Page 59 of The Moon Blessed King
Maya squirms less. Her body feels less like it is being held in stasis and more like it is being contained, managed, monitored.
Organ by organ, they work. Blood vessel by blood vessel, artery by artery, nerve by nerve. It is exhausting. It isexhilarating. With each success, a sense of giddiness overtakes Fen completely. It is working. She is healing someone, healing them with the power of an Alelunen Reaper she never would have trusted before today, and it isworking.
When Cieli eventually pulls away, Fen opens her eyes and is met with Maya’s own eyes staring up at her. Her tears have fled from her face. She is healthy, and whole, and alive. But, more importantly, there is a touch of Death running through her veins that keeps everything in balance. Blood cells are made and blood cells die. Processes start…and they end.
‘Very well done,’ Marina tells them both. ‘Thatis balance.’
Fen grins, pride thrumming through her. She meets Cieli’s eyes. ‘Again?’ she asks, knowing even as she does so that they will be far too exhausted to carry on to Himmelsheim tonight. But…theycansave these people. They can keep them from suffering. And if theycan, then perhaps…they might actually be able to stop this plague from spreading.
Cieli nods. She helps pass Maya to Rickard, then looks over the sea of needy faces, and replies: ‘Again.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
Fenlia
Fen isachingby the time she reaches Himmelsheim. Her head swims with thoughts and ideas and possibilities, and her musclesburnwith a kind of torn exhaustion that makes little sense on a cellular level, but she does not bother trying to question it. She has no idea what part of her body her ability to heal comes from. It is like Elena says: she does not understand thewhy, but at this point she understands the how, even if the how leaves her feeling dizzy and sore. They never met with Zinnitzia. Once they finished with the first group they met, Marina turned right towards Kreuzfurt, and Fen and Cieli continued to the capital alone.
Adalei meets them as they round the last bend into the palace courtyard. She is dressed in a fine black gown with exquisite embroidery dancing up her sleeves in spirals of silver and gold, the combined image of a sun and moon stitched lovingly along her shoulders. A deep green scarf, almost black in its depth, loops methodically about her neck and over her head. It flows elegantly down her back, and though Fen doubts it is necessary to hold it in place, a silver-and-gold circlet ensures the wrap does not move at all. The metal gleams brightly along the rich fabric. It is less ostentatious than Cat’s circlet, but its presence makes her role as heir impossible to ignore.
Adalei’s lips purse as Fen awkwardly slides off her horse. Fen’s knees almost give way underneath her. She groans and stumbles, forcing her back to straighten despite the strain. Then, once fully upright, Fen sluggishly attempts to recall the correct courtesies Adalei requires. The merethoughtof bowing is horrifying, but Fen is about to do it when Adalei waves aside the need with a sharp swipe of her wrist.
‘What news from Altas?’ Adalei asks when Fen fails to explain her sudden return from the field of battle. There is a tense current running through Adalei. Her voice is sharp and direct, her eyes narrow.
‘Lio’s fine,’ Fen blurts out. She hears Cieli dismounting and shuffling over. Adalei’s eyes flicker in Cieli’s direction only for a moment before returning to Fen. Some of the tension uncoils from Adalei’s shoulders, but she does not relax.
‘Our kings?’ Adalei presses.
‘Yes, they’re both…they’re both fine. Um, well.’ Fen glances about. The grounds feel far too open for what she needs to reveal. ‘We need to talk, and I need to tell you something you’re not going to like.’
Adalei nods once, curt and accepting. She spins on her heel, the tight weave of her skirt rippling only at the edges. They sway like the waves of the sea, splashing against her legs and leaving a riptide in their wake. Adalei walks slowly and carefully, exuding a kind of calm that Fen does not feel. She has a faint smile on her face, placid and polite. She nods to the staff as she passes, requesting someone to care for Fen’s and Cieli’s horses, and says nothing more.
It is not far to the King’s office. With Elician gone, it is not even surprising that Adalei has taken over the room. She’s maintained Elician’s paperwork, clearly, and has had a small table brought in to collect any new additions for his future review. It is a kindness, and shows the level of foresight that Adalei is known for. Perfectly practical in every way.
Adalei directs them both to sit on the couch Elician prefers and she settles into a wide chair just across. The door closes behind them and Fen is struck by just how confining the room feels. Elician rarely ever shut the door during the day. Somehow, it makes the world feel smaller.
‘Tell me everything,’ Adalei entreats for a second time. Fen swallows thickly and does her very best to explain. She speaks of the battle, the aftermath, the plague. Cieli fills in the pertinent details regarding the illness, explaining how patients quickly succumb to this overabundance of life itself, cells multiplying faster and faster to the point that nothing can stop it, and their bodies seem to be draining themselves into exhaustion. Calories burned, fat consumed, organs operating at a peak capacity that becomes unsustainable. Until at long last, the patient becomes listless and incapable of moving at all, too weakened by the excess strain of too much blood, too fast a heart, too rapid a replication: too much life.
‘The symptoms can be managed,’ Cieli says. ‘I’ve seen physicians treating the ill, ensuring they have food and water and care that can keep them sustained, but without that care – the patientswilldie. And the only thing that can save them is…well…a Reaper and Giver working together, it seems.’
Adalei’s lips thin the longer she listens. Her hands stay folded politely in her lap but there is a tension through her shoulders. A deep rigidity. ‘We don’t have physicians in Soleb,’ she says at long last. ‘All sick or injured wait for a travelling Giver to assist them, or they move themselves to Kreuzfurt for healing. We don’thavea health infrastructure like you’re suggesting.’
‘How many Givers do you have?’ Cieli asks.
‘One hundred and fifty-two Givers,’ Fen replies. ‘But it’s the Reapers that are the problem. There’s only thirty-nine of them.’
‘With thirty-two provinces in the whole of Soleb, it barely is enough to have one pair per province,’ Adalei sighs. ‘And some provinces are more populated than others. It wouldn’t account for theneed, or the distance that would have to be travelled. Tell me, how long does it actually,practically, take to heal this?’
‘It…depends,’ Fen replies. ‘Elician and Cat were fast. They didn’t need to touch anyone, so they could help a lot of people at once. Marina too…she just…she knew what she was doing. But when we tried it’ – she gestures to Cieli – ‘it took a few hours. But we could make it faster. Bring it down tomaybean hour per person? If we worked at it?’
‘Then one pair per province is an impossible task,’ Adalei says. ‘Even if every team manages to heal one individual an hour, some of these provinces havehundreds of thousandsof inhabitants. It will takeyearsto heal them all at that pace, if those who are infected even last that long. And that is to say nothing of the strain each pair will face. They’d need to work nonstop with no time for rest.’ For any time they paused, another person could suffer worse. Another person could, perhaps, die.
‘Then we can’t let the cities get infected,’ Fen insists. It’s exactly what Elician had said from the start. ‘We need to close the city gates.’
‘No,’ Adalei says. ‘That won’t work.’
‘What?‘
‘Let us presume for the moment that everyone who left Altas has already come into contact withsomeoneelse. If that’s the case – the plague is already in our provinces and capable of being passed on within every single community we have whether we close the gates or not. If we close the gates, all we do is one: barricade potentially sick people from access to any form of resources that may be used to help them; two: run the risk of food supply shortages, as we have already seen in Altas; and three: generate a fear campaign against anyone who has come in contact with Altas or an Alelunen. Closing the gates isn’t an answer. Especially not when we willneedtransportation to stay open to keep supply chains, letters with updates and new medical instructions, and volunteers for public service active.’
