following the same journey: carried in writhing and screaming, carried out silent and still to the centre of the mountain and the firestone where the pyre always burned.
Then, on the second day of the fourth week after the Citadel had opened its doors to the sick, Gabriel opened his eyes and they stayed open. It was the middle of the afternoon after the doctors had finished their rounds and Athanasius was away attending to the organization of what was left of his flock. He lay there, staring up at the soot-blackened stalactites high above him, listening to the drugged moans of the infected and the creak of their bindings as their bodies clenched and twisted all around him. He lay there a long time, bracing himself for the moment when the fever would drag him back down again, as it always had before. But this time it did not.
‘Hello,’ he called out, his voice raw and unfamiliar. Murmurings rose from the beds surrounding him, the sick roused from their drugged slumber.
‘HELLO,’ he called again, loud enough to hurt his throat and bring footsteps hurrying. A face appeared above his bed, brow furrowed, eyes ringed with the shadows of deep fatigue. Gabriel didn’t know him but he recognized the contamination suit he was wearing – and he also noticed the loaded syringe.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You don’t need to do that. I feel better.’
It was as if the doctor hadn’t heard him, his sleep-starved brain running through the well-worn routines of patient sedation. Gabriel felt the cold alcohol swipe of an antiseptic swab on his arm. He tried to twist away but the bindings held him fast.
‘WAKE UP!’ he shouted, as much to the doctor as to those surrounding him. ‘WAKE UP!’
The effect was instant, the faint murmurings erupting into howls as the sleeping sick were shocked into wailing wakefulness. The doctor looked up at the chaos now surrounding him, every patient around him now bucking and thrashing against their bindings as they howled in torment. He looked back down at Gabriel, his eyes shining with annoyance at the trouble he’d caused, he held up the syringe and readied the shot.
‘What are you doing?’ Gabriel growled, his throat raw from his shouting. ‘I do not need sedating. See to the others first. Their need is clearly greater.’
The doctor hesitated, looked like he was still going to spike him, then a shadow passed over Gabriel’s face and he glanced across to see the smooth-headed figure of a monk standing on the other side of his bed. ‘It’s OK,’ Athanasius said to the doctor, ‘I shall sit with him. You see to these other poor souls.’
The doctor blinked as though a spell had been broken, then turned away to start dealing with the others.
Athanasius pulled the stool out from beneath Gabriel’s bed and settled on it. His eyes were bloodshot and sunken and he smelled of wood smoke. Gabriel breathed it in, relishing the smell. It was the first time in a long while he had smelt anything other than the strange and permanent odour of oranges. And there was something else. He was cold and his sweat-soaked bindings felt wet and unpleasant against his skin.
‘The fever,’ he whispered in realization of what this meant. ‘It’s gone.’
Athanasius laid a warm hand on Gabriel’s forehead and straightened in his chair. ‘Thank God,’ he said.
Another figure appeared by the bed and held a thermometer in his ear. It beeped and he checked the reading. He reset it and did it again.
‘Ninety-eight point six,’ he said, the hint of a smile on his weary face. ‘You’re probably a few points cooler than I am.’
‘Dr Kaplan, allow me to introduce Gabriel Mann,’ Athanasius said.
Gabriel nodded a greeting. ‘I’d shake your hand but someone tied me to this bed.’ Kaplan smiled again. ‘Tell me. Did the quarantine work. Has the disease been contained?’
He knew the answer before either of them spoke. He heard it in the pause and saw it in the flick of their eyes as they looked away from him.
‘There have been new cases,’ the doctor replied, ‘ones that have originated beyond the line of the original quarantine in the metropolitan districts of the city. We have continued to remove the infected and quarantine those at risk but we have so far been unable to contain it. As of last week a state of martial law has been in place in the greater city of Ruin to try and prevent the further spread of the disease. The