Ludo gave the outside doors a shove and they swung open. Elskan whinnied and shot through them.
“Hang on, Des!” Astrid shouted.
And then the world turned into a blur as Astrid learned what it felt like to ride a bolt of lightning.
LING COUGHED. She took a deep breath and coughed again, wheezing for effect. Then she returned to her task—counting out arrow shafts and putting them in boxes.
She passed a full box to the prisoner across from her—Bai—whose job it was to fletch the shafts with gull feathers.
As she reached for another box, Ling hacked again. She shook her head and wiped her brow with the back of her hand.
“The current here is so warm tonight,” she whispered, even though it wasn’t.
Bai’s eyes darted from the arrow in his hands to Ling’s face. Worry creased his brow.
Ling counted out more arrows. She coughed again, grimacing this time, then pretended to steady herself against the work table.
“Bai…help me,” she whispered. The rooms spinning!”
Before Bai could react, she slumped to the floor where she lay gasping. Then she stopped breathing, hoping her face would turn a sickly shade of violet-blue. It did.
“Purple fever!” Bai shouted, backing away from her.
“Purple fever! Purple fever!” Panicked whispers spread through the warehouse like a red tide. Prisoners seated near Ling shot away and huddled at a distance.
A guard pushed his way through them. “What’s going on?” he demanded.
One of the prisoners pointed at Ling, now writhing on the warehouse floor.
The guard swam to her. He whacked her hard with his tail fins. Ling groaned in pain. That wasn’t an act; the slap really hurt. What she did next, however, was. She pushed herself off the floor and made as if she was trying to get up, but sank again, and faked another coughing fit.
“It’s purple fever, sir,” a prisoner said fearfully.
“Get her to the infirmary!” the guard ordered. When no one swam forward to do so, he grabbed two mermen by their necks and shoved them toward Ling. “Get her out of here!” he shouted.
The mermen picked Ling up by her arms and dragged her out of the warehouse. Ling let her body go limp and her head loll. She closed her eyes. That way no one could see the triumph in them.
So far, the plan was working. Her father had said he was going to start a rumor about purple fever. He would falsely diagnose it in every patient with weakness or a temperature. Judging from the reaction her performance just received, the rumor had spread. The prisoners, and the guards, were all terrified of catching the dread disease.
Ling’s coworkers brought her to the door of the infirmary, dumped her there, and sped back to the warehouse.
Ling moaned loudly. A few seconds later, Tung-Mei was at her side.
“Oh, Ling, not you!” she exclaimed sorrowfully.
Ling nodded. “I feel like I’m burning up. Please help me, Tung-Mei,” she rasped. She wished she could tell her friend the truth, but for Tung-Mei’s own safety, the less she knew, the better.
“Shan!” Tung-Mei shouted. “Come quick. We’ve got another fever patient!”
Ling gave no sign of knowing her father, and he was equally blank-faced as he wound her arm around his neck and helped her to the rear of the infirmary.
“I’m sorry, but all of our cots are full. I’m going to have to put you over here,” he said, propping Ling up against the back wall, away from everyone else. That was part of the plan, too. They could talk here without being overheard.
“The cart’s here,” her father whispered tersely, as he pretended to examine her. “I’m going to load some bodies, then I’ll come for you. Lie down and close your eyes. Don’t move.”
Ling nodded. Her father moved off to another patient, and she slowly lowered herself to the floor. The infirmary was so busy, no patient or guard would take any notice of one more prisoner quietly succumbing to fever. This was the easy part. As Ling lay there, she ran through the rest of the plan she and her father had devised.
“The cart driver comes at seven in the morning and again in the evening to haul away the dead. The death riders on gate duty are supposed to search the cart, and sometimes they do, but mostly they only glance at it,” her father had told her. “If someone could fake being dead—”
Ling had cut him off. “You want me to ride out of here in the death cart. Hidden among the bodies,” she had said. She’d shuddered at the thought, but had pushed her fear aside. She had to get away.