“I wouldn’t tell.”
Dorian smiled grimly. “Everyone tells in the end.”
“I mean I’m trustworthy.”
“Trust me with a secret, then. Where do you hide your pills?”
Lily showed Dorian the loose tile in the corner, the pile of contraband underneath.
“It’s good, well camouflaged. How many hiding places do you have?”
“Just this.”
“That’s no good. You should always have more than one hiding place.”
“I can’t hide anything anywhere else. Greg will find it. He does inspections now. But he never comes in here.”
“Jonathan says you fixed the surveillance in this place.” Dorian gave her a look of frank admiration. “Where’d a wall lady learn to do something like that?”
“My sister. She was good with computers.”
“Well, I’d still get another hiding place. One is never enough.”
“How many do you have?”
“When I was a kid, dozens. But I don’t have any now.” Dorian pushed herself up and reached for the bowl of broth. “In the better world, we won’t need to hide anything.”
“I don’t understand. Is the better world biblical? Are angels going to descend and wipe the earth clean?”
“God, no!” Dorian replied, laughing. “In the better world, no one will need religion.”
“I don’t understand,” Lily repeated.
“Well, why should you? The better world’s not for people like you.”
Lily recoiled, as though she’d been slapped. Dorian didn’t notice; she was busy eating her broth and staring out the glass doors into the backyard. She was waiting, Lily realized now, waiting for the Englishman to come and take her away. Part of her was already gone.
Lily left the nursery, closing the door carefully behind her, and went downstairs. It was all nonsense, she told herself. Tear and his people were probably crazy, the whole lot of them. But all the same, she felt as though they had left her behind.
WHEN KELSEA CAME back to herself, she heard thunder.
She looked up and found the blessed comfort of Carlin’s bookshelves, the long rows of volumes, each in its own place. She reached out to touch the books, but then Lily’s sorrow echoed in her mind, pulling her back across centuries.
Why am I seeing this? Why do I have to suffer with her, when her story is already done?
The thundering sound came again, and with it, the last of Lily’s memories faded away, and Kelsea was suddenly alert. Not thunder, but many feet, moving in the hallway outside. Kelsea turned away from the books and found Pen standing just behind her, listening intently, his manner so grave that Kelsea forgot to be angry at him.
“Pen? What is it?”
“I had a thought to go investigate, Lady, but I’m not supposed to leave you at such times.”
Now Kelsea heard a hollow, muffled groan, slightly distant, as though it came from down the corridor. “Let’s go and see.”
“I think it’s Kibb, Lady. He’s been sick for two days now, getting worse all the time.”
“Sick with what?”
“No one knows. Flu, maybe.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“Kibb didn’t want us to, Lady.”
“Well, come on.”
She led him into the corridor, where nothing was moving, only the flicker of torches. In the dim light the hallway looked twice as long; it seemed to stretch miles from the darkened door of the guard quarters to the well-lit audience chamber.
“What time is it?” she whispered.
“Half past eleven.”
The hollow groan sounded again: muffled agony, weaker this time, near the guard quarters.
“Mace won’t want you down there, Lady.”
“Come on.”
Pen didn’t try to stop her, which afforded Kelsea some small satisfaction. Weak torchlight gleamed from the open door of one of the chambers near the end of the hallway, and Kelsea walked faster, her feet hurrying her along.
Turning the corner, she found herself in what was clearly a man’s bedchamber. Everything seemed to be dark, and there was very little decoration, but Kelsea admired the room’s austerity; this was just the way she imagined her guards’ quarters.
Kibb lay on the bed, his brow shiny with sweat, naked down to his hips. Bent over him was Schmidt, Mace’s doctor of choice for emergencies. Elston, Coryn, and Wellmer were at the bedside, and Mace, crouched at the foot of the bed, completed the tableau. As Kelsea entered the room, Mace’s face darkened, but he only muttered, “Lady.”
“How is he?”
Schmidt did not bow, but Kelsea did not take offense; there seemed to be no ego to compare with that of the doctor in demand. His voice revealed a heavy Mort accent. “The appendix, Majesty. I would try to operate, but it would do no good. It will burst before I am able to get in there clean. If I perform as quickly as I must, he will bleed to death. I have given him morphia for his pain, but I can do nothing else.”
Kelsea blinked, horrified. Appendectomy had been a routine pre-Crossing surgery, so common and simple that Lily’s procedure had been done by machines rather than human hands. But the grim resignation on the doctor’s face said everything that needed to be said.
“We’ve promised to take care of his mother, Lady,” Mace murmured. “We’ve made him as comfortable as possible. There’s little else we can do. You shouldn’t be here for this.”
“Perhaps not, but it’s a little late to walk away.”
“El?” Kibb asked. His voice was slurred with some kind of narcotic.
“I’m right here, you ass,” Elston muttered. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Elston was holding Kibb’s hand, Kelsea saw. It looked odd, Kibb’s small hand buried in Elston’s giant fist, but she couldn’t even smile. They did everything together, Elston and Kibb, and Kelsea couldn’t remember a time when she had seen one without the other. Best friends … but now, looking at their clasped hands, at the agony that Elston was trying so desperately to hide, Kelsea’s mind came up with a third and fourth piece of information: neither Elston nor Kibb had a woman in the Keep, and their chambers adjoined.
Elston looked up at her dumbly, and Kelsea did her best not to blush. She reached for Kibb’s other hand, which lay fisted at his side. His eyes were closed, his teeth clenched against another groan, and cords stood out on his neck. Kelsea could see individual beads of sweat as they rolled down his temples and cheeks to settle in the matting of his hair. At the touch of her hand, Kibb’s eyes opened again, and he attempted a smile through gritted teeth.
“Majesty,” he croaked. “I am a Queen’s Guard of the Tear.”
“Yes,” Kelsea replied, not knowing what else to say. Her own helplessness had frozen her tongue. She wormed her hand inside his, felt him clasp it gently.
“My honor, Lady.” Kibb smiled, a smile of drugs, and his eyes slipped closed again. Elston made a choking sound and turned away, but Kelsea could not. Schmidt was undoubtedly the best doctor Mace could find, but he was only the shadow of a dead breed. There was no real medicine anymore; all of it had gone down with the White Ship, the medical personnel left behind, bobbing in the waves beneath the storm. What Kelsea wouldn’t give for even one of those doctors now! She thought of the brutal cold the survivors must have endured, treading water in the middle of God’s Ocean until exhaustion made them sink beneath the waves. By the end, they must have been in agony. Frigid air seemed to coalesce around Kelsea and she began to shiver helplessly, her legs cramping. Her vision went dark.
“Lady?”
A great shock slammed into Kelsea’s chest, so hard that she gasped. Pen caught her from behind, or she would have fallen backward. She clamped Kibb’s hand more tightly, struggling to hold on to him, knowing somehow that if she let go, the spell would be broken and nothing could be done—
Her stomach imploded in pain. Kelsea clamped her mouth shut, but a shriek built behind her lips and her body bucked in rebellion. Unbearable pressure laced across her abdomen and seemed to wrench her muscles, stretching them beyond their capacity.