“Hold her! Get her mouth open!”
Hands were on her arms and legs, but Kelsea barely felt them. The pressure on her abdomen doubled, tripled, going up and up, a feeling that had no comparison for Kelsea beyond the increasing scream of a teakettle. Her body continued to thrash, her heels digging into the chamber floor, but the inner Kelsea was thousands of miles away, struggling in the dark of God’s Ocean, trying not to go under. A wave of freezing water broke on her, closed over her head, and Kelsea tasted bitter salt.
Fingers forced her mouth open—somehow, she knew they were Pen’s—and groped for her tongue, but it all seemed very distant. There was only the shredding agony in her belly, and the cold, a paralyzing cold that seemed to have enclosed the entire world. Kelsea breathed in shallow gasps, trying not to gag at the intrusion of fingers pinning her tongue.
“You! Doctor! Get over here!”
Hands on her shoulders now, bruising hands, holding her down with great force. Mace’s hands, his face above her torn with anxiety, shouting commands because that’s how Mace dealt with crisis, sometimes it seemed that he could do nothing but give orders—
The pain vanished.
Kelsea took a deep breath and lay still. After a few moments, the hands on her relaxed, but didn’t let go entirely. She looked up and saw them crouched over her: Mace, Pen, Elston, Coryn, and Wellmer. The ceiling was a mass of incomprehensible tiles over their heads.
With a murmured apology, Pen removed his fingers from her mouth. Kelsea’s body felt light, clear, as though her blood had been replaced with water … the water that came from the spring near the cottage, so clean that they could prepare food with it directly from the pool. The unnatural cold had gone as well, and Kelsea was warm now, almost drowsy, as though someone had wrapped her in a blanket.
“Lady? Are you in pain?”
Kelsea was still gripping a hard object: Kibb’s hand. She sat up, feeling Pen move to support her shoulders. Kibb lay entirely still now, his eyes closed.
“Is he dead?”
Schmidt leaned over Kibb, his hands moving in a rapid, clinical way that Kelsea admired: forehead to pulse, and back to forehead again. He checked these areas with increasing agitation before finally turning to Kelsea, his face blank. “No, Majesty. The patient breathes easy.”
He pressed downward on Kibb’s abdomen, tentatively, ready to withdraw at any twitch. But there was nothing. Even Kelsea could see Kibb’s chest rise and fall now, the deep, even breathing of a man in the darkest part of unconsciousness.
“His fever is finished,” Schmidt murmured, pressing hard on Kibb’s stomach now, as though desperate to elicit a response. “Really, we should dry and cover him, or he will take a chill.”
“The appendix?” Mace asked.
Schmidt shook his head, sitting back on his heels. Kelsea reached up to clutch her two sapphires. They hadn’t spoken to her since the Argive, but still their weight was comforting, a solid thing to hold.
“Sir?” One of the new guards was peeking around the doorway. “Is everything all right? We heard—”
“Everything is fine,” Mace replied, turning a threatening glare on everyone in the room. “Back to your post, Aaron, and shut the door behind you.”
“Yes sir.” Aaron vanished.
“He’s all right?” Wellmer whispered. His face was pale and young, just as it had been months ago when Kelsea first met him, before life had begun to mature him a bit. Mace did not answer, only turned to Schmidt with a resigned expression, the face of a man waiting for a verdict who knows that he is already condemned.
The doctor wiped his forehead. “The swelling is gone. He appears to be completely healthy, but for the perspiration … and even that could be explained as the cauchemar, the night terror.”
Now they all turned to look at Kelsea, all of them except Elston, who continued to stare at Kibb.
“Are you all right, Lady?” Pen finally asked.
“I’m fine,” Kelsea replied. She thought of that first night when she had cut open her own arm. She had done so several times since; it was a coping mechanism, and her body was a good place to divert the rage. Her legs were better to cut than her arms, easier to hide. But was this a similar thing, or was it different? If it was her jewels, why didn’t they give any sign? Kelsea’s shoulders felt like brick. “I’m tired, though. I’ll need to sleep soon.”
Schmidt’s face was a portrait of upset, his eyes moving swiftly between Kelsea and Kibb. “Majesty, I do not know what I have just seen, but—”
Mace grasped the doctor’s wrist. “You saw nothing.”
“What?”
“None of you saw anything. Kibb was ill, but he took a turn for the better in the night.”
Kelsea found herself nodding.
“But—”
“Wellmer, use the brain God gave you!” Mace snapped. “What happens if word goes out that the Queen can heal the sick?”
“Oh.” Wellmer pondered this for a moment. Kelsea tried to think as well, but she was so tired. Mace’s words jangled in her mind: heal the sick …
What did I do?
“I see, sir,” Wellmer finally replied. “Everyone would have a sick mother, a sick child …”
“Kibb!” Mace bent down and shook Kibb’s shoulder, then slapped him lightly across the face. Elston winced, but said nothing. “Kibb, wake up!”
Kibb’s eyes opened, and by a trick of the torchlight Kelsea thought that the pupils seemed almost transparent, as though they had been cleaned out and replaced with … what? Light? She turned her senses inward and examined her own body, her own heartbeat. Everything was moving faster. She shook her head, trying to get rid of the rays that seemed to be shining through her mind. They went, but with a slight twinkle of mischief that did nothing to allay the feeling of unreality that swamped her.
“How do you feel, Kibb?” Mace asked.
“Light,” Kibb groaned. “All light.”
Kelsea looked up and found the doctor staring at her again.
“Do you remember anything?”
Kibb laughed softly. “I was on the edge of a cliff and sliding. The Queen grabbed me back. Everything was so clear—”
Mace crossed his arms, his jaw clenched in frustration. “He’s like a man on an opium binge.”
“Will he sober up, Lady?” asked Coryn.
“How would I know?” Kelsea demanded. All of them, even Pen, were looking at her with the same suspicion, as though she had hidden something from them, some longtime secret that had finally come to light. She thought of the cuts on her arms and legs again, but forced the thought away.
Mace grunted in exasperation. “We have to hope he’ll come out of it. Leave him in here and post a guard. No visitors. Lady, you should go on back to bed.”
This sounded so wonderful to Kelsea that she merely nodded and trudged away, ignoring Pen’s nearly silent tread behind her. She wanted to sort things out, but she was too exhausted to think. If she could heal the sick—but she shook her head, cutting off the rest. There was power there, yes, but it was a ruinous sort of power. Even now, she could feel the edges of the idea curdling inside her head.
Heal the sick, heal the sick.
Mace’s words rang like bells in her mind, no matter how she tried to push them away.
THE NEXT EVENING, after dinner, Kelsea was in the middle of her daily argument with Arliss when a messenger arrived, bearing the news she’d been dreading: six days ago, the Mort had broken through on the border. Having been frustrated in several attacks by the line of archers in the trees, Ducarte had finally taken the most direct method and simply set the entire hillside on fire. Hall had had the good sense to withdraw his battalion back toward the Almont and avoid direct battle, but nearly all of his archers had been caught in the fire, burning to death in their treetop nests. By now the Mort would be transporting their heavy equipment over the hillside, and the bulk of their infantry would already have moved down into the Almont. On Bermond’s orders, the Tear army had pulled back to the Caddell. Fire still raged across the Border Hills; if it didn’t rain soon, thousands of acres of good timber would be destroyed.