“Just keep out of my way,” the man warned him, moving on to other beds.
That was easy enough. Flick had sunk into a high fever while Briar was out. He checked her mouth, to find her tongue as dry as paper. Her cracked lips bled; her skin was ashy and dry. When he pinched her gently, the fold he’d made in her skin flattened very slowly. He’d been around healers enough to know this was the worst possible sign. His friend was drying up inside.
His heart pounded heavily. What was going on here? He’d thought she was on the mend that morning. Looking around, he saw that the homeless man Yuvosh was gone. A kid Henna had brought in and one of her old people were missing too.
“Dead,” said a healer—not the one who’d told him he didn’t belong there—when he asked. “Yuvosh, did you say his name was?—had a stroke. The old woman in her sleep; her heart stopped. It was quick. The little boy went into a coma and died—fever cooked his brain. Your girl started to heat up about an hour after you left. You won’t be able to give her enough liquid to make a difference,” she added as Briar grabbed a clean jar and filled it with water.
“We’ll see,” he said grimly, filling a smaller jar with willowbark tea. He marched back to the bed, determined to do battle. Flick’s response was not encouraging: she swallowed two mouthfuls and let the rest dribble onto her blanket.
“Open your eyes,” Briar ordered, trying to sit her up. “C’mon, Flick, you’re drier than the rooftops in Wort Moon. You have to drink.”
Flick’s eyes popped open. “Ma, don’t!” she cried, raising her hands against an unseen threat. “I’ll learn, I will, only don’t—” Her head snapped back. She keened deep in her throat and curled into a ball. “I’ll be good. I’ll be good,” she whispered, sobbing.
“Flick, drink this,” Briar said, badly frightened. “I know it’s nasty, but it’ll help.”
Flick sat up with a grin. “There’s a haul, and proper nicked!” she sang out. “And food enough for everybody after the Dirt Mayor gets his cut.”
Briar got the cup to her mouth and tipped it, pouring half down her throat. She drank, thinking it was part of the food she’d stolen in her waking dream. “Naw, give ’em dates to the littles,” she announced. “Too bleatin’ sweet for me. How ’bout some o’ that wine, there.”
Briar filled the cup from the water jar and raised it to her lips, but he was too late. Flick lay back, eyelids fluttering. “You want Petticoat to work the Bag trade. She’s got the lingo. Gimme wharves any road.” She slept briefly, her breath rasping in her dry throat, and woke to still more hallucinations. As the healers closed the shutters for the night and supper was brought to those who could eat, Briar learned more about Flick’s early life than he ever wanted to. He wished, tiredly, that he could find the monstrous mother who figured so vividly in his friend’s cries.
Worse, he wished that he’d never heard of Flick. He hoped that she would die so he could get some rest. That last thought made him despise himself. Her life was surely worth more than his winks. He was a monster to think it. As penance he fought her to drink more liquid. When she refused, he helped tend those on either side of her. One of them was Orji, the other homeless man who had come in that second day. He slept lightly, muttering in his dreams, but he drank when he was told, and he wasn’t as hot as he’d been.
Just after the Guildhall clock struck midnight, Flick went stiff, her body turning into a bow. Just her head and feet touched the bed. She collapsed as Briar and a blue-robed healer ran to her cot, then arched again, unbreathing, eyes rolled up in her head.
“Get her feet!” snapped the healer. She threw her body across Flick, grabbing her wrists. While Briar hung on to the girl’s feet, the healer took a breath and exhaled. Her magic surged like fast-growing vines through Flick’s arms and into her straining chest. Flick collapsed, gasping as she tried to suck air into her dry throat.
“Breathe,” the healer urged Flick. “Breathe as hard as you—”
Flick whined. Her back arched as her eyes rolled up. Now the healer sent power racing through her, filling the girl’s skin with magic only Briar could see. The magic’s light fluttered; in Flick’s arms and legs it receded, trickling back into her body almost as quickly as it had filled her limbs.
This time Flick’s convulsion was shorter. “Breathe,” chanted the healer softly when she went limp. “Breathe, breathe—”
Briar was confused. Why was it important for Flick to breathe? Wasn’t it Henna—? Yes. She’d said that in long moments without air, parts of the brain died. People with seizures forgot to breathe. Urda, no, thought Briar, scowling at his friend. Don’t leave her an idiot.
Flick tensed again. Two more seizures followed, the healer never once loosening her grip. Each time it took her more effort to thrust her magic into Flick’s body, and it never lasted as long inside the girl’s skin as it had the first time.
When Flick had lain quiet for a while, the healer let go. Briar, who’d been knocked repeatedly into the bedstead, was happy to release the girl’s feet.
“Could I do that?” he asked the healer as she gulped down cold water. “Put my magic in them to keep them going?”
“Are you a healer?” the woman asked tiredly. “Can you run your power through another human being?”