The Invasion of the Tearling

“Yes,” Kelsea replied, not knowing what else to say. Her own helplessness had frozen her tongue. She wormed her hand inside his, felt him clasp it gently.

“My honor, Lady.” Kibb smiled, a smile of drugs, and his eyes slipped closed again. Elston made a choking sound and turned away, but Kelsea could not. Schmidt was undoubtedly the best doctor Mace could find, but he was only the shadow of a dead breed. There was no real medicine anymore; all of it had gone down with the White Ship, the medical personnel left behind, bobbing in the waves beneath the storm. What Kelsea wouldn’t give for even one of those doctors now! She thought of the brutal cold the survivors must have endured, treading water in the middle of God’s Ocean until exhaustion made them sink beneath the waves. By the end, they must have been in agony. Frigid air seemed to coalesce around Kelsea and she began to shiver helplessly, her legs cramping. Her vision went dark.

“Lady?”

A great shock slammed into Kelsea’s chest, so hard that she gasped. Pen caught her from behind, or she would have fallen backward. She clamped Kibb’s hand more tightly, struggling to hold on to him, knowing somehow that if she let go, the spell would be broken and nothing could be done—

Her stomach imploded in pain. Kelsea clamped her mouth shut, but a shriek built behind her lips and her body bucked in rebellion. Unbearable pressure laced across her abdomen and seemed to wrench her muscles, stretching them beyond their capacity.

“Hold her! Get her mouth open!”

Hands were on her arms and legs, but Kelsea barely felt them. The pressure on her abdomen doubled, tripled, going up and up, a feeling that had no comparison for Kelsea beyond the increasing scream of a teakettle. Her body continued to thrash, her heels digging into the chamber floor, but the inner Kelsea was thousands of miles away, struggling in the dark of God’s Ocean, trying not to go under. A wave of freezing water broke on her, closed over her head, and Kelsea tasted bitter salt.

Fingers forced her mouth open—somehow, she knew they were Pen’s—and groped for her tongue, but it all seemed very distant. There was only the shredding agony in her belly, and the cold, a paralyzing cold that seemed to have enclosed the entire world. Kelsea breathed in shallow gasps, trying not to gag at the intrusion of fingers pinning her tongue.

“You! Doctor! Get over here!”

Hands on her shoulders now, bruising hands, holding her down with great force. Mace’s hands, his face above her torn with anxiety, shouting commands because that’s how Mace dealt with crisis, sometimes it seemed that he could do nothing but give orders—

The pain vanished.

Kelsea took a deep breath and lay still. After a few moments, the hands on her relaxed, but didn’t let go entirely. She looked up and saw them crouched over her: Mace, Pen, Elston, Coryn, and Wellmer. The ceiling was a mass of incomprehensible tiles over their heads.

With a murmured apology, Pen removed his fingers from her mouth. Kelsea’s body felt light, clear, as though her blood had been replaced with water … the water that came from the spring near the cottage, so clean that they could prepare food with it directly from the pool. The unnatural cold had gone as well, and Kelsea was warm now, almost drowsy, as though someone had wrapped her in a blanket.

“Lady? Are you in pain?”

Kelsea was still gripping a hard object: Kibb’s hand. She sat up, feeling Pen move to support her shoulders. Kibb lay entirely still now, his eyes closed.

“Is he dead?”

Schmidt leaned over Kibb, his hands moving in a rapid, clinical way that Kelsea admired: forehead to pulse, and back to forehead again. He checked these areas with increasing agitation before finally turning to Kelsea, his face blank. “No, Majesty. The patient breathes easy.”

He pressed downward on Kibb’s abdomen, tentatively, ready to withdraw at any twitch. But there was nothing. Even Kelsea could see Kibb’s chest rise and fall now, the deep, even breathing of a man in the darkest part of unconsciousness.

“His fever is finished,” Schmidt murmured, pressing hard on Kibb’s stomach now, as though desperate to elicit a response. “Really, we should dry and cover him, or he will take a chill.”

“The appendix?” Mace asked.

Schmidt shook his head, sitting back on his heels. Kelsea reached up to clutch her two sapphires. They hadn’t spoken to her since the Argive, but still their weight was comforting, a solid thing to hold.

“Sir?” One of the new guards was peeking around the doorway. “Is everything all right? We heard—”

“Everything is fine,” Mace replied, turning a threatening glare on everyone in the room. “Back to your post, Aaron, and shut the door behind you.”

“Yes sir.” Aaron vanished.