Give the Dark My Love(22)

“We have ruled out both those causes,” Master Ostrum said. His voice was neutral, but my blood boiled. “It is neither a result of unclean conditions—although such conditions certainly don’t help—nor something inherited through bloodlines.”

“Maybe it came from the mainland,” Salis, the girl who led the history study group, said. “There were a lot of visitors for the governor’s inauguration, to say nothing of the mercantile ships.”

I shook my head. “The disease was here before the inauguration.”

“No one asked you,” a voice behind me sneered in a whisper. I turned to see who’d spoken, but all the students behind me stared blandly at Master Ostrum.

Master Ostrum continued his lecture. “This illness has proven difficult to study. It’s not easy to catch it when it first strikes. Patients feel achy, often with a fever and a headache. Common enough symptoms; everything from spotted fever to a regular cold starts this way. Soon, however, digits exhibit signs of necrosis.” Master Ostrum indicated the girl’s toes. “The disease seems to spread out from a certain point. No patient has lived long when the blackness starts in the torso, but some have survived when the disease starts in a hand or foot.”

I felt tension coiling in my stomach, like a snake weaving through my intestines.

“This is Cyntha. She’s from the Simmina factory in Blackdocks, one of the few who worked there and is still alive. We’ve not yet traced a source or a way to combat the symptoms, but I think you, our brightest students, can surmise what experimental surgery we’re going to perform today.”

I stared at the sick girl, my eyes roving over her body. Her foot was blackened. Necrosis, Master Ostrum had said. The flesh was dead.

“Amputation.” The word felt like poison.

Master Ostrum nodded. “I think here,” he said, indicating a spot on Cyntha’s leg above the knee, where there was no blackness creeping under her skin.

The two aides returned to the surgical stage, wheeling a cart of tools toward Master Ostrum. The professor ignored us, using ink to mark where the girl’s leg was going to be amputated mid-thigh. We all watched silently. No one expected this on the first day of surgical observation. This was far more intense than any of our other hands-on training.

Master Ostrum positioned his scalpel.

“Sir?” I asked, hoping no one else heard the quiver.

Master Ostrum paused.

“Sir, where is the alchemist?”

In surgeries, alchemists used the gold crucibles to cipher pain from the patient into a lesser creature, such as a rat. But there was no alchemist here to help with Master Ostrum’s surgery, no golden crucible. No pain relief for the girl’s amputation.

“As you have learned from your books,” Master Ostrum said, “the alchemist must filter the pain between the patient and the crucible. An amputation is obviously a very difficult process, and the pain is immense.”

“But you also taught us that the alchemist feels the pain only temporarily as they push it into the crucible,” I protested. I shoved aside my notebook, my hands trembling. Grey reached out for me, but I shook him off as I stood.

Master Ostrum waved his hand dismissively. “The patient has entered a sleeplike state; I’ve seen it with other late-stage victims of this disease,” he said. “This won’t wake her.” He pressed the blade against the girl’s leg, and red burst through her skin.

“Sir!” I shouted.

Master Ostrum didn’t look up from his work as he sliced the girl’s skin. “If you cannot restrain yourself, you can leave.” He paused. “Unless you’d like to be acting alchemist on this surgery?”

“Nedra, don’t,” Grey whispered, but I ignored him. I had only used rats in my experiments with Master Ostrum, but I knew that I had a high tolerance for pain. This, however, would be excruciating.

But brief.

I marched to the stage, stopping in front of Master Ostrum, bloody scalpel still in his hand. “Where is your crucible?” I asked.

“A medicinal alchemist is never without her own crucible,” Master Ostrum said, his voice low, just for me, as one of the aides fetched a generic golden crucible and pressed it into my hands.

“I won’t make that mistake again,” I promised my master.

There was a scrabbling, squeaking noise inside the vessel; a rat already curled up at the bottom of the vase, awaiting the pain that would be pushed into it.

I sat down on the floor beside the patient, one hand wrapped around the sleeping girl’s palm, the other clutching the golden crucible. The vase lit up with runes as the power connection was established.

Master Ostrum ignored me for the rest of the surgery. He sliced away at the sleeping girl’s flesh as if he were bored and wanted to be done with the task. Her body didn’t move—the sleep stage was deathlike—but the aides held her leg steady when Master Ostrum reached for the bone saw.

The girl on the gurney slept through it all, and she didn’t feel a thing.

I felt it for her.



* * *



? ? ?

After a long, long time, Master Ostrum touched my shoulder, removing the blood-soaked apron he’d donned before the surgery.

“It’s done,” he said.

I shook my head, not understanding. Part of the girl’s leg was still attached; the amputation was incomplete. Master Ostrum bent down, prying my fingers from the girl’s and helping me to stand. I dropped the golden crucible on the floor, and the rat that had been inside it thudded lifeless onto the tiles. Master Ostrum held my arm politely, leading me to my seat and making sure I was settled there. Then he turned back to the girl on the gurney.