Chapter Text
Artemy Burakh watched his own breath fog out in front of his face as he rubbed his fingers together for warmth after another sleepless night out on the Steppe. The sun was coming up, but the end of summer (amidst the end of other things) had stolen the warmth of it away. The dawn was pale and cold, barely making the mist rise as the unsympathetic sun did.
I need to take stock of the herd.
The drying and dying grass crunched under his heavy leather boots, catching the attention of the more obedient members of his kine. The cattle each rose their heads from their grazing as he passed, ears flicking, enormous glass-brown eyes soft and expectant whenever they fixed upon his own. The cattle almost never wandered off, not without good reason. The bells around their necks made it easy to catch those that did stray.
The bells of the cattle weren’t the only thing he heard as he walked. There was the familiar buzzing of black and brown twyre, as well as the whisking susurration of a rarer patch of white whip, rattling away nearby.
He approached the rest of his kine still curled in sleep, some with one another and some resting against the flanks of cows for warmth, and he immediately began to count. Twelve... thirteen, fourteen, fifteen... sixteen‒
Dankovsky was missing again.
Artemy’s throat felt full of glass as he sought the Bachelor’s familiar silhouette.
Immediately he scanned the length of the railroad tracks. The Bachelor was endlessly transfixed by the only man-made structure left to split the land, like a series of stitches or staples along a wound. When Artemy caught up with the townsfolk, obstinate Dankovsky had been leading the main pack, almost sleepwalking, but with a lingering sense of purpose. Even now, if he wanted to lead the herd too far from the tracks, he expected Dankovsky would turn into a bit of a bull himself, and refuse to budge.
His hunch was right.
Artemy flinched when he saw the dark leather-clad lump on the tracks, a body without a partner for warmth, hemmed in by cold metal rails. Not the first time he’d done this. How like him to eschew comfort by clinging to a sense of direction, even if his chosen route could destroy him in one fell swoop; in this case, the unlikely but still possible event of a passing train.
Approaching and crouching by Dankovsky’s head, he cleared his throat, hoping fervently that the man hadn’t frozen to death on the tracks. By the subtle shift of his shoulders and the thrumming, twisted mess of Lines inside of him, he was still breathing, and the glass in Artemy’s throat turned to ice; still sharp, but melting from relief.
"This can’t be a comfortable place to sleep, emshen,” he said softly, half-anticipating the Bachelor, when he woke, to have finally forgotten his face, just as everyone had, even Stakh, Lara, and Bad Grief.
Shaking the man awake was out of the question. He kept his hands to himself on his knees, gripping tight.
His hands had a calloused will of their own sometimes; perhaps they learned it when he’d leave them to work on huddled near-corpses while his mind turned away. They fought for him, heavy and hard-knuckled, while he shuddered in anguish at every needless killing. They were dependable, but still… dangerous. He wasn’t going to use them without good reason.
Dankovsky shifted on the wooden slats of the tracks, both arms uncurling as his eyes opened. His neck was oddly crooked, and the back of his head was pressed against the metal; a most uncomfortable pillow.
"I don't like lying on the grass," murmured the doctor, nose childishly wrinkling in displeasure. "It's... too soft. Too muffled. I felt I might sink."
Artemy pursed his lips. On good days, Dankovsky was the only soul aside from the cattle who retained any context about Artemy or his place there. The thought of him being reduced to a bloody smear on the railroad tracks was a horrifying one. Enough so, that Artemy thought about lifting the man up to his feet, even holding him for a moment so he might trade his own body’s warmth for the Bachelor’s cold, or bringing him to lay against one of the cows to recover.
But he didn’t. His fingers twitched on his knees, firmly remaining in place.
"If the cows don't sink, you certainly won't," Artemy bargained with him. Though logic didn’t mean what it once did, did it? In the doctor’s eyes he only found haze, thick as the morning mist on the horizon. His heart twisted in his chest. "Come on. Up, Dankovsky."
"But they do," Dankovsky mumbled. "And I... I mustn't." He furrowed his brow.
“Up,” Artemy prompted again, glancing to the south, where any incoming train would be bound to come. As ever, there was no sign of one, but that didn’t make the tracks a safe place to rest. That sort of habit would inevitably get someone killed.
He needed to move him.
With the barest permission from his thoughts, his hand darted out of its own accord. Harshly, gracelessly‒as if a steam engine actually was bearing down on them‒Artemy yanked him to his feet and onto the relative safety of the Steppe. As he dragged the dazed Bachelor back to the herd, the man unexpectedly spoke.
"Idiot... Do you really think you can outwit the inevitable?"
Incredibly, he caught a lilt of that proud Capital scholar who’d flounced into town two weeks ago. That tone roughly plucked a string in his heart the Haruspex hadn’t expected to be quite so sore.
Artemy released Dankovsky’s arm, rounding to peer down at him.
It wasn’t the sort of mindless question that normally came from the misty-eyed people he was trying his hardest to shepherd. It was a hard question, and not hard because it was the sort of question that wanted to be turned and puzzled over, but rather because Artemy found he didn't like the answer the question begged.
Winter might come long before they made it to the closest town at the edge of the steppe, and the temperatures would drop to below zero. His own socks were already starting to rub at his feet, which meant that the fine, thinner knits that his charges wore would soon be threadbare and useless. If it weren't for risk of frostbite, he'd remove their shoes altogether, and also solve the recurring problem of them being so compelled to wander. As for resources, they had only the cows for milk, blood, and warmth. But they couldn't provide shelter, unless Artemy slaughtered the herd himself and tried to take up tanning. Even then, he didn't know how to make a yurt.
A creeping whisper from between his own ears reminded the Haruspex that there was a very strong chance that they were going to die out here.
The challenge of Dankovsky’s question implied a certain level of acuity, and surely enough, Daniil’s eyes looked shockingly clear.
"You of all people shouldn’t be asking. Aren't you the expert?" Artemy insisted with a quick, but hollow smile.
Daniil gave a haughty little sniff that was diminished somewhat by a shiver.
"I used to be." His head sank into his hands. "I must have been. If I could only remember my old epiphanies." He frowned and looked away. "What can I do, Burakh? I can't stop time."
"No…" Artemy answered Dankovsky, his tone softening in sympathy. "I daresay none of us can do that."
Days started like this now, or at least the past three had. The dreamers would raise their heads and try to rub the sleep from their eyes, but always failed to rub the mist away. The disorientation usually discouraged wandering, but there had been one morning when Notkin had begun to roam east, much to the menkhu’s panic. The boy’s eyes had hardly been open, but being dragged back had startled him awake, and he’d lashed out with fists and teeth, snarling and hissing like a feral cat at the rough treatment. The boy was here now. Artemy was already starting to count again, making sure that yes—they were all here.
Lara, Grief, Stakh… all by that rock… Notkin, Capella and Khan (holding hands? So their little affair or… whatever… so that’s still going on) … by one of the milking cows… Georgiy, Victor, and Maria Kaina… the Stamatins… Vlad the Younger, Anna Angel… Yulia, Katarina and Alexander Saburov…
"I mean, do you think you can defeat death, Haruspex? Have you got your own ideas about that? Everyone seems to."
Another hard question from Dankovsky.
He’d been hounded about it by a certain Changeling, too. She had made an appearance during Artemy’s mad dash through the town’s empty cupboards for foods that kept, like pemmican and kashk. She’d looked at him with pity with her horrible moon-saucer eyes.
“You won’t make it, Burakh,” she’d told him. “Your hands aren’t meant to nurture, not anymore. You’re walking them to their deaths, and twyre will be the only mark for their graves.”
“I have to try,” Artemy had replied, shooting her a harsh glare, and taking back a wrapped piece of pemmican she’d tried to filch from his bag. “I’ll find another miracle if I have to, girl-of-faith.”
It was strange to think how he wanted her to be here now, because she had answers, even if they were usually terrible, and unwanted.
As a new Mistress, she’ll be revered for that.
"Well, I know I'll die sometime or other," Artemy answered Dankovsky, best he could. "I'm starting to wonder if the 'how' or 'why' even matter. How you live is more important."
The Bachelor shivered again, and it frustrated Artemy, once more making him think about putting propriety aside and sharing his body heat, of squeezing the chills out of his colleague so he’d stop looking quite so piteous. His stupid, dandy snakeskin coat would hardly be enough.
But Artemy didn’t.
"Come back," he encouraged Daniil. "You need breakfast."
"Of course they matter," Dankovsky insisted, as a bit of color and fervor returned to his pale cheeks. The Bachelor reached over and clutched Artemy's broad forearm insistently, and the shock of the contact jumped up Artemy’s arm like an electric bolt. "The how and why... the method and the justification. It's the most intimate aspect of our beings‒” he pressed. “‒It's the prestige of the trick the laws of nature play upon us. If I could unlock your own 'how and why' I could offer you your life to hold in the palm of your hand! It would finally be yours."
There was a stubborn, intelligent ferocity sparking in his walnut eyes, and it seemed to animate his entire posture. The intensity was reflected in his grip. It was by far, the clearest that the Haruspex had seen him in days. But it was fading, as soon as it had come, and surely enough, the Bachelor’s expression fell.
“Do you even understand me, or do I sound raving mad?” he asked, gloomy and rhetorical.
Artemy wanted to keep that brief, flaring spark alive. Because if the poor Bachelor could improve…
Dare I hope?
“My own life in the palm of my hands?" Artemy asked the man, hoping fervently it would be enough to stimulate that flame of clarity again. "That's a novel idea, Dankovsky.”
It wasn’t enough. Dankovsky was sagging as his energy drained. He released Artemy and stepped back.
"Or in the shell of a nut. Ugh, no, that’s not the answer, is it? Put a soul in a nut… No, I’m nuts. Damn all this..." Artemy’s heart sank as Dankovsky continued to mutter, "Breakfast, breakfast, you said."
In the past three days, Artemy had been rationing out what little kashk and pemmican he’d managed to grab. But they were foods that always brought on thirst, which was growing harder to quench. He had a small number of glass bottles, and the water had run out on the second day. They had milk because of the cows, but Artemy knew the human stomach would only tolerate that for so long.
Somewhere in the steppe was the spring from which all the town water was sourced, but they hadn't reached it yet.
“It’s a day and a half out into the steppe, yargachin,” an odongh had instructed him when it was known among the Khatange what it was Artemy was planning to do.
He had been the one to bring the cow herd to Artemy, releasing them from the Abattoir; a piece of his inheritance he hadn’t anticipated to collect when he chose to leave the town again. “They will eventually find the way, if you do not.”
I certainly hope so.
Artemy sucked the side of his cheek between his teeth, and he pressed a piece of kashk into Dankovsky’s hand, before moving on to Lara, where she was leaning against the side of a bull, arms wrapped around herself. She was shivering with the morning chill. Her blue shawl was wrapped properly around her shoulders now, instead of tied stylishly around her neck.
"Sayn baina," Artemy, greeted her, offering her a piece of kashk as well, only for her to turn her uncomprehending, unrecognizing eyes on him.
"I don't understand," she murmured, her brow furrowing. "What are you saying?"
Artemy swallowed the lump in his throat when he realized what had happened. He hadn't even intended to speak in Khatanger. But he was finding that it fell easier from his lips than Russian in the past days. He shook his head, trying to regain clarity again.
"Just 'hello'," Artemy explained, successful this time. "Eat. Please."
Eyeing him with distrust, Lara did eventually take the food. She didn’t bring it to her nose, and she didn’t examine it. She began chewing pieces of it slowly, and if Artemy were an optimist, he might have guessed that she knew food was scarce. She didn’t finish the piece, and instead slipped the rest of it into her pocket.
“Thank you, Gravel,” he murmured, and with his heart sinking in his chest, he watched her brows knit together in confusion.
“It’s ‘Ravel’,” she corrected him, expression blank. “Not ‘Gravel’.”
“Miss Ravel,” Artemy answered her, bowing his head and turning to leave her. “My mistake.”
Right as he completed his breakfast rounds, he felt a hand come to rest on his back, right between his shoulder blades. He turned, and saw much to his own surprise, that it was Dankovsky again.
He’s being oddly persistent today, Artemy realized, wide-eyed at the prospect of Dankovsky improving.
"I've been neglectful," Dankovsky said slowly, "as a doctor. I should examine everyone; they might not know it if they were injured or sick. I can start with the children."
Confusion was lingering on the Bachelor's handsome features, but he seemed truly determined. It was plain from the pinch of his eyebrows and the way he held his jaw, just how hard he was trying to focus.
He might be lost in the fog but at least he’s trying to find his way out.
“Just let me,” Dankvosky added, now with some impatience. “It doesn’t hurt to be thorough.”
"Oynon," Artemy said, bowing his head in respect. He was unquestionably nervous about it lasting, but there was the chance that putting his well-educated brain to work would help him stay above the surface. Dankovsky, after all, was the sort of man whose mind needed to move.
With Artemy’s allowance, Dankovsky took his time, assessing each sleepy-eyed former townsperson's health. There were moments where he seemed to need to stop and shake his head, but he doggedly continued. Artemy watched him dutifully check temperature and pupil dilation. He heard him ask if they felt pain and waited for their slow uncertain answers, looked over their clothes for hidden bloodstains.
There is the Bachelor again. Thorough indeed.
Artemy kept his distance as he watched the man work, his own jaw set firmly with his trepidation. How long would it last? Would he even retain what medical observations he had? Letting the breath he was holding hiss out through his teeth, he held back hope, but allowed Dankovsky a scrap of trust, that he wouldn’t do any harm.
Out of a lingering sense of special responsibility, Artemy double-checked on the children from his father’s list after Daniil saw to them. Notkin was vague and dreamy, not remembering his earlier escapade, Khan seemed sullen and reluctant to speak, arms crossed over his knees with his back deliberately turned towards Capella.
An argument?
Capella was twisting stems and blades of grass between her fingers, and the circlet of flowers upon her lap looked so innocent, as if she’d come out here willingly to play as any young girl might. Artemy pursed his lips, unsure; she’d found a patch of white whip to decorate her crown with.
"How did you get those flowers? They're pretty rare."
"Oh, that's easy; I found them as I was listening for pain. It's awful, still. We need to do something about it. Pain distorts everything. It clouds your mind. Here with my meal again?” The young Olgimskaya rose to her feet and brushed her hands off on her skirt, getting rid of the stray bits of grass stuck to it.
“So you remember me?” Artemy ventured to ask, unhopeful as he did. He passed her a lump of kashk, and she bit into it like it was a plump, ripe fruit, without making a face.
“Not quite,” Capella answered him. “I know that there’s an empty space in my head where the context for you existed, but something took it away. After all, I don’t think you’d be out here trying to keep us alive if you didn’t care about us… right?”
His heart welled up, and throat tightened. “That’s more than I could have asked for. Thank you.”
“I know you’re important,” she went on thoughtfully, “... Because you were in a funny dream I had last night. You were picking flowers, but angrily. You were tearing them out of the ground. And I felt very sad for you. That’s all. But here,” she offered him the crown. “I got you some.”
The last time Capella dreamed about flowers, she’d impulsively taken charge of all of the children in his care. Maybe she’d been right to worry, given how things turned out, but she couldn’t halt the plague. No one except Artemy could, and it was the one thing he couldn’t bring himself to do.
Regardless of her own memory, it was almost like an olive branch of sorts. A peace offering in regard to their sour parting in the town.
For a moment, he imagined wearing the crown and found it too gentle and innocent an image. He wasn’t capable of gentleness anymore, was he?
“Keep it, it’ll look lovely in your hair, but I don’t think it’ll suit me. Remember to rest more. The twyre bloom will exhaust you quicker.”
Artemy moved on to the next thing: Milk and blood.
He located one of the cows who was pregnant, and he approached her, murmuring soft affections in Khatanger as he scratched her under her chin.
“Bayarlaa, pretty thing,” Artemy whispered. “I will be quick, I promise. Bayarlaa.”
He crouched at her side, his bad knee twinging as he did, and drew milk from her with firm and steady squeezes, filling up the few bottles he had halfway. When that was done, he withdrew a tourniquet from his leg pouch, and wrapped it carefully around the cow’s neck.
His father’s hands had always been steady and unflinching whenever he bled a cow. One hand would hold the beast fast by the horn, while his voice would be pitched low and soothing, commanding the beast to calm as if by magic.
Artemy could never forget the wild fear in that bull’s eyes; how it was compelled to stay still as it was bled when every single muscle was shaking and poised to bolt or kick.
Under the hand of the menkhu, it did not. It stayed perfectly still as flies buzzed to the open and precise wound to dip their little sinister hands in and drink.
When Artemy tried it for the first time as a sixteen year old, he hadn’t done it with his father’s confidence. In fact, he’d gotten a hoof to the chest for his troubles. Three Butchers all wrangled the frothing bull, and Artemy received a clean and sturdy splint wrapped around his freshly fractured wrist that he’d caught himself on when he hit the ground.
Now, he was the menkhu. He knew how tight the tourniquet should be and what the artery should feel and sound like under his prodding fingers when it was ready.
“Uuchlaarai,” Artemy apologized under his breath, before he withdrew the Menkhu’s Finger, and pierced the swollen artery with just the tip of the blade.
She jolted for a moment, but Artemy placed the knife between his teeth and his hand firmly on the cow’s right horn, keeping her from fleeing. When the blood welled and gushed from the wound, he immediately lifted one of the lined up bottles of milk to catch what flowed. The blood mixed with the milk, harsh and contrasting. Once shaken, it would be a more palatable consistency than the congealing mess it was now.
As soon as the deed was done and his bottles full, he loosened the tourniquet, and let the cow break from him, her tail swishing with irritation. She let him have it for a few moments, mooing quite indignantly at him. He fixed her with a glare.
“I apologized, didn’t I?” he muttered, glaring.
He had just finished capping the last bottle, when Dankovsky had at last returned to him. But going from the look on his face, not all of the townsfolk were well.
“Yes, emshen?” Artemy asked, placing the bottles in the front pocket of his smock as he anxiously rose to his feet.
"The Saburovs both have symptoms of morphine withdrawal,” Dankovsky reported, the vertical line on his forehead deepening as his brows furrowed. “For Katerina, that is understandable. Saburov himself? I'm surprised."
Artemy patted the cow's side, frowning at the news. "That’s odd," he replied, passing a bottle of pale red milk to the other doctor to let him drink. "As far as I know, Savburov had a reputation for keeping a clear head, and didn't even so much as sniff twyrine or smoke cigarettes. He doesn't like morphine." He brushed his hands off, before walking past Daniil in the direction of the Saburovs.
Surely enough, he could see Katerina slumped over and shuddering, with her husband trying to cradle her in his arms. Both of them were twitching, and their faces were covered in a sheen of sweat.
Dankovsky wasn’t wrong. It looks strange.
So Artemy closed his eyes, and he opened his ears.
A high-pitched, whining sort of resonance was wrapped tight around Katerina, cruel as barbed wire. It was an agonizing, tight line, beginning inside of her head, coiled and cruel, pushing out at her skull. Artemy tilted his head to the side, following the resonating, horrible sound. Surely enough, it twined up Alexander's arm, and wrapped around his chest in turn.
And there is our answer.
Exhaling, Artemy opened his eyes, and he returned to Dankovsky. "It isn't true withdrawal," he explained. "It's more complicated, but also infinitely more simple."
There was a bemused half-smirk on the other doctor’s face at Artemy’s answer. "You realize, I'm going to have even more trouble understanding you when you, ah, prevaricate.”
Artemy’s eyebrows rose.
‘Prevaricate?’ Perhaps there's hope for him after all if he's throwing words like that around again.
It was also the first time he'd acknowledged his compromised mental state, and it was unexpectedly wry.
"All right, tell me,” Dankovsky said. “How is it more complicated and more simple?"
In answer, Artemy shrugged. "He loves her. Her pain is his. Drink your milk."
“And what am I supposed to make of that?” Dankovsky plucked at a frayed edge of his coat. “Love binds? Love… fuses? I don’t understand love. But they say I don’t have a heart, after all.”
Artemy’s mouth twisted into a half-smile. “Give me a scalpel and five minutes and we can find out for sure.”
Dankovsky rolled his eyes, and lifted the bottle to his lips, then blinked and stared at it. “What the hell is this, Burakh? It’s liquid gore, not milk.”
“You’ve been drinking it for days, emshen. It’s just cow’s blood mixed in. Nutritious.”
“It does look a bit like your panacea,” Dankovsky agreed, and seemed to find that thought satisfying enough to drink it.
Artemy was ready to agree that the texture was similar, when he remembered that he hadn’t actually gotten the chance to show the Bachelor the small amount of panacea he’d managed to brew with living blood.
What the hell has been going on with him, actually? Now that I think about it. He’s talking like he knows something I don’t, but not in his usual haughty big city doctor way. It almost reminds me of Clara...
Dankovsky rubbed his lips, wiping away a small and sanguine milk mustache. “I still need to check on the Stamatins and those friends of yours."
“All right, then,” Artemy cautiously agreed, still befuddled. But he’d let it slide for now.
The twins were squatting by a snaggletooth circle of ancient pillars, that like so many of the rock formations in the steppe, must have been erected by ancestors of the Kin. Or the Earth herself produced them like an oyster makes pearls and squeezed them out of her body.
Artemy knew one such circle to be the town’s Ring of Suok, where blood was shed to appease the thirsty darkness, she-who-still-dwelled-in-the-deep.
Suok was not a being of Blood despite craving it; blood and flesh were life, which was Bos Turokh’s domain. Like how the herbs combined, one sating the other in the brewing of ulmars, the Layers themselves could be said to soothe each other. Nerve wanted a dose of blood, blood wanted bone, and bone wanted nerve.
His father hadn’t wanted him to participate in those old rites at the ring, said—You’ll find yourself in the thrall of violence without comprehending its meaning. Stick to surgery and the alembic, they will teach you the same lessons about the body.
Dankovsky was now trudging over to the brothers, lowering himself to Peter’s level first. Peter crouched on the outside of one pillar, while Andrey rested his back and shoulders on the opposing side. His feet were in the ring.
Artemy unclenched his jaw upon realizing his teeth were grinding. He wasn’t quite sure why he was so tense. Was he tense, or was there just an inexorable, ambient tension coming from that circle of standing stones?
As the Bachelor prodded the morose architect, trying to uncurl Peter’s arms from his knees, Andrey shifted. His own muscles moved in tandem with Peter’s protestations, as if he was lending his strength to his brother. A sour expression crept into the corners of his lips.
Peter was shaking his head now, vigorously, throwing his hands up to guard his face.
While Dankovsky’s voice had been lowered, Artemy now caught a snatch of a displeased, “You’re going to stay sane whether you like it or not, damn it.”
“Don’t interrupt me! I’m speaking to her, to my dearest!” Peter petulantly shook the doctor off and turned around to press his brow against the stone, while his fingers clutched the grass tightly.
“What? During the day now? You’ll tear your mind to shreds—” Dankovsky’s voice dropped to a hiss once more.
Andrey spun around the pillar and hauled Dankovsky up by his leather coat.
“Off him. Get off him.”
Dankovsky tried to shake himself free, nose high and haughty. “Irresponsible as always. Don’t encourage him! You always let him go too far—!”
With a rabid snarl, Andrey slammed his fists into Dankovsky’s breastbone, not punching but shoving hard, throwing him back into the adjacent pillar. At this distance, the sound of the Bachelor’s head knocking against weathered old stone was a mere subdued thud, but he immediately slumped. Andrey threw him aside, sending the man tumbling into the center of the ring.
A Line hummed like a bow sawing the thinnest string of a violin. Artemy sprinted, the way he once would through the town.
He felt the radius bone shift and grind as he seized Andrey’s wrist and twisted it round, throwing him off Dankovsky and into the dirt.
“You get off him, Andrey!” Artemy yelled, as if he were breaking up two dogs fighting in an alleyway. “Leave him be!”
Andrey didn't listen, of course. Artemy should have known that it would take more than one big dog barking to get the pugilist to back off. An enthused, manic laugh left him as he got to his feet and shook out his bruised wrist.
He was puffed up like an outraged rooster, and then his fist smacked against his palm. He grinned, though he already had the dizzy eyes of a beaten prizefighter.
His mind might be under a spell, but his body knew what it wanted.
And what the circle wants. He's at home here.
Artemy did not have time for this. His eyes darted between Andrey and Dankovsky, who was slumped against the rock. He needed to somehow scare Andrey off, or less ideally—knock him out. A few seconds wasted away from a patient could be trivial, or a life-or-death decision. During the outbreak he learned never to take those chances, even without knowing the true odds.
He had to make a choice, and he made it very quickly.
He pulled out the Menkhu's Finger for the second time that day, and held it between himself and Andrey. And to Artemy's immediate regret, his eyes lit up.
"So now we're speaking a common tongue, aren't we, cowherd?" Andrey laughed, moving his fists upright.
“No, we’re not,” Artemy growled, afraid not for himself but for what wasted time could do to the stunned Bachelor. “You want a fight for the fun of it. I just want you out of my way.”
“You want blood, don’t lie. Saw you pricking the cow earlier. It’s all about blood.” Andrey lurched forward, leading with his fist.
“All about—?” Artemy warily lowered the blade a few degrees. “What gave you that idea…?”
“It’s not only about blood,” droned Peter, unexpectedly. “No, I figured it was about the nerves, because it’s about vision, inner vision, I mean… What purpose does the blood play here…? Is it for sustenance or for circulation? Both… both? Either way it’s meant to keep the mind alive and aloft...”
Artemy’s eyes narrowed. “Where did you two learn all that?”
“I need peace and quiet,” Peter grumbled. “Let me hear myself think, brother.”
To Artemy’s relief, Andrey withdrew with a parting scowl. As always, heeding no authority except for his twin’s wishes.
Immediately, Artemy rounded on Dankovsky, who had gone down earlier like a crumpled doll, and while there wasn’t blood pooling around his head, he’d hit the stone hard.
Artemy crouched by the disoriented Bachelor, and firmly gripped his shoulder.
“Your eyes, Dankovsky,” he commanded. “Let me see them.” They were darting about wildly while the rest of the man’s face was frozen.
First the Bachelor hazily complied. Then his face burned with fear, or perhaps humiliation. He tried to yank himself back and away, but Artemy’s hand braced the back of the neck, just as he’d held the cow firm earlier.
“Boleesh…” Artemy pressed, keeping the man from bolting. “Stop it. What’s wrong with you?”
Dreadful contortion seized Dankovsky’s features and he warded off Artemy with clawed fingers. “Yes! What’s wrong with me—! I’m sinking again, sinking—!”
His eyes bulged. He pressed a palm to his throat and hurriedly turned to the side and retched onto the grass. It came out bloody, leaving a red thread of spit dangling from his lip. Gooseflesh stirred on Artemy’s arms, until he remembered the last thing the Bachelor drank.
Then, as the heaving of his chest slowed, the man came close to relaxing again. His head drooped.
Just how hard had his head hit the stone? Artemy knew very well how a killing or mortal blow to a human body could look like no big deal from a distance. It could resemble just a simple cuff of the ear, or something that would leave just a bruise, when in reality the damage could be extensive. That simple cuff could be a concussion.
"Speak to me, emshen," Artemy directed, hunching and ducking his head to try and look Dankovsky in the eyes. "I need to know that you can."
"It was only a bout of vertigo... My mind keeps slipping away from me. I don't like you seeing me so compromised... emshen." The Bachelor spoke diplomatically, the word pronounced as carefully as could be on clumsy lips and tongue. Artemy’s heart warmed, but that didn’t stop its aching. "I used to have this delusion we were equals. Now I'm usually no better than your supposedly talking bull."
Still here. He's still here. Don't waste it.
"It's hardly a delusion, oynon," Artemy tried to reassure Dankovsky. "And you were never better than Noukher. He's better than all of us."
The bull in question was at the edge of the herd, but those gentle brown eyes were watching them, intelligent and observant as ever.
"Fine. Examine me." Dankovsky must have been bitter to be the patient instead of the doctor.
Artemy pursed his lips, and moved closer again, this time with Dankovsky’s express permission. He took up his wrist, and slipped the pads of two fingers under the opening of his black leather glove to feel his pulse, and take the count of it. It stuttered and skipped as fast as a rabbit’s, but it didn't take a professional to know the man was stressed.
Next he held his eyes open, thumbs slightly stretching the bags under them, bruised by weeks of fatigue. One pupil dilated, while the other was not: the man was concussed. "Do you have a ringing in your ears?" Artemy asked, releasing Dankovsky. "Any more nausea?"
"I thought I'd finally learned how to hear your steppe herbs singing," Dankovsky muttered.
Great. Just what was needed with their morphine supplies running low. Concussions could heal, thankfully, and Dankovsky would not be doing any strenuous reading, or chewing on coffee beans out here.
"We won't be moving far today,” Artemy sighed. “It’ll give you time to rest."
“On account of me? Come on. Weigh the good of the many against the good of the few for once.”
“Not on account of you,” Artemy lied. “Travel days, then rest days, that’s always been the plan.”
Dankovsky sullenly settled back down on the grass. If Artemy wasn’t mistaken, he was gazing longingly at the train tracks again. The next time they slept, Artemy might very well tie the Bachelor to one of the cows to keep him from sleeping there.
“Rubin, Miss Ravel, and Bad Grief still need an examination.”
He didn’t want to leave Dankovsky like this, but Artemy couldn’t allow any of the rest of his kine to be overlooked.
Especially not them.
Artemy approached the rock outcrop, looking first for any obvious, external physical problems. Grief looked pained, curled up on the ground, but he'd looked bad before this had happened. Aglaya had practically broken him. So Artemy wasn't sure if this was a physical malady... or a mental one. From their expressions, Stakh and Lara might have answers, or their woeful unease might mean they weren’t well either. He had to ask, though it ached to speak with them, worse than any of the others.
He exhaled slowly, and hoped that the words would come out in Russian on the first try. "May I examine him?" Artemy asked, getting their attention. Lara flinched at the sound of his voice, and she turned towards him. The concern was painted across her face, worry-lines on her forehead.
"Oh," she spoke, blinking once, and for a brief moment, Artemy's foolish heart thought she might have a chance of recognizing him properly. "It's you again. The Kin man."
No such luck.
"He's not doing well. Are you a doctor? Stakh can't seem to focus."
"None of us seem to be able to focus right now," Artemy attempted to assure her, as he knelt in front of Grief. "Hey Grigory," Artemy greeted, the anxiety already starting to rise in his throat. "Let me take a look at you."
Grief squinted up at him, wincing from the pain but trusting as a lamb. He'd said earlier that he found Artemy had an honest face, despite not knowing who he was.
"Twisted up inside. Oh, it's like a sailor's fanciest knot. How did I get so mangled, cow-herder?" His hand lay on his stomach, clutching it. Just the way the man he'd sent Artemy to heal, the man with the lockpick in his gut, had curled around the wound. This time, there was no obvious injury.
"Twisted up inside, you say?" Artemy asked, seeing the sweat on Grief's temples. He pushed the man back, and pressed down on his abdomen, trying to determine just where the pain was. It became quickly apparent that it was isolated to stomach alone, and he sighed. "Can you remember the last thing you ate or drank?" he asked. He could smell an acrid sourness to the right, and a single glance confirmed that Grief hadn’t been able to keep the kashk down that morning. "There's no way the milk's been rancid."
"Why, the rainwater," Grief answered, once devious features scrunched up innocently. "Isn't that right?" Lara and Stakh nodded and murmured, "Yes, the rain, we all drank when it rained."
What rain? There hadn't been rain since they'd been in town, during the twelve days of hell. Sometimes people did drink rainwater in town, though they favored the taste of spring water the best, but the rainwater had to be boiled to kill bacteria. That fact could mean that, if there somehow had been rain, it could be an ordinary pathogen. If he'd somehow missed an ordinary, natural rainfall.
Unclean water. On the bright side, Grief wasn't likely going to die. From feeling their foreheads, Lara and Stakh obviously had fevers, so they were all burning through infection. Grief, having a particularly nasty one. What I'd trade for antibiotics right now.
"We won’t be moving today," Artemy explained. "You'll want to keep resting. Lay down on your left side, and it should help relieve a little of the pain. Eventually this will pass, but this won't be fun."
There was nothing else for it. He desperately needed to make it to the spring.
Lara and Stakh were good companions to a sick man, even while sick themselves, at the very least. Lara's kindness and Stakh's medical expertise went well together, even with his fogginess. "We were just so thirsty," Lara said a bit plaintively, clearly regretting whatever happened. "It was such a relief. I should have known better. I remember an untrustworthy bear of a man brought me unclean water once, when I asked for help."
Artemy’s heart twinged. The place he'd held in all of their minds had been cut out. Too perfect a surgery, that even he could not admire. For the second time that morning, Artemy felt like he was trying to swallow glass.
"The next time it rains, we won't touch it," Stakh promised. "But…” He frowned. “I thought it wouldn't matter if we drank it. The stuff wasn't even wet. Didn’t soak our clothes, see? Just a damned mirage."
And yet, I've heard of and seen stranger things in this world. I've clasped stranger things between my fingers.
"Hey. Stakh," Artemy spoke as he rose to his feet. "Do you remember Isidor Burakh? He was a doctor in the town."
Stakh went from misty-eyed, to upset at the question, and his expression crumpled. "Isidor... Isidor..." He held his head, eyes clenched shut. "I... I don't...? I think I'm supposed to...? I’m a doctor." He didn't sound sure in the slightest.
"I knew it. I knew someone would be sick.”
Damnable Dankovsky had crept up to the edge of the stone circle and was peering around the closest pillar, furtive as a misbehaving child. His mismatched eyes were wide and damp, and he had the proud grimace of a doomsayer who’d been proven right. Was that why he’d been so insistent about inspecting everyone?
Artemy squeezed Grief's shoulder one more time, hoping that subconsciously, the man recognized it as the gesture of a friend, but his luck had never been that good. He joined Dankovsky in the ring of stones, though it made him uneasy, as if the earth would expect a fight out of them.
"What happened to resting?" he asked.
"What happened to them? " Dankovksy demanded, pointing. "How did they fall ill? Are the symptoms...?" The unfinished question dragged like a lead weight.
It can't hurt him more to answer his questions. And I need—I want—someone at my side that doesn't forget who I am every day.
"No. It’s not the Pest. A few days back, they drank water that hadn't been treated or purified. It’s just a stomach infection."
"Water from where? The river is too far away."
"They said rainwater," Artemy clarified, looking back in the direction of Grief, Rubin, and Lara.
Lara had pulled Grief's head into her lap, and was trying to soothe him as best she could by pushing the tips of her fingers through his hair. The sight made Artemy's heart twist. She'd done as much for him when he was thirteen years old and had fallen straight out of a tree. She wouldn't remember it. Her hands might have, but she wouldn't. He turned his attention back to Dankovsky, who was still paying rapt attention. "Or a mirage, if Stakh is to be believed."
“Ah, shit,” said the Bachelor, with complete—and utterly bizarre—conviction. “A mirage, then. Dream, facsimile, whatever you’d call it. Another logical discrepancy.”
Convinced the man was being sarcastic, Artemy shrugged. “You’re in a world of miracles, Dankovsky. Don’t strain your brain too much. If we can just make it to the edge, then you’ll all be...”
He trailed off.
Would they be fine, though? Would he be able to scoop these poor souls off the living flesh of Mother Boddho and set them free where they belonged, like rescuing a butterfly from a spider’s web?
Off in the distance, he could hear the bellow of an aurochs, and when he looked past Dankovsky in the direction they came, he could still make out the silhouettes of the great creatures through the dense fog that had settled atop the town on the horizon.
I don’t know what I expected, trying to fight the whims of Gods.
