Steelflower by Lilith Saintcrow

Author:Lilith Saintcrow [Saintcrow, Lilith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-10-19T03:04:28+00:00

Chapter 24

Twinsick

I opened my eyes to see a beautiful face, black G’mai eyes and a lush mouth, the shorter braids I remembered dimly. The adai who had spoken to me before the duel peered down at me from her great height as a flame of scalding coolness washed through me, the agony of cut flesh melting in a wash of something prickling and alien.

“What?” I croaked. My throat was dry.

“I have offered you healing.” Her lips shaped each word, gave it beauty, set it free. Even commontongue would sound beautiful coming from her. “You sorely need it, sister.”

A flare of sharp, lifesaving irritation boiled through me. “Keep your healing to yourself.” Cold, so cold my teeth chattered, I was so cold. “Leave me be. Kesa?”

“Here.” Kesamine’s blue eyes, her hair pulled sharply back, filled my eyes. I blinked. Why did she look so fuzzy? “Kaia, you are delirious. Let her help. You’ve a fever—the rain, and the wound.”

“No.” I closed my eyes. “Leave me alone. Better. Kesa…” I could not speak to tell her what I needed to tell her. “How…long?”

“A full day since the duel. Sunup to sundown.” She answered me far too gently.

Sunup to sundown. He was safe now. I had survived a full day. No bloodguilt would attach to him. He could go back to G’maihallan with a clear conscience, and be free of all flawed things.

“What does she say?” A familiar voice, accented with G’mai. I closed my eyes.

“Since tis been a full day, sunup to sundown, you are free of bloodguilt. She won the duel, but you are free should she die.” Kesa sounded grim. “If you’ve aught to say to her, say it quickly.”

There was a moment of crackling silence. I heard a fire burning, and the breathing of five people, my own harsh gasping for air.

My skin flushed with fire. That was a bad sign. Cold, then hot—I had traveled in the rain and was now wounded, caught a fever.

But G’mai never caught woundfever. A gift of the gods, our antiseptic blood, proofing us against some accidents of fate and disease.

What could this be? Not jai fever, I had caught jai once and survived, one did not catch it twice. Being G’mai had meant I caught only the lesser of the two fevers, not the greater jai from which precious few returned.

Still, I had been prey to strange fevers all my life. I had always recovered, before.

“Get out.” Darik’s voice, an iron-cold fury to it. I would not have disobeyed that tone. I heard shifting, people’s boots resounding, the crackle of the fire.

“I would finish the healing—” the adai began, pleading.

“Get out.” Darik did not need to raise his voice.

More shifting sounds. The door, closing, latching shut.

The lock on the door, shot home.

Had he left me in here to die in peace? Good. I would perhaps thrash with the fever, grow delirious, lose control of my tongue. Say what I should not, and have it pass unheard.

He sighed, nearby. I sought to open my eyes again.

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