inside the laboratory. If Henri had set chimes in the bastille, surely he’d hung them inside the laboratory too. All I needed was to figure out what I was looking for.

  “You shouldn’t be out here alone.”

  I whirled around to find Asher standing in the center of the tunnel. “What’s out here to fear?”

  He started toward me. “Nothing. Yet.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He reached over my head, flipped a piece of metal aside and pulled a thin lever. “You will.”

  I fisted the back of his shirt. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  He was spared from answering when the door swung open.

  Braden’s gaze slid over me. “Good. You brought her.”

  I released Asher. “You were coming to get me?”

  “Aye.” He grasped the handles of my chair and pushed me into the laboratory.

  “Why?” I asked anyone who might answer.

  No one did.

  Through the cluttered aisles, we navigated toward the large hatch concealing the bastille.

  As I expected, this door was locked too.

  Asher performed the same task as before, revealing and pulling a delicate lever.

  Moments later, Henri cracked open the door. “Thank you for coming so quickly.”

  “Why was I expected to come at all?” I asked as Asher wheeled me in and the door was barred.

  Inside, the bastille buzzed with frantic activity. Our ward flung herself against the bars of her cage. Yellow blood poured down her forehead. Her eyes were wild, and her shrieks pierced my ears.

  Behind Henri’s back, Kaleb was signing to me, but they had never taught me their language, and I wasn’t going to magically understand a flurry of hand gestures just because he used extra emphasis.

  I waved my hands in front of my face. “I don’t understand. What’s happened?”

  Henri stepped aside, and I saw what had caused the commotion. Ghedi. His clothes were torn. His cheeks were scratched. A dark red stain spread over his shoulder, saturating the front of his shirt.

  Henri’s voice jarred me to attention. “Kaleb wants you to check Ghedi’s shoulder.”

  I noticed Ghedi watching me and stifled my reaction. “How can you make any sense of that?”

  Henri appeared baffled by my hostility. “Tau has been teaching me.”

  “I see.”

  Comprehension spread across his face when he matched my anger to the fact I had to ask him to translate. I was their sister. I was blood. I was clan and yet Henri having dangly bits trumped all that.

  Tau, who agreed with Ghedi that I shouldn’t be taught mkono, was teaching Henri? I had to remind myself to breathe. This was an old fight, and it wouldn’t be won tonight. Besides, it wasn’t our fault we were raised to believe a person’s worth was measured by what hung between their legs.

  The part where I had outgrown those backwards notions and they hadn’t? That was their fault.

  “Take off your coat,” I ordered Ghedi.

  “Not hardly.” He tugged it tighter around him. “I’m freezing.”

  “I’m sweating.” My thin gown clung to my back. “Take off your coat.”

  “Look at him. He’s feverish,” Henri murmured to me. “We’ll have to strip it off him.”

  “Don’t touch me,” Ghedi bellowed.

  I clutched my armrests, fighting the leg braces to stand. “Ghedi, you have to calm down.”

  Henri pressed on my uninjured shoulder to pin me to my seat. In his other hand, he flipped a slender tube over his knuckles. It might have been a writing tool, except that it was hollow, with two blunt ends.

  Ghedi spotted that tube, and recognition must have flickered because he roared.

  Ghedi charged Henri, his blade drawn, his lips peeled from his teeth.

  I shoved Henri. “Run.”

  He didn’t budge an inch. He brought the tube to his lips and huffed through it.

  A brightly painted dart sailed through the air and plunged into Ghedi’s throat. His eyes rolled to white a second later. Momentum brought him crashing to the ground at Henri’s feet. Kaleb and Tau stared at Henri, their eyes as wide as mine must have been, as though we had never seen him before.

  “What have you done?” I slid from the chair and crawled to Ghedi’s side.

  “He would have killed me.” Henri pocketed what I realized now was a miniature blowpipe.

  “We could have stopped him.” I pulled the slender dart from Ghedi’s neck.

  “Before or after he carved out my heart?” Henri flattened his palm. “Hand it to me. Don’t touch the tip.” One good look at the fury I was nurturing made him rescind his offer. “Then again, perhaps it might be wiser if I asked you to place the dart onto the table for disposal.”

  He was right, an inch closer and I might have stabbed him out of spite for scaring me spitless.

  When I felt Ghedi’s pulse strong beneath my fingers, I asked Henri, “What was on that dart?”

  “A powerful venom-based sedative.” He rapped the counter with his knuckles.

  Relief made it easy to drop the dart and roll it toward him. “There. Take it.”

  “As high as I’m sure his fever has spiked,” Henri said, “venom won’t immobilize him long.”

  Kaleb nudged me aside and knelt in my place. He peeled away Ghedi’s grubby coat to reveal his gray shirt had gone brown with blood. Ripping the fabric, he exposed the round of Ghedi’s shoulder. A chunk of meat was missing from the dense muscle tissue. Fresh blood oozed over its clotted edges.

  “In the hall, Braden said he’s been bitten.” I braced myself. “By what?”

  Henri softened his voice. “A riser.”

  My palms went damp. “There are risers here in Erania?”

  “Don’t know what you mean by risers, but I swear there are bodies up there walking around like they don’t remember they’re dead.” Braden’s face flushed. “That’s what made the holes in the fence. They were clawing their way in to get to the ursus. The bastards slaughtered three of my best sows.”

  I shared a worried look with Henri. “Or they were luring us to the surface.”

  “Are they intelligent enough for that?” he asked.

  “Hunger drives them, or other base instincts,” I said. “Outside of that, they’re following orders. That day on the ice, I spotted something on the road. I thought it might have been a canis or an ursus. What if it wasn’t an animal? What if it was a riser?” It fit, much as I hated admitting it. “What if our ward created them for Hishima? We have no way of knowing how their bonds work, what ties a harbinger to the risers she creates. She may have summoned them, or they may have followed her.”

  “It’s possible,” Henri allowed. “Or another harbinger is also here.”

  Harbingers in Erania. I would process the repercussions later. For now, my brother needed me.

  I ran my fingers through Ghedi’s hair. “What do we do for him?”

  “We get him to a room and secure him before he wakes.” Henri pointed at Braden. “Stay here. Guard their ward until I return.” He faced my brothers. “Get Ghedi to a room and wait for me there.”

  I struggled to my knees. “I’ll go too.”

  “No, you won’t.” Henri grasped my shoulders. “We must talk, privately.”

  Kaleb and Tau frowned in our direction, but neither signed a word before they lifted Ghedi.

  “Let me help.” Henri drew the chair near, clasped forearms with me and pulled me to stand. With gentle hands, he eased me onto the seat, sorting my limbs, placing them where they should go.

 
; I let him arrange me like a doll. Protesting would waste time and energy I didn’t have. When he rolled me into the laboratory and parked me near his workbench, I didn’t bother protesting then either.

  When he said, “I’ll be right back,” I found my tongue.

  “Ghedi has the plague.” I tried wrapping my head around it.

  “It’s very possible.” Henri hesitated. “I have to go. When I get back, we’ll talk about options.”

  I nodded as he eased out the door and left me sitting in the cavernous room alone.

  Options. What options? There was no cure. There was only misery and death for those who were infected.

  And then, unless your corpse was burned or beheaded, the harbingers came for you.

  In Henri’s absence, Ghedi’s mortality loomed. I could think of nothing else but rejecting the fact I might lose the brother who was my closest friend to an illness that few survived. When Henri came back to the laboratory, my heart was too heavy for me to lift my head and risk finding pity in his eyes.

  “I gave him something for his fever.” Henri knelt before me. “It should also help him sleep.”

  I was nodding as though I grasped what he was saying, but his meaning eluded me.

  “Are we sure it’s the plague?” My voice quavered. “How can…?”

  “Shh.” He took me in his arms. He must have expected tears, but I had none. The shock was too fresh, too numbing. “Though I haven’t seen a case myself,” he said, “Mana’s notes on her efforts are immaculate. Given the fact Braden witnessed the attack, I have no doubt about how Ghedi sustained his injury. His symptoms are exactly what I would expect from a person in this stage of sickness.” He smoothed his hand over my hair. “There is something you ought to know, but you must swear to me you will not speak of it to another soul. The consequences will be dire for us both if you do.”

  “I know how to keep a secret,” I said against his shoulder. It was a job requirement.

  He turned his face so his lips brushed my ear. “You’ve never kept one like this.”

  “I give you my solemn vow that I will not breathe a word of what you tell me.”

  “Not even to your brothers?”

  “If that’s what you require.” I withdrew from his embrace. “I would prefer not to exclude them.”

  Keeping secrets meant telling lies, and lies had a way of multiplying. Tell enough and you strangled on them.

  “There is no other choice.” He set his jaw. “Your word, please.”

  Unnerved by his expression, I said, “You have it.”

  “There is a cure.”

  “A cure.” A lump formed in my throat. “For the plague.”

  “My study of the cure is in its infancy, but yes, I believe it is genuine.” He appeared torn. “I can give what medicine I have on hand to Ghedi, but I must warn you that will put the rest of you at risk. If he is contagious, if Kaleb or Tau catch the plague from him, or if they pass it on to you, I will have no means of treating anyone else who becomes ill. You must decide, here and now, if treating Ghedi is your first priority.” As my lips formed a yes, he pressed his finger to them. “You must choose, not just between his life and yours, but his and the lives of all the others too. Consider all that’s at risk.”

  “You have siblings. I know you understand. There is no choice. Ghedi is our brother. If you had asked any of us, our answers would be the same. Do it. Give him the cure.” When I realized what he had admitted, I grasped his arm and held him in place. “Wait. You said the rest of you are at risk. As in you aren’t? What about Braden and Asher? They both had prolonged contact with Ghedi as well.”

  Now that Henri mentioned it, I recalled how certain he was when we first arrived. How sure he had been that even with a live harbinger in the nest, his clansmen would be unaffected by the plague.

  “My sister pledged the use of many resources for understanding and curing the plague.” His forehead creased. “Lourdes understood that quieting the rumbling from our southland allies required a gesture more personal than pledging gold. By taking in your ward, she exposed her clan and home to the same sickness, the same fear and risk her allies have lived with for the last several months.”

  “That was noble of her.” Foolish, but noble. “I assume she took precautions.”

  “I took them for her,” he said. “I refused to risk her or our people to prove a point. I had been in touch with Mana. She sent me several vials of the cure to study and replicate. I diluted the samples, creating what I hope is a preventative. For days now, I’ve been dosing all those most likely to come into contact with your ward in anticipation of your arrival. I diluted it further and treated the livestock too, to see if it could protect them from infection in the event things didn’t go as planned.”

  “You knew.”

  He made no apologies. “As you said, I do understand. All I’ve done, I’ve done for my family.”

  “At the expense of mine.” I shoved him away from me. “You could have prevented this.”

  “You came from the southlands.” He pushed to his feet. “You had been exposed—”

  “If we had been exposed, we would have been infected. Or was that what you were hoping for, a chance to prove your precious cure worked by breathing our air, sharing our meals and surviving?”

  “It wasn’t like that.” He began pacing. “All that mattered to me was containing the threat so that my family was protected from all this. I wasn’t being malicious, but I was thoughtless and arrogant.”

  “I can’t fault your love of your siblings,” I said, “but I can blame you for the risk to mine.”

  “Yours had already been exposed to the harbinger—to risers—and mine had not. Until I saw for myself that you were well, there was no reason to treat you all with the preventative in short supply.”

  “You saw Ghedi just now. He was feverish and out of his mind inside of what? An hour after he was bitten?” I scoffed. “You would have known if we had been infected on sight, and you know it.”

  “I had no reason to believe you would become infected during your stay.”

  “Did that stop you from continuing the treatment for your clan?”

  “No,” he admitted. “It didn’t.”

  “Of course not.” I dusted my hands. “There. I absolve you of your guilt. Now get out.”

  “My guilt is not yours to understand or to dismiss as trivial when I assure you it is not.” His tone lowered dangerously. “I have lost my parents. My youngest sister has ruined her life. Now my eldest sister wants to endanger hers, and our brothers, and our clan. I meant you and yours no harm. Can’t you extend me that much faith? I did what I thought was right to protect what family I have left.”

  “I would have taken the same precautions without regret.” Family first, always. “Understanding that, even while I respect you for protecting your clan, doesn’t make it easier for me to forgive you.”

  Nodding as though he could accept that, he exhaled. “We’re wasting time Ghedi doesn’t have.”

  He was right. I didn’t have to like it. I did have to get over it. For now. I had time for anger later. Crushing my eyes shut, I tamped down Henri’s betrayal long enough to ask, “What do we do now?”

  “We begin the process of creating the cure.”

  “Begin?” My gut pitched. “As in you don’t have any made? What about—?”

  “I dosed Ghedi with the preventative serum in the hope of slowing the progression of his illness. In order to treat him, we must distill more of the cure.” He grimaced. “The plague kills within days, and it requires days to make. I have no choice but to entrust the secret of its creation to you and hope you see why its existence must not become common knowledge until the Council of Elders wills it.”

  “When, exactly, will they? For that matter, when will they tell the nation what it is we’re facing? They can’t think allowing the southland clans to cower in ignorance will save lives. What’s holding them back?” I asked a question I feared the answer to. “
If there is a cure, then why not announce it?”

  “The cure has not been fully tested. Even once it has been, even if it works universally as Mana believes it will,” he said, “then we still face the dilemma of great need versus a very limited supply.”

  “The Council of Elders is comprised of what? Eight northland clans to four southlanders? Of the eight, now that Titania has fallen, four of the wealthiest clans are now seated in the north. You can’t think for a moment they will vote to share a cure with the south unless the north is protected first.”

  “As I said, its existence can’t become common knowledge until they will it. That doesn’t mean treatment will be withheld from those who need it most. The cure comes from the southlands, and it will be administered in the southlands, whether the council deems them worthy recipients or not.”

  A glimmer of hope pushed me to the edge of my seat. “I didn’t figure you for a revolutionary.”

  A sly grin curved his lips. “I’m not.”

  I tilted my head. “Why are you risking your neck?”

  “I lost both of my parents to a rival clan’s ambition. Mother was poisoned and left for dead. My father died shortly after.” He cleared his throat. “Their life threads were joined. A dual assassination was carried out with one single prick from a poisoned dart laced with venom by my sister Pascale’s lover.” He paused. “I want you to understand me when I say I have no ambition outside of my family’s survival. Ambition is its own poison, it kills.” He sank to his haunches so that our eyes were level. “To earn a measure of your trust, I’m giving you a secret and the ability to do me great harm.”

  A secret, he said. I wonder how many more and how much deadlier ones he knew.

  “If your sister Pascale was not irreparably harmed for her crime, I doubt you would be either.”

  “The matter of my parents’ deaths was a clan matter, handled by our elders and our maven. The Council of Elders bows to no one, my sister included,” he said. “I have put my life in your hands.”

  “Your reputation perhaps.” The Council of Elders wouldn’t dare strike at him.

  “As I am partial to both, I hope our arrangement won’t come to that.”