“Look at the skin—the boils! War-taint!” A plump woman gasped and hailed to the sky. “He’s war-tainted!”

A chorus of screams jolted the figure back to himself. Barrels overturned, rolling down the street. People scattered as others sought makeshift weapons, looking to extinguish the sickness in their midst.

Nearby, a clothesline descended at an angle from the heights. The figure sprinted for it as a burly trader grabbed a butcher’s knife and swung after him, barely missing his leg. The figure shimmied up the cabling to its anchor stories higher. In the haven of the skyline, he clutched his beating heart before heading for the western docks.

As he prowled, the figure repeated his own name, again and again.

Under the unforgiving moon, he climbed aboard a vacant ship moored in the yard. Suspended on the topmast, the figure stared over the murky waters of Thoarne Bay. He spit the killer’s blood into his glove, nauseated. It tasted of waste and bile, much like his own.

He closed his eyelids, scorched from their blistering, and wished it were war-taint that ravaged his body instead of the truth. For damnation was so much worse.

THIRTY-TWO

Luscia

   Luscia removed the stopper of the vial and swirled the murky fluid inside. Legs of the liquid slid down the glass, thicker than Alora’s previous concoctions. Resigning herself to its bitterness, she swallowed the tonic and trudged to the edge of her lush bed, wearing little more than her linsilk shift.

As she slid under the blankets, Aksel yipped at her heel. His impatience swelled into a throaty growl when she refused to move.

“Your manners are absolute trash these days,” she grumbled into her pillow. “Niit, you brute.”

Luscia hoisted herself up on an elbow when he started to scratch at the door, growling louder at the illuminated seam between it and the floor. With a groan, she rolled off the mattress, grabbed her dressing gown, and listened from the interior, radials at the ready. There were men talking just outside, their cadence clipped and argumentative.

“Heh’ta, Aksel,” she ordered her companion, wrapping the dressing gown tighter.

Easing into the common room, Luscia nearly tripped on the hem of her robe in surprise. In the threshold to her apartments, Kasim’s beta cradled another Darakaian in his arms, limp, grey, and soaked in blood. Kasim was attempting to push through Marek and Declan, who blocked the Darakaians’ entry to the foyer. From his chest up to the side of his face, both skin and leather were smothered in gore. The veins of his neck strained under the wetness, warping his expression into something unbridled and bare.

“I said, call for her! She can save him.” Kasim’s throat pressed into the edge of Declan’s blade. His overly bright eyes searched beyond their barricade, latching onto hers. “You will save him!”

Marek held his stance unwaveringly as he murmured for instruction, “Ana’Sere?”

“Ock, Aurynth’s watchman, on high!” Tallulah scurried to Luscia’s side, adjusting her own floppy nightcap. Sputtering, she heaved a blanket around her curled shoulders. “Well, I’ll not give them a free show!”

Luscia felt her heartbeat inside her ear canal. She weighed the ramifications of Boreali involvement, should he not survive the night. The hour aside, such a request was unprecedented—a Darakaian choosing to bypass court physicians to beseech the House of Boreal for healing.

“You will save him.” Kasim’s voice cracked. Worded as a demand, spoken as a plea.

Blood dripped in the entry near the beta’s feet as he readjusted the weight of their friend. Kasim’s man didn’t have much time, if any at all.

“Wem.” Luscia nodded and motioned for her men to admit the Darakaians. “Wem, to my bedroom, quickly now. Bolaeva,” she begged, directing the gruesome group to her quarters, “please be careful. Try not to move his abdomen.”

The hulking beta tenderly laid the man on her mattress and lumbered out of the way. The injury continued to bleed, quickly soaking the fabric in an unpromising stain. A mane of shoulder-length braids spread over the crest of her pillow. She recognized him as the third member of their night raid through the Bazaar. Luscia tore a piece of linen with her mouth and thrust it into Creyvan’s grasp as he entered the room, door swinging behind him.

“Hold this. Tallulah!” she shouted for the lady’s maid. “Hot water, needle, thread, and all the rags you can find. Marek, cut his shirt open. Niit, lift it, don’t touch the skin.”

Peeling the filthy sparring tunic away from the flesh, red flooded to the surface, no longer contained. Yelling for Declan to apply pressure, Luscia tossed the drenched tunic into a bucket Tallulah lobbed near the bed. At Luscia’s direction, Creyvan replaced Declan as she ran to the viridi box and unlocked her apothecary.

Her back to the scene, she rushed to grind gilead with kaléo, hiding the subtle twinkle of the chartreuse leaves and white stamen within the basin of the mortar. “Mila!” Luscia called, sprinkling iridescent yarrow buds into the paste. “Where is that girl? Mila, the water!”

“She’s gone.”

The brisk, off-putting tone caused Luscia to turn. Creyvan’s jaw was set as he pinned a wad of cloth against the southerner’s middle.

She moved to take his place and caught his eye. “Wem, that was thoughtless of me.” Luscia had not realized his feelings for her attendant were so serious. His resentment likely made worse, she suspected, by the fact that Mila traveled to Roüwen with his brother. “More water. Bolaeva, Brödre.”

Crevyan stomped out of the room to do as asked, without retort. Using a warm rag, Luscia carefully wiped gravel out of the wound and gasped.

“Should we send for Ana’Mere?” Declan asked, examining the wounds with concern.

“Niit, not unless we have to.” Luscia sent a look at Marek. He tilted his head suspiciously. “Kasim, these injuries…how did this happen?”

Kasim paced at the foot of the bed, rubbing his forehead anxiously. His gaze narrowed at the two Najjan in the room before returning to Luscia. “We regrouped. Went back out there. Found him at the edge of Marketown, depositing another body. Takoda…” He gripped the footboard forcefully. “Takoda got to him first.”

Luscia avoided the looks from her men and peered closer.

“This had to have been some kind an animal, you see? What kind of blade would make such markings?” Luscia indicated the parallel slashes over Takoda’s belly. Torn and savaged, he resembled the victim of a bear attack. She mimed a set of claws over the wound for Kasim and the beta. “I will do what I can for your friend, but you should prepare yourself, in the event our aid proves futile.”

“Ano zà!” Kasim grabbed a vase and smashed it against the wall, pointing at her. “You do for him whatever you did to heal those bruises I gave you. He will not die!”