Fever: An Uncommon World Novella Read online

  She was enjoying this far too much. And I had the uneasy feeling she was keeping something from me. “Samira, if you think you can force me into a tumble…”

  “No, no, lord servant. I’m no criminal. It’s a simple matter of working off your time in this room and the food I’m about to give you. Simple business. You’ll owe me. Whether or not we tumble.” She winked and glided out of the room.

  A grumble rose to my lips, but I closed it off. She was right. Father had taught me enough about business outside of Old Farm. Cities like this, even a smaller town like Jakobden, didn’t function like my home and my people, giving and taking as needed. They aren’t family, he’d said. Only true family can give up food for one another when times are lean.

  Blood came off my chin easily with the wet cloth. Not so from my clothing. I washed my dusty feet. My right shoulder pinched as I stripped my tunic off over my head and I swallowed a squeak of pain. Taking up the needle and thread Samira had left beside the bowl, I turned my tunic inside out and began stitching the two rips along the sides.

  I was such a complete and utter fool. I’d be lucky if Kinneret would even look at me after all this, let alone marry me. I’d be lucky if Amir Ekrem didn’t take my head. He wouldn’t want to, but Serhat would. She’d press him. In the years I’d known her, I’d only seen her not get her way twice.

  Samira returned with a steaming plate of flatbread and some sauced vegetable I didn’t recognize. I reached for the cup of watered wine she held, but she jerked it away.

  “Eat first.”

  The vegetable tasted green and fresh, the sauce spicy and cinnamon-like. As I drained the weak wine, I realized why Samira had insisted I finish my meal first. The simple bed in the corner blurred. My knees trembled, and I braced myself on the lotus tower that held the establishment upright. Samira’s hands felt prickly as she helped me to lie down.

  “Sleep, lord servant. You need it.”

  “What did you…you gave me something…I have to leave now. Can’t wait.” I tried to argue, but darkness wrapped me up and stole my mind. I’d been drugged. Again.

  Fevered dreams bit into my sleep.

  In my nightmare, my father and the elders glared at my empty, open hands. Sweat soaked my tunic and blood ran from my lip. Kinneret pushed a curl away from her face and refused to look me in the eye. Explanations sifted from my mouth like useless chaff.

  I had to wake up.

  Wake up.

  But I couldn’t. My eyelids wouldn’t open.

  Can’t.

  Darkness swamped me.

  An animal’s bray shook me out of my stupor. There was some commotion in the street beyond the inn’s thick, woven walls. I had to clear my head. Water. Water will clear the drug away.

  The room was nearly black with only a strip of light coming in between the cut in the door’s flap. Nearby, someone was humming. My head pounded.

  The water, I reminded myself. On the table.

  I pushed off the bed and my knees hit the floor. How had that happened? I lowered onto my elbows and pressed my forehead into the thin rug, desperate to ease the throbbing. Fighting a rush of clinging heat and nauseating dizziness, I eased myself to standing and put a hand against my stomach.

  Where was my tunic? I only had my small clothes on. Had the woman undressed me? How long had I been out?

  The table rocked under my palm and water lipped over the edge of the bowl. I plunged the cup into the cool liquid and drank all I could before I thought my stomach would burst.

  Maybe Samira meant to keep me here for some strange purpose. Maybe she just thought she was being helpful. Regardless, I had to leave and I had to leave now.

  4

  Avi

  The street beside the row of inns bustled with men who seemed to be late for important things. Two donkeys and a camel, loaded up with sacks and bedrolls, brayed their opinion on being tied together.

  Radi and I had talked to someone at every inn—the owner at all but one whose employee said she was out on an errand. Worry pinched clawed fingers into my shoulders and neck and I couldn’t believe it was this hard to find a person. Radi, arms crossed and leaning against a lotus tower’s white stone, tapped an elbow, thinking.

  “You probably need to get back to your parents’ stall in the market,” I said.

  He yawned wide despite his obvious effort to fight it. His white teeth were straight except for one tooth on top, on the side. “I do. But what’s your next idea for finding your brother-in-law to be? I hate to just leave you.”

  I’d had no luck at the Kyros Walls, but it was really the only place to go. Nothing else stuck out in my mind. “I’ll try to get past the kyros’s front guards and try to see the kyros himself, or maybe a representative.”

  Radi held out a hand to lead me back through the maze of tents and people of all colors speaking in three different languages. I took it and gave him the best smile I had in me. I could’ve figured out a way back on my own. I really just liked the feel of his fingers on mine.

  I felt strangely lonely.

  I’d only been gone four days, but it felt like so much longer. It was silly. But the foreign tents, languages, and scents were waves crashing over my head. I couldn’t seem to get a good breath.

  At the market, merchants had set out their tables in front of tents that appeared to serve as both home and goods storage. Beside Radi’s family’s stall, a woman and a man in rich black clothing haggled with a short man. Their hands moved nearly as fast as their lips.

  “Radi!” A young man—a little older than Radi and me—burst from behind the table and knocked a roll of blue wool to the ground. He hugged Radi. “Where’ve you been? I wanted to try the sweep Nuh showed me.

  “That fighter has more patience than my wonderful mother,” Radi said. “Are you paying him or something?”

  The man I guessed was his cousin laughed and punched Radi in the arm, well, tried to punch him. Radi slipped his shoulder back and the cousin missed.

  “No, cousin. He said I remind him of the brother he lost during the Invader attack. Before you were born.”

  Radi spun and held a hand out toward me. “Bash, this is Avi. She’s looking for her brother-in-law. He’s needed back at home. They’re from Jakobden.”

  Bash’s eyes went wide. “Ooo. Near the Pass. Have you seen a Salt Wraith?”

  “I have. It’s not something to be happy and excited about.”

  “Of course. Sorry.”

  “It’s all right. I guess if I hadn’t had seen them myself, I might think they’re interesting too.”

  “Her sister is sick,” Radi said, “and needs her husband-to-be.”

  I ran a hand down Arrow’s warm nose and let her lip my palm, savoring the feel of her soft horsey lips. “Kinneret has a deadly fever and—”

  “Wait.” Bash put out a hand. “Your sister is the great Kinneret Raza? Mistress of the Pass?”

  “Mistress of the what?”

  “The Pass! The one who did all the amazing things that the traders are all talking about.” He put his clasped hands over his heart and blinked. “Kinneret Raza.”

  “Um. Yes. She is. Is everyone really talking about her?” I turned to Radi, who shrugged.

  Bash waved Radi off. “Don’t ask him. He doesn’t talk to anyone who knows anything.”

  “Except that he happened to spend all morning with Kinneret Raza’s sister.” I couldn’t help but smirk.

  “Except for that, yes.” Bash smiled. “Why are you here? Oh wait. You said she had a fever?”

  Radi cleared his throat. “If you’d shut up for a minute, she could tell you.”

  I did.

  “But,” Bash stammered, “but why can’t she heal herself? She’s amazing!”

  “She’s not a healer. My aunt is. She’s on her way from Kurakia, but I don’t know if she’ll get to Jakobden in time.”

  “Aren’t there other healers?”

  “Yes. And the amir has called them in. No one has been able to he
al her. A lot of people have this fever.” I turned to Radi. “Thank you, for all you’ve done to help. I need to go now.”

  “I’ll be here if you need a place to stay tonight.”

  “I’ll find him today. I have to. I have to get back home.”

  He nodded, and his cousin smiled sadly. I left them explaining everything to Radi’s parents, who were curious about where he’d been all morning. Radi gave me one last look and I tried to memorize his features. I didn’t want to forget the boy who’d been so kind to me or the way his fingers had felt on mine.

  “You cannot pass,” the guards at the Kyros Walls said. “Public supplications take place tomorrow. Today is only for those with appointments to see the kyros or his retinue.”

  “I just need to see if my brother-in-law is here. He does have an appointment with the kyros, for the amir in Jakobden.” I wasn’t sure exactly how that worked, but I wasn’t going to tell this guard. “He’s probably inside, waiting for a meeting right now.” Since he hadn’t been at any of the inns, this was the only answer.

  “Right.”

  “Why don’t you believe me? Do you really hear stories like this all the time? This is because I’m not from Akhayma.” I looked to the skies as another group of people—blessed appointment holders, I had to assume—sidled past me and walked happy as you please into the kyros’s courtyard.

  “No,” the first guard said. “We have many visitors.”

  “Then it’s my age. I’m a little girl so you can’t let me in to see the big important kyros.”

  “Say it again, and you become our prisoner. No one is to speak ill of the kyros.” He eyed the five bells on my sash. “Even if you are high-caste. You can wait until the supplicant’s day.”

  “When is that again?” My mind was flying from one idea to another, all of them worthless.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “I can’t wait. This is important.” My vision blurred, and I wiped my hand across my eyelashes. “Please. Isn’t there someone else I can ask?” Kinneret could be dying right now. Or what if I waited one night, then she died on our way home? “There has to be a system for this sort of thing, for emergencies, right? Help me, please.” I palmed my eyes again, angry that I couldn’t seem to stop crying.

  “That’s enough,” the second guard said.

  A man in a rippling black kaftan and a well-dressed party rode up to the gates, blocking my view. I swallowed and nudged my horse away from the entrance, veering left and following a stream of men and women with steel at their belts and shiny, pointed helmets. I pounded a fist against the saddle in front of me. Arrow snorted.

  “Sorry” I sighed. I was apologizing to a horse. I needed some sleep.

  As I let Arrow stop to snuffle a patch of green near the canals, a skinny little boy with wild hair threw a stick into the air. My thoughts shifted and surfaced, one by one, in my head. None of my ideas would work. I couldn’t pretend to have an appointment now. The guards had seen me. I didn’t have enough money with me to bribe someone with an appointment to bring me in with them. Everyone gaining entrance had looked like clan chieftains anyway. They weren’t going to care about one kaptan in a faraway township. My gaze followed the spin of the boy’s stick as he tossed it up again.

  I had to think like Kinneret. She never let anything get in the way of what she wanted.

  The little boy caught the stick neatly between his teeth. Amazing. Especially considering flames flickered at the ends of the stick. A crowd gathered around him, stomping their feet in praise and tossing him small coins. A girl and a boy, siblings from the look of their similar noses, ran past.

  “I’m going to tell Mother about that new boy!” the girl said.

  Her brother nodded. “Su will want to see too. I’ll get him.”

  I searched the crowd for Calev. “Calev ben Y’hoshua! Where are you?”

  The noise of merchants calling out, hooves on the ground, and the rush of everyday life in this big city trampled my shouts

  If only I could toss fire and catch it in my mouth. Then maybe I could get everyone’s attention. Or at least Calev’s.

  I huffed a breath. What would Kinneret do?

  Wait. That’s it. I tugged Arrow to a stop beside a man selling ponies. If I did something that got everyone’s attention, surely Calev would find me.

  But what could I do?

  “You want to sell your fine mount?” The pony merchant set a gentle hand on my horse’s neck.

  “No. Thank you.” I had an idea. A foolish plan. “I think I’m going to need her for a ladder.”

  This was the stupidest idea I’d ever had. But it was just the sort of thing Kinneret would do and somehow get away with.

  “What?” The merchant scratched his head.

  I dug my heels into Arrow’s sides and drove through the crowded street toward the Kyros Walls, a good length from where the guards stood so if they came after me, I could get back on Arrow and ride away, into the crowd. I edged Arrow sideways against the pale stone, took my feet from the stirrups, and went to a crouch on the saddle. Arrow huffed and sidestepped.

  “Easy now. Be still.”

  Using the balance I’d learned on boats, I stood on her back and reached as high as I could. I needed handholds to climb. Arrow shifted her weight onto one back hoof and I caught myself against the wall, heart drumming.

  “Girl, what are you doing?” The pony merchant had followed me. He stood below, taking Arrow’s reins.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Can I have your horse when you fall and crack your head open?” Seeing my scowl, he let go of the reins. “Such a face on such a young person.”

  “Mind your own business.” I was going to fall and this was so stupid. But I couldn’t wait another night to get to Calev. Kinneret was dying. Every minute here was a minute wasted.

  He held out his hands. “All right. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Finally, my fingers dug into a space between the stones. I jammed a sandal into another uneven place in the Kyros Walls and pushed, leaving the saddle’s surface. My other foot dangled as I shuffled it around and searched for a little ledge, a flaw in the quarried white rock, some mortar that could be crumbled away. Sweat gathered under my shirt. My caste bells jingled as if they worried I was going to fall.

  A woman below gasped and said something in the desert tongue. Another voice replied. They were almost right under me.

  “Just some…entertainment. For the kyros. That’s all. No problem here,” I panted, knowing full well I looked completely mad climbing up the wall.

  I shifted to another set of handholds. The top of the wall was only an arm’s length away. I reached and reached, my one lodged foot shaking, and grasped the high, toothed edge of the walls. A sad grin split my dry lips. Kinneret would’ve loved to be here doing this with me. Normally, I would’ve told her to stop being a crazy person. But I had to risk this for her. If I could get Calev’s attention, get him home, she’d be all right. I was sure of it. My heart thrummed with the truth of it.

  I waved my arms. “Calev ben Y’hoshua!”

  The crowd—a clutter of black and red and orange kaftans—teemed on both sides of the walls. A huge black-blue tent with star-shaped panels of silvery material commanded the kyros's courtyard. Smaller tents, with people going in and out, surrounded it. Some paths were lined with smooth rock and a simple stable at the far end revealed swishing animal tails and servants with large bells suspended over their heads and attached to metal belts. A few faces peered up at me. I had to be louder.

  “Calev ben Y’hoshua! I’m looking for Calev! An Old Farm with black hair and an agreement from Jakobden’s amir!”

  Only a few more people looked up. I was going to have to be like the boy with the fire stick. I tied my skirt between my legs so I wouldn’t give that kind of show, placed my hands on the wide surface of the top of the wall, and lifted myself into a handstand.

  “Avi!” Radi’s voice bounced up to me.

&nb
sp; My elbow buckled.

  Someone else shouted.

  I caught myself. My lungs were about to burst.

  “Avi, you have to get down! You’ll be arrested!” Radi’s words were strained, high-pitched in his stress.

  “Is everyone paying attention?”

  “Yes, for Holy Fire’s sake, yes. Get down! I have a cousin—very, very distant but still— who works for the kyros’s wife. Her name is Meekra. Mother said she thinks she is her handmaiden. Mother said we might be able to get a message to her and some information if we’re lucky. Get down, please!”

  I lowered my feet and stood upright, looking not at Radi’s side of the wall, but toward the courtyard. High castes and nobles stared, their servants gawking beside them.

  “If you meet a Calev ben Y’hoshua,” I called out, cupping my hand to my mouth, “tell him to find his sister at…” I couldn’t name somewhere everyone knew in case the guards decided to come after me. “…at the place he would feel most comfortable!” I repeated the message, then noticed a shift in the crowd by the gates. I spun to see the guards, on the other side of the wall, pushing through the people and toward Radi.

  “Run!” I called to him.

  “No! I’ll help you down. Start climbing. I’ll help you!”

  “Just go!” The guards were already closing in. “Go!”

  Radi positioned Arrow below me. “Hurry!”

  My thundering pulse choked me. I rubbed my palms on my skirt, untied the knot, and lowered myself onto my stomach. I found a foothold and pretty soon Radi’s guiding whispers were nearer. With my feet on the saddle again, I took Radi’s hand.

  “Come on!” I jerked on his fingers to get him to jump up onto Arrow behind me.

  He huffed, then mounted easily, his muscled calf showing as his kaftan billowed.

  “Go!” I shouted into Arrow’s ear. She lurched forward. We were going to get away.

  Large hands thrust through the crowd and grabbed the reins, jerking us to a stop.

  Radi and I slid from Arrow’s back. The ground jarred my body and my teeth banged together.