“Maybe in the kitchen.”
“Let me carry her for you.”
“No!” I stumbled into the kitchen. Everyone had stood by now, already hearing the commotion as I ran through the vault, and when they spotted Kazi in my arms, the center table was swept clean. I laid Kazi across it, and my mother and the healer rushed over.
“She’s been bitten by ashti! She needs the antidote! Do you have it?”
“Someone get my bag from the sickroom!” Rhea ordered, then pushed me away to examine Kazi. She shook her head as she looked at the wounds and discoloring on Kazi’s arms, legs, and chest, then felt her wrist for a pulse. “Her heart is racing like a rabbit’s. How long ago did this happen?”
“I don’t know. Maybe days ago.”
She looked at my mother. I recognized that look. It was the same one she had given my mother when my father was on his deathbed.
“No!” I said. “She’ll make it!”
“No one said she wouldn’t,” Rhea replied. “We’ll do what we can. Now let me work.”
The antidote had to be coaxed down Kazi’s throat, drop by drop. Some spilled out from the corner of her mouth and had to be spooned back in. Long minutes passed just trying to get the three thimblefuls of medicine into her. Rhea gently rubbed Kazi’s throat, trying to encourage her muscles to swallow. She was dehydrated too, and water was given in the same manner, one slow drop at a time.
“Give us a little privacy now,” Rhea said to everyone in the room. “I need to clean the wounds.”
Everyone left but me and my mother. My mother brought warm water from the hearth, and she and Rhea began carefully washing and searching Kazi’s whole body for bites, even the bottoms of her feet. But the one thing we noticed right away were the bruises everywhere. Her whole left side was a dozen shades of blue and purple. Paxton had told me she’d fallen down a rocky canyon wall and then had been on the run for days before she was recaptured. After cleaning the wounds on her arm and thigh, Rhea said, “They’re deep, but they won’t need stitching. And this one here…” She pressed on the one-inch scar on Kazi’s abdomen. “This is from something else. A knife, I suspect.” She shook her head as she covered her back up. “What this girl has been through.”
“Let’s move her to my pallet. It’s more private there. She can rest,” my mother suggested, then looked at me. I saw the terror in her eyes, the questions she had just had time to consider. I had come back alone.
“I don’t know where the others are,” I said. “We had to split up. They’ll be here, though.” It was all I could give her for now. I scooped Kazi into my arms and carried her to the small room off the kitchen.
We’ll do what we can. How long ago did this happen?
I lay on the pallet beside her. Holding her. Keeping her warm. Talking to her. Doing everything I could to keep her in this world.
I stared at her face. Her lashes. Ran my thumb over a bruise on her cheek.
I kissed her lips. “Wake up, Ambassador Brightmist. We still have work to do.”
She didn’t stir.
* * *
Four hours. Six hours. Eight hours passed. The vault was stifling with the tension of waiting. Waiting for Kazi to wake. Waiting for the others to return. There was no word from anyone. What had become of Priya, Paxton, Wren, and Gunner? Four against ten. For all the time Priya spent alone in an office with numbers, she could be fierce, but I wasn’t sure how adept Paxton was at anything, though long ago he had flipped me into a well without much effort. I never thought I would find that comforting.
Finally, just after dark, there was banging on the cave wall. We all ran to the door. It was Wren and Gunner. They were both covered with blood.
“Not ours,” Wren said as she marched in. “Where’s Kazi?”
Gunner was right behind her, holding his arm. “Mostly not ours,” he added. He had a gash on his upper arm.
I took Wren to see Kazi and explained what the healer had said. Wren knelt beside her and rested her head on Kazi’s chest. “Tantay mior, ra mézhan,” she said softly.
I knew one of the words.
Kazi had taught me the Vendan words for wife and husband. Shana and tazerem.
She taught me the other words for family too.
Ra mézhan. My sister.
* * *