I nodded again and added another five balls to the bucket. Then, after a moment’s consideration, I added one more. “That brings us up to twenty-one,” I explained. “A good number. Three sevens.”
“Nothing wrong with having luck on your side,” Denna agreed.
“We want it to die quickly, too,” I said. “It will be more humane for the draccus and safer for us.”
Denna looked at me. “So we double it?” I nodded and she headed back into the trees while I made another twenty-one balls and dropped them into the bucket. She came back with more wood just as I was rolling up the last ball.
I packed the resin down into the bottom of the bucket. “That should be more than enough,” I said. “That much ophalum would kill the entire population of Trebon twice over.”
Denna and I looked at the bucket. It contained about a third of all the resin we’d found. What was left in the oilskin sack would be enough to buy Denna a half-harp, pay off my debt to Devi, and still have enough left over so that we could live comfortably for months. I thought of buying new clothes, a full set of new strings for my lute, a bottle of Avennish fruit wine….
I thought of the draccus brushing aside trees as if they were sheaves of wheat, shattering them casually with its weight.
“We should double it again,” Denna said, echoing my own thoughts, “just to be sure.”
I doubled it yet again, rolling out another forty-two balls of the resin while Denna fetched armload after armload of wood.
I got the fire blazing just as the rain started to come down. We built it larger than our last one with the hope that a brighter fire would attract the draccus more quickly. I wanted to get Denna back to the relative safety of Trebon as soon as possible.
Lastly I cobbled together a rough ladder using the hatchet and twine I’d found. It was ugly but serviceable, and I leaned it up against the side of the greystone arch. This time, Denna and I would have an easy route to safety.
Our dinner was nowhere near as grand as last night’s. We made due with the last of my now-stale flatbread, dried meat, and the last potatoes baked on the edge of the fire.
While we ate, I told Denna the full story of the fire in the Fishery. Partly because I was young, and male, and desperately wanted to impress her, but I also wanted to make it clear that I had missed our lunch due to circumstances completely outside my control. She was the perfect audience, attentive and gasping at all the right moments.
I was no longer worried about her overdosing. After gathering a small mountain of firewood, her mania was fading, leaving her in a content, almost dreamy lethargy. Still, I knew the aftereffects of the drug would leave her exhausted and weak. I wanted her safely in bed in Trebon for her recovery.
After we finished eating I made my way over to where she sat with her back against one of the greystones. I cuffed up my shirtsleeves. “Alright, I need to check you over,” I said pompously.
She smiled lazily at me, her eyes half-closed. “You really do know how to sweet talk a girl, don’t you?”
I felt for her pulse in the hollow of her slender throat. It was slow, but steady. She shied away a little from my touch. “You tickle.”
“How do you feel?” I asked.
“Tired,” she said, her voice slightly slurred. “Good and tired and a little cold….”
While this wasn’t unexpected, it was still a little surprising considering the fact that we were only feet away from a blazing bonfire. I fetched the extra blanket from my bag and brought it back to her. She snuggled into it.
I leaned close so that I could look into her eyes. Her pupils were still wide and sluggish, but no more than before.
She reached up and lay her hand on my cheek. “You have the sweetest face,” she said, looking at me dreamily. “It’s like the perfect kitchen.”
I fought not to smile. This was the delirium. She’d fade in and out of it before the profound exhaustion dragged her down into unconsciousness. If you see someone spouting nonsense to themselves in an alleyway in Tarbean, odds are they’re not actually crazy, just a sweet-eater deranged by too much denner. “A kitchen?”
“Yes,” she said. “Everything matches and the sugar bowl is right where it should be.”
“How does it feel when you breathe?” I asked.
“Normal,” she said easily. “Tight but normal.”
My heart beat a little faster at that. “What do you mean by that?”
“I have trouble breathing,” she said. “My chest gets tight sometimes and it’s like breathing through pudding.” She laughed. “Did I say pudding? I meant molasses. Like a sweet molasses pudding.”
I fought off the urge to point out angrily that I’d asked her to tell me if she felt anything wrong with her breathing. “Is it hard to breathe now?”
She shrugged indifferently.
“I need to listen to your breathing,” I said. “But I don’t have any tools here, so if you could unbutton your shirt a little, I’ll need to press my ear against your chest.”
Denna rolled her eyes and unbuttoned more of her shirt than was altogether necessary. “Now that one is entirely new,” she said archly, sounding for a moment like her normal self. “I’ve never had anyone try that before.”
I turned and pressed my ear up against her breastbone.
“What does my heart sound like?” she asked.
“It’s slow but strong,” I said. “It’s a good heart.”
“Is it saying anything?”
“Nothing I can hear,” I said.
“Listen harder.”
“Take a few deep breaths and don’t talk,” I said. “I need to listen to your breathing.”
I listened. The air rushed in and I felt one of her breasts pressing against my arm. She exhaled and I felt her breath, warm against the back of my neck. Gooseflesh broke out over my whole body.
I could picture Arwyl’s disapproving stare. I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate on what I was doing. In and out, it was like listening to the wind through the trees. In and out, I could hear a faint crackling, like paper crumpling, like a faint sigh. But there was no wetness, no bubbling.
“Your hair smells really nice,” she said.
I sat up. “You’re fine,” I said. “Make sure to let me know if it gets any worse or feels different.”
She nodded amiably, smiling dreamily.
Irritated that the draccus seemed to be taking its sweet time making an appearance, I heaped more wood on the fire. I looked out at the northern bluffs, but there was nothing to see in the dim light but the outlines of trees and rocks.
Denna laughed suddenly. “Did I call your face a sugar bowl or something?” she asked, peering at me. “Am I even making any sense right now?”
“It’s just a little delirium,” I reassured her. “You’ll fade in and out of it before you go to sleep.”