Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 84840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Nicostratus tries again, pulling at something beneath his cloak, and I push him back this time. No need for swords here.
He grimaces, scowls, and reluctantly returns to Olyn’s side while I try once more to placate the farmer. “You’re a good man. All you want is to protect your animals. I agree with you.”
“Then why’d ya say you’d infect ‘em! Maybe this thing passes. Spares the rest. Won’t have you fir certain killin’ em.”
“What if it saves them? What if this is the only way to spare the rest?”
The farmer hesitates, but his lips are stubbornly firm, like nothing will change his mind. But I try one last time. “Have you heard that Kastoria has very few sick?”
“They’re hoarding the cure!”
“No. Last year, they suffered a variation of this plague. All those who survived have become resistant to this one.”
“Whatcha saying?”
Before I can respond, I’m cut off.
“Pegus!” the cry comes from a middle-aged woman who stops her cart and crosses the dirt road, clutching the loosening fabric binding her hair, her pounding feet stirring up a dust cloud.
The farmer turns and rushes towards her.
The woman clutches the farmers soil-stained shirt. Tears stream down her face and she sobs. “They didn’t make it. The luminists were burned this morning.”
The farmer—Pegus—stiffens, and lets out a guttural cry.
“Them poor little ones, they aren’t sick. They haven’t got it.” She gestures to the cart where two small heads pop up from amongst the hay.
“Let me get rid of this lot, and I’ll help them inside.”
The woman finally notices me and my companions and she swipes at her leaking eyes. “W-who—”
I step forward, bow my head, and lie. “I’m a royal vitalian. The king has ordered me to stop this plague.”
Pegus hisses. “He wants to test his strange theories on our animals!”
The woman looks from me to her husband and back to me. “A royal vitalian?” Her gaze glimmers with hope. “Prove it.”
I open and shut my mouth. In a flutter of cool air, Nicostratus is once more by my side, showing his royal beads. They immediately gasp and drop into a deep bow for the prince.
“How easy this could have been,” Nicostratus chides softly, and I rub my throbbing head. Indeed. I should have thought. The fear has simply been all-consuming.
The woman scrambles nearer, pleading. “Take all the animals. Just please, find a way to keep us and these children safe.”
It’s from the sun passing behind a cloud. It’s her words, weighted with life and death.
I shiver again.
Ibite my tongue. The world sways, but I force myself to stay upright. There’s no time for me to be sick, so I ask Nicostratus to magic me a shield like his own. He asks why and I tell him a truth: I must get close to sick animals and a shield will be safer than mere cloth over my nose. Nothing will get past it—neither in, nor out.
With the vibration of his magic glittering faintly around my skin, I ignore the heaviness of my limbs and get to work. I ask to see the infected horses first, and to Olyn’s gulps, I scrape the pus oozing around the hardened scales on its flank. “The horses are stronger; their bodies fight the plague better. This pus has become weakened plague. The pigs might fight off weakened plague.”
“You hope to do this on people.” Olyn’s words are not a question. She’s smart enough to understand. “Even if it works, who will let you?”
I grit my teeth against that and a sudden spell of dizziness. I exhale sharply and the world rights itself—just barely.
How long do I have before the fever wins? A day? Less?
Not now. Not yet.
I have to see this through. I finish scraping pus into a vial and hand it to her. “Hold it upright. Don’t spill any.”
I find two more vials in my bag and fill them past the point the cork can hold them too.
Olyn watches me for a beat too long. “You look . . . flushed.”
I force a laugh, tossing off a hollow smile. “It’s the shield.”
She doesn’t look convinced, but she rushes along with me to the next paddock, where Nicostratus and the farmer have pulled in a dozen healthy pigs.
I hand over the pus. “Did your wife find any angelica root?” I say as I dig in my bag for ground mustiva, oldeaf, and costmary.
Pegus pulls a warty root out from behind his belt and I take it, quickly snatching it away before anyone notices my tremors. I smash the end of the angelica root until I can squeeze its juice into a shallow bowl and gesture for Olyn to hand over a vial of pus.
When all the parts are put together and I have three bowls with differing supportive herbs—all my grandfather’s scriptions according to his research—it’s time to infect the pigs. “Divide the pigs into three groups. One we cut small crosses, another circles, the last an equivalent sign. When each seep blood, we’ll smear a spoon of the corresponding pus into it.”