Keeptown – Debility
Attacks on Protectorate Naval Forces in Serrula have been reported. Suspected infiltration by Onari saboteurs.
Local fleet heavily damaged or scattered, total loss of warehousing and shipwright facilities.
Serrula garrison disbanded. All assumed dead or missing.
Request dispatch of Parotodus with reinforcements for reclamation operations immediately.
-Missive to Lord Hyloxalus from Incisa Garrison
Simen awoke with a choking gasp and struggled to sit up. He was stifled by coarse bandages sticking stiffly to broken skin, the blood and puss seeping from his body added to the stink of the thick, garlicky unguent slathered across his face, neck, and chest. He sucked in ragged, halting breaths, eyes darting around frantically in blinding rays of westerly sun as he attempted to make sense of his environment. The hospital, he realized as his eyes adjusted to focus on intricately molded cornices lining the long, glass-paned ceiling. He was in one of the many wings of the palatial old cathedral that now served as the primary hospital and medical research campus in the Grove.
His mind wandered, he couldn’t remember anything that would coherently explain his current situation and as he racked his brain, painfully looking for answers to a growing list of unanswerables, he felt the constriction of fear settle into his stiff chest. He wanted to withdraw completely within himself in revulsion as he began taking stock of his many pains and endeavored to categorize his fractured memories. His right arm was absent entirely from what he could tell, it giving no response to his multiple attempts to raise it to his face. His despair steepened.
Losing a limb was all but guaranteed to see Simen discharged from Company Mellivora; it would be with honors surely, granting him a pension and the many benefits afforded those who serve in the Grove’s military machine, but it would also mean he would be alone, and crippled. What could he do? He remembered those poor handless bastards who had lived and died horribly in the gutters of Heartwood when he and Pica were young, was he to become one of them? Just another ‘honored veteran’ that spirals into sin and destitution until he choked on his own vomit in some piss gutter somewhere or jumped of a pier one dark night?
Ma Canbya had warned them of that after they shared their intent to enlist in the war college, pointing at one of the soon-to-be corpses down the street with her cane before swinging it at the young boys like a viper. She had probably been right. She had been about most things growing up, so it frankly wasn’t a surprise that being the case once more.
The old woman had made them swear to take care of one another one cold night long ago when the wolves of starvation stalked outside their thin, patchwork door. And they had always kept true to that promise: saving one another countless times over the years; feeding and nourishing each other through sickness; offering love and empathy in the grimmest days or most fretful nights. Now they would be separated for sure, and likely for good. Pica still had another six years on his contract with the company and there were an extremely limited number of ways out of that. What was he supposed to do anyway? Leave the rest of their family to take care of some pauper? Abandon his post, living as a fugitive for the rest of his life and taking care of his broken old friend?
Simen yelped as a sob twisted in his chest, aggravating burned lungs and breaking freshly scabbed burns across his chest. Tears flowed free and seared their way down his scorched cheek. To his surprise and relief, he felt a cool hand settle into his. Pica’s careworn face floated into view above Simen’s immobilized head.
‘Oh, my Love,’ he said through a tight throat, ‘I am so happy to see you.’ Tears welled rapidly in the man’s dark eyes, falling to mix with those flowing freely from his debilitated friend. His voice was raw and gravelly with emotion, he was almost inaudible as he choked out varied blessings for the wounded man before him. He cleared his throat, turning to look over his shoulder to croak into the echoey hall. ‘He’s awake!’
To Simen, his friend looked aged, whites gone yellow and cheeks sunken below black-rimmed eyes and a wrinkled brow. Grief wafted from him in caustic waves, he stank of sleepless nights and his jaw clicked silently as he ground his teeth anxiously. It horrified Simen, blackening his heart in a frozen grip of anguish at the changes he saw in his dearest friend. He shuddered to think of how he must look, he fancied he knew based on the way Pica’s eyes flitted about without ever focusing too long on one part of him.
In a flurry of white, Doc Pan appeared. He glowered down his long nose at the young man through chipped glasses.
‘Hmmm.’ He finally grunted after setting a small brass cup to Simen’s chest and bending over to listen intently from the other end of a twisting tube, ‘don’t think it’s best for him to be up so soon but if he insists on being awake, get some water and maybe some broth down him if you can.’
They talked over him, as if he couldn’t speak for himself or exist. The doctor gave Pica a crisp nod and noted something in his logbook, whispering an order to a waiting attendant, and disappearing in another surge of flowing robes and clicking boots back into the depths of the shadowed hall from which he had come.
Pica gently placed a cup to the man’s lips, slipping clean, cold water into his parched mouth. The man was shaking as he held the cup, as if he strained to hold it steady and failed all the more because of that. Simen lifted his thickly bandaged left arm slowly to stabilize the cup, he gripped Pica’s hand firmly within his own. He resolved not to die there as he saw grey hope bloom in his partner’s eyes at the strength of his grip. No matter what happened, he wasn’t going to leave like this.
Simen faded into blackness.
Pica blinked away fresh tears and gently replaced Simen’s hand on his bandaged chest. He turned his bleary gaze to the bed opposite them and looked at the body laid out there, hands interlocked over his chest and a thin silk Mellivora flag draped over him entirely.
Alces had died an horrific death; catching the brunt of the blast to the chest and face, he had snapped his back and cracked open his skull as he was dashed against the crumbling fountain wall. Doc Pan insisted that he had died before he hit the failing stonework but anyone who was there had their doubts: Pica remembered his comrade’s eyes, peering intently through a melted face as his family and closest friends fought for their lives in the urban darkness; they had seemed to scream his frustration and anguish as he could do nothing to help, trapped in a mangled body and life leaking too slowly from a shattered skull.
Nobody would talk about that, preferring it to fade into a motley of unique yet terribly consistent fantasies that they each chose to believe was a flight of imagination in a chaotic situation rather than a shared experience of catastrophic consequence.
Rusa and Sily stood beside the dead man, the first with his shoulder bandaged and arm strapped to his chest, the latter with a freshly straightened nose and rough stitches poking from beneath tight bandages wrapped around her head and covering her right eye. They both stared at their fallen brother with unflinching anguish and incandescent fury, tears flowing free and silent down their battered faces.
Pellia sat on the foot of the bed, cradling her face in her hands in a swaying stupor and moaning gently to herself. Tacca held her shoulders loosely, staring blankly at the disaster that had become of her squad. She was clearly blaming herself as well, regretting allowing them the freedom to wander the city against the advice of the civilian envoys and wishing she had not been so easily assuaged by their naive assurances. What if she had decided to go along? At least then the outcome may have been different, she thought, maybe she wouldn’t be looking at two of her troopers, her children, lying broken on stained sheets and stinking of death and disease while she stood here useless. She had smiled a bit at Simen’s show of vigor but that faded swiftly as her mind swept her away into self-critical anguish once again.
Silence reigned as Pica meticulously poured water and salty whitefish broth into Simen’s mouth. The man’s eyes remained closed, but he was responsive to Pica’s gentle touch and despite some coughing, he managed to get most of it down without event.
One of Doc Pan’s innumerable assistants arrived bearing one of his oft noxious concoctions; Pica grimaced in sympathy for them all.
‘Doc Zingi’s recipe,’ she assured as she removed the cork from the clay bottle and poured six small doses.
The room flooded with waves of rich honey and spicy black pepper, it cavorted merrily with light notes of early-autumn chamomile and the deep, earthy richness of valerian root. It was a hypnotic scent, simultaneously foreign and deeply familiar to the young soldiers, they eagerly took the small earthenware cups of the liquid she offered each of them.
The attendant was kind and motherly, cradling Simen’s head and nodding with approval as he drank his portion eagerly. Pride glowed in her large orange eyes as the rest of the squad followed suit after only the briefest of pauses. ‘I will tell her you approve. Now, come with me.’
One by one, she led each of them to a cot in the great wing of the hospital. Some she lay under the afternoon sun to apricate in the day’s final hours of light; others she took to isolated and cool corners tucked away from the bustle of the general hospital.
Pica smiled broadly as she guided him to a bed near Simen’s but in the shade of a great old palm’s drooping fronds, a place where he could keep a watch on the now-snoring young man. She placed a damp cloth across his fevered brow and closed his swollen eyes with a soft hand. In a language of some exotic place, she had once called her home, she lent her rich, deep voice to sharing ancient, melodic lullabies that lifted his soul from the trials and strictures of the day, taking his flying mind to a faraway place of vivid imagination.
Whispers in the night awoke him, wrenching him from a sleep he would have believed infinite and into an immediate state of stiff alarm on the sagging cot.
He was still in the hospital where the gentle new assistant had laid him to rest, he thought with instant relief and relaxing back onto his sweat-dampened pillow. A chill raced through him, induced by the cooling northern breeze that snuck in through the high, angled windows and cascaded downward to sway the fronds above his head. It felt good against his damp skin, his fever must have broken and fled while he slept below the dancing palm.
He had been bathed as well, he noticed further with mild discomfiture, and redressed in a pink-dyed hospital gown of almost indiscreet length. He hoped it was just dye anyway, he thought as he gazed at the worn fabric, the alternative was revolting. How long had he been asleep? How could they have bathed him without him noticing? He hadn’t noticed feeling particularly sick at the time, but the look from the assistant and his current state made him think he must have been quite poorly indeed.
With a quiet, pained sigh, Pica gripped bruised ribs and delicately swung his legs out of the bed and onto the cold, marble floor. The shock through his warm soles was pleasant and he reveled in the sensation briefly before greater urges suddenly took hold of him; he desperately needed to relieve his bladder and making that his priority seemed like a good step to reacquainting himself with this ethereal world.
He looked to Simen’s bed and was relieved to see him resting there still, visibly breathing in his tight strictures and otherwise still in the calm air. He frowned to himself as he turned his gaze to Alces’ bed; the mattress lay empty and refreshed, awaiting the next unfortunate who found need of it. He was surely taken away for preparation and his final rites, Pica thought lamentably, once again envisioning the man’s demise and final visage. Pica gave a last glance at the slumbering Simen before he slowly pushed himself fully onto wobbly legs with a wince.
He almost fell to the floor as he peered around for a bedpan and resorted to looking directly under his low cot to no avail. Where were the facilities?
The conversion of the annex into a medical ward by the skilled logisticians of Dorylus Corp. during the Reclamation had turned what was a den of sinful mockery and foul usury in the name of the many Gods into the most advanced medical facility in all the empire. Pica all but gawked at the water being piped directly into deep, self-draining basins aligned strategically along the walls and tucked into small alcoves. Pristine instruments of obscure purpose and use were laid out meticulously on small tin trays stacked several high and spread across various tables in the halls and rooms.
It was hard not to be impressed with the attention to detail and the clear scale of the wing, Pica wondered how many floors and stretching corridors were similarly equipped. The beds, he noticed, were largely empty, and despite his estimation that there numbered at least two hundred of the small cots in this room alone, only a rough dozen were occupied. He didn’t see any readily available bedpans and turned to exit down a convenient corridor.
The walk felt timeless as he moved forward on silent, barren feet across the timeworn stone floor; he marveled at the heavy, silver-hued oak timbers that framed the hallway and how they seemed to glow primrose under the gaze of the roseate moon high above. The richness of the place was wonderful to behold in the strange light peeking through the paned glass ceiling above, and it was no small part intimidating as well.
Much to his relief, a side of the corridor opened up onto a generous square garden and although it had been as transformed as much as any other part of the estate in the intervening years, some of the old beauty remained in the marble benches that circled the central fountain basin and the broken statuettes that still adorned some tall pedestals in a few corners. Today, it was a sort of loading area and was currently hosting a variety of crates, cases, and barrels for either receiving or disposal in the morning. A lone hedge caught Pica’s eye and he proceeded toward it hastily, forgoing his search for proper facilities and releasing an indulgent sigh as the pain in his bladder subsided from the sharp stab it had noticeably become during his walk. He frowned as he observed the urine flowing from him, noting the red tint of it despite the tinge of the moon. He would need to talk to Doc Pan about that, he surmised, blood in piss isn’t usually a great sign. The deep silence that had surrounded and lulled Pica throughout his meandering through the hospital was broken softly, Pica froze in place.
Whispers.
He recalled his confused awakening and perked his ears inquisitively toward the far end of the enclosed garden and where he thought the sound had come from. Leaning out cautiously from behind the shrub to get a better view of the defunct courtyard, he thought he saw motion at the door he had entered from but doubted himself, a breeze choosing that moment to shuffle the leaves and shadows all about inconveniently as he peered through the night.
‘I was right, wasn’t I!’ a hushed voice crept from a doorway across the courtyard. ‘I’m not going anywhere. What is this?’
A sound of fluttering pages in the night answered the question.
Pica could not see who was speaking nor with whom they were meeting so surreptitiously during these strange ethereal hours. The moon above was redder than before, beginning to play with his vision in a sanguine distortion of shadows around him; the doorway he watched was an impenetrable black portal in the crimson gloom, yet voices floated to him from those depths.
He felt sick suddenly. Holding in a violent retch painfully, he shuffled back behind the shrub and all but collapsed against the wall, sliding to the ground and sitting quietly, eyes closed, until the world stopped spinning.
What was in that potion? He was hallucinating, he was sure of it, and he likely needed to find his way back to his cot before he found himself in some trouble for sneaking about an imperial facility under cover of darkness. He was obviously a patient, but he expected wandering about unsupervised was probably frowned upon nonetheless and while Doc Pan was one of the best surgeons and administrators in the hospital, he was not of a proportionately high status within the ranks of the hospital governance to offer any real protection if an overzealous guard happened to be in search of a promotion.
The man was suddenly paranoid, a hot sweat rapidly cooled and made him clammy in the suddenly still night air. He smelled smoke, woodfire and something acrid, it escalated his growing trepidation. He pulled himself clumsily to his feet once more, breathing deeply behind closed eyes before slowly leaning out toward the doorway once more.
Silence. Not a whisper or scuff of boots or whining insect; dead, oppressive silence reigned over the old garden. He began his journey back to his cool bed and the hopes of a restful sleep.
Pellia stood silently over Simen’s sleeping form as Pica discreetly padded into the grand room, he stopped and stared for brief moment before slowly making his way to stand beside her in the gloomy light.
‘I’m so sorry’ she whispered almost inaudibly as he sidled up beside her. ‘I’m just… so sorry.’ She sobbed lightly, lowering her face into her hands.
Pica was confused by the girl, wondering how she could possibly blame herself when she had almost certainly saved them all with her precision archery. He placed a light hand on her trembling shoulders, pulling her to his chest and holding her in a tight embrace.
‘You did nothing, little cub, other than keep us alive. You have nothing to feel sorry for and we all owe you more than anything.’ He looked down at the near-motionless form laying on the cot before them. ‘Especially me’ he added.
The girl leaned back, meeting his brown eyes resolutely and taking a bolstering breath. ‘I was following you, stalking you through the Milkmaid’s Quarter. I was angry at being left out and having to stay with Tacca, I didn’t think it was fair.’ This last part slipped out quietly, shamefully from the small warrior. Pica couldn’t help but smile.
‘I understand, of course I do,’ he assuaged her, ‘I used to do the same thing when I was growing up. I would sneak around and follow Simen when he wandered off alone all the time.’ He introspected briefly, ‘out of some form of jealousy or fear or whatever, I don’t know what it was, but I cared for him and I wanted him to be safe.’
Pica was silent for a moment, reminiscing on a time that he was beginning to think was more imagination than true memory. ‘I am glad you were there’ he finally added, giving Pellia another tight squeeze. ‘Nobody blames you for anything, especially not Sily or Rusa. You saved them as much as anyone and they know nothing you could have done might have saved their brother.’
She sniffed, ‘I froze. I didn’t know what to do.’
‘You did what you had to and were able, no one can ask for more than that.’
A small smile broke her thin lips as she mulled his words. ‘Thank you’ she murmured softly.
They stood silently for a time longer, looking over their wounded friend and hoping he would awaken again soon. The young soldier squeezed his hand tightly and began to walk away.
‘Still haven’t learned about sneaking around at night then?’ Pica asked her retreating shadow. A good-natured obscenity floated back from the darkness and she was gone.
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