As soon as we’re dressed, Delphine leads us out into the cold fortress city. I assumed she’d take us back to her home and Cloudia’s bedside, but she marches briskly in the opposite direction, past homes, shops, and schoolhouses until we’re in an entirely different quarter of the city with densely packed buildings.
When she stops in front of a sign that says VAYNIR’S FINE FURS AND EXOTIC TEXTILES, Alaric and I share a confused look.
“Fashionis your sister’s pressing concern?” he teases.
“Don’t pretend it isn’t your top priority too,” I say, brushing invisible dust off the lapels of his emerald-green jacket.
“Quiet, both of you,” Delphine whispers harshly, shocking us both into silence. She glances furtively down the street before tugging us around the corner of the building. “Not everything is as it appears.”
She guides us to a nondescript door and, after rooting around in the flower bed, produces a key. Holding a finger to her lips, Delphine eases the door open and motions for us to follow her inside.
The hallway is long, dark, and dusty, and I instantly want to retreat back into the cold fresh air. This desire quickly becomes a need when I venture a few steps farther and an unmistakable stench invades my nostrils. My throat spasms, and I catch myself against the wall, looking around for the source of a smell that has no place in a Vanzadorian textile factory. No place anywhere on this mountain. Yet the fetid aroma of rotting flesh wafts down the hallway, even more potent than the tea in the queen’s solarium. Almost as noxious as the smoke-filled sky the day our bagrava fields burned
I shoot a horrified look at Delphine, who has buried her mouth and nose in her shirt.
I do the same.
Behind me, Alaric coughs and then full-on gags. “What in the name of the kings?”
“This way.” Delphine points toward a glowing doorframe at the end of the hall, and we tiptoe toward it. Once we’re huddled outside, she points to the keyhole.
Alaric’s eyes find mine, silently asking if I want him to look first. As much I appreciate the offer, I shake my head. Whatever’s happening here clearly has to do with my bagrava.
I bend toward the keyhole, heart hammering so loud it sounds likea fist against the door in the unnatural quiet. I half expect someone to fling open the door and catch us.
I hold my breath and peer through the keyhole into a large open room. It’s as vast as any of our storehouses in Tashir, except instead of being filled with animals and produce, it’s filled with beds. Row after row of steel beds are crammed side by side, and each bed houses a body—old and young, infants to the elderly, boys and girls alike. The strange conglomeration of people lie stiffly on their backs, staring blankly at the ceiling, even the babies.
The wrongness of it feels like spiders creeping down my shirt. Babies are supposed to coo and cry. Children are supposed giggle and chatter. Adults are always yelling and arguing over something. But everyone in this room is as still as a corpse, aside from a handful of men and women in white smocks, who weave through the narrow paths between beds, blotting foreheads and fluffing pillows.
“I don’t understand. Is this a hospital?” I ask Delphine, but it’s Alaric who answers, shaking his head as he nudges past me to look for himself. “Of course it isn’t a hospital. We have twoactualhospitals in the Fortress. Why would anyone need to hide in a warehouse for treatment?”
He squints into the room, and I swear I feel the muscles down his back stiffen one by one. “What is this?” he turns on Delphine. “How did you find this place?”
Delphine takes a shaky step back. “It-it was Cloudia. She became more lucid last night, after another dose of Indira’s bagrava tincture, and she started talking about people dying again. I still didn’t think anything of it until she began reciting an address.Thisaddress. We’ve never had any business on this side of the Fortress, so I found it odd and decided to investigate.Thisis what I found, and I came to inform you immediately.”
“How did Cloudia know about this?” Alaric demands.
Delphine shrugs helplessly. “I haven’t a clue.” Delphine shrugs helplessly.
“I haven’t a clue.”
I chew my lip, trying to make sense of it. “Do you think these people have the same illness as Cloudia? Perhaps it’s catching. Maybe there’s an outbreak, and that’s why they’ve been quarantined?”
“Maybe…” Delphine nervously twirls the end of her braid. “But Cloudia isn’t silent and still like this. If anything, she’s the opposite. Consumed by fits and outbursts. You saw her.”
“No one is quarantined,” Alaric interrupts. “I would know if there was an epidemic among my own people.”
He returns to the keyhole, and I squeeze in beside him. For several minutes, we watch the nurses make their rounds—tucking blankets and changing sheets. They work with cold, clipped efficiency, never talking to their patients or even looking at them, really. For their part, the patients offer no acknowledgment or thanks to their caregivers.
All of it is deeply unsettling. I want to look away,runaway, but then a pair of swinging doors open, and even more nurses enter the room, carrying trays of steaming soup. This wouldn’t be noteworthy if not for the purple steam rising from the broth and the putrid smell, which intensifies a hundredfold.
Beside me, Alaric gags.
I do the same as the nurses begin spoon-feeding every patient.
They’re basically poisoning them. These patients are too unresponsive to stop the soup from dribbling down their chins, let alone refuse to drink it. Such high doses of bagrava will drive them mad, if not kill them entirely.
I’m about to crash through the door like a raging bull to stop it when, all at once, the silence breaks, and the patients begin to yawn and sit up, stretching as if it’s the start of a new day.
