The Scourge Read online

  But not in this storm!

  In any other circumstance, it would have been comforting to know that in desperate times, Weevil did far more foolish things than I'd ever attempt. But now, with lightning cracking almost directly overhead, that was downright stupid!

  "We have to get him out of that tree," I said to Jonas, and immediately started back down the stairs.

  Jonas grabbed my arm. "We have to find Della."

  "Weevil will die up there!"

  "And Della will die in this prison. Your friend knows what he's doing, and he's trusting us to do our job too."

  My lips pinched together. "Fine, but let's hurry."

  We both searched on the second floor, and I quickly realized it had been wise to keep my face in the shadows before. Because those who saw me weren't exactly offering me cheers and good wishes. One woman even welcomed me by throwing her pitcher of water at my face when I looked into her room.

  The third floor was even worse. People there had heard the commotion and those shouting out my name below. Many were already out of their rooms when we walked up.

  "We were wrong to listen to you, grub!" one woman shouted at me. "Until this morning, I could do my work assignments. I could manage the Scourge pain and feel I was living an almost normal life. But now I've lain here all evening, wishing the storm would just strike this building down and end all this moaning."

  "If there was one thrushweed plant on this island, then there must be more," I said. "When we find it, I'll personally bring you some and let you try it. The Scourge isn't--"

  "The Scourge is going to take us anyway!" a man yelled. "At least before today, it took us more gently."

  "You've all been poisoned!" I called back. "That is the Scourge--a poison. But it can be cured!" Even if there was no more thrushweed on this island, I knew where it grew in Keldan. I could return here and help these people. "If you give me a few more days, I will bring you the cure myself."

  "We might have a few more days," another man said, advancing toward me and Jonas. "But you don't. The wardens promised that if we turned you over to them, we'd all get new flasks full of medicine. So that's what we'll do." He snarled at those around him. "Get the girl!"

  As the third-floor Colonists moved closer to Jonas and me, we backed toward the stairs, but more people were coming up, so we couldn't get out that way. I looked out the window, still cracked open from when Della and I had dumped out the laundry. Too bad the laundry wasn't there anymore. It might've cushioned our fall if we decided to jump.

  Because as risky as that idea was, jumping out of a third-story window seemed safer than where we now were.

  "You're going to have a bad night!" I yelled at the growing crowd. "It'll be one of the hardest nights you've ever had to go through. I know, I've done it. But morning will come and we'll start to fix things tomorrow."

  "We don't have to wait out the night," a man said. "Not if we turn you in."

  He started to lunge for us, when a voice behind everyone shouted, "I forbid you to touch her!"

  Hearing Della's commanding voice, the crowd turned. With so many people between us, I couldn't see her, but I was certain that everyone around us had heard. "All of you know me and you know my father, so you know that he would've done everything possible to save me from this disease. None of it kept me from getting sick, and none of it has saved me from being here in this Colony. If all that money can't save me, what hope do any of you have? Did Governor Felling save any of you from this disease? No, she only gave you a medicine that can numb you for a while, even as it makes us sicker. There is only one person who has given us any hope of survival, and she is standing there before you. Look at Ani. She was as sick as me when we came here on the boats. Now she looks as healthy as we all used to be."

  "I am healthy." I raised up my arm to show the thin red line running up my forearm. "This is evidence that I've recovered. The Scourge is not a disease. You were poisoned, and thrushweed can cure it."

  "Rubbish," one woman muttered. "The governor has no reason to make us sick. The Scourge is real."

  "Whatever the Scourge is, I recovered from it too," Jonas said, holding up his arm. "But it wasn't because of the medicine."

  "Jonas?" Della called. I saw where she was pushing through the crowd, and suddenly, she was running to her friend. She gave him a warm embrace, and then he kissed her. I felt embarrassed to look at them, but happy too.

  And I wondered if one day, Weevil might ever want to kiss me. I thought if he did, I'd probably be all right with that. One day.

  When they parted, he whispered something to her. Della nodded and turned to the crowd. "I demand that you let us pass."

  They parted for her in a way they never would have for me or even Jonas. And as we turned and started to leave, I checked out the window again.

  I wasn't one for cursing, but I did now. Weevil had made it to the highest, thinnest branches of the vinefruit tree and was looking around in all directions.

  Without waiting for the people to move, I pushed through them and ran to the main floor. There, right beside the entry, was a half-filled laundry bin, probably abandoned when the storm hit. I grabbed it and pushed it with me out in the rain toward the tree. Weevil didn't see me coming. He was facing southward, looking out over the wall behind the infirmary. He was so intent on whatever he was watching that he might've forgotten all about the storm overheard.

  River People understood storms better than anyone. Water from the heavens was drawn to water already on the earth, and when storms hit, we felt the worst of it. Weevil knew better than to be up in that tree.

  But he had also promised to find us a boat within one hour, and this was the only way.

  I charged for him, determined to get that laundry bin beneath him before he either fell in the rain or was struck by lightning. Jonas wasn't far behind me, though Della was with him and much slower than me, so the gap between us widened.

  "Weevil!" I yelled. "Get down!"

  He turned and reached for a rope up in the tree with him. Probably the rope that held the cage suspended from the tree. I couldn't see the cage right now, though, only the rope.

  "Ani, run!" he yelled back at me.

  I was already running. But he knew that, which meant he was warning me to go back, to run away from him.

  I spun around, trying to see anything through this storm, and was immediately tackled to the ground by Warden Brogg. Jonas crashed into the two of us, fighting the warden off, but then Gossel came and several more wardens with him, as if they had all been searching for us together. From the corner of my eye, I saw Della creeping toward us. I wanted to warn her to stay back, but didn't dare call attention to her.

  Jonas and I were both pushed into the mud. It took the effort of every warden there to get our arms pulled behind us. I made sure of that.

  "I only brought enough rope for the girl," a warden said. "I didn't think we'd find another one out here."

  "Tie up the boy," Gossel said. "The governor has other plans for the girl anyway."

  Whatever they were, I didn't care. My eyes were on Della. She had snuck in close enough to grab the laundry bin and was now racing toward Weevil. I doubted the wardens even noticed her or cared what she was doing if they did notice. They wanted me, and Jonas had been a fugitive for even longer. Della was considered harmless.

  "Two for the infirmary, then," a warden said. "Jonas, we wondered where you had gone. I figured you were dead."

  "If you had found me before, I would've been dead by now," he said.

  "Well, we can take care of that."

  They sat us up, and my eyes immediately went to Weevil. Della was almost to him with the laundry bin, but now that she had crossed into the fenced yard, I couldn't really see her anymore. With a shout down at us, Weevil held on to the rope and jumped into the air. Now I understood. He was using the cage as a counterbalance. It would rise up as it lowered him.

  But he hadn't dropped far before lightning struck the tree, exactly where h
e had just been standing. Weevil was thrown off the rope, and limbs from the tree exploded away from its base. With so many wardens around me, I couldn't see where he fell. The fierce rain blinded me, or maybe it was my own fear and anger doing that. I couldn't see what was happening to him or Della.

  I stifled a scream in my throat. They could be hurt--very seriously hurt from either the lightning, or the fallen branches, or Weevil hurt from the fall itself. If I told the wardens, they could go check on them and ... and then what? They'd leave my friends to die or bring them into the infirmary with Jonas and me. To die.

  I lowered my head and let the tears fall while the wardens forced us to our feet and began walking Jonas and me toward the infirmary.

  Where people went in, and nobody ever came out.

  If the old prison had been cold and unwelcoming, it was nothing compared to the infirmary. At least some effort had been made to remove the feeling of the prison having once been an ancient dungeon.

  No such effort had been made here.

  Without its thick main doors, this infirmary would have been heavily flooded by now. As it was, it might've been the safest place in the Colony. Despite the serious situation, the irony of that thought gave me a grim smile.

  We walked down a narrow hallway, passing rows of cells with more thick wooden doors and heavy locks. There was some moaning in here, but most of the voices I heard seemed stronger than I'd have expected from the people dragged in here during recent days. One man in a cell to my right even yelled that he felt well and begged to be released. His words were echoed by others nearby, sounding equally strong. I struggled to figure that out.

  The moans obviously came from the sickest prisoners of these cells, but what were healthy people doing here? They hadn't come in healthy--at least, everyone I'd seen entering the infirmary looked like they were in their final moments of life.

  The Scourge was a poison made of spindlewill, slowly killing the Colonists outside of the infirmary. The medicine they took to stay numb was just a weaker form of the same poison.

  Yet in here, they were getting better.

  They weren't bringing people into the infirmary to die. They brought them here to live, but why?

  A Colonist had to be broken before coming to the infirmary. That was the reason the wardens hadn't been allowed to bring me here before. The governor wanted broken spirits, and whole bodies.

  None of this made sense. I wished Weevil were with me because he could help me sort these things out.

  No, I immediately corrected myself. No, I did not want Weevil here with me. I wanted him safe at home, laughing and diving to the bottom of the rivers and working hard for his family, and ... and I wanted to be there with him.

  I didn't even know if he was still alive. Nor if I would be alive by the end of this night.

  As we reached the final row, Jonas was led away toward a cell. I struggled against the warden's grip, desperate to see which cell they put him in. I'd need to know that for when I came to get him out again, which I fully intended to do. By the time they got control of me, I hadn't seen exactly which cell they took him into, but I had a close enough idea. As soon as possible, I would come to rescue him.

  The hallway ended there with only a single door ahead of us. This was the back room, where Governor Felling had apparently ordered me to be taken. I didn't know why, but it couldn't be for anything good. We entered an examination room, not too different from Doctor Cresh's office in Keldan. A fireplace was at the far end, with a lit fire inside, making the room a touch too warm. But a kettle was hung over it, and I recognized the scent at once. More medicine was being brewed, more poison. It had worked for over a year to keep the Colonists numb. Whatever happened to me, I doubted it would be as easy to fool them anymore. By tomorrow, when the medicine was ready, most of the people in that prison would already feel better than they had. They would know the medicine was an enemy to them. They'd know the governor was their enemy too.

  The wardens would never persuade the Colonists to believe their lies again, no more than they could put all this rainwater back into the clouds.

  But saving the Colonists wasn't enough. The governor could not be allowed to send anyone else here. Someone had to stop her.

  I really didn't want to think about who that someone might be.

  Another door stood at the far end of the room, letting in rainwater, so I guessed it had to be the infirmary's rear exit. Shelves on the walls held jars of herbs, liquids, and other ingredients. In any other physician's office, these jars might contain things to actually heal a person, or to improve their life somehow. Not here.

  But my attention went to a more unusual sight, a wooden grate in the floor of the room. They already had cells in the rest of this infirmary. What would they need with a caged pit beneath the floor?

  Maybe it was nothing. In the old days, when this place had been a prison, that had probably been used as an isolation cell. Before that, I couldn't imagine its use, and I was certain that I did not want to know.

  Yet as they led me in that direction, I figured I was about to find out. I tried digging in my feet. Governor Felling had already ordered my sentence, that I would get enough Scourge to kill me. What was in that pit? My resistance was useless. Gossel grabbed both my arms, locking them behind me.

  Brogg wasn't helping. He only stood aside, staring at our fight with sympathetic eyes. But sympathy did me no good.

  "Help me, Brogg!" I cried.

  He didn't move to help, but shook his head at Gossel. "The tests are one thing. This goes too far. I won't help you do this."

  Gossel began dragging me toward the grate, and then I had my first clue of what was down there.

  I heard hissing.

  Snakes.

  "This is wrong!" I yelled as I struggled against him. "You know this is wrong!"

  "You left the governor no choice," Warden Gossel said. "How many times were you warned? Unlock that grate, Brogg. Do it, or you'll go in with the grub."

  "Throw the keys into the pit," I told him. "Then neither of us will go in."

  Brogg frowned at me, looking truly sorry. "It's not as easy as that."

  "Follow my orders, or I will have you put inside, Brogg," Gossel said again. "Make your choice."

  Without looking at me, Brogg knelt on the floor and unlocked the grate, pulling it open.

  I squirmed again, trying to get free, but with my exhaustion and hunger, Gossel was so much stronger than me.

  "Why did you take me in the first place?" I asked. "I've done nothing wrong. I wasn't even sick, not until the governor made me sick. Why?"

  More lightning cracked overhead. Truly, this storm was getting worse. The caves would be entirely flooded by now. The main floor of the prison would have a lot of water too. The infirmary was downhill from the Colony square, though still protected by its thick doors.

  Gossel used the distraction to push me backward into the pit, but as I fell, I grabbed the grate door, which came down over my head, nearly knocking me off as it crashed closed on the ground. Though I had a good grip on the bars, that was only a temporary solution. Not far beneath me, the dark ground was moving. I didn't know how many snakes were in this pit, but if I didn't keep holding on, I would find out.

  "Lock it," Gossel ordered, and while still avoiding my eyes, Brogg did as he was told.

  Gossel outright laughed at my attempt to avoid the snakes. "They say River People are strong, so maybe you'll try to stay up there for the rest of the night, but honestly, there's no point in trying. Governor Felling will be here in the morning to check on you. Even if you last that long, she will see that you get the Scourge."

  "The Scourge is spindlewill," I said, almost to myself. "But you're running out of plants." Then I looked up at him. "You're going to use snake venom next?"

  "Doctor Cresh is experimenting with the right dosage to mimic symptoms of the Scourge. You'll make for a good test subject, though I suspect you're about to get far too much venom to help us." Gossel's smi
le reflected his cruel heart, and his eagerness to get rid of me.

  Behind him, Brogg added, "We'll have to use the snakes soon. If the governor brings in more River People, the spindlewill won't work."

  As he talked, I'd been looking at the snakes below me, with red spots on their black bodies, different from anything I'd seen in the river country.

  "There are no snakes in the towns, and I didn't think Attic Island had snakes," I said. Moisture still on my hands from the storm was threatening my hold on the bars, and there was no dry spot on me to wipe them off. Gossel laughed as I redoubled my grip. Ignoring him, I asked, "What kind of snake is this?"

  "They're very aggressive," he said, almost admiringly. "Dulanian vipers."

  "Dulan?"

  "They were a gift to the governor. Most of them are kept here, though Doctor Cresh has some in his offices as he continues his experiments."

  "Dulan?" I still couldn't understand that. "Why would Dulan--"

  Suddenly, something exploded right outside the infirmary, followed by a crash and the cries of several other prisoners in the west side of the building. It startled me so much I nearly lost my grip.

  Nearly. Nothing would make me let go of these bars.

  "I'll wait with the girl," Brogg said. "You'd better check that out."

  Gossel swatted the side of his head. "So you can get her out? I've seen your sympathies. Come with me!"

  Again, Brogg obeyed, though I also saw his apologetic look as he exited the room. He never expected to see me again. Well, he could apologize to me in person, because I wasn't about to fail now. Not after all I'd been through.

  As the infirmary door closed on me, I made that a vow. Yes, they definitely would see me again.

  I hoped.

  With the crash still echoing in my ears, I guessed that lightning had struck near the infirmary and caused one of the taller trees to fall. If it landed on the infirmary, it might've smashed through the outer wall. The yelling I was hearing might be prisoners whose cells were being flooded.

  But the damage must also be connected to the pit below me, where floodwaters were already seeping in, and fast. If these snakes could swim, then it didn't matter how long I could hang here. They would rise up to meet me.