Stone’s brow furrowed, and he turned to regard the swarm. “Not grasseaters. There’s none near here. Probably bugs, since they come out at night. Probably have to fly around to all the marshes to get enough.”
Moon considered. “I wonder if they’d want bug paste.” They still had the packet of it from the swampling city.
Stone tilted his head. “There’s a thought.”
Bramble braced herself as Delin banged on the door of his cage. One of the Hians opened it. Delin said, “She is awake, and I need to take her to the physician.”
The Hian said, “She should stay here.”
Delin gestured in frustration. “The physician must examine her before she collapses again!”
Bramble choked out a moan and clutched her stomach, letting herself half-fall against the wall. The Hian stared at her, then stared at Delin. Delin said, “You saw what happened to Aldoan. The effect may be delayed. Bramble could die.”
The Hian hesitated, then gestured for them to follow her down the corridor. The other Hian on watch at their door followed.
When Bramble had first seen the hanging waterskins in the healer’s room, she had committed all the labels to memory. She had written them down on a piece of paper from Delin’s small stock and fortunately he had recognized the glyphs. He said, “This is a variant of the scholar’s notation of Kedmar, that is used in the library.” He tapped one. “From the indicators for predator and eradication, I surmise this one could be the simple we know as Fell poison. But this one has indicators for liquid and danger. It’s the only one with such a notation.” He met her gaze, his expression serious. “That’s the one we need.”
Bramble held that image in her memory as they approached the healer’s room. “Is she there?” Delin called out. “If she is not there, we will wait inside. Bramble can’t walk back and forth in this condition!”
Exasperated, one of the Hians said, “You were the one who wanted her to walk here in the first place—”
As Bramble had hoped, the healer stepped out into the corridor. “What’s wrong?” She was clearly startled to see Bramble on her feet. “Are you better? You should be lying down.”
“I wanted you to examine her,” Delin said as they reached the doorway. “She seems much better, but has strange pains.”
Bramble gripped the door frame, screwing her face up into a grimace as if she was about to be sick. “Can I sit down?”
The healer motioned to her. “Yes, go ahead—”
“Perhaps it’s the weather here,” Delin said. “I confess, I have felt lately as if the air is thick and difficult to breathe.” As the healer turned toward him, clearly alarmed by that statement, Bramble slipped inside the room and sat down heavily on the bench. The waterskins hadn’t been moved, and her heart thumped in relief. Delin stepped sideways and the healer moved with him, trying to peer into his eyes. As the healer’s back blocked the doorway from view, Bramble leapt across to the waterskins.
Bramble found the one Delin had chosen and took it down. She sniffed the bone cap and got a trace of acridity but no definite odor. This has to be right.
Bramble pressed the skin to her stomach, steeled herself, and shifted. She took the bag with her, the way she could take clothing and jewelry. She had never carried something as big as the waterskin with her through a shift. It caused a distinctly odd warm sensation in her chest. She took a sharp breath and stepped out into the corridor.
The startled healer blinked down at Bramble’s scaled form. The other Hians tensed warily, and one half-lifted her fire weapon. Bramble said to the healer, “I feel better this way, not as sick.”
“Ah, I suppose that makes sense—” the healer began.
Delin cried out, staggered sideways, and collapsed against the nearest Hian. She tried to catch him but he jerked out of her hold and fell to the floor. He clutched his chest, his eyes rolling back in his head, and jerked his legs as if having a seizure. Trying to get to him, the healer shoved past the other Hians. With their attention diverted, Bramble said, “I’ll get help!” and darted down the corridor.
She was lucky that the healer’s room was near the stern of the ship. She dropped down the nearest stairwell, heard voices in the corridor, and jumped up to flatten herself against the stem-like beam that crossed the ceiling. She pressed against the moss and didn’t breathe as two Hians passed beneath her. She couldn’t tell if she was just imagining the waterskin’s phantom weight against her scales. She hoped the fact that it was poison wouldn’t affect her. Though if it did, there was so much of it, surely she would have dropped dead by now.
The Hians turned into another corridor and Bramble dropped soundlessly to the floor. She skittered around the next two turns, took refuge in an empty room when someone else passed, and made it down the next stairwell.
She avoided the heavily guarded corridor that led down to Merit’s cage. She needed a big distraction before she could get him out, though if they were lucky the poison would work fast enough to provide that.
If this boat was like Callumkal’s, then the cistern was down a level in a supply hold. Bramble rounded the next corner.
That was when a Hian stepped out of a doorway halfway down the corridor. She was facing away, still sliding the door closed. She wasn’t wearing a fire weapon. Bramble bounded forward and leapt.
The Hian turned toward her but didn’t have a chance to make more than a strangled yell before Bramble slammed into her. Bramble ripped her claws across the Hian’s head and felt them glance off the armor plate. Unexpectedly strong hands clawed at her face, and Bramble stabbed her claws into the Hian’s neck. Blood bubbled up and the Hian gasped, the breath strangled in her ruined throat.
The Hian went limp and Bramble let the body drop. She tilted her head to listen. No running footsteps sounded from nearby corridors. The moss walls tended to dampen noise, and there must be no one near enough to hear. Bramble twitched away the blood on her claws and thought, I need to hurry.
She pulled the body into a cabin, slid the door closed, and hurried on. Hopefully no one would notice the blood on the soft cork floor, at least not right away. At the next junction she found the narrow stairs down to the lower level. At the bottom was a corridor with a low ceiling, with larger stem-beams. Just like Callunkal’s boat, this was the hold, where the supplies were stored.
Bramble pushed open the first sliding door and slipped inside. The space was dark, crammed with ceramic containers and bundles and boxes, and it smelled grainy and of sweet greens and earthy roots. The smell was enough like the storage chambers in the Indigo Cloud colony tree that homesickness pierced Bramble’s heart like a claw. She passed it all by, heading toward the cold wet scent toward the far end.
The big ceramic cistern held the water supply, and also rainwater from collectors that ran up to the top of the flying boat. It had a hatch to the outside where it could be filled and drained. Pipes ran from it to the water flushes in the ship’s latrines and the drinking water taps in the cabins. Bramble knew all about it from helping fill the one on Callumkal’s boat.
She opened the small cover in the top that allowed the water to be checked for freshness, then shifted to her groundling form. To her relief, the waterskin was still intact, still heavy with the poison.