The Healing Wars: Book III: Darkfall (27 page)

Another horn blew and the ground shook.

I curled into a ball, bracing myself for the stabs and strikes that couldn’t be far away. The reinforcements were coming. No one saw me lying on the street, or no one cared, and soldiers trampled me. The straps of the armor broke and the protection skittered away, kicked by running feet. My bones cracked. Broke. Pain flared, and the soldiers kept coming.

Just like we’d planned.

Protect me, Saint Saea, please.

There was nothing else I could do.

T
he river of feet eventually subsided. I’d have sighed in relief, but my ribs hurt too much to take more than a shallow breath. I still wore the helmet and chest piece, but the bracers and greaves were gone. The net bunched around my visor, and all I could see were bodies and blood on the warm brick street.

“Nya!”

Danello, but he sounded far away. And scared.

“Here,” I rasped, but it couldn’t have been loud enough to reach him. I rolled and fresh pain shot through me. I cried out, louder than my call for help.

“It’s her!”

Not someone scared—or friendly. My mind screamed at me to move, but my body couldn’t listen. Feet stomped closer, then metal against metal.

I squeezed my eyes shut, braced for more pain. None came. Fighting above me, near me, the quick swish of rapiers cutting through the air.

Someone tugged on my hands, my legs. I whimpered, suddenly alert. Had I blacked out? I couldn’t focus, couldn’t stay awake.

“Hold on, Nya,” Danello said. “Help’s coming.”

“Nya needs a Healer over here,” Ellis shouted. “Don’t move her. Don’t do anything until the Healer gets here.”

The world swam past me, shadows moving, people talking. The helmet slid off my head. An older man stopped and knelt beside me and put his hands on my forehead. The pain in my chest eased, though my limbs still hurt.

“That’ll hold her until you get her back to base.”

“Thank you,” Danello said.

“I gotta get moving. They’ve broken through the League’s front lines. Shouldn’t be long now.”

“Good luck!”

Scraps of information came to me as Danello and someone I couldn’t see carried me through the streets to the resistance’s small infirmary. The soldiers had fallen for the ruse. The battle was still going on, but not here. They’d taken both Upper and Lower Grand Isles and were closing on the League.

Jeatar did it.

The sunshine on my face vanished, and a door thunked closed. My stretcher was lowered to the floor. I gritted my teeth while Danello and the other person lifted me onto a cot.

“Saints, what happened to her?” Lanelle sounded worried.

“She was trampled. Help me get the chest piece off her.”

“No, leave it until I get those bones healed. It’ll hurt her too much.”

Lanelle pulled over a stool and sat beside me. I tried not to think about the last time she’d stood over me while I was in pain. Telling me to sleep, doing nothing to ease my suffering, same as she had to the others.

She’s here to help this time; give her a chance.

Tingling fire surged through my bones, part from the healing, part from the pain as Lanelle set my broken legs and arms. I screamed my throat raw and she healed that too. The heat and pain faded and I sank onto the cot, weak as a duckling.

I opened my eyes.

Danello and Aylin stood by the bed, dirty and worn, but alive. Framed paintings hung on the wall behind them. Wherever I was, it wasn’t the infirmary. A nice room, even without windows. Light glowed in elegant glass lamps. Soft mattress. Thick pillows. Familiar, even.

“Did we win?”

“We won,” Danello said softly. Yellow bruises covered half his face. “You’re in the League and safe. The distraction worked even better than we’d hoped. We got past the bridges and took the League itself with minimal resistance. There’s still patches of fighting, but the League is secure.”

“Thank the Saints.” I took a tentative breath, but the pain was gone. Lanelle really did know what she was doing. “You look awful.”

He chuckled. “You look beautiful.”

“Liar.”

“You’re alive. That’s enough for me.”

“Where’s Tali?”

Aylin stepped aside. Tali sat on a chair, playing with the braided silver cords that marked a League apprentice. The last of the tightness in my chest loosened.

“Ellis found Ginkev and a bunch of other Healers upstairs,” Danello said, taking my hand. “They were hiding in one of the classrooms. Barricaded the door and everything.”

“Took her twenty minutes to convince him to let her in.” Aylin chuckled. “She was about to knock the door down.”

I swung my legs over the end of the bed. “Where is he? Does he know about Tali? Has anyone spoken to him yet?”

“He’s in the ward, and you need to stay here.” Danello put both hands on my shoulders and pushed me back. “Want me to go see if he’s free?”

“Would you? But only if no one else needs healing.”

“Of course.” He leaned down and kissed my forehead before leaving. People were hurrying past the door, most of them still in armor.

“You know,” Aylin began, “he was running all over the place looking for you. There were reports you’d gotten hurt, but with all the bodies out there, they couldn’t find you. He fought off four soldiers to protect you.”

“He did?”

She rolled her eyes. “Well, yeah.”

“But he could have gotten hurt—or killed.”

“Let him be the hero once in a while, huh? You’re not an easy girl to live up to.”

I grinned. He wasn’t going to let me keep him in the back after this. But maybe he’d stay close to the League. Surely we’d need lots of soldiers to protect it.

A soft knock at the door, and Aylin rose and answered it. She stepped aside and Jeatar walked in, still wearing his armor. Dirt and blood smeared his face, and I spotted several gashes he really should have had healed.

“I hear we won.”

“We did, but it cost us.”

I was afraid to ask how much. “Is Ellis okay? And Kione?”

“They’re fine. You didn’t lose any more friends. Not even Vyand, though it was close there. She might cancel her arrangement with you.”

“You can have her then.” She’d be happier protecting him anyway.

“I have enough people watching my back.” Jeatar ran a hand through his hair, scratching at the back. “We received some bad news. One of the scouts I left upriver sent me a message that the Duke is two days out.”

The tightness in my chest came back. “Two days? Do we have enough time to prepare?”

“We’ll do what we can. Onderaan’s already got the forge stoked. We’ll need healing bricks for sure, pynvium weapons.”

“Did he find anything valuable in the forge?” Doubtful, but something could have been left behind.

“Nothing but barrels of blue sand. We were lucky they didn’t think to break apart the forge.”

“Can we still win?” Aylin asked.

“I don’t know yet. We lost a lot getting this far, but morale is good. I’ve called a strategy meeting in an hour, and you’re welcome to attend. I understand if you need to rest.”

“No, I’ll be there. Where is it?”

“Danello knows.” He paused, his gaze traveling over the scars on my arms. For a moment, I thought he might say more, but the contemplative look vanished and he nodded. “See you in an hour.”

Ginkev arrived not long after Jeatar left. He’d been Tali’s Heal Master, in charge of teaching the apprentices at the League. He was just as short and bald as he was the day he’d taught me how to spot bleeds. Back then he’d had no idea I wasn’t a real apprentice, or that I was at the League to sneak upstairs and rescue Tali. He’d been tough but nice. Even tried to keep me out of the spire room and away from Vinnot’s experiments.

“Can you help her?” I asked after telling him everything that had been done to Tali. I’d tried to explain what Onderaan had said about the damage to the brain, but I wasn’t sure I’d gotten it right.

“Won’t know until I look.” He walked over to Tali, a smile on his face. She tensed, but there was recognition in her eyes. My heart soared.

Ginkev reached out a hand. She flinched away.

“It’s okay, Tali,” I said, going to her. I took his hand and placed it on my forehead. “See? It won’t hurt.”

He reached out again and she held still. “Saea’s mercy, who did this to her?”

“The Duke. Vinnot. Zertanik. Maybe all of them together.”

He tsked and shook his head.

“Can you fix her?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen such brutality before, not to a brain. Bones, muscles—seen those shredded many a time. But this?” He shook his head again. “Just criminal.”

“I wonder if she’s the only one,” Aylin said softly. “There have to be more, right? Not everyone wanted to join the Undying.”

I hadn’t thought of that, but there probably
were
more. Trapped in the armor and in their own minds. Forced to become something so awful, they closed out the rest of the world.

“I know she’s still in there, Master Ginkev,” I said. “Please find her and bring her back.”

Ginkev sighed and put his hand on her forehead again. “I’ll do everything I can.”

An hour later, I left Tali with Ginkev and headed to Jeatar’s meeting. Danello led us to one of the classrooms on the second floor. The same officer group as before sat around a table with maps again, but this time Balju was there.

“The Duke will be here in two days,” Jeatar said after we took our seats. People gasped. I guess he hadn’t told anyone else about his message. “He’s been marching his troops along the river, but he’ll have to load them all onto the transport ships once he arrives at the delta. The fireboats will most likely reach us first, and we can expect the transport ships to start ferrying troops over not long after.”

“How many are there?”

Jeatar looked grim. “Fifteen thousand men. Five transport ships, plus smaller skiffs, scouts, and of course fireboats. Where are we with the fire crews?”

“Ready to go where needed,” said a woman I didn’t know. “We found seven water pumps, and we’ll have them placed around the city by midday. We’ll start soaking buildings so the wood’s good and wet. Won’t protect them if they get a direct hit, but it should help keep the flames contained until the fire crews can get there to douse them again.”

Seven water pumps wouldn’t be able to cover all the isles. But hopefully our boats would be able to stop the fireboats before they could launch too many attacks.

“We need to keep the fireboats out of range,” Ellis said.

“Anything we can get in range to hit them will also be in range of their boats.”

“What about bigger catapults?” Kione said.

“No materials, and no time to get any.”

“Ipstan blocked the canals by sinking boats,” Danello said. “Can we block Geveg by sinking bigger boats?”

“We’d never find boats that big,” Ellis said.

“The Duke’s bringing them, though, right?” Aylin asked. “We sink those first and they block the rest.”

Jeatar rubbed the back of his neck. “That’s actually not a bad idea.”

“Except we have no way to sink a ship that size,” Ellis said. “What’s Nya going to do? Shift into it?”

“What about pynvium?” a sergeant said. “Something that will flash and make them scared to come closer?”

“A little pain won’t stop a whole ship,” I said. Except … I looked at the walls around me. Stones just like those that had crumbled from a
lot
of pain. If pain dissolved stone, it could also dissolve wood.

“I need to talk to Onderaan.” I jumped out of my chair and headed for the door. Danello and Aylin both came after me.

“Nya?” Jeatar said. “What are you planning?”

“I’ll tell you once I know it’s possible.”

And if we had enough time to do it.

Onderaan was in the League’s foundry. It wasn’t very different from the one I’d robbed—and destroyed—in Baseer. Double doors opened toward the lake, allowing the breeze to carry the heat of the smelters away, but the metallic tang of the pynvium stayed behind. Two forges blazed, one on either side of the room, the enchanter’s glyphs carved into the bricks glowing bright blue. The fires inside burned a shade darker, the blue flames rising and falling with the breath of the bellows.

A half dozen barrels like the ones I’d found in the Duke’s foundry lined the front wall. More pynvium sand. The only pynvium left behind.

Onderaan worked at one forge, heavy leathers covering his head, hands, and torso. He was pouring blue-hot liquid pynvium into a mold about a foot square. Another man worked the second forge. He spotted us, then went to Onderaan and tapped him on the shoulder. Onderaan turned and walked over, pulling the long cap off his head.

“You’re looking better.”

“Feeling better, too. Do we have enough pynvium to make large spheres? Something that can hold a
lot
of pain?”

“For healing?”

“Weapons.”

“Such as?”

“If you flash enough pain, it disintegrates things, like wood.” Flesh too, but I didn’t want to think about that. “If you trigger it to flash when bumped hard, we can put pynvium balls around the isles. We can use buoys from the fishing boats to keep them just below the surface. If we do it right, we might even be able to weight them enough that they drag the buoys underwater too.”