The Devil's Heart - Carmen Carter [58]
The book he had been reading fell from numbed fingers onto the desktop. Shoving the volume to one side, he dropped his head down into the cradle of his arms and released his hold on consciousness.
The sound of the captain’s breathing could barely be heard, and his body moved imperceptibly with the steady rise and fall of his chest. The fingers of one hand twitched until they brushed against the rough surface of the Heart, then they stilled their movement.
As time passed, overhead lights dimmed automatically, tricked into quiescence by the still silence of the room. In the darkness, the gray rock came to life with an inner glow that dipped and flickered like the flame of a candle.
The man’s lips began to move, framing alien words.
“This one is …”
“… is dead,” said Telev automatically, yet when he looked up there was no one to hear his pronouncement.
The nearest aide was at the far end of the ward passing out bowls of soup to those strong enough to feed themselves. If there was time, and food enough to go around, she would try to help the weaker ones eat. The woman stopped ladling for a moment, wracked by a chesty cough, and Telev suspected that before too long he would find her lying on one of the cots herself. He only hoped there would be someone left to bring her food by then.
The healer turned back to the dead man. A cursory search of the body confirmed that it carried no identification beyond a clan scarf.
Telev studied the vaguely familiar pattern, but his mind was so numbed with fatigue that the answer was slow in coming.
Ah, yes, Assan.
There had been three family members attending an Assan in the ward just last week … weavers by trade … too poor to leave the city, but not too poor to pay for hospice treatment. Telev took a closer look at the puffy face of the man and recognized him as one of those three. So there were probably no Assan left alive or they would be here at this bedside.
Telev draped the scarf over the young man’s throat. Eventually someone would come along and haul the body outside for the next passing death cart.
They rumbled through the streets at all hours now, piled high with corpses, carrying their load to the funeral kilns that burned day and night to keep up with the victims of the Scourge.
Telev moved on to the next bed, where two sleeping children were huddled together as if for warmth.
Chills and a creeping cold over the extremities were the first sign of the pestilence, but perhaps they only sought the comfort of each other’s embrace. He listened to the steady sound of their intertwined breathing and was relieved that their lungs were still clear; their skin was still a pale blue, free of any mottled dark patches. By all rights, they were too well to merit space in the hospice, and the continued confinement put them at risk of contracting the Scourge, but as orphans he feared they would roam the streets of Andor until they starved or fell ill. There were more ways to die than from pestilence.
The condition of the last patient on the row was not so promising. The healer had known Evalla since childhood, had watched a quicksilver girl grow into a graceful young woman who had danced the sissalya cycles at the last fall solstice. Now, however, her white hair had turned as yellow as a grandmother’s and her once agile frame was stiff and bloated. Telev perched on the edge of her cot to examine her more closely. Air whistled in and out of her jointed antennae, an indication of their inflamed interior; her complexion had deepened to purple.
“She won’t eat,” said Shaav, the woman’s consort. He held a half-eaten chunk of bread and carefully picked at the scattered crumbs that had fallen from her mouth onto the bed.
“It hurts to swallow,” she said, gasping for breath. “I’ve gotten worse, haven’t I?”
“Yes, quite a bit worse.” Telev knew of several herbs that could at least ease her pain, but he had used up the last of them long ago, and there was no one left in the hospice who had