Canes of Divergence (28 page)

“You’d really let Thomas go – if he wanted to.”

“Yes. It’s hard, but it’s also hard not to see that if we keep Thomas here when this isn’t where he wants to be, we would still lose him. He’s already been struggling all these moons without you and Quinn … and to keep him here while Linnea goes … and then if Mia decided to … I can’t do that to him, William. If you and Quinn would agree to it, it would feel so much better knowing he’s happy there. And from what I can see, you all could use a little more support there.”

“We could, Mother. There’s no question of whether Quinn and I would agree to it. Even discussing the idea feels like a celebration. Quinn’s getting our sister. I need my brother.”

*          *          *

The conversation with his mother left William smiling to himself as he carried Samuel back down the hall. “Should we go see if
your
mother is awake?” he asked the baby. “I want to talk to her.”

In response, the baby pulled his fist to his mouth and began sucking on it.

“You want her even more than I do, don’t you, little one?” he said, chuckling. “Even if she is still asleep, you’re going to demand that she wakes. You’re a little monarch already.” His words were far from criticism; he snuggled little Samuel close and pulled one of the tiny hands to his lips.

He opened the door of the suite quietly, but Quinn was already awake, standing by the little table, holding the note he’d written to her.

“Hey,” he said, coming to stand next to her.

“Hi.” Turning around, she stretched up to kiss him.

“Did you have a nice nap?”

“Mmm-hmm. I’m surprised I fell asleep like that.”

He smiled. “Is Owen still asleep?”

She nodded.

Samuel began to fuss. William chuckled and began rocking and bouncing him. “You’re an impatient little bug. Let your mama get settled and get a drink first.”

“Good luck with that, Daddy,” Quinn teased.

William smiled – the term “daddy” was foreign to him – he’d only heard it in passing in Bristlecone. But he sort of liked it when she used it in reference to him. He offered his finger to Samuel, who accepted it, quieting down as he clamped his little gums onto it and sucked. “You were saying?”

“That our son lucked out in the father department.” She rested her head against his shoulder and wrapped her arm around his waist. “I didn’t think I could love you any more than I did on the day you proposed to me, Will, but you just keep surprising me.”

“I think Samuel and I are the lucky ones.”

Quinn was just
getting settled on the couch, and William was in the process of handing her the baby when there was a knock at the door.

She frowned.

“One minute!” William called. He finished nestling Samuel into her arms and kissed her on the head before answering it.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, Your Majesties,” Marcus said when William opened the door.

“You’re never a bother, Marcus,” Quinn said. “Come on in. Is everything all right?”

“Yes and no. We’ve had a bit of an interesting afternoon.”

“What do you mean?” A little twinge of fear twisted in William’s stomach.

“Don’t get worried. Everyone is all right. But Ben sent a bird earlier about a very strange situation they encountered on their ride. Luke took two groups of men out to retrieve three potentially rabid animals – and one man who sounds to be in grave condition.”

“Well that sounds like something to be worried about, Marcus.” Samuel fussed at the agitation in her voice.

“Yes, it is very troubling. I’m very concerned about the man, of course.”

“And three more animals with rabies?” William knew his own voice was strained. Three animals at the same time could indicate a much larger outbreak than they were prepared to deal with. “That’s a very big deal. Were they inside the clear zone?”

“Near the border, I think, just inside Carperos Forest. An area I’m afraid hadn’t been cleared as well as it could have been.”

“Maybe we didn’t make the zone large enough. Have you told Nathaniel?”

“Yes. They should all be beginning to arrive here in the next twenty minutes or so. Nathaniel is down in the clinic now preparing to receive the man and the animals. He’s also sent a bird to Jacob. We’re going to need as much help as possible with this, I think.”

He looked apologetically at Quinn. “I’ll head down there now.”

She nodded; her expression held only understanding and concern.

“Hold on. There’s something else.”

They both looked at him.

“Her Majesty has just had a visit from Prince Jonathan’s bird.” Marcus opened the flap of the leather pouch he carried on his shoulder and reached inside, withdrawing a small, rolled-up slip of paper. Quinn’s name was on the side of the roll, written in the elegant script of her uncle.

William took it from him, breaking the seal and
unrolling the letter so that Quinn wouldn’t have to do it one-handed as she fed the baby. He didn’t look at it before he passed it over to her.

The letter was short. Quinn’s eyebrows knitted together as she scanned it quickly and then looked back up at them. “He’s coming here. He’ll be arriving this evening.”

“This evening?” William was surprised. Philotheum was a long journey away. Even a single rider pressing his horse would need close to three days. “When did the message come?”

“Just a little while ago. And the bird flew away immediately. Returning directly to him, I presume. I don’t know why he didn’t give us more warning.”

“I guess he’ll tell us when he gets here,” Quinn said, sighing.

It shouldn’t have been concerning news – both he and Quinn liked and trusted Jonathan – at least mostly – but something about this felt off.

“All right, Marcus,” Quinn said, making eye contact with him. “I think it’s time now for you to fill me in on all of the little concerns you’ve been keeping from me the last few weeks. I know some of it, but I don’t want to be off-guard when Jonathan arrives.”

Marcus smiled sheepishly. “I was only trying to give you a bit of time to relax, Your Majesty.”

“I know, Marcus. That’s why I didn’t say anything before. I have appreciated it, truly. But reality seems to have come creeping back in on its own. Have any other messages gone missing, do you think?”

“All of our messages have been answered
recently, milady. The few that we’re worried about didn’t contain any sensitive information.”

She sighed. “Meaning it’s likely that whoever may have intercepted them determined that we don’t know whatever it is they don’t want
us to know about, and it’s just not worth the risk of us catching their spies.”

“That’s a strong possibility, yes.” Marcus nodded.

“And the hostilities in the border towns?”

“Quiet in the last two weeks, actually. Ever since we sent the troops to Milderan things have gotten better, but there’s just something I’m not quite comfortable with. Charles doesn’t like it either. I have some messages from him for you to read.”

“All right. Let me finish here, and get Owen over to play with the other children and see if Mia can take care of the baby for a while, and then you can brief me.”

“Let me take them,” William said. “Nathaniel can hold his own in the clinic for a few minutes.”

Rosewood Castle, Eirentheos

A
T FIRST, WHEN
Ben had asked Zander to ride with one of the wagons rather than on Chestnut to go back to the castle, he’d thought it would be a much easier option. Anything had to be easier than the prospect of putting his sore legs back on a saddle.

An hour on the wooden seat of a utility wagon quickly convinced him otherwise. It didn’
t help matters even a little that this wagon carried the carcasses of the animals they’d discovered in the tent, along with the black deer and the remnants of the strange discovery Zander and Ben had made along the riverbank.

They had covered the animals with canvas cloth, and at first he’d thought that it was going to work, but fifteen minutes into the journey, he found himself wishing for a world where large sheets of plastic actually existed.

Twice, he’d had to bury his nose in his hands, taking deep breaths through his mouth and thinking about something else – anything else – to keep himself from getting sick again.

One of those times, the driver, a young-looking guard named Tobias, actually had gotten sick. He hadn’t stopped, though, he’d merely leaned over the side of the wagon while it was still moving, done what he needed to do, and then pulled a cloth over his own face when he was finished.

For obvious reasons they were riding behind everyone else, and so when they pulled up in front of the clinic behind the castle, everyone was already busy, attending to the man in the other wagon as Ben and Nathaniel worked to get him inside.

He could see Thomas and Linnea riding toward the stables, away from the clinic. Ben had been very adamant about keeping them away from everything. Even the other guards who’d been assisting them had been forced to take precautions – handling the animals only with shovels and making no direct contact with the man
, but Ben had made Thomas and Linnea stay on their horses, at least ten feet away from everything at all times.

Thomas had been a bit chagrined about the arrangement, but Linnea, for once, had complied without complaint – though Zander was certain it was only because Ben was the one asking.

William came running up to him as he climbed down from the wagon, though he stopped short a few feet away. “Oh, whoa,” he said, fanning his hand in front of his face. “What
is
that?” He peered into the wagon.

“The animals.” Zander knew
the information had gotten back to the castle before them. “The fox has been dead for too long, and it and the capiya were closed inside a tent for days, probably. You don’t want to lift that cloth if you don’t have to.”

“I’m sure I’ll have to eventually, but I’ll hold off.
” He took a few more steps back from the wagon and Zander followed him, grateful to get as far as he could away from the stench. “Ben was just telling me something about bones, too?”

“Yeah. That’s when it got really creepy. The tent was bad enough, but then when Ben and I were down by the river washing up, we found these little areas that had been dug up recently.”

“And there were animal bones in there?”

“Some of them had more than that. One was still a pretty intact raccoon.
Ben is certain it died of rabies – and someone buried it. Maybe that guy. There were raccoon droppings inside the tent.”

William’s jaw dropped. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

“No. I don’t think it’s good at all.”

William raised an eyebrow. “Do you have a theory, Zander?”

He swallowed. “I don’t think I know enough about your world to be coming up with theories.” Especially not ones this macabre.

“Sometimes, not knowing the lay of the land gives someone an advantage in situations like this. You see the issue without the preconceived notions we have about what things should be like.”

“All right then. I don’t know who that guy is, but if I had to guess, I would say it looks like he was somehow intentionally infecting those animals with rabies. Trapping them, infecting them, and then burying them when they died.”

“Yes, that’s what it sounds like to me, too.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense. Who would do a crazy thing like that and then get himself bitten and not get help?”

“People in our world don’t understand rabies very well. Honestly, most of them don’t even know that we have any means of treating it. If he’s from a village far from the capital, he may not have ever heard of someone receiving the treatment here at the castle or in the three other clinics where we’
ve used it.”

“I guess you don’t advertise it when you bring back drugs from an alternate world.”

William looked around, but there was nobody standing near them – Zander had already checked. Everyone was either in the clinic or quite a distance from them and busy. “No, we don’t advertise it at all. The few people we have treated believe that we came up with the treatments ourselves.”

“So, maybe he’s a scientist? A doctor or something? Trying to figure it out himself?”

“It’s possible.” William shook his head. “He’d also have to be insane. Intentionally infecting an animal … keeping it in his living space, and
handling
it after it died … even in your world, people have developed rabies without an actual known bite. Living in close proximity to that much of the virus is asking for trouble. And with animals that could attack or escape at any time…”

“
You’re right, insane … there’s one more thing.”

William raised an eyebrow.

“Once we pulled down that tent and really got to look around at what was there…. It was a lot of stuff, William. Materials for traps, a stockpile of food, several cages with bite marks from different teeth, droppings inside the tent and another area outside where it looked like he’d been cleaning up after them and dumping the waste…”

Although Ben had listened to
Zander’s train of thought when they’d discovered all of those things, he hadn’t wanted to quite believe it – he had a lot of other theories. William’s expression, though, told Zander that his gut-level reaction was the same as his own. “And the bones?”

“Unless there are a lot buried somewhere else, there were nowhere near enough to explain that amount of stuff.”

William closed his eyes for a long moment, then finally nodded. “Did you touch that man or any of the animals?”

“Yeah. Someone had to
. We had to get them packed up and out of there, we had to carry that guy out of the tent and get him onto the wagon. Ben and I were the only ones who’d ever been vaccinated, and we didn’t want anyone else touching anything.”

“Nobody else
touched anything?”

Zander knew who he meant by “nobody else.” “I’m willing to bet that even in this world, there aren’t a lot of guards as good as Ben.”

“Okay, let’s get you into the clinic. I want to check you out.”

“I didn’t get bitten,” Zander said, as he followed William up the wooden steps and into the building that he called the clinic.
He sucked in a breath as he looked around. Being in the castle for the last few days was surreal enough; this clinic was truly a space from another world – or at least another time.

He could see where William and Doctor Rose had worked to make the clinic as much like a doctor’s office or hospital in his world
as they could – but they just weren’t working with the same materials and technology.

Like the castle, it was wired for electricity, but
, like the hallways and bedrooms in the castle, there were also gas lamps and candles in strategic locations for the inevitable times when the unreliable power failed them.

The cots along the walls were covered with crisp white sheets and blankets, but the frames were wood – they couldn’t be adjusted and rolled away in an emergency.

There was a room in the back where they’d taken the sick man. Through the open door, Zander could see the clean tiled floor and the metal-topped table they’d laid him on – this world’s version of an operating room, he guessed. Ben was in there, along with a figure who was very familiar to him – though he hadn’t yet seen or talked to him in this world – Doctor Nathaniel Rose.

“Have a seat,” William sa
id, pointing at one of the cots as he washed his hands in an iron sink.

Zander thought it was unnecessary, but he could see that William was serious, so he sat.

“Can I take a look at your hands and arms?”

He held th
em out and waited as William looked over every inch, even prodding gently at a tiny scab on Zander’s forearm that he hadn’t even realized was there. “Really, William, I didn’t get bitten, or anything close. Ben and I were as careful as we could possibly be. We knew how dangerous it was.”

At that moment, Doctor Rose walked out of the back room and over to them
, smiling. “I’d heard you were here, Zander. I apologize for not making the time to come and seek you out before this.”

“Quinn and William said that you were away, and that you only came back to the castle last night.”

“That’s true. I did mean to come and say hello sometime today, before all of this happened. Circumstances aside, it’s nice to see you.”

Zander had almost forgotten how much he’d always liked Doctor Rose.

“It’s nice to see you too, Doctor Rose.”

“If you’d prefer, you can call me Nathaniel.”

“I think that might take more getting used to than I have time for before I have to go home.”

“Fair enough,” Doctor Rose said, chuckling.

“How is that man?” Zander asked.

“He’s dying. I think you and Ben probably knew that. He has rabies
and he’s very far gone. There’s no cure, and there’s nothing I can do for him except try to keep him out of pain until it happens. I’ve given him a lot of medicine and he’s asleep now. It’s very unfortunate – not only for his sake, but because I very much wish we could question him and find out exactly what was going on here, but I’m not sure he’ll wake up again, and even if he did, I’m doubtful that he’d be able to speak.”

Zander nodded, subdued. The news wasn’t unexpected but it was still such an awful thing to hear. He found himself glancing at his own hands, wondering if something could have gotten in through one of the cracks in his cuticles.

“I don’t really need you down here, Will,” Doctor Rose said. “You don’t need to watch that man die. And I don’t want you helping with those animals until I have the brains isolated and we can do the testing with gloves and aprons – let’s not risk taking any of this upstairs near that baby. But I will give you and Ben the next dose of vaccine while you’re here, and then you can take care of Emma.” He looked over at Zander. “And let’s just be safe and start the booster series for Zander.”

William nodded. “That’s what I was thinking, too.”

Zander shook his head. “You don’t have enough of that vaccine to be wasting it on me. I’ve had the shots. It can’t be that much of an emergency.”

William looked behind them at the room where the man was. “I’m not sending you home to have that happen to you.”

“Well, what about the other vaccine? The one you’re making here? Don’t you need someone to test that on?”

“It won’t be ready until
probably at least the day after tomorrow.”

“So?” He looked at Doctor Rose. “When you gave me the vaccine before, I remember you telling me that now I could go exploring in bat caves without worrying if there was a hospital nearby.”

“You still need to have the booster doses after an exposure.”

“Yes, but not today, right? I can wait for the other kind. You don’t have to use the good stuff on me. There are
kids
here who might need it.” The idea of Owen, or one of the little girls always running around the castle … he couldn’t be responsible for using medicine one of them might need.

“We don’t know if it will work for sure.” Doctor Rose shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

“So test me. Test me today to see what my antibody levels are, and then test me again before I leave.”

William raised an eyebrow.

“What? I might not be as smart as you are, but I paid attention in class. And I’ve been listening to you talk about this stuff for three days. I’m not so stupid I don’t understand you.”

“I don’t think you’re stupid, Zander. I don’t think people don’t
understand
what I’m talking about, I just usually think they’d rather I shut up and talk about something interesting.”

William’s words surprised him. He’d always known William was smart and into reading and studying more than most people, but he’d never guessed that he was self-conscious about it. It was sort of an odd thought.

He realized that he’d always sort of assumed that William thought he was better than the rest of them when he had his nose buried in books while they played, but maybe that wasn’t true at all. Maybe William had really always believed they wouldn’t like him or be interested in the things he was.

“Well, maybe I’m stranger than I thought I was, because I actually think most of it is interesting.”