The third volume in the lead chest was not a ledger. It was a body case-book. It was bound in split calfskin that had been stained dark purple with elderberry juice.
Tomas sat upon a dry driftwood log on the western knoll of the Willow Eyot. Meanwhile, Nessa carefully turned the brittle pages beneath the yellow flame of their lantern. The wind off the open water had shifted again, blowing cold and clean from the northern hills, temporarily sweeping the sulfur smog away to reveal a sky powdered with cold winter stars.
“Read the post-mortem protocols, Tomas,” Nessa said, her finger tracing a set of careful body sketches.
In the final weeks of her life, knowing that she and her staff had been abandoned to starve behind the guard post’s blockade, Alia Sen had turned her physician’s quill upon herself and her five dying companions.
The notes were written in an increasingly faint, trembling hand. But the test care never wavered:
Day 98: Post-mortem check of Orderly Kenneth (Age 22). Body starved. Fat under the skin fully empty. Spleen shrunken to half normal mass. Liver pale and bloodless. Stomach contained only fibers of boiled willow bark and traces of dried sphagnum moss. Lungs clear. Heart valves sound. Zero septic carbuncles. Zero black rot of the tongue or throat. Pathological Conclusion: Death from main starvation made worse by acute cold exposure.
