The Healing Wars: Book III: Darkfall Read online

  “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.”

  Danello whistled. “They’d never even suspect something like that.”

  “No, they wouldn’t,” Onderaan said. “We can make them, but filling them will be the problem. We don’t have enough pain.”

  Aylin huffed. “We have Healers and soldiers and knives. We can make pain.”

  Onderaan gasped and stared at her as if he wasn’t sure if that was ghastly or genius. Seemed like both to me.

  “Can you make them?” I asked.

  “I can.” Onderaan went to a heavy metal box on a worktable and opened the lid. He pulled out the silvery-blue cylinder I’d found at Zertanik’s. My stomach quivered, flipping around like a beached fish. He ran his fingers along a row of glyphs. “In fact, I’m almost certain these glyphs here enhance a flash. I’m still studying what these other glyphs are, though.” He tapped along the bottom. “They’re very similar to a traditional trigger, but I haven’t figured out yet what type of trigger.”

  “Which means what?” Aylin said, frowning.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” He grinned. “Zertanik was a dangerous man, but his work is astonishing. With his glyphs, I can enchant Nya’s spheres to flash twice the amount of pain, if not more.”

  “Enough to dissolve a hole in the hull of a ship?”

  “I believe so, yes.”

  Danello looked uncertain. “Is it wrong to be happy about that?”

  “I don’t know, but I bet Jeatar is going to be thrilled.”

  If this worked, we could even the odds. Saints, we might even gain an advantage. It would be nice if just once, we didn’t have to do the impossible to survive.

  TWENTY-THREE

  The darkness hovered on the silver edge between night and day. No gray streaks of dawn lit the sky yet, but the orange glow from fires boxes on the blockade boats mimicked the rising sun. By full dawn, the Duke’s men would be here.

  “I can’t take this waiting anymore,” Aylin said, standing with the rest of us on the balcony of the tallest spire at the League. Jeatar had everyone on alert, the pynvium ready, the dorms and classrooms full of Gevegians who needed our protection. Children, old men and women, those who weren’t able to fight. They’d been coming in for two days, carrying what was left of their possessions in baskets.

  “They’ll be here soon enough.” Danello wore a League guard’s uniform. He’d been assigned to protect the League, along with his father.

  I tugged at the collar of my own uniform. Me, in Healers’ League green. If that didn’t say desperate, I don’t know what did.

  “Do you see that?” Aylin said, pointing out across the water. “I thought I saw something.”

  “It’s still too dark,” I said. “We’ll see them before they land, don’t worry.”

  She shivered. “All I’ve been doing is worrying.”

  I gazed into blackness. Pale light hovered on the horizon. It wouldn’t be long now.

  “How many ships do you think he’ll have?” Lanelle asked, back in League green as well.

  “Not more than we can stop,” Danello answered. It sounded better than the truth. Jeatar had kept the Duke’s numbers quiet, though they were bound to come out once he arrived. Hard to hide the truth when it was sailing right toward you.

  Jeatar had troops spread around the isle at strategic points throughout the city. He didn’t expect the Duke to risk a full invasion unless the fireboats failed, but he wanted to be ready. Vyand had gone with him this time, insisting it had been my idea. That I’d be fine tucked away in the League. After seeing her and her team fight, I agreed that she was a good person to have watching Jeatar’s back.

  He’d frowned, but he hadn’t argued.

  With so much ground to cover, our people were spread pretty thin. Every boat was on the lake, fire rocks ready to launch and spears ready to throw. The pynvium spheres, or sinkers, as Ellis had named them, floated below the surface of the water just beyond catapult range. The bulk of our foot soldiers were in the Aristocrats’ Isles—where Jeatar felt the Duke would most likely launch his ground assault. The League had a decent-sized guard, but we needed our people more on the outer isles to work the water pumps and keep the fires from spreading. We placed extra sinkers in Half Moon Bay to compensate. The Duke’s ships couldn’t reach League Isle without coming through there.

  We were as ready as we could be with the little time we’d had to prepare.

  The sky brightened, black turning to gray. Shadows fled, but a moving darkness remained.

  “There they are,” said Aylin. No trace of hesitation in her voice this time.

  Black on the lake. Ships of all sizes, sails unfurled. The transport ships led the armada, huge and unforgiving. Smaller ships trailed in their wake.

  “Look at them all,” Lanelle said. “Oh Saints, they’re really here. It’s starting.”

  “We’re going to have burns first,” I said, thinking about everything Mama had ever said about treating them. “We need to soak the cloths.”

  “We know what to do, Nya. We’ve been trained for this—you haven’t.”

  I gritted my teeth. “It won’t be the same.” Words in a classroom couldn’t pr
epare you for what was coming. Of course, neither could stories, no matter how horrible they might have been. Or the memories.

  “There must be forty ships surrounding the isles,” Papa told the group of men and women around our table. “Dozens of fireboats.”

  Gasps from those who’d been strong until now.

  “He means to burn us out? Like Sorille?”

  “He’s threatening to.”

  “We’ll fight him. We have our own boats. We can throw fire and pitch just as well as he can. Burn those fireboats before they can burn us.”

  They hadn’t done it, but maybe we had a chance.

  “Healers, time to go,” Ginkev said, and I jumped. I hadn’t even known he was there. The worst of the injured would be brought to the League, but the rest would be healed on the battlefield. Half our Healers had gone with the army, taking several pynvium bricks each.

  “I’ll be on the perimeter if you need me,” Danello said before hurrying off. He had his own post to get to. He was ten steps away before I realized I hadn’t gotten a good-bye kiss. I wanted to chase after him, say good-bye properly in case one of us died today.

  “Nya, move it!” Lanelle hollered.

  I followed the others, wondering if Mama and Grannyma had felt like this the day the Duke attacked them.

  And wondering if they had been just as scared.

  The city bell tower struck double clangs—another fire warning. Volunteers rushed around the treatment ward, preparing beds, stacking cloths and bowls, filling water tanks.

  Healers waited for the rush of injured. A few dozen to help where there had once been a hundred. But it should have been two more. Soek should be here. And Tali should be able to do what she was so good at, but who knew what she’d do in all the chaos. Ginkev was making progress with her, but she wasn’t ready to heal under battlefield conditions.

  More burn victims would be coming in soon, but right now the treatment ward was empty. I had time to see what was going on, how bad the fighting was. How close the Duke’s ships were. I ran for the stairs and the sunroom on the third floor. The lower windows had been boarded up, but the windows on the upper floors were unprotected.

  Several of the Duke’s fireboats were by the dock, some already burning from our attacks. Smoke from the fireboxes rose into the air on both sides, the curved poles of the catapults arching over the decks. Balls of flame flew through the air toward the docks. More flew toward the approaching fireboats. Smoke misted above the buildings, but not as heavily as I’d feared. The fire crews were probably there, keeping the fires under control.

  I scanned the rest of the city, the afternoon sun stealing any shadows that might hinder my view. A half dozen more fireboats floated off the production district. Heavier smoke rose above the buildings there—had the fire crews failed? I didn’t see any of our boats.

  Tall masts rose above Upper Aristocrats’ Isle, transport ships that had made it past the sinkers. We’d gotten reports that troops were in the city, but we hadn’t seen any battle injuries yet. That would change soon.

  WHOOMP!

  Water sprayed. Wood vanished. A sharp crack split the air as a sinker’s flash split the hull of one of transport ships off North Isle. Huge cracks spider-webbed from the gaping hole in the bottom. The ship rolled to one side, and armored soldiers tumbled toward the water. Screams followed not long after, then splashes.

  WHOOMP!

  Another flash, a fireboat this time. Screams came sooner, the flash close enough on the smaller boat to hit the crew. Steam hissed as water flooded the fireboxes.

  Cheers rose above the screams and hisses and splashes.

  My stomach churned.

  I turned away. This was my doing. I’d thought up the sinkers, devised the way to kill those people. I tried not to imagine it, but the images kept flooding my mind. The falling. The sinking. The dying.

  I left the balcony. People filled the halls: soldiers left behind to guard the League, folks with nowhere else to go. People running with one message or another. I reached the main treatment floor. Lanelle was shouting directions and Healers were dashing from bed to bed.

  “Wounded incoming,” she shouted, and bells began to chime. Smaller bells than those outside—calls for the Healers.

  The next wave of injured for the day. But not the last.

  “Nya,” Lanelle called, waving me closer. “Stabilize the patients and move on. Let the others finish the heals. It took too long this morning.”

  I held my tongue and nodded. I went to the first bed. A woman with stab wounds, confirming the Duke did have soldiers in the city now. I put one hand on her forehead and the other on her heart and felt my way in. Pierced lung, badly healed on the field by someone who didn’t know how to close such a wound. We’d probably see more of those today, too. I drew the pain away, sealing the puncture and easing her shock. So much more I could do, but she’d survive until one of the others got to her to heal her properly. That was their job, this was mine.

  I went to the next bed, a man bleeding far too much to have been moved in the first place. I drew in his pain too, closing the artery. Bed to bed, patient to patient, skipping those who weren’t on the verge of death. I finished the row, my stomach throbbing, my lungs stinging, my head swirling. I staggered to the rear of the ward and through the curtains.

  The apprentice assigned to help me jumped to her feet. Twelve years old, with just enough training to take my pain and put it into the pynvium. “Are you full?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  She closed her eyes. I wanted to shift into her and get rid of the pain faster, but it was easier on her if she took it herself.

  My hands tingled and the pain slid away, my fingers throbbing as it passed from me to her. She gritted her teeth, the knuckles of her hands white.

  Then the pain was gone.

  “Got it.” She turned away and went to our meager Slab, a cube of pynvium the size of a footstool, and pushed the pain into it.

  Tali had once offered to transfer pain for me. She foolishly thought I could join the League and heal, that she could draw my pain from me and push it into the pynvium. Impossible then—the Luminary would have thrown me into prison—or worse, as I’d found out—but I was doing it now.

  Without her.

  Bells inside the League rang again. More wounded on the way.

  I took a deep breath and ran back to the ward.

  By the end of the day, bodies and wood floated around the city, creating an effective barricade against the Duke’s ships. Two transport ships broke the surface just off the Aristocrats’ Isles, leaning so heavily to one side, their masts dented a villa along the edge of the isle. The Duke had tried hard to reach us but we’d held him back.

  Another ship lay on its side in the water at the edge of Half Moon Bay, blocking the path to the League better than anything we could have built. The smaller boats we’d sunk had vanished, though they made the water equally treacherous. Two fireboats had tried to maneuver past them and had run aground on the wrecks, ripping out their hulls and sinking.

  The Duke had diverted more soldiers to North Isle. Rivers of blue and silver were still pouring into our streets from the transport ships we hadn’t been able to sink. We had them contained to the North and Aristocrats’ Isles for now, but we were still outnumbered.

  “I thought I’d find you here,” Aylin said, walking wearily into the sunroom. Blood stained her shirt, and a smear of it crusted along her hairline. She’d been assisting patients and Healers all morning. “Best view in the city.”

  “Not today.”

  “Yeah, well.” She sighed. “It’ll get better.”

  “You really think so?” I said.

  “Yes. And so should you. No one thought we’d last this long, and we’re holding them back.”

  I tried to smile, but it wouldn’t come. Could I at least hope? I gazed at the ships we’d sunk, the soldiers we’d stopped. The fires we’d put out.

  We might not win, but maybe, just maybe,
we’d survive.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Two full days, and still we held our ground. The wounded kept coming into the League, and we kept sending them back out again. Fire crews staggered in, exhausted, and others staggered out to relieve them. We couldn’t keep this up, couldn’t keep pitting tired and worn soldiers against the Duke’s fresh troops.

  The docks were in flames, but the fires had been stopped before they’d spread to the tradesmen’s corner. Most of the production district smoldered, some fires still burning, but the fire crews had put out most of them. One of the Aristocrats’ Isles was nothing but cinders.

  “No loss,” said one of the soldiers recovering from healing. “It was all Baseeri living there anyway. We’ll rebuild it for Gevegians.”

  I held my tongue and kept healing. Gevegians had built those villas. Nothing Baseeri burned there—just all that was left of the families they’d already destroyed.

  Another night fell. The sounds of metal clashing subsided, and campfires blazed in the east end of Geveg—the isles held solidly by the Duke. More fires burned in the west end, but no people sat around those. They were the last of the dock buildings finally succumbing.

  “One more in bed six,” Lanelle said as we passed each other. “I’m going to dump my pain and grab some food.”

  “I’ll get them.”

  The soldier in bed six smiled. Ellis.

  I smiled back and took her hands. “Good to see you, even if it is here.”

  “Better here than not at all.”

  “True.” Someone had started a list of the dead in the main antechamber, but I hadn’t looked to see who was on it. I had no time to grieve. I put a hand on Ellis’s forehead and felt my way in, sensing the same cuts, the piercings, the bruises I’d been healing for days. I drew them all away.

  Ellis sighed. “Thanks.”

  “How’s it going out there?”

  “Been hard, but we’re not letting them through. Jeatar is amazing. He won’t let us lose hope, keeps us focused and fighting, even laughing once in a while. Those sinkers made a big difference.”