Page 49 of The Prison Healer

Alarmed, Jaren reached for him, and with a look that brooked no argument, led him over to one of the metal benches and waited pointedly until he sat. While Kiva was relieved to see the young boy now off his feet, she still grumbled internally that it was Jaren’s intervention that had convinced him to move, when she’d been begging him to rest for over an hour.

“What do you mean,favored? ” Jaren asked.

Naari, on duty at the entrance to the infirmary, made a coughing sound. Kiva felt like doing the same. But instead, she answered the question, as delicately as she could.

“It means she’s given extra comforts from the guards—warmer clothes, better rations, safer work allocations, that kind of thing—in return for ... services.”

“I don’t g-get it,” Tipp said, yawning again. “I mean, what k-k-kind of services can she g-give that others aren’t giving them? They already have p-prisoners doing their laundry, making their meals, and c-cleaning their quarters. There’s n-nothing else they need.”

Naari coughed again, and neither Kiva nor Jaren answered.

“I see,” Jaren said tightly. “But I still don’t get how Rayla-from-administration is a problem.”

“The favored prisoners are kept separate from the rest of us,” Kiva shared. “Rayla would have had little to no interaction with anyone other than the guards that she ...” She cleared her throat, and rallied on. “Even her sleeping quarters are away from the rest of the cell block dormitories, closer to the guards’ quarters.”

Or inside those quarters on any given night,Kiva didn’t need to add.

“She shouldn’t be sick,” Jaren said, realization lighting his features.

“She shouldn’t be sick,” Kiva confirmed. “I mean, it’s notimpossiblethat she’s been in contact with an infected person, but if that were true, why are none of the guards that she’s been—” Kiva broke off with a quick look at Tipp before turning back to Jaren. “Uh, been near, getting sick?”

“Are you saying that none of the guards have fallen ill?”

Kiva swiveled to find that Naari had moved closer on silent feet, joining their conversation.

“None,” Kiva stated, still slightly uneasy talking to the amber-eyed guard, even if the feeling had been slowly dissolving.

“How many prisoners are sick?” Naari asked.

Kiva did a mental calculation. “Including those who have already died, close to seventy, with ten more on average every day.” And at least that many dying daily, too. The quarantine room was nearly at capacity, and would have passed it if not for the rapid increase in deaths. Kiva had even been allocated extra workers to help temporarily care for the sick, as had Mot and Grendel in the morgue and crematorium.

“Statistically, shouldn’t at least a few guards have caught it by now?” Jaren asked. He didn’t seem at all afraid of Naari, though he hadn’t witnessed a decade of guard brutality like Kiva had.

“If it’s a stomach virus as I had originally assumed, then yes,” Kiva said. “But while all the symptoms point that way ...”

“Rayla-from-administration proves that theory wrong,” Jaren finished for her. “Or, really, the guards that she’s been in contact with, who aren’t sick.”

“So, if it’s n-not a virus, what is it?” Tipp asked, rubbing his eyes.

“That’s the real question, isn’t it?” Kiva said, leaning back against the workbench and feeling about three thousand years old. “It could be anything—a spore in the air, bacteria in our water, mold in our grain, diseased meat or dairy ... the list is endless.”

“So we’re all at risk,” Jaren said, his tone part question, part statement.

Kiva made a helpless gesture. “I honestly don’t know. Why are they sick”—she pointed toward the closed quarantine door—“and we’re not? Why did some of them start catching whatever it is a few weeks ago, while others only became symptomatic today?” She paused, considering. “If it’s a bug in our food or water, it’d make sense that the guards aren’t catching it, since they have separate supplies and meal preparation from the rest of us. But if it’s something in the air or the animals or grain ...” She frowned and continued, almost to herself, “If I can’t figure out what’s wrong, then I need to find the origin of the illness. Maybe that will help me come up with a treatment.”

“Your n-n-next Ordeal is in four days,” Tipp said. “I think you should f-focus on that.”

Tipp had kept quiet about the Trials in the days since Kiva had first volunteered to take Tilda’s place. At times, she heard him whispering to the sick woman, who remained too delirious to talk back. Kiva knew he was worried, but she also knew he was trying to remain positive about it all, which was something she desperately needed. Sometimes she resented herself for it, since she should have been the one comfortinghim,but it was his sunny personality that pulled her out of the shadows when her fear became too great.

“Four days is enough to get started,” Kiva said. And enough for the rebels to arrive, even if there had been no sign of them yet. Sending him a reassuring wink, she added, “And I can continue investigating after the next Trial is over.” If she was still there.

His gap-toothed grin brightened her night, bringing a warm, sweet feeling to her chest.

“How will you do it?” Jaren asked, leaning his hip against the bench near her. “Investigate, I mean. Do you have a plan?”

Since he’d been there scant seconds ago when the idea had come to her, Kiva had to bite back a sarcastic retort. Instead, she thought about it and said, “The first prisoners to show symptoms were quarriers, so I’ll start there. I can circle around the outside of the prison, checking the farms, the lumberyard, all those outer places, before looking into what’s happening inside the walls.”

Realizing that she was forgetting something important, Kiva turned to Naari and, with slight hesitation, said, “Do you—uh, would you mind asking Warden Rooke for permission? I can’t leave through the gate without an escort.” Normally Kiva would have approached the Warden herself, but she hadn’t seen him since the night of her first Ordeal. She’d awoken the next morning clearheaded enough to be horrified by how assertive she’d acted while on the poppymilk, and thought it best to avoid another conversation with him so soon.

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