“I mean it, unless you want to watch,” she cried, holding the door open.
Most of the little miscreants bobbed out, but the youngest paused in the doorway, her eyes enormous, and said, “There’s a monster in the sewer!”
“I’m the monster,” said Tess, lightly swatting her backside. “Now get gone.”
Tess got straight to business, not giving the warning a second thought. When the flame struck her backside, therefore, it came as a complete surprise.
She screamed and leaped to her feet. It was dark; the children had taken the lantern, and the only light was glimmers of the full moon through the ventilation slats near the roof. Tess yanked up her breeches and called, “Hello?” into the jake-hole, feeling stupid. Had she imagined fire in the commode? What a thing to think.
No, there it was again. A flicker in the pit. Saints’ bones, what was it? Swamp gas? Some kind of sewer malfunction?
It occurred to her that this might be a quigutl. She hadn’t seen any this far south; if it was alone, it might be lost and scared.
Tess said, “Who’s there? I understand Quootla. You may speak to me.”
“I am speaking—with fire,” said the creature.
Tess recognized the voice and jerked back. She’d all but forgotten Kikiu, but apparently her reflexes hadn’t. “What are you doing here?” she said, keeping her distance now. “Have you come to kill me, the way you tried to kill Pathka?”
“I was defending myself,” cried the hatchling, charging out of the hole. Kikiu now sported three shiny horns; her bite enhancer gleamed as she snarled. “Pathka tried to cut me and make me bleed into a bowl. What else was I to do?”
Tess felt her fear deflate. Of course they’d each been too wrapped up in their own pain to listen to the other. Maybe if she could have been there to interpret…
“I need your help,” said Kikiu, who clearly didn’t know an effective way to ask for it. “My mother’s in the sewer; I dragged ko this far, miles through the snow, but I can’t haul ko up through this narrow vent. You’ve got to come fetch ko.”
“I don’t understand,” said Tess, her heart quailing. “Did you bite him again? Is he dead?”
“No, stupid human,” barked Kikiu. “Ko is ill. It’s Anathuthia who’s dead.”
* * *
A trapdoor in the courtyard permitted St. Blanche to visit the underworld if her innovative plumbing jammed. Tess flung it wide, took a deep breath to steady herself, and descended into the stenchy semidark, grateful that she hadn’t quit her habit of breeches and boots despite Gaida’s daily protestations. The ladder was nothing but notches in the slippery wall. Kikiu ignited her tongue, dissipating the smell a bit, and led Tess through a dank, arched brickwork tunnel. It occurred to Tess—how could it not?—that Kikiu was taking her down here to bite her, but then she saw Pathka lying inert in a pool of icy sludge, barely breathing.
Tess didn’t let herself think about how dirty he was, or she’d have balked. She scooped Pathka out of the muck, threw him across her strong shoulders, and staggered toward the hatch. Pathka was heavier than Griss had been, and deader weight. Climbing through the trapdoor was a nightmare; Tess clung to the wall one-handed, steadying Pathka with the other, her grip slipping. Kikiu tugged Pathka’s tail from above and dragged him onto the bricks of the yard.
Tess hauled water from the well and sluiced the muck off Pathka. Steam rose off him; his internal furnace still burned. Kikiu refused the bucket, preferring to scour herself with her tongue-flame. Tess removed her filthy jacket and washed her hands.
“What’s all this?” said Josquin from the doorway.
Tess had been so busy she hadn’t heard him approach. She was at a loss to explain, numb with cold, disgust, and worry. “I’m…this is my oldest friend, Pathka, and his daughter, Kikiu. Pathka is dirty and ill, and I only know what to do about dirty. Where can we keep them without alarming Gaida?”
“You’ll never keep me,” snarled Kikiu, flaring her spines. “I won’t live in a house again.”
“All right, not Kikiu,” said Tess. She swiped a shaky hand across her forehead, leaving a smudge.
“Tess, it’s fine,” said Josquin, assessing Tess’s distress and coming to a decision quickly. “Let’s put your friend in my room, on the tiles near the boiler. It’s fireproof and warm.”
Tess nodded, grateful for his decisiveness, and picked up Pathka. He was dry, the wash water having evaporated already. They made Pathka a little nest of blankets and got him settled. Kikiu lingered in the doorway making disdainful remarks about the shape of the nest.
“That will do,” said Kikiu at last. There was something in her voice Tess had never heard before, a kind of resignation. “Get my mother well, or I will exact it from your flesh. Ko is all I have, the only thing between me and…” Kikiu’s head spines trembled fragilely, minutely, like poplar leaves. “Something happened when ko joined dreams with the serpent’s—I felt it from miles away, impossibly. Then, when they killed it, I felt that, too—”
“Who killed Anathuthia?” cried Tess. Anathuthia dead had been unthinkable, but killed?
“Don’t pretend you didn’t send them,” hissed Kikiu, swinging back to venom and menace in an instant. Her tail whipped the lintel as she turned back toward the sewers.
Tess closed the door shakily, mind racing. Emmanuele. It had to be. He must’ve gone to Santi Prudia’s, maybe with an expeditionary force, and…she could hardly think it. When she could finally focus, she realized she’d been staring at Josquin without seeing him.
“Could you tell me what’s going on?” he said once he perceived that she was present.
“I barely know,” Tess half whispered, “but I’ll do my best.”
She’d left Pathka’s pilgrimage out of her stories because there was so much she didn’t understand and couldn’t explain. Josquin listened solemnly, and by the end of the story she was weeping into his lap.
“Your friend is ill,” said Josquin, stroking her short curls. “Let’s tend him tonight; if he doesn’t improve by morning, I’ll call for Dr. Belestros and St. Blanche. They say St. Nedouard was a great physician, but these two together exceed even him. They’ll know how to help. Once Pathka is well, you’ll have time to worry about how to make this right.”
“How did you know—” Tess began, half weeping, half laughing.
“Because I know you and I know your conscience,” said Josquin. “I’ve heard all your stories, remember? The world could end, and you’d blame yourself for it—and then you’d find a way to push on through the wreckage and save what can be saved.”
Tess wiped her eyes. “Are you calling me pushy, villain?”
Josquin kissed her warmly, and then they turned their attention to Pathka.
* * *
There passed a terrible night. Pathka, in the grip of insensible delirium, thrashed and muttered and did not know Tess at all. His eyes wouldn’t focus; his eye cones drooped alarmingly. Tess curled up beside him and slept as best she could.
Josquin called the physician and the holy machinist by thnik as soon as it was light, while Tess was still (or finally) asleep. An hour later, Gaida threw open the door, crying, “Dr. Belestros is here, and St. Blanche! Are you unwell, Jos? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Josquin, dressed but not yet in his chair, put a finger to his lips and pointed urgently at Tess and the quigutl, lying behind the furnace. Gaida let the visitors through, but before she left said waspishly, “I’d assumed that when she wasn’t in her room, she was sleeping with you.”
“So much for not alarming her,” muttered Tess from the corner, and then she was on her feet brushing herself off and trying to look presentable.
Tess recognized St. Blanche as the pale, scarred woman Josquin had spoken to at the Academy gala; her scars, up close, turned out to be silver scales. The Saint smiled shyly. Dr. Belestr
os, a saarantras, was taller and darker than his counterpart. Tess was surprised to find she recognized him, too, as the doctor Pashfloria had asked about the serpent’s healing power.
The dragon doctor wasted no time on greetings, but went straight to palpating Pathka’s throat. Belestros listened to the quigutl’s chest, wrenched an eye cone aperture open with two thumbs, and then reached around and stuck an instrument up Pathka’s cloaca. Tess flinched; Josquin took her hand.
“When did you last treat a quigutl, Bel?” said Blanche, her light voice carrying a note of warning. “Are you being gentle enough?”
“St. Blanche is his conscience,” Josquin stage-whispered to Tess.
“I could drop this quigutl on his head,” said the doctor evenly, “and he’d feel nothing.” He wiped his hands on a towel. “There are two things wrong with him. First: pneumonia, which should be curable with a syrup. Second, and more perilous: a condition we dragons call inevitable quigutl quietude. I’ve seen it before. They fancy themselves ingenious, courting contradiction, but they may delve so deeply into paradox that their minds seize up. The wage of illogic is paralysis; everyone knows this. Blanche, I’ll need your electroquietus unit.”
St. Blanche rummaged in a large leather bag and drew out a device like a hedgehog, its quills all wires and switches. From two longer wires dangled what looked like meat-turning forks. Dr. Belestros pressed their tines to the little quigutl’s temples, wedging them under scales and into flesh.
“Wait,” said Tess. “What are you doing?”
“We’ll send an electrostatic current through the brain to stop it,” said Dr. Belestros, as if this were nothing. “A second current will start it up again.”
“You’ve done this before?”
“Not precisely this,” said the doctor, wrapping Pathka’s head to keep the forks in place. “The machine is for hearts, usually, but I see no reason—”
“All will be well,” said Blanche, turning solemn violet eyes to Tess’s face. “I built this machine. No one can run it but me, because it runs on my power. It will be my current, softly closing his mind and gently waking him again.”
“And he’ll be himself when he wakes?” asked Tess tremulously. “He’ll remember me, and all he’s been through?”
“Oh, probably,” said Dr. Belestros, waving an impatient hand. “He’s a quigutl. Does it matter what he remembers?”
St. Blanche shot her colleague a look. “We’ll do our best. You may wish to leave.”
But Tess couldn’t leave. She’d have held Pathka’s hand, but they made her watch from the bed so the device wouldn’t shock her as well. Josquin held her; Tess wouldn’t take her eyes off her friend. Pathka twitched, died, twitched again, and took a convulsive breath. His eyes focused, though they wobbled; he raised his head an inch off the ground and said, “Teth?”
Then Tess was on her knees beside him, stroking his head, asking how he was and what he remembered and did he know she loved him?
“Stop,” said Pathka, squirming in her arms. “Stop talking and listen, Teth. I was…we call it tutlkikiu, the splitting death. I will slip into it again. I feel myself slipping already.”
“You should stop thinking contradictory thoughts,” said Dr. Belestros.
“Quiet, dragon,” snapped Pathka. “Thinking couldn’t do this. It’s feeling—which dragons don’t understand, but you do, Teth. It’s like the time you walked out of Affle in a daze, the same, except it’s all the time, and I can’t climb out; I will slide down forever unless I resolve it.”
Pathka struggled for breath and coughed painfully. “The Academy sent a little army after Anathuthia. The monks tried to stop them—some died trying. I tried, too, but we were too few, and they were armed. They killed…they killed…”
“Kikiu told me,” said Tess hastily, trying to spare him the anguish of reliving it.
“Let me say it!” Pathka wailed. “They killed Anathuthia with a ballista bolt through the eye and then hacked her into pieces. I was swimming in gore, and I hated you, Teth! No one else had seen her but the monks and me; it had to be you who sent them. I hated you, but I can’t hate you, but I can’t stop thinking about it, but you’re human so I can’t…I can’t—”
“He’s falling back under,” said Dr. Belestros.
“Can’t you use the machine again?” cried Tess.
“Not without harm,” said St. Blanche, her pale brows pinched. “I don’t understand all his words, but I think you’re what sets him off, child.”
Pathka struggled in Tess’s arms, babbling and gnashing his teeth. It was the gnashing that made Tess understand: “Sweet St. Siucre, he needs to bite me.”
“His bite is septic. It could kill you,” said St. Blanche, moving as if to separate Tess from the quigutl.
“It’s not a terrible idea,” said Dr. Belestros, blocking St. Blanche with an outstretched arm, his voice tinged with curiosity. “That’s how they reset their misfiring brains in the wild, by biting each other. The pressure of the jaw releases a de-stressing neuro—”
Tess had no time for this. She grasped Pathka’s head, trying to get his attention. “I want you to bite me. I know you don’t bite humans, on principle, and it’s going to hurt, but if this is what you need to be at peace, then do it. Please.”
She extended her arm and Pathka clamped down with tremendous force before she was ready. For half a second she felt only surprise, but then the pain caught up and was everywhere, like an immolation.
Then, mercifully, mind and body agreed she’d had enough.
* * *
Tess had a fever within hours. It raged for three days, during which she remembered only bits and pieces: Pathka sleeping beside her, Josquin feeding her broth, and Dr. Belestros making a poultice from moldy bread (surely she dreamed that; it was too bizarre).
Upon the fourth day, her fever broke enough that she knew where she was and could speak. “Next time, remind me to offer my nondominant arm,” she croaked through parched lips as Josquin propped her head up and St. Blanche put a glass to her lips.
“If she’s well enough to joke, she’s on the mend,” said St. Blanche, and some of Josquin’s tension melted away.
“I’d rather have another baby than be bitten by a quigutl,” Tess declaimed, teetering on the edge of delirium. “I’d rather have ten babies.”
“Noted,” said Josquin, dabbing her forehead and smiling.
“I’d rather marry Will than be bitten by—”
“All right, let’s not exaggerate,” Josquin said.
Tess and Pathka were co-invalids, together on a pallet in Josquin’s room. Pathka didn’t speak at first—he was recovering from pneumonia, on top of everything else—but they lay in comradely silence, nest to each other.
When they finally spoke, it was the middle of the night. Moonlight streamed in the window; Josquin snored lightly across the room. “Pathka,” Tess whispered, “I’m so sorry about Anathuthia. That doesn’t make up for it or fix anything, but I don’t know what else to do.”
Pathka was silent so long that she might have thought him asleep, except he wasn’t snoring. Finally he said, “Anathuthia isn’t gone. There’s still the egg, buried under all that gore. The serpents are eternally renewing themselves; she may have meant to die soon anyway. I wish I knew. I was wrenched out of her dream so abruptly, it’s been hard to orient myself.”
“What was it like to dream with her?” asked Tess.
“All in ard, as the great dragons say,” said Pathka. “I never understood their obsession with order, but there’s no better word for it. I was in the right place, doing the right thing. It was all right.” His eyes unfocused, staring toward the ceiling. “It will be all right.”
“It must have been excruciating to lose her,” said Tess.
Pathka stretched on the blanket, considering. “She’s not gone, Teth. Not com
pletely. Anyway, I feel worse for Kikiu than for myself. Ko arrived just after Anathuthia was killed, and saw only blood and offal.”
“She said she felt it when you started dreaming,” said Tess. “And she felt it when Anathuthia died. Pathka, you said she was broken, and a monster, but that doesn’t sound monstrous to me. That sounds like…I don’t know. Like she’s nest to you?”
“Kikiu and I are bound together in ways I still don’t understand. Fatluketh didn’t set us free; it only bound us tighter.” Pathka shifted in the blankets, reaching a sticky-fingered ventral hand to touch Tess’s cheek. “I haven’t done right by Kikiu. I refused to see ko clearly—or maybe I couldn’t, until I dreamed with Anathuthia and saw everything.
“As much as I want to find another serpent and continue the dream, it’s Kikiu who needs it. Something is broken inside of ko—I was right about that much—but I…I am responsible. I’m still Kikiu’s mother, even if I haven’t been very good at it, and I inexplicably thluff ko.” Pathka burrowed his head under the blanket, avoiding Tess’s eyes.
Tess took his hand and pressed it between both of hers until his pulse slowed. And then, insofar as it was possible for human and quigutl, they dreamed together.
The spring thaw hit hard, turning the streets into muddy rivulets. The sewer under the privy was a torrent of runoff, making the sluice unnecessary for hygiene (although the bathwater still needed to be drained, Tess discovered, or the system backed up). The Ninysh were great devotees of bulb flowers—crocus, tulip, jonquil, hyacinth—and the stubborn things started pushing up everywhere, through mud, through cracks, wherever itinerant bulbs had sailed on the high spring tides. Tess rescued bulbs that had washed ashore in the middle of the street, against a midden of manure, and brought them home for Gaida. The yard was ringed with terra-cotta pots, ready to burst into unruly bloom.