Paole blinked a few times, nonplussed, then he laughed dryly. “Should have sent you back to her, shouldn’t I? But I said for you to go.”
“I will when she’s…when you’re finished here.”
Over sixty percent of those who caught kirten fever, died from it. Outbreaks were unknown in Sardelsa now, and rare in the whole of Tuelwetin, but still deadly when they occurred. The chances of this woman surviving were slim. The child…none at all.
“Do what you will but I have to…” Paole gathered her up and lifted her and the baby in his strong arms. She didn’t move. Yveni picked up the lamp, and the light revealed final-stage blistering covering her face. She had no hope of surviving. Paole had contaminated himself for nothing.
He made no attempt to mount the wagon. Instead he asked Yveni, “Can you drive? There’s a place about three hundred metres down the road. The trees open out, and there’s water.”
“And you?”
“I’ll walk beside. Keep Peni slow so I can use the lamps.”
The journey took only ten minutes, but Yveni concentrated hard to keep Peni at walking pace and the light on the road even. He found the spot Paole meant easily enough, because the sun coming through the break in the tree canopy was startling after the darkness of the deeper woods. Paole walked ahead at that point, wanting to lay the woman and baby down.
Yveni set the brake and jumped down to run to Paole’s side. “What do you need? Blankets?”
“Aye, and a fire. Water too, for drinking.”
He still held the woman, now muttering almost inaudibly. The baby hadn’t moved or cried. Paole caressed the woman’s cheek and soothed her. She was only a girl, really. Younger than Raina. Paole moved the scarf covering her hair. Blond—Uemirien. Another slave?
“Yveni, please?”
He came back to himself. “Hold on.”
He brought the blankets and wrapped it around the girl’s body. He looked at the baby and then up at Paole, who shook his head. “Should I take…?”
Paole shook his head again. “Later,” he mouthed, then looked down at the girl. The mixture of bleakness and tenderness in his expression did something to Yveni’s insides. How could he be so gentle and yet so…
Time for that later. They still had a little firewood in hand, so he could make a campfire. He gave Paole the canteen and went off to find more wood.
There was nothing either of them could do for her. She could take some sips of water from time to time, but no food. As the sun set, she no longer wanted to drink, and was barely conscious for more than a few seconds. Paole offered no treatment because there was none. An infirmary would most likely do the same, only the doctors and nurses could have taken precautions to prevent being contaminated. Too late for that. Too late for Paole. Yet he hadn’t hesitated, even though it was a hopeless case.
She died some time during the night. Yveni didn’t know when exactly because he dozed off, wrapped in blankets and lying near the fire. He woke at dawn because his unconscious mind realised the fire had died down, but as he sat up, prepared to build it up, he found Paole gone and the woman lying on the ground, her face covered with her scarf, her arms folded over the body of her child on her breast.
“Paole?”
“Here, boy.” The man emerged from the trees. Perhaps he’d only gone to relieve himself. “It’s over.”
“Do you need to alert someone? Like a sheriff?”
“Probably, but taking a kirten fever death into a town won’t do me any favours and she’ll be no less dead for it. I’ll report it and her slave mark. Right now, I need to dig a grave.”
“I’ll help.”
Paole shot him a startled and slightly suspicious look. “Why don’t you leave? You said you would when it was over.”
“Not until she’s decently buried.”
Paole grunted. “Only got the one shovel, boy.”
“Then I’ll dig because you sat up all night.”
“What’s this to you? She’s only a Uemirien slave.”
Yveni ignored the jab and fetched the shovel from the back of the wagon. “Where do you want it?”
“Away from the water supply. Over there.” He gestured vaguely towards the edge of the clearing. He suddenly looked very tired, fine lines around eyes and mouth deepening, his normal erect stance slumped and defeated. Yveni found himself feeling sorry for him, and stopped.
Digging a grave in packed earth wasn’t as easy as doing it on a sandy beach, but Yveni was determined to do this for the woman, even if he hadn’t been able to do anything else.
Paole sat by the woman’s side, ignoring Yveni and his excavation. What was he thinking? About the woman and the baby? Or about what he had been exposed to and what that would mean? End-stage kirten fever was highly contagious. If Yveni left, and Paole took ill…
But there was a town a little way down the road. If Yveni saw him that far, and they had a healer, then there would be no more he could do for him. Honour would be served.
It took him two hours to dig the hole deep and long enough to take the slight bodies of mother and child. When he finished, he climbed out and called to Paole, who lifted the girl and carefully bore her body over. Yveni helped him lay her and the baby out in the grave. “Do you know her name?”
“No. Doesn’t matter now.”
The harshness of Paole’s words stung him. “She was still a person, even if she was a slave.”
“You’re telling me that, boy? Get out and leave me deal with the rest of it. Go clean up.”
“I want to—”
“What?” Paole scowled at him. “What’s there to be done?”
“Say a prayer.”
“There are no gods, no spirits. Don’t waste my time. Go away.”
“No. Do what you will, and so will I. You set me free, and you won’t chain me or order me around again.”
Paole didn’t look at him, didn’t reply as he pulled himself out of the grave and began to shovel dirt quickly, angrily over the two corpses. To himself, Yveni recited the prayers for the departed he’d said over Gerd’s grave, and over his father’s. And when he was done, he said, out loud, a prayer in Uemi, not a prayer for the dead, but a prayer of hope and blessing for a new mother, because the girl deserved that much.
When he finished praying, he lifted his gaze and found Paole kneeling by the half-filled grave, his expression empty, his eyes red. “Are you all right?”
Paole stood and wiped his face on his sleeve. He didn’t answer Yveni as he began shovelling dirt again.
Yveni waited until he finished before he asked, “Should we put a marker on it?”
“I’ll deal with that. Time for you to leave.”
“I can’t. You’re almost certain to fall ill. I’ll make sure you get to the town you mentioned—”
“Not going to the town, boy. You think I want to spread this? If they find I’m infectious, they’ll throw me out on the road, same as her.”
“Is that what happened?”
“Her owner threw her out, most likely. Happens often enough. Probably belonged to that big castle back that way. They don’t want to waste a healer’s fee on a dying slave, don’t want it to spread, so they drop them out in the middle of nowhere and then say the slave ran away.”
“That’s vile!”
“You sound surprised, boy.” Paole rested heavily on the shovel, like he could barely stand up without its help. “Anyway, you don’t need to help me. You can take the wagon and Peni. Don’t want her caught out here with me. Just leave me a bedroll, supplies.”
“Are you just going to stay here and die?”
“I’m going to die anyway. The only choice I have is in how many people I take with me.”
Yveni clenched his fists in frustration. “But…it’s not certain you’ll get sick and it’s not certain you’ll die if you do.”
“None of your business, boy. You wanted to be free, so go. You’re nothing to me any more. You don’t like me and I don’t like you.”
“I don’t like you because you force young boys to sleep with you!”
“I what?”
Paole was clearly exhausted. Yveni doubted he had the energy to put on an act, and his confusion looked real. “Those boys. Kurt and the others. Were paying you in sex for their families’ debt.”
“Are you out of your mind? Their families paid me in bread, food, those clothes I got which you never wear.”
“But…” Yveni ran over the conversation with Kurt. “He didn’t mention any of that.”
“Did you ask him flat if he was sleeping with me out of obligation?”
“No.”
Paole shook his head and walked towards the wagon. “Thought you were so smart,” he muttered as he passed Yveni.
“Wait!”
“Boy, I want to wash and to eat. I told you twice now to leave.”
“No, I won’t. I’m going to stay and look after you.”
Paole made a derisive noise and didn’t stop. Yveni had to chase after him. “Are you so eager to die alone?”
“What makes you think I want
your
company? You’ve been a little shit for weeks, and over nothing at all, it turns out.”
“I
thought
you were exploiting children!”
Paole turned and glared. “None of those boys were children. How can you believe I’d do something like that? Shows what you think of me, doesn’t it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t care. Go away, Yveni. Go away and find your fancy friends and be a lord or a king or whatever you want. Take what you need. The only thing I want is for Peni to be cared for. If you won’t do that, I’ll set her free in the forest, but I don’t like her chances of surviving in there.” As if she’d understood, the big horse whinnied softly. Paole went to her and rubbed his cheek against her jaw, scratching underneath it the way she liked.
Yveni gritted his teeth. He’d been a damn fool. He could have just asked a simple question and all this misunderstanding would have been avoided, but no. He’d leapt to a conclusion and sat solidly astride it, as his father would have said.
Well, he wouldn’t make another mistake. He marched up to Paole. “I’m not leaving. I’m going to wait with you and see if the fever comes. If it does, I’ll nurse you. If it kills you, I’ll bury you, and if it doesn’t, you can take me with you until you reach a port. I’ll work with you until then.”
The man laughed harshly, unpleasantly. “Sorry, no. I’ve seen how your promises end up, boy. Made any gloves lately?”
“Given me the tools to do the job lately,
master
? I was at fault, but so were you.”
“At least I wasn’t accusing you of whoring out little boys.”
“Look, it was an honest mistake. If you’d thought me guilty of that, you’d have been angry too. And you’ve accused me of plenty of things that aren’t true. Being a thief, wanting to poison your patients. Lying to you, which I haven’t.”
Paole straightened up. “Tell me who you are.”
Yveni took a deep breath. The risk was great, but Paole already knew enough to bring the Karvins down on him, and hadn’t. “I’m the Vicont Yveni, the missing heir to the ducal throne of Sardelsa. The man who’s plotting my death is the regent, the Margrave Konsatin. He’s betrothed to my sister. Gil was my father’s huntmaster and best friend. Everything else I’ve told you is the complete truth.”
Paole regarded him with bleary eyes. He didn’t even blink in surprise, which was a little insulting after the bastard had demanded this information over and over these past few weeks. “Konsatin has Karvi friends?”
“Yes. Long ties between his brother, the grand duc of Enholt, and here. I really need to leave Karvis.”
“Then go.”
“
After
.”
Paole buried his face in Peni’s neck briefly, then looked up. “As you wish, boy. I’m too tired to fight you.”
“Then go and rest. Is there anything in your books about kirten fever?”
“Think so. I…”
His voice drifted away. Yveni walked up and took his arm. “Rest. I’ll make something to eat for when you wake. You can get through this, Paole.”
Paole gave him a long, searching look, then let Yveni tug him over by the embers of the campfire, and to Yveni’s discarded blankets. “You really ought to go,” he mumbled as he curled up by the fire’s remains.