The Prison Healer (The Prison Healer #1)(52)
“Here,” Naari said, reaching into her rucksack when the rain grew heavier, withdrawing a canvas poncho, and thrusting it toward Kiva.
With numb hands—from shock, not the cold—Kiva took it, staring at it mutely.
“Put it on before you’re soaked,” Naari said, as if speaking to an idiot.
Kiva followed the command on instinct. The canvas was heavy on her shoulders, but she was protected from the rain and felt an instant rush of heat from her trapped body warmth. When she raised the hood over her dark hair, she nearly moaned at the difference in temperature.
“The last thing we need is you getting sick,” Naari explained before Kiva could offer her gratitude. “Olisha and Nergal are useless. If anyone’s going to figure out how to stop this illness before we all die, it’s you.”
It was a valid excuse for the offering, but Kiva didn’t think it was the only reason Naari had brought the poncho. Her own leathery armor protected her from the elements—she hadn’t needed to bring anything for Kiva, despite her words. And yet she had.
In another time, another place, Kiva wondered if they might have been friends. Even here it was beginning to feel that way, though she didn’t dare dwell on that for long, knowing how dangerous such a thought was. Guards came and went, and soon enough, Naari would be gone, like all those before her.
Once they stepped around the corner of the entrance block, the iron gates rose high above them, forged into the limestone walls that encircled the compound. Rail cart tracks intersected the entrance, leading from the luminium depository and harvest factory inside the grounds, and traveling out the gates toward the lumberyard, the farms, and the quarry. At the end of each day, laborers would load the carts and return with their spoils, but right now, the tracks offered nothing more than a guiding path for Kiva and Naari to follow.
With a wave to the guards up in the towers, Naari didn’t pause before venturing outside, and Kiva, while on edge, kept in step just behind her.
In Kiva’s ten years at Zalindov, she’d passed through the gates only a handful of times to treat prisoners who hadn’t been able to make it to the infirmary without medical attention. In each of those instances, she’d felt what she did now—a thrill at being beyond the central compound, so close to freedom, yet still so far away.
She wondered where her family was, how long until the rebels arrived to free her. Then she cast the thought from her mind, knowing there was nothing she could do to speed up the process. Today she had one goal, and she would give it her full attention.
“Guard Arell, a word?”
Kiva and Naari halted at the sound of Warden Rooke’s voice calling out to them, unmistakable even with the rain still drumming down. They turned to find him striding through the gates in their wake, heedless of the water bouncing off his leather uniform.
Wondering about his presence, Kiva watched the Warden jerk his head toward the stables just outside the prison entrance, indicating for them to seek shelter within. The smell of hay and horse assailed her nose as she stepped inside, the rain almost deafening as it beat down on the roof above them.
“You, stay,” Rooke told Kiva, before looking pointedly at Naari and walking to the far end of the stables, still within sight—and crossbow reach—but far enough away that Kiva couldn’t hear what they were saying.
Her curiosity was piqued, but she had no skill in reading lips, so she sighed and leaned against the nearest stall door, petting the face of a damp-looking horse when it poked its head out to investigate. Given the wet mud tangled in its mane, she assumed it had arrived recently, the rider perhaps a messenger delivering one of the numerous royal missives that were inconveniencing the Warden of late. That would certainly explain the dark look on his face as he spoke with Naari, who appeared nearly bored in return, her arms crossed over her chest.
Casting her gaze out, Kiva took in the other horses already stabled, and the empty, waiting stalls between them. Perpendicular to where she stood was a lone carriage that she recognized as belonging to the Warden, having seen him use it to come and go from Zalindov, if infrequently. Rooke rarely left the prison—just as a king rarely left his kingdom.
“Psst.”
Kiva looked away from the carriage and frowned at the horse that was now butting her shoulder.
“Psst, Kiva. Down here.”
Her eyes widened as she peeked over the stall door and found the stablemaster, Raz, crouching near the horse’s front leg. The middle-aged man held a brush in his hand and was covered in fine hair, indicating that he’d been grooming the creature upon their arrival and had chosen to stay out of sight.
Kiva didn’t know Raz well. In fact, she was careful to avoid him, since any interaction between them could end in either of their deaths. For Kiva, it was a risk she was willing to take, given the reward. But Raz wasn’t a prisoner, nor was he a guard, and while he had been employed by Zalindov since long before she’d ever arrived, he had a lot more to lose than she did.
Raz was Kiva’s link to the outside world. Ten years ago, his pregnant wife had visited him during the day and gone into early labor. If not for Kiva’s father, they would have lost both the baby and the mother. In thanks, Raz had offered to sneak a message out and send it on, knowing how tight the channels of communication to and from Zalindov were.
Faran Meridan had been clever. He’d known better than to risk prying eyes, so he’d used a substitution code Kiva and her siblings had invented for fun, one that everyone in their family could interpret with little effort. And so had begun their discourse, with Raz offering to continue his services for Kiva.