Len knelt on the wet floorboards beside Cot Thirty-Eight. His right arm slid beneath Heth Ash’s thin shoulder blades. He lifted her torso slowly, adjusting her stance until her back rested against Bram’s chest at a forty-five-degree angle, supporting the back of her neck with a rolled wool muffler taken from his satchel.
The girl’s throat clicked, a tiny, bubbled wheeze escaping her lips as the raised angle allowed the fluid to drain away from her throat pipe. Her head rolled back against her father’s wool lapel, her fair hair damp with sweat, her small hands twitching faintly against the stained hospital blanket.
Beside them, Ivara Quill remained standing in the aisle. Her sounding rod was held upright. Her gray eyes swept the darkened corners where the floorboards met the baseboards.
“Look at her face, Len,” Ivara whispered. The sound of her voice was like gravel moving beneath water. “Look at the blue around her nostrils. That’s the true currency of the twelve-year night. Not the trade scrip in Pell’s cedar chest, and not the copper marks in the High court vault. That child’s lungs are what Chancellor Morn spends every twelve hours to keep his boilers high-pressure.”
Len didn’t take his hand from Heth’s shoulder. The heat of her fever burned through the coarse linen of her nightdress, hot and dry. Meanwhile, her feet beneath the blanket remained cold as river shale.
