Page 20 of Zenith Tower

Kieran’s hand moved against the stretcher. His eyes opened a fraction.

“Astra,” he managed.

I stepped around her and bent over him. “I’m here.”

His fingers found my wrist. They rested over the green-gold line beneath my sleeve but did not have the strength to close.

“My records,” he whispered. “Don’t let Marrow??—”

“I won’t.”

His hand slipped away.

Hale followed the stretcher into the corridor. The reader went with them, carrying the latched case against her chest. The woman from the bridge gave one last instruction to the attendant, then followed.

Caspian’s hand settled at the back of my neck.

The fallen cup lay beneath the table. Water had reached the hem of my skirt.

Caspian drew me toward the corridor.

We followed as far as the infirmary corridor. A healer stopped us at a pair of metal doors and refused to say where they had taken Kieran beyond them.

I sat on the stone floor. Caspian sat beside me.

Behind the doors, voices rose and fell. Metal struck metal once, followed by the quick movement of feet.

No one came out to tell us anything.

Astra

Hale came back alone near dawn. Caspian and I were still sitting outside the infirmary doors. The corridor lamps had dimmed and, sometime later, begun their slow return — the only way the Tower let anyone count a night.

I stood too quickly. “Where is he?”

“Inside.” Hale’s shirt was creased, and dried green marked the cuff where Kieran had gripped him. “They have him breathing. The fever is lower. The medicine slowed the spread across his chest.”

“Slowed it,” Caspian said.

“It hasn’t stopped.”

“Can we see him?”

Hale shook his head. “They sedated him for the reading. The woman from the bridge said she would send for us when he wakes.”

“Did they measure the decline?” I asked.

“They started.”

His voice roughened on the last words. He looked toward the metal doors, then turned away from them.

We returned to Kieran’s room because there was nowhere else they would let us wait closer to him.

The fallen cup had been removed. Someone had wiped the water from the floor and changed the bedding. The room looked as it had before Kieran collapsed, except that Kieran was gone.

Marrow arrived at the next bell with a healer carrying blank paper, ink, and a sheet bearing the panel’s seal.

“The panel has accepted Marsh’s offer of a copy,” he said. “The original will remain in your custody until he can speak for himself.”