Work Text:
Several years after the plague, the town had a small but adequate hospital in one of the old factories by the abattoir, just in case, god forbid, another plague were to break out. It had been a few months since anyone had turned up at Artemy Burakh’s doorstep in the middle of the night, but it still happened at times, he reflected, trudging blearily through the darkened streets. He was, after all, the town’s only proper surgeon, and, as a menkhu, the medic most favored by the Kin. Stakh Rubin typically worked the night shifts. He didn’t seem to mind being up at odd hours, but his relationship with the Kin was complicated, to put it politely.
“Get that needle away from me, akhar!” A familiar voice echoed through the ward the moment Artemy opened the door. “I’ll beat you up! I'll bite if I have to!”
The ward was empty, aside from Taya Tycheek, in a bed at the far corner, and Rubin, who awkwardly circled around her with a syringe.
“What’s this about biting?” Artemy asked. “Seems beneath the dignity of a Mother Superior, especially at your age.”
“It’s not like I can hit or kick him,” she said. “And he won’t leave me alone! I told him to wait for you, but he isn’t listening!”
“I was only trying to give her some morphine," Rubin said, holding up a syringe. "She’s obviously in a lot of pain.”
That much was true. Taya cradled a slightly malformed wrist with the opposite hand, and one ankle, propped up on a stack of pillows, was visibly swollen. There was a noticeable scrape on her chin, and her pant legs were torn and slightly bloodied at the knees. Her expression was calmly indignant, but Artemy could sense pain in the ashen color of her face and the furrowing of her brow.
“Don’t try to argue with her,” he told Rubin. “It never goes well.”
Artemy knew this from experience. The tenacity that made Taya Tycheek such an asset to the Kin also had the effect of making her a very difficult patient, and the approaching onset of adolescence did little to help in that regard.
“And you didn’t have to wait for me,” he said to Taya. “I’ve been working with Rubin here for years now, and I assure you, he’s perfectly capable of setting a bone or two. No cutting involved.”
“A menkhu is more than just a surgeon,” she said. “And I don’t like being seen like this, least of all by strangers. You’re the only one I trust here.”
He couldn’t help but feel his heart warm a little bit. Through their years working together as leaders in the Khatanghe community, he had found himself in the simultaneous positions of being Taya’s mentor and second in command. More than that, they had become good friends.
“Well, he’s going to need to help out. I don’t have enough hands to patch you up on my own. It looks like you’ve got a broken wrist there.”
She nodded. “That’s where it hurts the most.”
“Would it be all right if I gave you some morphine?”
“Of course.”
Rubin rolled his eyes as he handed Artemy the syringe.
“I’ve got all the tools set up for a closed reduction,” Rubin said, pointing to a tray on the bedside table. “You’ll want to take a look at her hands, too; they were bleeding when she first got here.”
“Thanks.” Gently, so as not to cause any further pain, he turned over her hand, exposing a number of cuts and abrasions on the palm. Bits of glass were embedded in some of the wounds. An inspection of the other hand revealed similar injuries.
“How did this happen?” he asked.
“I fell,” she said flatly.
He paused, taken aback by the brevity of her answer. Perhaps the morphine had set in quickly, he thought, and she was too tired to go into any more detail. But he had given her a small dose, and her eyes were fixed and quizzical as he examined the swollen ankle.
It didn’t look broken, but it was hard to tell without an x-ray. “Did you walk here?” he asked.
She nodded. “Mostly. I tried crawling for a little bit, but that hurt my arm even more than walking hurt my leg.”
“It’s probably not broken then… Best not to try walking on it again for a few days, though, just to be safe.”
Taya let out a decidedly teenage sigh. “Ugh. What am I supposed to do all that time? It’ll be so boring!”
“I’ve no idea.” Artemy prepared a set of forceps and a bottle of iodine. “I’m afraid the subject of entertaining bored twelve-year-olds never came up in medical school.”
“Oh? Why go, then?” she quipped.
“I suppose you could simply inject this novocaine by yourself then?” he retorted, selecting another syringe with a particularly long needle.
“No,” she said, “but I don’t know how to entertain myself either.”
“A fair point.” He carefully ran his fingers along her wrist until he felt the displaced end of a bone, calculating the best angle to inject from.
“This is going to look bad,” he warned. “You might not want to watch.”
Taya, predictably, watched closely as he slid the needle between the two broken ends of the fracture.
“Is that going right into the bone?” she asked nervously.
“Shuu dee,” he agreed. “I did warn you it would look bad. It's going to sting for a few seconds, too.”
She made some pained noises through her teeth as he completed the injection. “Some anesthetic this is,” she muttered.
“It should kick in a few minutes from now,” he said, setting aside the syringe for a set of forceps and a bottle of iodine. “Until then, I’m going to clean up these cuts on your hands, since the splint will go on top of them.”
“All right,” she said.
“So where exactly did you fall?” he ventured.
Her face darkened in an instant. “Down some stairs.”
The answer was consistent with her injury--she might have twisted her ankle from a misstep, and broken her wrist reaching out as she landed--but something about the abrupt change in her demeanor felt deeply wrong.
“What stairs?” He plucked a large shard of glass from the heel of her palm and dropped it in a small tray.
She raised an eyebrow, looking indifferent. “Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters,” Artemy said. “If nothing else, I need to know how far of a fall it was.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, it was dark.”
Artemy and Rubin exchanged an exasperated glance.
“Well, what about these cuts on your hands?” Artemy asked. “There are bits of glass in them. How did that happen?”
“I dropped my lantern when I fell,” Taya said.
“So you had a lantern? I thought you said it was dark.”
“It went out.”
“I see,” Artemy said.
“I didn’t. That’s why I fell.”
Finishing his work on Taya’s hands, Artemy checked his watch. “How does your arm feel?”
“It doesn’t,” Taya said, frowning at her wrist.
“Good. Rubin? Would you mind holding up her arm? By the fingers, like this,” he said, demonstrating.
“All right.”
“Hold on tight,” he said. “This is going to take a little force.”
Taya made a small, displeased noise as Artemy pulled at her arm.
“It doesn’t hurt, does it?” he asked.
“No. But it’s not a good feeling. Bones aren’t meant to move like that.”
“Unente, they’re not,” he agreed. He felt the bone snap into place. “If only I knew how it happened.”
She didn’t even reply to that particular remark, but merely sulked as Artemy and Rubin wrapped her arm in bandages and plaster.
“So are you just going to sit there and pout?” Rubin snapped. “How are you planning to lead the Kin if you can’t take responsibility for whatever nonsense you’ve been up to all night?”
“Stakh!” Artemy had half a mind to give Rubin a solid smack in the face, but, fortunately, he was busy wiping the plaster from his hands. “She’s just a kid…”
“I’m not ‘just a kid!’” she said indignantly. “I’m Mother Superior!”
“Then try acting like it!”
“Perhaps it would be best if you left us alone for a few minutes,” Artemy said, through clenched teeth. “I’ll have a word with her.”
“Yeah, good luck,” Rubin muttered on his way out.
Taya watched him leave, and then gave Artemy a wry glance. “He’s your friend, huh?”
“He does care about other people, he’s just… not great at expressing it. He was only trying to help. He did help, even if he complained the whole time. And it’s not like you aren’t being stubborn. You still haven’t told me what happened.”
Taya shrugged. “What more is there to say? I fell down some stairs.”
“There’s more than one set of stairs in this town, you know,” he said. “Where were they?”
She gave him a sharp glance, the sort usually reserved for people she disliked. “Do you really need to know?”
“Yes,” he said. “I really do. What if you hit your head when you fell, or caught an infection in your cuts? If I don’t know the whole story, I can’t really help you.”
She rolled over to face away from him. “Amaa tat. Can’t you see I’m tired?”
“Fine.” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “But I’ll ask again when you wake up.”
“I’ll sleep some more then.”
“You can’t sleep for the rest of your life, kiddo,” he said.
“And you can’t stay awake for the rest of yours,” she replied.
“Well, the more you avoid my questions, the more worried I get. You’re obviously hiding something.”
“Boleesh, Burakh!” She rolled onto her back again to give him another pointed frown. “Is this any way to treat your Mother Superior?”
“As a menkhu, it falls well within my duty to know what happened to you.”
“I can’t tell you,” she said resolutely. “My tutors will be furious if they know I’ve snuck into the warrens.”
“The termitary? What were you doing in there? It’s been empty for years now--”
“Shudkher! Promise you won’t tell. I told them I wouldn’t go, but…”
“They’ll find out sooner or later,” he said. “A broken wrist is going to be tough to hide. Besides, what are they going to do? Who would dare to ground Mother Superior?”
“I mean, they wouldn’t punish me, of course, but Khanda would give me that look, all disappointed in me, and Solbon would get so worried…”
“If they’re not worried already,” he pointed out. “What were you doing in the Termitary? It’s not safe in there, especially not by yourself.”
She held up her splinted wrist and rolled her eyes. “Obviously.”
“But why were you there? I can’t imagine you were feeling nostalgic about it.”
“Of course not.”
“Then what were you looking for?”
She covered her face with her good arm, wincing even more than she had before. “I can’t say it. I can’t. I’ll cry if I do. And it’s no good for a Mother Superior to be seen crying; it will only bring down everyone else’s spirits.”
Artemy shut the curtains around her bed, even though the ward was empty. “There’s no one else here,” he said, “and I won’t tell anyone. You have my word.”
Almost instantaneously, Taya let out a sob though clenched teeth, as though she had been holding it in for a very long time. “Bayarlaa, emshen,” she said quietly. Rather than asking any further questions right away, Artemy offered a handkerchief and waited a minute or so, turning his eyes respectfully to the floor.
“Kids around town have been saying it’s haunted, you know?” she finally said, interrupting herself with a small sort of hiccup. “So I thought maybe my Aba and Ashkan would be there still…”
“Oh, Taya… Noukherne…” Artemy felt as though he ought to have said more, perhaps offered some wisdom befitting of a menkhu, or at least a comforting platitude. “I’m sorry… I wish I had more to say.”
She blew her nose and took a few moments to collect herself. “I just had to check, to make sure… I don’t even remember what they looked like anymore. Or their voices, or anything, really. But I couldn’t find them. I kept searching, but…”
“It’s good that you didn’t find them,” he said. “They wouldn’t want to be trapped in such a terrible place.”’
“But it really is haunted,” she said. “I saw it myself. Or, heard it, mostly. When my lantern went out, I could hear the screaming. I could smell death. I think I even stepped on something soft, like a body… I was so afraid I just started running, even though I couldn’t see, and, well…” She gestured vaguely.
“So that’s when you fell down the stairs?”
“Yes.”
He nodded solemnly. “Be khara.”
“I was so afraid,” she whispered. “It hurt so much I didn’t think I could walk. I just kept screaming and screaming and nobody came; my voice was lost in all the others… I thought I was going to die there.”
“I’m glad you found your way out,” he said. “Yamar berkhe, you’re a brave girl. I’m not surprised.”
“I didn’t have much choice…” She chewed on her lower lip, looking pained. “But since it’s haunted, my parents might still be there, right? What if they’re worried about me? I never want to go back, but…”
“I don’t think it’s haunted,” he said gently. “Painful memories can be strong like that, as though no time has passed at all. I still wake up in a panic sometimes, thinking I’ve slept too long, that I need to hurry up and make a cure for the plague…”
“So it never gets better, then?” She wiped her nose on the back of her hand, having soaked through the handkerchief.
“Ime beshe,” he said quickly. “I mean, it gets a little easier. The pain will always be there, but it gets smaller, farther away, in a sense.”
“But that’s not right!” she exclaimed. “Why should I have to spend my whole life bearing the burden of something that happened when I was hardly old enough to remember it?”
“You’re right,” he said. “What happened to our people was deeply wrong. Even worse than what the rest of the town went through. Seven thousand dead. And only a few hundred left to shoulder the grief. It will take a long time--generations even--to work through that kind of pain. You have every right to be upset.”
“But I wasn’t grieving,” she said. “Not then. I was bored, really. I remember that. Seven thousand of the people I should have been responsible for were dying right around me, and I was bored! Some Mother Superior I am.”
“I didn’t think you understood what was going on at the time. You were so young--”
“And that only makes it worse!” she cried. “What use was I, if I didn’t understand what was happening? Maybe if I’d known, I could have changed things… Maybe I could have…”
“Of course you didn’t understand. You were practically a baby, ezhe. Nobody was expecting you to take on that sort of responsibility so young. You may have had the title, but your attendants were protecting you, not the other way around.”
“And why?” she demanded. “When you only had a few doses of the panacea, you gave one of them to me, when the others were dying all around! It’s not right that I took the first cure for myself. What kind of Mother Superior would protect herself, leaving her people to die? I shouldn’t have taken it--every one of the thousands who died were just as worthy as me. Why did you spare my life over the others?”
“Because we needed you,” he said. “Everything changed during the plague. We needed a leader. Someone to rally around and represent us when it seemed like our way of life would be gone forever. I wasn’t ready; I had been away for too long. But strength and charisma like yours are rare gifts, and even then, I could see that in you. Medeneghshe, I think I’ve made the right choice. So far, you’ve done a remarkable job.”
“Have I really?” she asked, sniffing.
“Timel da. Your first act as Mother Superior was leaving the termitary for Shekhen. I didn’t think it would ever happen--it seemed to simple, too good to be true--but you were right. Tom naymaa,” he said. “Before then, if anyone so much as thought the word ‘strike,’ Olgimsky would have the whole place locked up. And speaking of Olgimsky, you certainly don’t take any shit from him.”
Taya snickered, giving Artemy an abrupt reminder that she was, in fact, still very much a child. “You said ‘shit.’”
Artemy knew better than to try denying it. “Unente. I did.”
Her face brightened. “So that means I can say it, right?”
“No.”
“Ene shi yuun khun geeshebshe!” she said, snorting with laughter. “I’m Mother Superior, and if I want to say ‘shit,’ then I can say ‘shit’ whenever I damn well please. Shit!”
He grimaced and sighed a little. “Well, I suppose I’m in no position to object. But if anyone asks, I never gave you permission, either.”
“I think I’ll be saying it a lot in the next few days,” she announced. “I hate it here, but I can’t exactly walk all the way back to Shekhen.”
“Hmm… Think you can climb onto my back? I’ll carry you home.”
“I think so.” With one arm splinted up to the elbow, her grip on his shoulders was a little unsteady, at first. “For that matter, I could use some moral support trying to explain everything to my tutors.”
“Careful. Normally, I wouldn’t be offering piggyback rides to an injured patient, you know.” It took a little effort to stand upright; she was getting big, and he was getting old. He could carry her well enough, but he suspected a backache would be due within the day. “And if I drop you, we’ll both be in a lot of trouble.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “We’d be in deep shit, one might say.”
Artemy made a small noise of disapproval.
“What?” She rested her chin on the top of his head. “Am I wrong, emshen?”
“I suppose not, but…” He frowned. “My point is, you need to let me know if you feel like you’re losing your grip, or if I’m hurting you at all, okay?”
“Of course,” she said. “Let’s go!”