“I barely know,” Tess half whispered, “but I’ll do my best.”
She’d left Pathka’s pilgrimage out of her stories because there was so much she didn’t understand and couldn’t explain. Josquin listened solemnly, and by the end of the story she was weeping into his lap.
“Your friend is ill,” said Josquin, stroking her short curls. “Let’s tend him tonight; if he doesn’t improve by morning, I’ll call for Dr. Belestros and St. Blanche. They say St. Nedouard was a great physician, but these two together exceed even him. They’ll know how to help. Once Pathka is well, you’ll have time to worry about how to make this right.”
“How did you know—” Tess began, half weeping, half laughing.
“Because I know you and I know your conscience,” said Josquin. “I’ve heard all your stories, remember? The world could end, and you’d blame yourself for it—and then you’d find a way to push on through the wreckage and save what can be saved.”
Tess wiped her eyes. “Are you calling me pushy, villain?”
Josquin kissed her warmly, and then they turned their attention to Pathka.
* * *
There passed a terrible night. Pathka, in the grip of insensible delirium, thrashed and muttered and did not know Tess at all. His eyes wouldn’t focus; his eye cones drooped alarmingly. Tess curled up beside him and slept as best she could.
Josquin called the physician and the holy machinist by thnik as soon as it was light, while Tess was still (or finally) asleep. An hour later, Gaida threw open the door, crying, “Dr. Belestros is here, and St. Blanche! Are you unwell, Jos? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Josquin, dressed but not yet in his chair, put a finger to his lips and pointed urgently at Tess and the quigutl, lying behind the furnace. Gaida let the visitors through, but before she left said waspishly, “I’d assumed that when she wasn’t in her room, she was sleeping with you.”
“So much for not alarming her,” muttered Tess from the corner, and then she was on her feet brushing herself off and trying to look presentable.
Tess recognized St. Blanche as the pale, scarred woman Josquin had spoken to at the Academy gala; her scars, up close, turned out to be silver scales. The Saint smiled shyly. Dr. Belestros, a saarantras, was taller and darker than his counterpart. Tess was surprised to find she recognized him, too, as the doctor Pashfloria had asked about the serpent’s healing power.
The dragon doctor wasted no time on greetings, but went straight to palpating Pathka’s throat. Belestros listened to the quigutl’s chest, wrenched an eye cone aperture open with two thumbs, and then reached around and stuck an instrument up Pathka’s cloaca. Tess flinched; Josquin took her hand.
“When did you last treat a quigutl, Bel?” said Blanche, her light voice carrying a note of warning. “Are you being gentle enough?”
“St. Blanche is his conscience,” Josquin stage-whispered to Tess.
“I could drop this quigutl on his head,” said the doctor evenly, “and he’d feel nothing.” He wiped his hands on a towel. “There are two things wrong with him. First: pneumonia, which should be curable with a syrup. Second, and more perilous: a condition we dragons call inevitable quigutl quietude. I’ve seen it before. They fancy themselves ingenious, courting contradiction, but they may delve so deeply into paradox that their minds seize up. The wage of illogic is paralysis; everyone knows this. Blanche, I’ll need your electroquietus unit.”
St. Blanche rummaged in a large leather bag and drew out a device like a hedgehog, its quills all wires and switches. From two longer wires dangled what looked like meat-turning forks. Dr. Belestros pressed their tines to the little quigutl’s temples, wedging them under scales and into flesh.
“Wait,” said Tess. “What are you doing?”
“We’ll send an electrostatic current through the brain to stop it,” said Dr. Belestros, as if this were nothing. “A second current will start it up again.”
“You’ve done this before?”
“Not precisely this,” said the doctor, wrapping Pathka’s head to keep the forks in place. “The machine is for hearts, usually, but I see no reason—”
“All will be well,” said Blanche, turning solemn violet eyes to Tess’s face. “I built this machine. No one can run it but me, because it runs on my power. It will be my current, softly closing his mind and gently waking him again.”
“And he’ll be himself when he wakes?” asked Tess tremulously. “He’ll remember me, and all he’s been through?”
“Oh, probably,” said Dr. Belestros, waving an impatient hand. “He’s a quigutl. Does it matter what he remembers?”
St. Blanche shot her colleague a look. “We’ll do our best. You may wish to leave.”
But Tess couldn’t leave. She’d have held Pathka’s hand, but they made her watch from the bed so the device wouldn’t shock her as well. Josquin held her; Tess wouldn’t take her eyes off her friend. Pathka twitched, died, twitched again, and took a convulsive breath. His eyes focused, though they wobbled; he raised his head an inch off the ground and said, “Teth?”
Then Tess was on her knees beside him, stroking his head, asking how he was and what he remembered and did he know she loved him?
“Stop,” said Pathka, squirming in her arms. “Stop talking and listen, Teth. I was…we call it tutlkikiu, the splitting death. I will slip into it again. I feel myself slipping already.”
“You should stop thinking contradictory thoughts,” said Dr. Belestros.
“Quiet, dragon,” snapped Pathka. “Thinking couldn’t do this. It’s feeling—which dragons don’t understand, but you do, Teth. It’s like the time you walked out of Affle in a daze, the same, except it’s all the time, and I can’t climb out; I will slide down forever unless I resolve it.”
Pathka struggled for breath and coughed painfully. “The Academy sent a little army after Anathuthia. The monks tried to stop them—some died trying. I tried, too, but we were too few, and they were armed. They killed…they killed…”
“Kikiu told me,” said Tess hastily, trying to spare him the anguish of reliving it.
“Let me say it!” Pathka wailed. “They killed Anathuthia with a ballista bolt through the eye and then hacked her into pieces. I was swimming in gore, and I hated you, Teth! No one else had seen her but the monks and me; it had to be you who sent them. I hated you, but I can’t hate you, but I can’t stop thinking about it, but you’re human so I can’t…I can’t—”
“He’s falling back under,” said Dr. Belestros.
“Can’t you use the machine again?” cried Tess.
“Not without harm,” said St. Blanche, her pale brows pinched. “I don’t understand all his words, but I think you’re what sets him off, child.”
Pathka struggled in Tess’s arms, babbling and gnashing his teeth. It was the gnashing that made Tess understand: “Sweet St. Siucre, he needs to bite me.”
“His bite is septic. It could kill you,” said St. Blanche, moving as if to separate Tess from the quigutl.
“It’s not a terrible idea,” said Dr. Belestros, blocking St. Blanche with an outstretched arm, his voice tinged with curiosity. “That’s how they reset their misfiring brains in the wild, by biting each other. The pressure of the jaw releases a de-stressing neuro—”
Tess had no time for this. She grasped Pathka’s head, trying to get his attention. “I want you to bite me. I know you don’t bite humans, on principle, and it’s going to hurt, but if this is what you need to be at peace, then do it. Please.”
She extended her arm and Pathka clamped down with tremendous force before she was ready. For half a second she felt only surprise, but then the pain caught up and was everywhere, like an immolation.
Then, mercifully, mind and body agreed she’d had enough.
* * *