Breath of Winter, A (11 page)

I shared a worried look with Henri. “Or they were luring us to the surface.”

“Are they intelligent enough for that?” he asked.

“Hunger drives them, or other base instincts,” I said. “Outside of that, they’re following orders. That day on the ice, I spotted something on the road. I thought it might have been a canis or an ursus. What if it wasn’t an animal? What if it was a riser?” It fit, much as I hated admitting it. “What if our ward created them for Hishima? We have no way of knowing how their bonds work, what ties a harbinger to the risers she creates. She may have summoned them, or they may have followed her.”

“It’s possible,” Henri allowed. “Or another harbinger is also here.”

Harbingers in Erania. I would process the repercussions later. For now, my brother needed me.

I ran my fingers through Ghedi’s hair. “What do we do for him?”

“We get him to a room and secure him before he wakes.” Henri pointed at Braden. “Stay here. Guard their ward until I return.” He faced my brothers. “Get Ghedi to a room and wait for me there.”

I struggled to my knees. “I’ll go too.”

“No, you won’t.” Henri grasped my shoulders. “We must talk, privately.”

Kaleb and Tau frowned in our direction, but neither signed a word before they lifted Ghedi.

“Let me help.” Henri drew the chair near, clasped forearms with me and pulled me to stand. With gentle hands, he eased me onto the seat, sorting my limbs, placing them where they should go.

I let him arrange me like a doll. Protesting would waste time and energy I didn’t have. When he rolled me into the laboratory and parked me near his workbench, I didn’t bother protesting then either.

When he said, “I’ll be right back,” I found my tongue.

“Ghedi has the plague.” I tried wrapping my head around it.

“It’s very possible.” Henri hesitated. “I have to go. When I get back, we’ll talk about options.”

I nodded as he eased out the door and left me sitting in the cavernous room alone.

Options. What options? There was no cure. There was only misery and death for those who were infected.

And then, unless your corpse was burned or beheaded, the harbingers came for you.

In Henri’s absence, Ghedi’s mortality loomed. I could think of nothing else but rejecting the fact I might lose the brother who was my closest friend to an illness that few survived. When Henri came back to the laboratory, my heart was too heavy for me to lift my head and risk finding pity in his eyes.

“I gave him something for his fever.” Henri knelt before me. “It should also help him sleep.”

I was nodding as though I grasped what he was saying, but his meaning eluded me.

“Are we sure it’s the plague?” My voice quavered. “How can…?”

“Shh.” He took me in his arms. He must have expected tears, but I had none. The shock was too fresh, too numbing. “Though I haven’t seen a case myself,” he said, “Mana’s notes on her efforts are immaculate. Given the fact Braden witnessed the attack, I have no doubt about how Ghedi sustained his injury. His symptoms are exactly what I would expect from a person in this stage of sickness.” He smoothed his hand over my hair. “There is something you ought to know, but you must swear to me you will not speak of it to another soul. The consequences will be dire for us both if you do.”

“I know how to keep a secret,” I said against his shoulder. It was a job requirement.

He turned his face so his lips brushed my ear. “You’ve never kept one like this.”

“I give you my solemn vow that I will not breathe a word of what you tell me.”

“Not even to your brothers?”

“If that’s what you require.” I withdrew from his embrace. “I would prefer not to exclude them.”

Keeping secrets meant telling lies, and lies had a way of multiplying. Tell enough and you strangled on them.

“There is no other choice.” He set his jaw. “Your word, please.”

Unnerved by his expression, I said, “You have it.”

“There is a cure.”

“A cure.” A lump formed in my throat. “For the plague.”

“My study of the cure is in its infancy, but yes, I believe it is genuine.” He appeared torn. “I can give what medicine I have on hand to Ghedi, but I must warn you that will put the rest of you at risk. If he is contagious, if Kaleb or Tau catch the plague from him, or if they pass it on to you, I will have no means of treating anyone else who becomes ill. You must decide, here and now, if treating Ghedi is your first priority.” As my lips formed a
yes
, he pressed his finger to them. “You must choose, not just between his life and yours, but his and the lives of all the others too. Consider all that’s at risk.”

“You have siblings. I know you understand. There is no choice. Ghedi is our brother. If you had asked any of us, our answers would be the same. Do it. Give him the cure.” When I realized what he had admitted, I grasped his arm and held him in place. “Wait. You said
the rest of you
are at risk. As in you aren’t? What about Braden and Asher? They both had prolonged contact with Ghedi as well.”

Now that Henri mentioned it, I recalled how certain he was when we first arrived. How sure he had been that even with a live harbinger in the nest, his clansmen would be unaffected by the plague.

“My sister pledged the use of many resources for understanding and curing the plague.” His forehead creased. “Lourdes understood that quieting the rumbling from our southland allies required a gesture more personal than pledging gold. By taking in your ward, she exposed her clan and home to the same sickness, the same fear and risk her allies have lived with for the last several months.”

“That was noble of her.” Foolish, but noble. “I assume she took precautions.”

“I took them for her,” he said. “I refused to risk her or our people to prove a point. I had been in touch with Mana. She sent me several vials of the cure to study and replicate. I diluted the samples, creating what I hope is a preventative. For days now, I’ve been dosing all those most likely to come into contact with your ward in anticipation of your arrival. I diluted it further and treated the livestock too, to see if it could protect them from infection in the event things didn’t go as planned.”

“You knew.”

He made no apologies. “As you said, I do understand. All I’ve done, I’ve done for my family.”

“At the expense of mine.” I shoved him away from me. “You could have prevented this.”

“You came from the southlands.” He pushed to his feet. “You had been exposed—”

“If we had been exposed, we would have been infected. Or was that what you were hoping for, a chance to prove your precious cure worked by breathing our air, sharing our meals and surviving?”

“It wasn’t like that.” He began pacing. “All that mattered to me was containing the threat so that my family was protected from all this. I wasn’t being malicious, but I was thoughtless and arrogant.”

“I can’t fault your love of your siblings,” I said, “but I can blame you for the risk to mine.”

“Yours had already been exposed to the harbinger—to risers—and mine had not. Until I saw for myself that you were well, there was no reason to treat you all with the preventative in short supply.”

“You saw Ghedi just now. He was feverish and out of his mind inside of what? An hour after he was bitten?” I scoffed. “You would have known if we had been infected on sight, and you know it.”

“I had no reason to believe you would become infected during your stay.”

“Did that stop you from continuing the treatment for your clan?”

“No,” he admitted. “It didn’t.”

“Of course not.” I dusted my hands. “There. I absolve you of your guilt. Now get out.”

“My guilt is not yours to understand or to dismiss as trivial when I assure you it is not.” His tone lowered dangerously. “I have lost my parents. My youngest sister has ruined her life. Now my eldest sister wants to endanger hers, and our brothers, and our clan. I meant you and yours no harm. Can’t you extend me that much faith? I did what I thought was right to protect what family I have left.”

“I would have taken the same precautions without regret.” Family first, always. “Understanding that, even while I respect you for protecting your clan, doesn’t make it easier for me to forgive you.”

Nodding as though he could accept that, he exhaled. “We’re wasting time Ghedi doesn’t have.”

He was right. I didn’t have to like it. I did have to get over it. For now. I had time for anger later. Crushing my eyes shut, I tamped down Henri’s betrayal long enough to ask, “What do we do now?”

“We begin the process of creating the cure.”

“Begin?” My gut pitched. “As in you don’t have any made? What about—?”

“I dosed Ghedi with the preventative serum in the hope of slowing the progression of his illness. In order to treat him, we must distill more of the cure.” He grimaced. “The plague kills within days, and it requires days to make. I have no choice but to entrust the secret of its creation to you and hope you see why its existence must not become common knowledge until the Council of Elders wills it.”

“When, exactly, will they? For that matter, when will they tell the nation what it is we’re facing? They can’t think allowing the southland clans to cower in ignorance will save lives. What’s holding them back?” I asked a question I feared the answer to. “If there is a cure, then why not announce it?”

“The cure has not been fully tested. Even once it has been, even if it works universally as Mana believes it will,” he said, “then we still face the dilemma of great need versus a very limited supply.”

“The Council of Elders is comprised of what? Eight northland clans to four southlanders? Of the eight, now that Titania has fallen, four of the wealthiest clans are now seated in the north. You can’t think for a moment they will vote to share a cure with the south unless the north is protected first.”

“As I said, its existence can’t become common knowledge until they will it. That doesn’t mean treatment will be withheld from those who need it most. The cure comes from the southlands, and it will be administered in the southlands, whether the council deems them worthy recipients or not.”

A glimmer of hope pushed me to the edge of my seat. “I didn’t figure you for a revolutionary.”

A sly grin curved his lips. “I’m not.”

I tilted my head. “Why are you risking your neck?”

“I lost both of my parents to a rival clan’s ambition. Mother was poisoned and left for dead. My father died shortly after.” He cleared his throat. “Their life threads were joined. A dual assassination was carried out with one single prick from a poisoned dart laced with venom by my sister Pascale’s lover.” He paused. “I want you to understand me when I say I have no ambition outside of my family’s survival. Ambition is its own poison, it kills.” He sank to his haunches so that our eyes were level. “To earn a measure of your trust, I’m giving you a secret and the ability to do me great harm.”

A secret,
he said. I wonder how many more and how much deadlier ones he knew.

“If your sister Pascale was not irreparably harmed for her crime, I doubt you would be either.”

“The matter of my parents’ deaths was a clan matter, handled by our elders and our maven. The Council of Elders bows to no one, my sister included,” he said. “I have put my life in your hands.”

“Your reputation perhaps.” The Council of Elders wouldn’t dare strike at him.

“As I am partial to both, I hope our arrangement won’t come to that.”

Neither of us had a choice. Best we stop pretending we did. “You’ll teach me to make the cure?”

“I see no way around it.”

“But I won’t be allowed to tell anyone what I learn or of the cure’s existence?”

“That’s right. If you told them, they would have no way to obtain the required supplies.”

“As much as I disagree with your stance on secret-keeping, I will help you. I won’t let Ghedi die because of all this. I was the one who agreed to take the job with Hishima on my brothers’ behalves. It’s my fault we were in Titania. It’s my fault we’re here now. If not for me, we would be working in the southlands—ignorant and blissful as everyone else. If this deal with you costs me my moral high ground, then so be it.” I exhaled. “Family first.”

He gripped my armrests, pinning me in the chair. “I have your word?”

“I give you my word, Henri of the Araneidae, that nothing I learn will leave this room.” I hoped he read my sincerity. “I will protect your secrets, your life and your reputation with mine.”

“I hope it won’t come to that,” he said, equally serious.

“So do I,” I agreed. “So do I.”

Chapter Six

Until my sequestration in the nests below Erania, time was fluid. I took for granted the cycle of morning, evening and night because those parts of my day blended seamlessly with the others. Here, there was no sun. There was no moon. There were no winds. I lived in a void of hours that lingered from one day to the next. I had only Henri’s word for what day it was. I was fed and put to bed on a schedule he alone seemed to understand. Even Asher and Braden often fell behind in what Henri established as routine for the Araneidae, but then again, he had been born into this dark world.