By noon, the floating plaza of Rust-Water Basin looked like a field hospital during a major trench offensive, though the stench of death had been replaced by the pungent, cleansing steam of boiled willow bark and bitter-salt peat ash.
Three breath in pipe hubs, fashioned from flexible rubber drainage hoses and copper pipe hub tees, were routed directly into the natural heat cavities of Titus’s dorsal armor scales. The great terrapin had settled into a state of deep, meditative immobility, his breath a slow, rhythmic tide that never varied by more than two beats per minute.
Connected to each pipe hub were four delivery masks. Nomad adults and children sat in neat rows along the hemlock logs. They held the chamois cups over their faces, drawing deep, steady drafts of the warm, amber-tinted mist into their congested chests.
With every breath out, plumes of pale, aromatic vapor drifted into the damp air.
“Patient forty-eight, bilateral lung clearance confirmed,” Dr. Morrigan Calder called out. She lifted her stethoscope from the back of an elderly nomad weaver. Her voice was raspy from hours of shouting over the hiss of steam. But her eyes held a fierce, triumphant brightness. “Rhonchi and wheezing reduced by seventy percent. The cyanosis in her nail beds has fully reversed. Next patient!”
