Page 80 of The Moon Blessed King
‘I know that to win, my brother stole a Giver’s power and sparked a plague that is killing his people.’ Murmurs break out across the growing crowd. ‘I know he sent Reapers marching with his army to Soleb on the promise that they could live there in peace, if only they commit genocide.’ The voices get louder; people want to know more. They ask about the plague, if it is true. There are coughs and cries and wails, screams of fury. ‘I know,’ Cat continues unbothered, ‘that you hate and fear me because I am a Reaper, but the war has reaped more than I could ever manage in a lifetime. And you deserve better than death as a reward for service to your country.’
No stumbling. No hesitation. He speaks with his head up and his back straight and his hand locked firmly around Elician’s. ‘Please,’ he beseeches his people. They are not active soldiers sworn to obey orders who are all prepared to die, not zealots who marched to slaughter, but people. Sons and daughters, children and their parents, the old and the young, the rich and the poor. Veterans who managed to survive the bloodshed only to face an illness that couldnot be stopped. ‘Let me help you live long enough to enjoy that peace.’
Nervous eyes flick from face to face. ‘It’s taboo to be healed by a Giver or…any other way than our own ability,’ the woman tells him, even as she shifts her weight from one foot to the other.
‘Yes,’ Cat agrees. ‘But you deserve to live anyway.’
Slowly, the woman raises a trembling arm. ‘My name is Madame Myrte Leonde,’ she says. Cat glances at Elician and he nods.
He doesn’t need to touch her. He doesn’t need to touch any of them – neither of them does. Elician feels the moment Cat starts reaching out, the moment he starts ending the processes that are working valiantly to end Madame Leonde’s life. Elician has learned, and learned well, from his time amplifying Fen’s power. And now, it is nothing to smooth out sharp edges, to adjust and to aid and to reinvigorate, to heal death in tandem with a child of Death who loves with his whole soul.
Leonde gasps. The black marks slip from her skin and the swelling decreases. She sways on her feet and Alest catches her with his gloved hands. He steadies her and murmurs soft words. ‘Careful. Easy…’
The crowd watches as their honoured elder is healed, and when she is well, a child is brought before them, and they start again.
Elician glances at Partho only once as they continue their weary work. He, and all the Blue Guard brought with him, beam with pride. And when Leferge approaches the village, when she allows the army to come and give what aid and support they can before relocating the main force outside, so as to not put a strain on Ines’ already strained resources, Elician almost catches her grin.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Fenlia
Of all the lessons Zinnitzia has tried to impart on her, Fen thinks this the most important: that Kreuzfurt was meant to contain Givers and Reapers, not help them work together. All of Zinnitzia’s yelling during every argument, and every time Fen failed to heal someone from their suffering and pain – none of it was ever intended to help Fen succeed. And for all her vague warnings and attempts at imparting an idea of greater meaning, she is not truly helping now either.
So, if it’s all bullshit, Fen thinks, barking orders at one Giver and Reaper pair and then to the next,I’m going to ignore it.
‘You’re going to eat together,’ she tells the teams. ‘You’re going to room together. You’re going toget to know each other.‘ She hisses that last part when she starts hearing grumbling amongst the ranks. ‘You’re going to learn how to communicate. You’re going to stop spending time only in your own groups. You must learn how to worktogether, and you’re not going to do that if you hate each other.’
Fen is relatively certain that every Reaper and Giver in Soleb loathes the ground she walks on. She cannot bring herself to care. Adalei’s decision not to close the gates, to at leastattemptto slow the spread of whatever is truly causing this plague, has left themoverwhelmed with the sick beyond the point of reckoning. It is exactly as she has feared, and people are dying.
They don’t know how to treat them without their powers. Elena’s new recruits fumble this way and that, trying to help anyone that the Exalted aren’t attending to, but they are squeamish around the bodies and Fen catches a few of them crying from the sheer futility of it all. They don’t know how to save the people they’re trying to help; they’ve never needed to tend to anyone before and no one has ever explained it. They have only ever hoped, and waited for a Giver to save them. None bothering to learn more. And for them, now, what good is offering comfort if it only ends in death? Isn’t it better to just stay away from the damaged and weak and pretend it will never come for them too?
‘The good is kindness, and respect,’ Elena says when Fen asks her just that. ‘A modicum of dignity to those still living, with the time they have left. And it is a dignity we all deserve.’
‘Even if it doesn’t matter?’
‘It matters very much to the people we’re being kind to. Sometimes the most valuable thing you can do for someone is to remind them they are not suffering alone.’ Elena stands stalwart even as her volunteers balk, offering palliative care and running tests whenever she can on the organic material of sick and healthy individuals alike. Her protégés are terrified of the way she lances wounds and forces food and drink into the mouths of those unable to swallow on their own. But those under her care last longer, and, Fen hopes…they will continue lasting just long enough to be healed.
Fen and Cieli are still the only consistent team available, and where before they hoped to heal only the most grievous of illnesses first, they now need to try an alternative option. If there is less to heal, it takes less time to heal. Two of their Giver and Reaper pairs help all those who are first showing signs of symptoms, and they are mitigating the influx of the new while harsh decisions are made around who may be too far gone.
If they can heal ten people an hour instead of only one…then is that not better in the end?
Families cry. They curse. They scream. Fen crumbles under the face of their wrath. She tries to steel herself against their hate and their rage. Their despair.Why could you save my father but not my son? Can’t you justlookat my mother?And she tries. She tries to help everyone she can, but there are simply too many people falling ill. And they can only do so much.
The wind carries the disease up over their barricades. Their too-basic quarantine fails, and the whole of the city is overcome. Reports arrive from other provinces: it is the same everywhere. The death toll is rising. If smacking the Exalted around would help them learn the very basic principle of teamwork, she would do it, but Zinnitzia smacked her more than a few times in Kreuzfurt and it never once brought fresh knowledge or possibility. The only thing it did was make Fen hate Zinnitzia and everything she stood for.
She isn’t going to smack these Reapers or Givers.
But sheisgoing to make them miserable.
‘You will sit at each other’s sides. You will learn each other’s names, histories, families. You will talk about the things you like and the things you don’t. You will memorize each other’s favourite fucking flowers, and you willget along.’
‘You’re ordering us to befriends?’ Gerai asks her hatefully.
‘Yes. You’re going to bebest friendsand you’re going to figure out what it is that you need to do tomake this work.’
Since Kreuzfurt was designed to isolate them, she will make them integrate. Since Kreuzfurt has kept Givers focused only on healing and Reapers only on killing, she will force them to do otherwise.
‘I don’t have a favourite flower,’ Cieli informs Fen when they pause for a roll of bread for dinner. Despite Adalei’s attempts at forestalling a famine, the supply chain has weakened dramatically. Fen has already assigned one Exalted team to ensure anyone responsible for making, producing or transporting food in and out of thecity is healthy. Another group of freshly healed volunteers is working to mitigate distribution issues, including rationing and price fluctuation. (She has seen one of the guards whipping a merchant who dared to sell flour for ten times the common asking price already, and heard it happened three other times as well.) Things she did not think needed monitoring or regulation suddenly required an overseer to make sure someoneelsedid not feel the need to profit on others’ misfortune or desperation.
