"Birds!" Nestor announced to one man. "Bloody birds went mad and attacked us."
"We're just popping in to the infirmary to get cleaned up," Kiram added.
But Kiram could tell that the servant's attention wasn't really on him, Elezar or Nestor. It was Javier, whom all of the passing staff members watched with a kind of shocked apprehension.
Kiram suddenly wondered if word of the royal bishop's ruling against Javier had reached the academy. He suspected that it had and when one servant suddenly bolted away, Kiram felt sure that the man had gone to raise some alarm that the hell-branded duke had returned to their midst.
"How hard do you think it would be to barricade the infirmary?" Kiram asked.
Javier offered him a weary smile. "We do think alike, don't we?"
When they reached the infirmary, they found the lamps dimmed but still burning. Scholar Blasio sat beside a bed, while across the room Genimo stood polishing one of Scholar Dona- millo's mechanical cures. Genimo's eyes went wide at the sight of the four of them at the door and the polishing cloth dropped silently from his hand.
Donamillo lay on a bed, sunken and still as a corpse. Scholar Blasio stroked his older brother's waxy brow and whispered what sounded like a prayer over him. Only after smoothing the blankets that covered his brother did he look up and see them in the doorway.
"Dear God!" Blasio cried. "Sit down. Sit down all of you and let me see what I can do."
"We aren't here for medical attention, Scholar," Kiram told him. "We're here because you were right about what your brother wrote in his journal. We have to stop him."
A watery gleam came to the scholar's eyes and he glanced to where Donamillo's body lay on the infirmary bed.
"He's nearly gone," Blasio said softly. Then he looked to Kiram. "I've been nursing his body for weeks hoping that he would come back-that if he would just return to me, it would somehow undo what he has done to himself and to everyone else."
"What on earth are you all talking about?" Genimo demanded. "What happened to you?"
"You wouldn't believe it," Nestor told him.
Scholar Blasio cleaned and dressed their wounds and ordered the servants to bring them food and drink.
Nestor nearly fell asleep on his feet once his wounds had been tended and he'd eaten. Elezar guided him to one of the cots and tucked him in. When Javier dropped to another cot moments later, Kiram felt relieved. It had been almost painful to watch Javier struggling to stay awake. Now he sprawled across a cot, snoring quietly. Elezar sat, bleary-eyed, on a cot between Javier's and Nestor's. He maintained his vigil over the two of them for nearly an hour before he too succumbed.
In the meantime Kiram inspected Scholar Donamillo's mechanical cures and flipped between the two journals, taking notes.
"What do you think you're going to do?" Genimo asked. His tone was genial enough but there was something in his wording that bothered Kiram.
"What I can," Kiram responded.
"Why don't I have a look?" Genimo reached for Yassin's journal but Kiram pulled it back from him.
"Thanks, but it wouldn't do any good. They're both written in Haldiim," Kiram said quickly.
"Suit yourself." Genimo shrugged and stalked back to the medicine cabinets. He picked up a tattered book and flipped through the pages. But as Kiram checked the mechanical cures for the symbols and invocations he found in Yassin's journal, he felt Genimo watching him. The sensation made him uneasy and he considered writing his own notes in Haldiim.
But that would just make it more difficult for everyone else to help him reconstruct the mechanical cures. Besides, he might not like Genimo but that didn't make him a traitor.
Kiram had already made that mistake once, in assuming that just because he was off-putting and bigoted Holy Father Habalan had to be the man responsible for the shadow curse. All the while he'd been blind to Scholar Donamillo's machinations, simply because the two of them had shared tastes and ideas. He didn't want to think that he could have idolized a man who committed such cruelty and yet he had.
Even now, Kiram felt sick with awe as he took in the beauty and pure mechanical mastery of Scholar Donamillo's work. Every screw and incantation was precisely placed, perfectly crafted. The twelve iron ribs arched in magnificent geometry supporting 792 glass panels which interlocked to exactly align every curse and command that gave the mechanism its purpose. Even the wires of the harnesses were carefully braided and measured to exact lengths.
Kiram couldn't deny that the mechanical cure was a masterpiece and the thought both repulsed and frightened him. He needed to reverse what Donamillo had done as quickly as possible but the intricacy and perfection of the mechanical cure defied replication. New glass panels and iron ribs as perfect as these certainly couldn't be fabricated in a matter of weeks, much less a few days.
Kiram knelt on the floor, exhausted and frustrated. He glared at Donamillo's journal, fighting the urge to hurl it across the room. He couldn't compete with this level of experience and perfection.
His own steam engine looked simple and dull in comparison to Donamillo's breathtaking mechanism.
"The wisdom of age defeats the strength of youth," Kiram whispered to himself, remembering how smug Donamillo had been in the stable in Anacleto.
But Donamillo hadn't always been old and wise, had he? Kiram suddenly thought. Wisdom came with experience: trial and error. This perfect mechanical cure wasn't the first machine that Donamillo had built. There had been others and Kiram knew exactly were to find those slightly less ideal iron ribs and glass panels-the tower room.
Elation surged through Kiram's exhaustion. He bolted to his feet and, grabbing a lamp, started out the infirmary doors.
"Kiram?" Scholar Blasio gazed at him with gentle worry. "What are you doing?"
"I'm going to bring your brother back to you." Kiram grinned. "Don't wait up for me."
In the tower storage room Kiram moved between the dozens of disused mechanical cures like a moth searching for a flame. In one only a few glass panels were viable, but among them was exactly the sequence of incantations that Kiram needed. He jotted notes and then moved to another broken machine. As he found more and more of the pieces he needed his pulse raced faster and he laughed to himself, half delirious with exhaustion and excitement. Steadily his notes grew into an exact design for the parts he required. He mapped everything out: where each glass panel and iron screw would come from and where they should go.
When he at last stumbled from the tower, he found morning light illuminating the marble staircase and glowing through the vast halls of the academy. In the infirmary everyone was sleeping until Kiram entered and let out a wild crow of triumph. Then only Donamillo remained motionless in his bed.
Kiram bounded gleefully between the cots while Elezar and Nestor stared at him and Javier shoved his tousled hair back from his face. Kiram waved his notes and explained everything much too quickly. He smirked at Donamillo's mechanical cure and feigned punching it. For a moment even Javier looked at him like he might have gone mad.
"You're off your nut, underclassman." Genimo shook his head at Kiram.
"No. I am on my nut! We can do this. We really can." Kiram tried to calm down but only his excitement was keeping him awake and on his feet. "We can rebuild Donamillo's mechanical cure using the parts from his old machines up in the tower. If we do it right we'll be able to exactly reverse the effect. We'll be able to force Donamillo back into his own body. I've worked it all out! We're going to beat the bastard at his own game." Kiram held his notes out to Javier. "The strength of youth farts in the face of age and experience, ha!"
Scholar Blasio's brows rose with worry, but Javier took the notes and carefully read through them.