Page 85 of Malady

“Iscairn—”

He’s already gathering bottles into his satchel when another crash shakes the floorboards. Someone shouts over the commotion, close enough now that I catch the words upstairs and doctor.

“Ophelia Harrow, we are leaving.”

He slings the satchel over one shoulder and bends for me in the same breath, an arm sliding beneath my back and another beneath my knees before I have enough sense to object. The room tips as he lifts me from the mattress, and I clutch at the front of his cloak.

Wood creaks behind him.

I look over his shoulder.

Black fingers are hooked over the windowsill.

Gideon hauls himself through the opening with snow whipping around him, smoke pouring from the folds of his cassock and spreading along the rafters until half the ceiling disappears behind it. Those burning eyes find me in Iscairn’s arms just as the first heavy footfall lands on the stairs below.

Then another.

Closer.

The bedroom door crashes open, plaster breaking loose as the wood strikes the wall. Through the dust come Brother Matthias and Brother Leon, their cassocks dragging across the floorboards. Leon raises his arm, and the flames wrapped around the end of a broken chair leg flare in the draught, throwing a fierce orange light across the room.

Oh, no.

“Burn the beast!” Gideon roars from the window, black smoke spilling from his mouth as he points a clawed hand towards us. “Burn the rot out of them!”

“Gideon, please⁠—”

Leon comes straight at us.

The flames rush towards the pale bone of Iscairn’s mask, and I throw my hands up, but he has already turned, twisting his body around mine to take the burning timber against his shoulder. Fire catches at the edge of his cloak, the cloth hissing and singeing as he pulls me tighter against his chest.

“Stay back,” Iscairn roars.

Matthias’s hands close around my ankles.

“No!” I kick at him, wrenching to get my legs free, but he hauls backwards with his whole weight, and I slide down Iscairn’s chest.

Something gives. The last of the cold goes out of me all at once, like a candle pinched between two fingers, and the pain comes through it white and whole. There is nothing in the world but that—no room, no fire, no sound—only a breath stopped somewhere it cannot get out.

By the time I can see again, I am on the floorboards with my nails buried in Matthias’s wrists. “You haven’t even covered your face! I’ve got the pestilence, you stupid bastard! You’ll catch it from me!”

Behind him, Leon swings the burning chair leg at Iscairn, driving him back before he can reach me.

Iscairn catches it in his bare hand, wrenching it from Leon’s grip so violently that the man stumbles forward. Before Leon can recover, Iscairn drives his boot into the side of his knee, and the crack that follows turns my stomach. Leon crumples with a scream, clutching at his leg while Iscairn hurls the burning wood across the room.

“Get your hands off her!” he roars, his voice rattling the glass on the table beside my bed. “You will rupture those swellings! She is sick enough without you damaging her more!”

“I'll take Ophi!” Gideon shouts from behind me. “Keep the Devil away from her!”

Matthias lets go of my ankles and shoves me backwards across the boards, and another pair of hands closes beneath my arms before I can draw my legs under me.

“Gideon, don’t—” He hauls me upright, my feet leaving the floor as black claws dig into my flesh. I struggle against him, choking on the smoke pouring from his cassock as he drags me backwards, and when I twist desperately towards Iscairn, Gideon's burning eyes are so close that I can feel their heat against my face. “Let me go! Gideon, please!”

A gust of snow blows straight through the open window, striking my face and making me squeeze my eyes shut. When I open them again, the smoke has thinned, and the burning eyes above me are no longer burning. They're ordinary eyes. Small and bloodshot, they stare down at me from a broad, sweating face I know far too well.

My stomach turns.

Billy Mercer.