Ward Against Death (14 page)
Read Ward Against Death Online
Authors: Melanie Card
Tags: #teen fiction, #melanie card, #young adult, #necromancy, #ya fantasy romance, #paranormal romance, #high fantasy, #fantasy, #light fantasy, #surgery, #young adult romance, #organized crime, #doctor, #young adult fantasy romance, #romance, #ya paranormal romance, #high fancy, #medicine, #necromancer, #not alpha, #teen, #undead, #juvenile fiction, #ya, #ya romance, #surgeon, #upper ya, #new adult, #magic, #shadow walker, #teen romance, #teen fantasy romance, #dark magic, #fantasy romance, #young adult paranormal romance, #zombies, #assassin
“What were his symptoms at the beginning?”
“Pain that comes and goes. Constipation, which also comes and goes.” The Tracker sounded as if he’d said it too many times.
Ward waited for more but he remained silent.
“It does sound like a colicky bowel.”
The Tracker placed his hand on the hilt of his dagger. “Remember what I said about a diagnosis I didn’t like?”
“And obviously it’s something more serious.” Ward yanked open his rucksack and pulled out his book on surgery.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m looking for an answer.”
“You’ve barely looked at Pietro.”
“He’s feverish, and has what I’m guessing is excessive weight loss. From the chamber pot by the bed, I’d say he’s vomiting on a regular basis, which means he doesn’t have the proper balance of fluids. His abdomen is without mark, as I suspect is the rest of his body, so the problem lies within. And since I can’t cut him open from neck to crotch to look, I need to narrow down the options.” He met the Tracker’s gaze. “His fever tells me time is of the essence. I am thirsty and hungry and will be able to concentrate better if both were remedied.”
Ward refused to break eye contact or reveal any sign of weakness. Even if he didn’t know what the problem was, he couldn’t let it show. It was like facing down a mountain cat. Don’t show a weakness and it won’t think of you as dinner.
The Tracker growled, shoved his blade back into its sheath, and stormed out.
Ward expelled the breath he’d been holding and flipped past the section on anatomy and terminology, uncertain where to look. He didn’t have the experience to deal with a situation like this. He should still be an apprentice under Professor Schlier, whose first advice would be to not find himself held at dagger-point to perform an illegal operation for an officer of the highest law. If he didn’t work out the situation with care, even if he saved the Tracker’s brother, Ward could still end up dead.
Schlier would know how to get out of this mess.
And his next advice would be to calm down and start at the beginning. Well, the question above all else—his future or his life—was how to save the man lying in the bed beside him. What ailment could he possibly have?
Ward flipped a few more pages. He’d read the book more times than he could remember. There were sections on diagnostic procedure—most he’d already attempted—bone-setting, removal of foreign growths, injuries of the head, and studies of individual illnesses. All of which he’d read hundreds of times, and not a whit of it could he bring to mind.
The door opened, making Ward jump, and the Tracker entered carrying a tray laden with a pitcher, two cups, a small loaf of bread, and two bowls wreathed with steam. Ward’s stomach growled.
“So?” The Tracker set the tray on the small table beside the bed and elbowed Ward out of the way so he could sit.
“There’s a great deal of information to review,” Ward said, trying to determine how to get to the food without incurring more of the Tracker’s wrath.
The Tracker turned his back to Ward and tried to rouse his brother.
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“Even if we have narrowed it down to a colicky bowel with fever and—” A colicky bowel with fever sounded so familiar. Ward closed his eyes, ignoring his stomach, and tried to remember where he’d heard that before. The end of the book in the individual studies?
“What?” the Tracker asked.
Ward flipped to the final section, where the real value of the book lay. Studies of unfortunate individuals and the course of their usually terminal illnesses and the following exploratory necropsies: woman with hard formation in her breast, man with watery breath, man with colicky bowels.
“What?” The Tracker’s voice was dark, a definite precursor to violence.
Ward just needed another minute.
Complaint of pain from abdomen that came and went in waves over the period of two weeks.
He skimmed the page. Physician’s initial diagnosis was colicky bowel and instigated a change in diet. Symptoms not alleviated. Constipation, vomiting, fever, death. The surgeon who’d performed the necropsy discovered the abdominal cavity poisoned, a hole in the small bowel edged with rotted flesh, and a hard uneven mass blocking it.
Of course. How could he not remember? It was an exciting surgery that involved the removal of the blockage to alleviate the pressure and eliminate the risk of bursting the bowel.
The Tracker slammed his hand down on the book, knocking it to the floor, and grabbed the front of Ward’s shirt. “What?”
“It’s a—” He swallowed. He had to sound sure, confident. And really, the symptoms were almost identical. It fit with other colicky bowel situations where often the pain subsided after a hard stone was passed in the stool. Why couldn’t the stone get stuck, obstructing the body’s natural process? “It’s an obstructed bowel.”
“A what?”
“His body is unable to pass a stone.”
“That’s not important. What matters is I can attempt to remove it.”
The Tracker narrowed his eyes. “Attempt?”
Ward pried his shirt free. “All surgery is dangerous. The humors can become unbalanced and flesh can quickly rot, but the fever tells me your brother’s illness is at a critical stage. Without the attempt he will surely die.”
“You say it so academically. That’s a real person lying there, not some footnote in a book.”
Ward picked up his book and hugged it against his chest. “Death is just another state of existence.”
“Necromancers should never go into medicine.” The Tracker turned back to his brother.
Ward shoved the book into his rucksack. “So what’s your decision?”
He ran a hand over his hair, his expression dark.
Ward waited, trying not to fidget, his hands clasped around the strap of his rucksack.
The silence stretched on. The seconds ticked away with each heartbeat, each uneven flicker of shadows, as the flame danced on the end of the wick. Ward’s mind raced through his options. He didn’t know if he could perform the surgery, or even if the Tracker would let him go free afterward.
The Tracker smoothed his hair again and squared his shoulders. “What do I need to do?”
“You need to purchase a generous length of fine silk thread, wine, olive oil, a silver cylinder the length of your thumbnail and the width of your baby finger, and a vial of mandragora mixed with zephnyr oil. Also linen bandages, a butcher’s apron, and a tarpaulin.” Ward wrapped the strap around his hand. “Your brother needs to fast for a day before I can perform the surgery, so I will return tomorrow night.”
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“And he’ll just lie here, dying until then?”
“If his bowels aren’t as empty as possible it will increase the likelihood of rot. We will just have to pray the Goddess will keep him alive another day.”
“And so you should pray.” The Tracker didn’t finish his threat but Ward knew it was there.
SIXTEEN
Ward entered the bedchamber to find the journal open on the floor and Celia reading the parchment. He tugged it from her hands and put it back on the basin.
“Fine. The damn thing
is
an assassination assignment, but not for me, and the journal’s in some kind of foreign language.” The muscles on her jaw tensed. “What took you so long?”
He swallowed and set his rucksack on the floor. “I wanted to make sure I wasn’t followed.”
“A turtle could have done it faster.”
“And I would say a turtle has more experience at these things than I.” His stomach growled and for a fleeting moment he regretting rushing out of the Tracker’s room without eating. No. Staying with the Tracker was like playing with fire. Better alive and starving than dead. He pulled out the case containing his surgical implements, unhooked the latch, and placed it on top of the journal.
“These are amazing. What are they?” Celia reached for one of the knives and Ward pushed her hand away.
“They’re silver-plated steel knives.” He removed a pair of f0">a Caslon Pro long, thin scissors from their felt and leather pocket, and cut away a square from the back of her ruined shirt. “They are not to be touched.”
“I just meant... they’re beautiful. I’ve never seen craftsmanship like that before, and trust me, I know my knives.”
“Really?” He set the scissors aside to be washed, and removed his tweezers. He cradled her right forearm in his left hand and pulled out a piece of crystal. She hissed, but managed not to move.
“My mother’s specialty was knives: use, craftsmanship, everything. She wanted me to follow in a proud line of knife specialists.”
Ward plucked out a few more pieces.
“She would have killed to see these. Where did you get them?”
His first professor, Schlier, had given them to him with the book on surgery after years of fending off Ward’s incessant questions about anatomy and why surgery was illegal. It was one of the proudest moments of Ward’s life, and he reveled in the honor of being accepted into the secret society of surgeons. Still, his joy was bittersweet. He could never tell his family, not even his grandfather, and he could never show anyone how beautiful and captivating surgery and the implements of surgery could be.
“A friend gave them to me.” He tried for another piece, but it was lodged deeper than the others. “They are not for killing.”
“No,” Celia said, “but they certainly are illegal.”
“Yes.” He captured the crystal and removed it, dropping it beside the other ones. “I suppose we have more in common than first thought.”
“Hardly.”
Fine. They had nothing in common. She was practical, he intellectual. She physical, he mental. Water and oil. Ice and fire. Superior and inferior. Except she was the one lying on the bed with crystal in her rear.
He pushed that thought away. “So, this might not be the best time to bring t kme pan>
“But you’re going to talk about it anyway.”
“I was wondering where we are now.” He swallowed. “I mean, in trying to figure out who… you know…”
“Who killed me?”
He finished her right arm and moved to her left. “Yes, given...”
“Given that this assignment wasn’t for me, and I haven’t been able to find one?” She closed her eyes.
“Exactly.”
“It’s not really the assignment that bothers me.”
“Excuse me?”
“A lot of people could want me dead for a lot of reasons.”
He bit back the nasty comment that came to mind.
“Let’s begin with my family.”
“Your family?” He fished out a few more pieces.
“I mean, people might want to kill me because of my family, particularly if they discovered our identities. But I can’t ignore anyone, which also means it could be a member of my family, including my father and his right-hand man, Bakmeire. Who, strangely enough, we keep running into. Then there’s my older brother. If I ever marry there’s a chance my husband will become the next Dominus and not him.”
“A line that’s succeeded by women?”
“Hardly,” Celia said. “Just the most unscrupulous. That, and neither of my brothers are very good at managing th kt me="Time type of people under my father’s reign.”
“I never thought the Dominus needed people skills.” He’d always assumed the Dominus was kind of like the Quayestri, bullying people to get what he wanted.
Celia snorted. “Of course he does. His business is manipulation and control. If his people don’t obey him, he has a serious problem.”
“I suppose so.” He removed the last of the crystal from her arm, lifted her shirt away, and started on her back.
“Father probably is— was— considering a marriage with a second or third son of a Dominus from another principality, or a powerful under-lord here in Brawenal who would be more capable of taking the reins of the Gentilica.”
“What about your father?”
Celia shrugged. “I always thought I was more important to him alive and married than dead.”
“So who’s on the list for wanting you dead because of your family?”
“You name them, they’re on it. They don’t even have to know me. They just need to know the Dominus has a daughter.”
“That doesn’t help narrow it down. We can’t go chasing everyone in town. I doubt you’d have the time.” Ward dropped a piece of crystal with the others on the cloth. The pile had grown past his original expectation.
She glanced at him from over her shoulder. “The spell?”
Ward nodded.
“How long?”
“I don’t know.” He thought back to when he’d performed the Jam de’U. It felt like an eternity, but it was only a few nights ago. “This is the third night.”
“And how long are these spells supposed to last?”
“It all depends.”
“Depends on what?” Celia asked.
Ward returned to pulling the crystal from her back. She wasn’t going to be pleased with the answer.
“Depends on what?” she asked again.
“On how well I did the spell.”
“How well you did the spell?” She started to roll over, and he pushed her back down.
“I had to improvise on some of the components, and I was a little pressed for time during the meditation.”
She didn’t respond.
“There were people breaking down the door.”
He dropped two more pieces of crystal onto the pile, and Celia pressed her face into the blanket. He paused, tweezers ready to remove another piece, and watched the slow rise and fall of her back as she breathed. It must be difficult for her, knowing she worked on borrowed time.
“So, when?” she asked.
“I don’t—” He tugged at his shirt and swallowed. “Have you noticed any of the signs?”
“What signs?”
“Remember when you were in the sewer?”
“The shakes, the cold, the encroaching darkness?”
He nodded.
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“I haven’t noticed any of it this time.”
“Then I suppose you have a while yet.”
“You suppose?”
He grasped a piece of crystal and eased it out of her back. “It isn’t an exact science.”
“No, I suppose it isn’t.”
Another piece of crystal and her back was finished. He swallowed and stared at her buttocks, tweezers poised in mid-air. This was the part he wasn’t looking forward to, and yet, in a strange way, he was. He swallowed again. He was a physician. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen a woman’s unclothed bottom before. And it wasn’t as if a few of those women hadn’t been beautiful, either.
Celia propped herself up on one elbow. “Are you done?”
“No. I need—” He met her gaze and flushed. He didn’t understand how just thinking about her body could reduce him to a babbling idiot. “I’m almost finished. You need to...” He swallowed and pointed to her bottom with his tweezers. “Not all the way. Just to your...”
“Just my luck, I get stuck with a shy physician.”
“I am not.”
She raised a single sculpted eyebrow.
“It’s just that I don’t tend to work on live patients.” He reached for his scissors, leaning so close he could feel the heat radiating from her body.
“Let me put you at ease.” She blew against his neck. The cavern grew uncomfortably warm. “I’m not alive.”
Right. She was dead, dead, dead. Actually, beyond-dead, but she would go back to being dead very soon. He didn’t know how a beyond-dead woman could retai kn ce wan her seductive powers, but she had done it.
Well, no more. He was a professional. He could keep a professional distance from a dead, deadly, charming, beautiful...
He sat up, grabbed the waistband of her pants, and cut. “Then I suppose that’s a good thing.”
§
Ward rolled to his side and tucked his arm under his head. He squeezed his eyes shut but sleep evaded him. He tried his back. No luck. He couldn’t stop thinking, flip-flopping between the Tracker and Celia. Could he successfully perform the operation on the Tracker’s brother? He had the procedure memorized but still, he’d only read about it. He hadn’t seen it done before. And Celia... her body...
Heat rose to his face. His Jam de’U was certainly working. Everything about her—how she bled, and scabbed, and the feel of her skin—seemed alive. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear she was still alive. Maybe he’d somehow cast a resurrection spell?
No. Resurrections were the stuff of legends and he wasn’t powerful enough for that. In his wildest fantasies, the most he could hope for was some strange variation on the Jam de’U, which meant she was still dead. And that led to the other, more imminent, question. Who had killed her?
He sat up and ran his hands over his face. It didn’t matter if the Tracker’s brother lived, or who wanted Celia dead. What he needed to keep in mind was how he could free himself from this disaster and survive. To that, he saw very little hope. Aside from saving his soul from the fate of an Oath-breaker, helping Celia catch her murderer was supposed to clear his name with her family and the inevitable accusation of stealing her body. But that didn’t seem plausible anymore. It was more likely her family wanted her dead, and Ward was getting in the way of all of it. She had claimed her father had murdered her, but then didn’t seem sure, and now... Goddess. Her father was the Dominus, the Master of the Gentilica, Lord of the Underworld. His own daughter was an assassin. Which didn’t make her entirely reliable.
His memory flew back to the white curve of her buttocks. Even crisscrossed with lacerations and smeared with blood it was beautiful.
He needed to walk.
He left his bedchamber and headed down the hall, away from Celia and her beautiful bottom. He’d fished out all of the crystal, cleaned her k, cn="j wounds—which, to his surprise, didn’t require any stitches—and wrapped her in linen bandages. With any luck, she would be sleeping.
Wishful thinking. She was more likely up and about, bleeding through her bandages and making a mess of her stunning self. Everything about her was mesmerizing, even her temper. It brought a blush to her cheeks and made her eyes sparkle. And turned him into a stammering fool, making him see flirtation where he was sure none existed.