Canes of Divergence (8 page)

Rosewood Castle, Eirentheos

T
HE SOUND OF
the sitting-room door closing startled Quinn; she hadn’t realized she’d dozed off. At the motion, the baby, who had just finally fallen asleep on her chest, stirred and immediately began fussing again. She didn’t know if it was because of her own heightened emotions or what, but Samuel had been a mess ever since she’d brought him inside after the fox attack.

For the moment, though, she ignored the
fussing and carried him with her to the other room. The motion quieted him down a bit.

“Will! Are you all right?”

He nodded, though he wasn’t the least bit believable. The dark blue of his shirt hid most of the blood spatters, but it was ripped in a couple of places. Most notable was the big white bandage that was wound around his right arm, just below the elbow. Almost white, anyway, a small dot of red had seeped through in the middle of it.

“You’re still bleeding.”

“It’s fine,” he said, shaking his head. “We can’t close the wound all the way right now. The fox probably had rabies.”

Cold, stark horror washed over
her. “What? Are you sure?”

“Almost positive. Nathaniel is going to test it.”

“Did he give you the shots?”

“No
… why is he crying like that?”

Samuel’s fussiness had now exploded into full-on screams, his little face turning red; Quinn was rocking and bouncing him, but it wasn’t helping, and she couldn’t concentrate on anything except what William was saying. “What do you mean
no?
Why not? People die without those, Will!”

“Seriously, Quinn. T
he baby. Feed him or change him or
something
. Look, I’m a mess, and this has been … I’m going to go and have a bath. Take care of him, please.”

He walked away from her, through the bed
room door and then, a second later, she heard the bathroom door close. She stared after him in shock, the baby’s cries piercing her ears. He’d just blown her off. Avoided her question entirely. She was afraid she was going to be sick.

And still, the baby cried. His diaper was dry and fastened perfectly. He’d finished eating only a little while ago, but still she sat down on the cou
ch to see if he was hungry again – but that only made him angrier. It was the dance they’d been doing all day.

Finally, she wrapped him snugly in his blanket, scooped him up, and carried him out of the room. Miraculously, by the time they’d gone a few feet down the hall, he quieted. She stopped and looked at him. Immediately, his bottom lip quivered again, and she started walking, quickly. If that was what it was going to take
… well, she thought she could probably do with some exercise herself.

Besides, if William wasn’t going to give her any answers, she was going to find some for herself.

Bouncing the baby the whole way, she headed toward the family’s wing.

She was almost to the common room
when she ran into Thomas coming from the other direction. “Hey, Quinn, are you okay? Where’s Will?”

“I’m fine, I guess. Will is taking a bath. Where’s everyone else?”

Thomas frowned and opened his mouth to answer her when the baby suddenly let out a high-pitched wail. “Whoa,” he said instead, “is it really that bad little man?”

Quinn swayed him back and forth, attempting to mimic the motion of walking, but it didn’t help. “He’s been like this all day. It’s why I’ve been hiding in our room.”

“May I?” Thomas asked, holding out his hands.

She passed the baby over willingly.

Thomas unwrapped Samuel and then laid him facedown over his arm, cradling the baby’s chin with his hand and patting him gently on the back while he rocked from side to side.

For almost a full minute, she thought it was going to work.
The crying quieted to a whimper and the baby’s tight fists relaxed a little. Then, Samuel hiccupped, which made him mad all over again and the screaming resumed. Quinn almost felt like joining him. She closed her eyes, needing half a second to compose herself.

“Let me try.” Mia’s voice came out
of nowhere. Quinn opened her eyes, startled. She hadn’t heard her approaching – not that she’d have been able to hear footsteps over Samuel’s cries, she supposed.

Thomas handed her the baby. She
grabbed the blanket from Thomas’ shoulder and wrapped Samuel loosely in it. Then she held him, just cradled normally in her arms, gently swaying back and forth. Less than a minute later, he was quiet. Quinn and Thomas both watched in stunned silence as, another minute after that, Samuel’s eyelids started growing heavy, his little blinks lasting longer each time.

“Can I have him for a while?” Mia asked.

Quinn tensed, waiting for Samuel to get upset again at the sound of Mia’s voice, but he didn’t seem bothered in the least. He was almost all the way asleep now.

“I’ll bring him back if he gets hun
gry or if I can’t calm him,” she said a bit nervously; probably misunderstanding Quinn’s hesitation in answering. “It just seems like you could maybe use a little break, milady.”

Quinn nodded.
“Thank you.” She was going to say more, but at the sound of
her
voice, Samuel’s eyes fluttered open again, and his tiny lips twitched. She took a step back.

Mia smiled in understanding
, and then turned and headed down the hall. At that exact moment, Quinn wasn’t even interested in knowing where she was going.

“How did she
do
that?” she asked Thomas, once Mia and Samuel were both safely out of earshot.

“Magic. It’s the only explanation. She’s going to take him, and he’s going to sleep for hours. She’ll be able to lay him down in a cradle somewhere and everything. When she brings him back, he’ll be happy, and he’ll stay that way for the rest of the night. I’ve seen it a thousand times.”

Quinn raised an eyebrow.

“Seriously. How do you think she became my mother’s baby nurse at sixteen?”

“I thought it was because her mother had the job first.”

“She did. She still does, but Mia was allowed to work part-time as her mother’s assistant from the
time she was thirteen, and then full-time with the babies and helping the rest of us when she was sixteen. Her mother is magic like that, too. My parents would have probably stopped having children after Alex and Emma if they didn’t have those two.”

“If they’d have made it past you and Linnea.”

“Yeah, that too.”

“I’m starting to wonder if I should quit while I’m ahead with this one,” Quinn said, chuckling, “or at least while I’m only this far behind.”

Thomas rubbed her back. “Two weeks old is hard. He’s probably stressed because he can tell you’re scared, too. You’ll be missing him long before he finishes his nap with her.”

She nodded, remembering why she’d come looking for someone else to begin with. “Where is everyone?”

“Um … my father brought Emma back up a little while ago, and I think he’s still with her. She’s really upset; she thinks it’s all her fault, plus she got a few really bad scratches from those thorns. My mother is still down in the clinic with Nathaniel and Alice. Will and Nathaniel ended up putting her out before they treated her bite and her scratches. They didn’t want to traumatize her.”

“Will said they think the fox had rabies?”

Thomas nodded. “There’s almost no chance it didn’t. It’s so stupid … we haven’t had that – we’ve always called it water disease here – anywhere near the castle for many cycles. The younger children have never even been warned about it. But there have been a few reported incidents lately.”

For the first time, she realized how upset Thomas looked; how pale he was, how he wouldn’t directly meet her gaze.

It occurred to her, then, that she might have slipped and forgotten about the differences between this world and the one she’d been born in. Her stomach twisted into horrible knots and her voice shook as she asked her next question. “Do you …
not
… have the treatment for it here?” The last part came out in a rush.

He still wasn’t making eye contact with her. His avoidance was starting to make her a little nauseous.
“Didn’t William tell you?”

She shook her head. “The baby was screaming, and … I don’t know. It almost felt like he was ignoring me, blowing me off.”

Thomas sighed and nodded. “Sounds like Will. The answer to your question is yes and no. Nathaniel has brought the medicine back from your world for … I don’t know, as long as he’s been traveling there, I guess. They know
how
to make a kind of the medicine here, but it’s difficult, and apparently something went wrong with the last batch of the medicine they tried to make. And, apparently they
can’t
make the other kind they also use in your world. Jacob’s working on it, but in the meantime, we were down to having only one of the medicines in the clinic – in the kingdom, really – and only enough of that kind for one person.”

Quinn’s arms went limp at her sides, and she felt cold, as if a sudden blast of frozen air had filled the hallway. “And he’s giving it to Alice.”

“Yes.”

It was the same choice Quinn would
have made, if she was in the same position, but she knew enough about rabies exposure to know what it meant. The cure, if given in time, was one hundred percent effective, but if not…

“You said Jacob was working on
making more?”

“Yes. Nathaniel is going to ride out to him later, once Alice is awake. There’s still a chance that at least
some of the medicine will be ready in time.”

“Okay.”
She didn’t know what else to say.

“I’m sorry, Quinn. I don’t think I was supposed to tell you about this.”

A million sarcastic responses ran through her head, but she couldn’t hold on to any of them. There wasn’t an appropriate answer here, and the inappropriate ones were only going to make this harder. Worse, acknowledging this much at all was going to make it feel real. And she wasn’t ready for that. So she just nodded. “It’s okay, Thomas, I would rather know.”

“I know you would.”

“Ben and Emma are okay, though?”

“Yes. Scratched up, both of them – Emma’s the worst. And if we had enough medicine – if we could get more – Nathaniel would want to treat them both, just in case, but chances are slim they were exposed to anything.”

Something wasn’t quite right with his voice when he told her that, though, and she frowned. “The truth, please, Thomas.”

“Okay. Ben has one scratch that Nathaniel is worried might have come from the fox or gotten exposed to its saliva or something. Ben doesn’t want to tell Linnea though, because it could still be nothing.”

Quinn closed her eyes and took a long, deep breath before looking at him again. “A few years ago, my family went camping – well, we stayed in this cabin in the mountains with some friends for a week. It was Zander’s family, actually. And my friend Abigail and her brother came up for the weekend, too. Anyway, one night, Abigail and I were asleep in one of the bedrooms, and this
thunk
noise woke me up. I sat up, and immediately I knew there was something in the room. I was freaked out, and I woke Abigail up. We both heard another
thunk
, and we turned on the light. There was a
bat
flying around in the room.”

“A what?”

“A bat.”

“Is that some kind of
bird in your world?” Thomas looked confused.

“No. It’s a tiny mammal that can fly. Like a mouse with wings.”

“Creepy.”

Quinn chuckled in spite of herself.
“They’re very creepy, especially when you wake up with one in your bedroom in the middle of the night. Abigail and I both screamed our heads off. My dad came running. As soon as he opened the door, the bat flew out, and then it flew around the rest of the cabin. All of these adults were running after it, yelling, trying to catch it or get it to go outside, or something.”

Thomas was laughing
now. “That must have been hilarious.”

“Not at the time. The next day it probably would have been.”

“Except what? …
Oh
, did it bite someone?”

Quinn shook her head. “Not that we know of. My dad was trying to get it to fly out the door, but Zander’s dad stopped him, said we needed to catch it, just in case. Abigail’s brother finally smacked it with a tennis racket and killed it.”

“Well that was good.”

“Nope. That turned out to be r
eally bad. Bats have small brains, and Louis had smashed it to pieces. They couldn’t test it to see if it had rabies or not.”

“But it didn’t bite anyone.”

“That’s what we thought. But Zander’s dad was insistent that we call the doctor anyway – Nathaniel, you know.”