but at least he is not convulsing. His lashes are dark crescents against the gold skin of his face. He looks younger in sleep. Like the boy I danced with on the night of the Moon Festival.
I reach out a hand and place it against his jaw, rough with stubble, warm with life. It pours from him, this vitality—when he fights, when he rides. Even now, with his body battling poison, he throbs with it.
“Come on, Elias.” I lean over him, speaking into his ear. “Fight back. Wake up. Wake up.”
His eyes fly open, he spits out the gag, and I snatch my hand back from his face. Relief sweeps through me. Awake and injured is always better than unconscious and injured. Immediately, he lurches to his feet. Then he doubles over and dry-heaves.
“Lay down.” I push him to his knees and rub his broad back, the way Pop did with ill patients. Touch can heal more than herbs and poultices. “We have to figure out the poison so we can find an antidote.”
“Too late.” Elias relaxes into my hands for a moment before reaching for his canteen and drinking the contents down. When he finishes, his eyes are clearer, and he tries to stand. “Antidotes for most poisons need to be given within an hour. But if the poison were going to kill me, it would have already. Let’s get moving.”
“To where, exactly?” I demand. “The foothills? Where there are no cities or apothecaries? You’re poisoned, Elias. If an antidote won’t help, then you at least need medicine to treat the seizures, or you’ll be blacking out from here to Kauf,” I say. “Only you’ll die before we get there, because no one can survive such convulsions for long. So sit down and let me think.”
He stares at me in surprise and sits.
I pore over the year I spent with Pop as an apprentice healer. The memory of a little girl pops into my head. She had convulsions and fainting spells.
“Tellis extract,” I say. Pop gave the girl a drachm of it. Within a day, the symptoms eased. In two days, they stopped. “It will give your body a chance to fight the poison.”
Elias grimaces. “We could find it in Serra or Navium.”
Only we can’t go back to Serra, and Navium is in the opposite direction from Kauf.
“What about Raider’s Roost?” My stomach twists in dread at the idea. The giant rock is a lawless cesspit of society’s detritus—highwaymen, bounty hunters, and black market profiteers who know only the darkest corruption. Pop went there a few times to find rare herbs. Nan never slept while he was gone.
Elias nods. “Dangerous as the ten hells, but filled with people who wish to go as unnoticed as we do.”
He rises again, and while I’m impressed by his strength, I’m also horrified by the callous way he treats his body. He fumbles at the reins of the horse.
“Another seizure soon, Laia.” He taps the horse behind its left front leg. It sits. “Tie me on with rope. Head straight southeast.” He heaves himself into the saddle, listing dangerously to one side.
“I feel them coming,” he whispers.
I wheel about, expecting the hoofbeats of an Empire patrol, but all is silent. When I look back at Elias, his eyes are fixed on a point past my head. “Voices. Calling me back.”
Hallucinations. Another effect of the poison. I bind Elias to the stallion with rope from his pack, fill the canteens, and mount up. Elias slumps against my back, blacked out again. His smell, rain and spice, washes over me, and I take a steadying breath.
My sweat-damp fingers slide along the horse’s reins. As if the beast senses I know nothing about riding, it tosses its head and pulls at the bit. I wipe my hands on my shirt and tighten my grip.
“Don’t you dare, you nag,” I say to its rebellious snort. “It’s you and me for the next few days, so you better listen to what I say.” I give the horse a light kick, and to my relief, it trots forward. We turn southeast, and I dig my heels deeper. Then we are away, into the night.
VII: Elias
Voices surround me, quiet murmurs that remind me of a Tribal camp awakening: the whispers of men soothing horses and children kindling breakfast fires.
I open my eyes, expecting the sunshine of the Tribal desert, unabashedly bright, even at dawn. Instead, I stare up at a canopy of trees. The murmuring grows muted, and the air