Give the Dark My Love(37)

“Come,” he said again, his voice brooking no argument.



* * *



? ? ?

I found Nedra in the library. She was in the restricted section, where the oldest records were kept.

“Whew,” I said, sitting down beside her.

“What’s wrong?”

“I thought you might be at the hospital and that I’d missed you.” I spoke in a whisper not because we were in the library, but because the books were so ancient looking I worried they would fall apart if I breathed too hard.

Nedra wore white cotton gloves as she carefully turned the page of a book bound in cracked and flaking leather. “I’m going there after lunch,” she said.

I should go with her. I knew I should. I couldn’t recognize the twisting reluctance in my gut to stay on campus. Was it fear? My father’s prejudice rang in my ears: They need soap. I shook my head. Dirt was not a virus.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Research.” Nedra did not look up from her book, but I couldn’t see how there were any answers for a new disease in a book as old as that.

“So,” Nedra said, leaning back from the tome. “Are you going to ask me to Tomus’s party?”

I blinked several times. “I—you know about that?”

“I heard the others talking. Although I doubt Tomus wants me there, not after this morning.”

“He does,” I said slowly. “He said he does.”

“Then he’s either planning something horrible for me, or he wants to suck up to me as he thinks I may be useful to him in the future.”

She seemed to have summed him up rather succinctly. “The latter, I think,” I said. “I’m not sure, but . . .”

Nedra nodded. “It’s more his style.” She paused. “I think I’ll go.”

“Are you sure?”

“I want to show him that he can’t intimidate me.”

I sat down beside her, and she read in silence for a few moments before turning the page.

“Why did you ask for me to stay with Master Ostrum?” I blurted out.

She didn’t try to deny it. “You have to ask?”

I looked down at my hands. I wanted to hear her say it.

“Tonight,” I said slowly. “Would you like to come with me? Together, I mean?”

Her eyes met mine, alight with hope. “Yes,” she said simply.





NINETEEN


    Nedra



Grey’s invitation kept me warm as the ferry drew me across the bay—at least until the winds picked up. The days were getting colder; fall was almost as harsh as winter on Lunar Island, with all the wind and cold but none of the snow. I wrapped my cloak tighter around my frame, breathing into the cloth, my breath warming my face. My smile was hidden by my collar as I remembered the way Grey had said together.

My boat docked, and everyone disembarked. I was halfway up the stone steps when I heard the sounds of another boat arriving. I turned, surprised; the ferry couldn’t have returned that soon.

It wasn’t the ferry to Blackdocks. This ferry had come from the north.

I rushed back down the steps. I didn’t recognize the skipper, but she was grateful for the help as I secured the mooring and then helped the people inside the ferry disembark. The ones who could walk got off first, then I called for stretchers for the dozen or so people whose legs were black and twisted. Potion makers and aides rushed down the steps toward me.

“Thank goodness you’re here,” one of the potion makers—Lufti—told me as I helped him load a middle-aged woman onto the stretcher. “We’re so backed up today.”

“Where did this ferry come from?” I asked, looking to the skipper.

“Hart,” she said.

“I’m from the village beyond the ivy gate,” the woman on the stretcher said.

“The ones that can, come to Hart. I take them here.” The skipper started pulling up the moorings now that her boat was empty of passengers.

I helped Lufti carry the woman from the village beyond the ivy gate up the stone steps. It was a perilous climb, and even thought she was strapped to the stretcher, the bindings pulled against her diseased leg. She moaned.

“It will be okay,” I promised her, trying not to jostle the stretcher too much.

Her laugh was bitter. “No, it won’t,” she said, and I didn’t have the heart to lie to her again.

When we reached the heavy mahogany doors, another aide took over for me. I was left in the foyer, my arms aching, trying to catch my breath. My mind swirled. The ivy gate was just a half day’s ride from my own village. Papa went there often.

I shook myself. There was no time to worry.

I had work to do.

I checked in with the front desk and was sent immediately to help process the new patients. They were sick and scared and overwhelmed and far from home, and at least my accent matched theirs. Mentally, I tracked the villages. None closer to home than the village beyond the ivy gate. I tried to tell them that they were safe now, that the best alchemists in the land were here.

The first person to die that day was a baby.

The mother had fallen sick when she was close to giving birth. She’d hoped it was late enough in the pregnancy to save her child, but the little girl had been born with black swirls over her heart. The mother had given birth just the day before, rushing straight from her labor bed to the boat in Hart. She was still bleeding from the pregnancy, her skin ashen, her eyes sunken. She held her baby with one arm—her other was dead and black and twisted, the fingers useless.