The hissed froth ate through the dry straw, sending curls of bitter gray vapor into the clinic.
Surgeon Vornen shoved his stool back so hard it cracked against the stone floor. "Black-rot fever. Step back from the boy, you fool!"
"He's suffocating!" Velis dropped to her knees beside Jom, ignoring the surgeon's snarl. She pressed two fingers to the hollow beneath Jom's collarbone, finding only a furious, fluttering spasm. The skin felt hot enough to scald lard.
Heavy iron boots clattered down the trench gallery beyond the grating. The clinic's reinforced iron rattled on its hinges as a masked provost strode into the doorway, followed by four line-drudges hauling pots of slaked pitch and unlit brand-irons. The provost's face looked pinched behind an oiled leather cowl.
"The ditch-sickness reached the lower cells," the provost said flatly, pointing a hooked iron rod at Jom. "Three dead in the latrine shaft. Five spitting bile in the armory. General orders state containment takes precedence over salvage. Drag him out to the furnace pit. Burn him before the spores take wing."
"He isn't dead!" Velis cried out, shielding Jom's spasming frame with her back. "It's the trench-chill seizing his lungs. A decoction of boiled silver-moss and crushed ash-root breaks the heat. I can clear his chest!"
"You're an infantry dog, Velid, not a physician," the provost barked, gesturing to the drudges. "Take the boy. If the runt resists, throw him onto the embers alongside him."
Two soldiers stepped forward, chains clinking at their waists.
Velis wasted no time calculating odds. She grabbed a glass jar of distilled vitriol from Vornen’s washing shelf and smashed it against the paving stones between the provost's boots. Acid flared white and pungent against the damp moss. The guards leaped back, cursing as fumes singed their wool gaiters.
"Run, Jom!" Velis seized the lad by the scruff of his filthy jacket, hauling him to his feet. He whimpered like a beaten hound, feet scraping blindly, but she bore half his weight and shoved past the gagging guards into the gloom of the subterranean corridor.
"Mutiny!" the provost's roar bounced off the dripping ceiling. "Purge Squad! Seal the sub-level! Take their heads!"
Velis dragged Jom down the dark, narrowing tunnel toward the barracks quarters. Cold water splashed over her ankles. Jom's head lolled against her shoulder, his lips rimmed with curdled ink.
"Velid... the grave-worms... they're chewing..." Jom groaned.
"Quiet, hold onto me." She rammed open the heavy ironwood door to the cell she shared with Garrach, hauled Jom inside, and slammed the reinforced timber shut. She drove the top bolt home. Then the lower one. With a grunt that strained her hidden rib-bindings, she dragged their heavy weapon chest across the flags, jamming it under the iron latch.
In the distance, alarm horns began their hollow baying.
"You'll be hung..." Jom sobbed, sliding down the rough stones into a heap on the freezing floor. "They'll hang us both..."
"Not today." Velis tore through her pack beneath the narrow heat-stone cot. She pulled out the tin of dried silver-moss she had gathered from the north wall, along with two bitter bulbs of wild iron-parsley she kept tucked inside her wool stockings. She dumped water from the canteen into an iron mess tin, scraped phosphorus off a match-stick, and lit the small tallow lamp.
Her apothecary training took over, moving her hands with calm, precise speed while the garrison screamed in the galleries. She crushed the dried stalks between two flat slate tiles, working the pulp into a thick paste. The smell of ammonia and bruised pine rose from the brew.
Booted feet pounded down the hall approach. A heavy shoulder smashed against the wood, shaking the frame.
"Open this hatch, recruit, or I bring the mining picks!" an enforcer shouted from the corridor.
Before the man could strike again, steel bit deeply into flesh on the other side of the oak. A choked gargle cut off into a dull thump. Then, a voice like grinding glaciers cut through the timber.
"Step away from this latch, or I'll carve you into ditch-fill."
Garrach.
The iron bolts groaned. The chest scraped backward across the flags as the door was violently shoved inward. Garrach filled the entrance, his broadsword dripping dark soldier's blood onto the stone. His hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat, his grey eyes blazing with an unhinged, feral focus. Behind him, two purge-guards lay twitching in the hall puddle.
He stepped inside and shoved the door shut with his heel, throwing the deadbolt back into its socket.
"Commander," Velis breathed, stirring the boiling slurry with a rusted iron nail. "He isn't turn-sick. It's just the ditch-vapor fever. If I can get this down him—"
"I don't give a damn about Jom," Garrach snarled. He kept his grip on the sword. His knuckles were raw and split, chest heaving under his studded cuirass as he stalked across the cramped room until his massive form loomed directly over her. "The provost has forty men with sulfur brands clearing the north gallery. They're sealing every cell that shows a drop of black spit."
"Then let me finish this! Help me lift his head!"
Garrach looked down at Jom, then at Velis. His jaw worked, muscles knotting along the edge of his cheek. Slowly, deliberately, he turned his back on them both, stepped to the barred iron slit in the door, and set his great shoulders against the wood.
"Brew it," Garrach said, voice rough as pumice. "Nobody enters this cell while I draw breath."
Velis wasted no time. She carried the scalding tin over to Jom, propping the boy’s head on her knee. "Drink it, Jom. Swallow, damn you!"
The boy gagged, thrashing weakly as the bitter, steaming liquid was forced between his stained teeth. He sputtered, coughed, and vomited a ribbon of dark fluid, but the bulk of the draught went down. His spasms softened into ragged, exhausted panting. The boiling heat radiating from his brow began to break, replaced by cold sweat.
Across the hall, heavy fists pounded the oak again. "Commander Garrach! High command demands you stand down! You are harboring contaminated stock! Surrender the pet or burn with it!"
"Come through this timber and test your steel, cowards!" Garrach roared through the slot. His voice reverberated off the damp stone walls, shaking the dust from the ceiling rafters. The men cursed, shuffling back down the corridor, their torches flickering through the bottom crack of the door.
Silence fell over the room, save for Jom's rattling snores and the hiss of the dying tallow lamp.
Velis collapsed back against the foot of the cold heat-stone cot, her hands trembling so fiercely she had to clasp them together in her lap. "You killed Vanguard men for me. They will execute you for treason."
Garrach remained facing the door, sword point resting on the stone between his boots. When he finally looked back, the fury in his face had collapsed into a bleak, agonizing hunger that made the air in the small room feel completely stripped of oxygen.
He crossed the flags with three heavy strides, dropping to one knee before her. His hand came out, large and calloused, gripping her chin with a bruising intensity that forced her gaze to meet his.
"Do you think I care about their laws?" he murmured, his thumb dragging across the corner of her lips, rough and demanding. "I have sat in this freezing pit for two months trying to root you out of my skull. I told myself it was sickness. That the damp was rotting my mind. That I was losing my manhood to lust after a green-horned boy with soft hands."
Velis tried to pull back, but his grip remained an immovable vise. His breath brushed warm across her cheeks.
"Let them bring the fire," Garrach said, his thumb pressing harder, his voice dropping into a desperate, broken gravel. "Let them hang me from the gallows post. I am damned already, Velid. I look at you and I don't care what you are. I want you."
The raw, naked declaration struck her with the force of an iron cudgel. Her disguise, her murdered brother, the fail-safe waiting in her skull—all of it seemed to fracture beneath the heat of his gaze.
"Garrach..." she began.
Then the room tilted.
A sudden, blinding agony pierced the base of her skull, sharp as a rusted needle. Velis gasped, the sound turning into a wet, choking cough. She pitched forward, crashing straight against Garrach’s armored chest.
"Velid?" Garrach caught her instantly, his arms locking around her waist to keep her from hitting the flagstones. "Velid, look at me!"
Velis tried to push herself up, but her limbs had turned to water. She reached a trembling hand toward her collar, tearing open the top button of her rough wool tunic to draw air into her seized lungs. Beneath the frayed collar, tracing along the porcelain curve of her collarbone, a web of thick, tar-black veins was spreading rapidly toward her face.