Waking up not dead wasn't like in books.
Not bewildering, or dramatic, or poignant. I didn't spend long moments in unwitting contemplation of why the afterlife had a utilitarian grey canvas ceiling, only to find out the truth in a comical way.
Mostly, it was nothing at all.
I was a little curious about a few things—why Greta's sleeping draughts were so unforgivably pissweak, why my leg no longer felt like a crushed pretzel, why I was on a cot in some kind of field hospital.
No patchy recall. No obvious gaps. My memory of the events that had swept me along to my final extremity seemed intact—the only missing part was why my final extremity had turned out to be so provisional.
It must be about midday, I judged by the light. People were in cots everywhere in various states of evident ill health. That must include me. Whatever this place was, nobody seemed to have much expectation that its inmates do anything useful with themselves. Fine by me.
I closed my eyes again. Being alive was a sort of interesting development in the abstract, but it didn't have a lot of practical utility at the moment.
"Intriguing choice. Some might expect you to have had your fill of sleep, by now," observed a mild, lightly accented voice from very close by.
If I'd had nerves remaining or a concern for self-preservation, I might have jumped. Instead, I turned my head slightly to look at the man sitting on a camp stool by my cot, peering at me with bland regard over his spectacles. Older than my father by a few years, I guessed, with messy brown hair, close cropped, but still sticking up every which way. He set his book aside and reached for a carafe of water on a stand by my cot. I studied his black leather breastplate and tunic and decided he must be some kind of cleric.
When he finished pouring the water and turned back to me I made the mistake of inhaling too quickly and choked on my dry throat. He set the cup down and pressed one hand firmly against my sternum, murmuring a few words. My coughing fit subsided.
"Don't try to move just yet."
I ignored him, fighting to get up on one elbow, just enough to be able to drink without help, but couldn't manage the effort. When I gave up, he skipped the told-you and slipped one arm smoothly behind my shoulders, lifting me up enough to take a few sips. The exertion necessitated a short rest on my part, but the man didn't seem to mind waiting.
"You have many questions, I expect," he commented after a couple iterations of this routine, "but we can get to those soon enough."
I contemplated him in silence. What this man's interest in my affairs might be, I couldn't imagine, but with his help I eventually summoned enough strength to prop myself up and control my hand enough to hold the cup unassisted. He topped it off from the carafe and resumed his seat.
"Wh—" My voice came out creaky, sounding like it belonged to someone else. "Wh—" I broke into another coughing fit but waved him off when he reached for me.
"Where?" He tried to save me the effort of speech by anticipating the question.
"No—" I shook my head vehemently. I knew I was going to have to hear about all that at some point, but wasn't eager to get to it.
"You want to know what happened. Why you're here."
"No." I shook my head again. "What"—I started to cough again and stopped to catch my breath—"What are you reading?" I inclined my head toward the bedstand where he'd set the book. I couldn't make out the title.
A crinkle appeared at one corner of his mouth. "Elminster's Treatise on the Herbology of the Middle Continent."
I closed my eyes and labored through my next sentence. "Oh. I hate… that guy. Have you read...his Greater Faerunian Bestiary?"
"I'm a bit of a completist, yes," the man admitted.
"How did… you find it?"
"Heavily pompous and lightly researched."
I decided I didn't dislike him. "How bad is… his take on… herbology? Does it compare favorably… to his unsupported… theories on bugbear… social structure?"
"It's more misogynistic than one might expect from a phytological chronicle."
"Oh, but… everyone loves an… affable misogynist," I said.
The man snorted, then cocked his head in rueful agreement and took the empty cup back from me. "…true."
I wanted to ask him if he was just a general reader or if he had a specific interest in botany, and if so, whether he'd read Gruenor's encyclopediae on agronomical craft, but I was so very, very tired. "Just a moment," I apologized, only intending to close my eyes for a few minutes, but when I next opened them it was after dark. A mixture of torches and magical light sources lit the huge tent, and caretakers moved between the rows of cots attending to their patients.
The man was still there, but he was reading and not looking at me. I used the opportunity to examine him. His high cheekbones had a northern look. Silver Marches, maybe, from the accent. I could tell his boiled leather breastplate had some kind of design stippled into it, but not what it might be. Nor could I work out his patron deity.
"Can I ask you something?" My voice was raspy, but at least I didn't have to stop to rest mid-sentence this time.
He closed the book with a snap, making me wonder if he'd known I was awake and had merely been waiting for me to announce myself. "Certainly."
"I don't know you. And I know I wasn't awake for it, but I have a feeling you haven't left my side all day. Aren't there… other people who need you more?"
"Ah," he said. "Yes, well. In cases like yours it's customary not to leave the patient unattended."
My bafflement must have been plain.
"One of the more reliable predictors of suicide is a previous attempt," he explained. "Thus…" He gestured vaguely.
Oh. Right.
"I felt that was your own private matter, however, so I allowed everyone here to believe you're one of the plague-stricken."
"Plague-stricken?" I raised myself up on my elbow and looked around, troubled. I knew most of these people. "What kind of plague?"
His brow knit in contemplation. "It's some kind of… thaumaturgical contagion, though not one I've encountered before."
"Why… aren't you helping them?"
"I consulted a bit, until today, when you woke. But I was sent here for you specifically, so you've been my chief concern."
"Sent?" I puzzled over this, trying to think who might possibly have had an inkling of where to find me, and why they would have sent some mysterious stranger I'd never seen before, instead of going themselves. I couldn't come up with anything. "Sent by who?"
He raised an eyebrow. "You don't remember?"
I frowned in confusion.
"Hm." He stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Too bad. I was looking forward to hearing whatever it was you did to make such an impression."
I stared at him. "On whom?"
He looked at me with evident amusement. "I admit, I expected you to be sharper than that, after I discovered you've read a book or two."
I frowned again, my mind churning. "Stand up."
He obliged.
"Bring the light closer."
He picked up the lamp on the bed stand. In the illumination I saw the scales of justice on his breastplate that I hadn't been able to discern in the shadows. "You're… a servant of Kelemvor."
He set the lamp down and resumed his seat. "That's better. And?"
"I didn't do anything special. It was… stupid."
"I doubt that. The summons I received was emphatic."
I looked away. "I was already woozy on sleeping draughts by then. You saw."
"I did."
"Why send someone for me? I'm nobody."
"I don't know." The man gave me an appraising look. "Perhaps he saw some potential in you, and thought your quitting the mortal world would be a waste." He shrugged. "Or, he has a dark sense of humor and thought it would be amusing to despoil your plans."
"Not very reverent about your patron, are you?" I observed.
"Everyone's a critic." But he smiled.
I looked around at the other people in the tent and sobered at the sight of so many lying ill. "What… did you mean before when you said this sickness is some kind of magical affliction?"
His smile dropped. "It comes on like a fever, at first, but instead of burning out the way a fever should, it settles in the vital organs and destroys them. The more correct denomination might be to call it a curse, albeit not one like I've seen before. And a communicable one at that."
I mulled this over. "Communicable. Like lycanthropy?"
He nodded. "Similar. But bad as it is, lycanthropy isn't in itself deadly. This one is, in almost all cases."
My mouth felt dry again. "What doesit do? You said it affects the internal organs."
"Are you familiar with a disease that causes mortification of the limbs?"
"You mean gangrene?"
"Yes. It's a little like that, but it begins in the heart or lungs. It rots its victims from inside out," he said grimly, "but slowly. It acts in weeks instead of days."
"It what." I struggled to pull myself to a sitting position.
"Careful." He caught me by the arms before I could get all the way up. "You—"
I pushed him off. "I don't see why you would waste time on someone like me when a horrible thing like that is going on."
He looked at me, frowning slightly, but didn't respond to the attack.
With some effort, I swung my legs over the side of the cot.
"Wait—"
My feet skidded out from under me as soon as they touched the ground.
The man caught me, sort of, on my way down. "Right. I hadn't yet gotten to that part." He helped me back to the edge of the cot and sighed. "Things got a bit knotty when it came to your leg."
I looked down at my right leg. No longer crushed, no longer quite alive, either. It was whole again, but the limb was an unhealthy grey color from the knee down.
"Meaning what, exactly?" I tried to work up the nerve to touch it.
"Meaning, I was able to repair the physical break, but… I believe you already picked up the contagion somewhere."
"Is that why I was coughing?"
"No. You were just parched from being unconscious so long. I could only get so much water down your throat without choking you." How long was so long, it occurred to me for the first time to wonder. "The break was a bad one," he went on. "The bone was partially crushed. It broke through the skin."
"That explains why it hurt so goddamned much."
"Yes. I think you were infected shortly before you fell. A few hours, maybe. I believe what happened might have had something to do with the timing of the break. Regardless of why, the sickness centered itself in the bone, instead of the thoracic organs. Do you follow?"
I frowned. "Not entirely."
"I think because your most vulnerable point at the time of disease onset was your crushed leg, the pestilence settled there instead of your lungs. But, in restoring the bone, it was… fused with your leg. Still there, but its progression was halted."
I braced myself and touched my calf. It was like marble, smooth and firm, though not so heavy as it seemed it should be. "It's… cold. I can't feel anything." I tapped it with two fingers and shuddered. It was like rapping on wood. "So… am I going to rot from the inside, then? Or just lose the leg?"
"I think no to both. I believe it was neutralized and wasn't allowed to run its usual course in your case. Whether that was due to coincidence, timing, or intervention"—he cast his eyes briefly upward—"I can't say. But its malignancy seems to have been eliminated."
I took this in. "Will… I be able to walk again?"
"I expect so. With some practice."
I set my bad leg tentatively on the ground, testing my weight on it. The sensation was surreal.
"Lady Oswin! Is that you up?"
I threw the thin camp blanket over my leg and turned to see Talia, looking weary, but vastly relieved. "Oh, thank the goddess, you are awake. I need you to come with me as soon as you can stand."
"Can this wait?" the man objected before I could open my mouth to reply. "She shouldn't be up."
"No," Talia said firmly. "It can't."
The man studied us for a moment, then nodded and stood, excusing himself. "I'll find you… a crutch somewhere."
I looked at Talia in mild befuddlement. "What do you need with me, though?"
Her face took on a sort of heartsick look that alarmed me. She sat lightly on the edge of my cot. "I have some hard news for you," she began.
My heart clutched with fear. "Is Jessa here? Is she sick?" I searched the room with my eyes, terrified to see her telltale mop of honey gold hair on one of the sickbeds.
"No. I have no reason to think Lady Jessa is sick."
I relaxed a little. As long as she was fine, whatever it was couldn't be that bad, at least not compared with everything else that had happened.
"Your parents aren't taking any chances letting it spread to their household. We're under self-imposed quarantine here, and the entire estate has been sequestered for over two weeks."
"Two weeks," I replied in surprise. "That long? It's been that long?"
"Yes. In you the disease seems to have run a different course. Unlike most people you never woke up, but you're one of the very few yet who has revived. But that's not what I came over here to discuss." Talia took my hand in hers. "The night of the storm, Bonnie came asking for my help. She told me… probably most everything. About you and Britt, and the wedding contract. She thought you were going to run away, or that you might hurt yourself."
"Why are you telling me all this?" I asked uncertainly.
"Because Britt is sick. It's mostly fever talk, but every time he's awake he asks for you."
Britt was sick. I reflected dully on this. "Sick with the same thing…" I looked around and took in all the still forms surrounding us.
"Yes."
"The one that… rots people inside?"
Talia looked troubled. "Yes."
"Is his father with him?"
"No. He's taken ill too." Talia looked at me with an expression so sad it felt like I should be the one comforting her. "We think Britt may not have much longer. You should come see him right away."
"He's awake, then?"
"Here and there," she said. "Not really awake. But he's coherent at times." Talia squeezed my hand. "Most of them become delirious, at the end. He's held on better than many."
I couldn't answer.
"I didn't tell anyone else about you and him," Talia said. "I thought you might both want it that way."
"Thank you," I said numbly. I saw the man coming back, crutch in hand. "I would like to see him now, please."
Talia and the man helped me get unsteadily to my feet, and stable enough that I could hobble a few feet at a time before stopping for breath. Then Talia led me to the other end of her makeshift hospital, where Britt lay, looking drawn and wasted, on a camp cot that should have been too small for him. I stifled a cry and sank to a seat at his bedside.
"How can he have lost so much weight?" I asked Talia in dismay.
"Fighting off the sickness takes most of the body's energy, and it's hard to get them to eat much. They're awake so little and if one of us doesn't get there before they fall back into the fever dreams…" She sighed. "I'm sorry. We're shorthanded. And he's been hanging on a long time already."
I looked at Britt's sunken, pale face and rejected everything she said. I couldn't let him die, whether he hated me or not. I was here now, and it didn't matter how understaffed the healers were—I would sit here day and night until he recovered. I had the considerable advantage, unlike everyone else in this place, of not caring very much whether I myself lived or died. "Will food help? What does he need?" I asked.
She didn't answer, so I looked up at her as the man in black came to stand at her side, surveying us. "Tell me what you do for this." When she still didn't reply, I tried a different tack. "He has to stop losing weight. Is there a way to wake him up so I can help him eat something?"
Talia and the man looked at each other. I wasn't sure what that was supposed to mean. "Stop that. There has to be something we can do. I'll do anything if it will make him better. Just tell me what. Tell me what he needs."
I looked at the man in black and thought resentfully about how Britt could have used his help a lot more than my stupid, unconscious body did for the last two weeks. Maybe he wouldn't be so thin now if someone had looked after him the way this man had evidently looked after me. That didn't seem like a helpful thing to bring up, though, and perhaps there still was something the man could do to help, so I suppressed my anger.
Talia looked pained. "I think what Britt needs most is to feel your presence. Even if he doesn't wake up again, his spirit will know you were here with him."
His spirit will know? I had never heard anything so unhelpful in all my life.
Talia probably read the disgust on my face, because she excused herself quickly. "I should get back to the other patients."
"Whatever you did with my leg—obviously you know something of healing," I said to the man when she was gone. I set my hand on Britt's forehead, which was distressingly cool under my fingers. "Can you do something like that…with the internal organs?"
The man sat on the other side of Britt's cot and regarded me in silence for a moment. "I wish I could," he said. "Divine magic doesn't work on this curse. The unlucky few we tried to heal in that fashion, before we realized, died more quickly. It does something to accelerate the affliction."
"It didn't do that to me."
"No, and that is a curious thing, but it's also a clumsy approach to a delicate problem. I was only able to contain the corruption in your leg by fusing the whole limb into what might as well be stone for as much use as it'll be to you now."
"So?" I whispered. "Do that."
He looked down at Britt and set one hand on his chest, concentrating for a moment. "The progression is extensive in his case. You can live—comfortably even, once you're used to it—with a leg that no longer functions the way it was intended. But he can't live, with a heart, lungs, or liver of stone. He couldn't survive that way even if it were only one of his vital organs, rather than most of them."
I leaned over Britt and put my hands on his arm, squeezing my eyes shut to keep from crying. I had to think. "Give him some of my life, then. Surely Kelemvor has that power." When he didn't answer right away, I added, "Or… all of it, if that's what it takes."
"Such power exists, but I don't possess it. And were I to try, Kelemvor wouldn't be party to it."
I felt a tear sliding down my cheek and raised my head. "Please. Tell me something I can live with. I can't live with any of these. I can't live, without him."
"His body is being devoured from the inside," the man said gently, taking his seat again. "There is nothing in my power or yours to stop that or to make his passing less painful—for you. The most critical thing you can do is to be here with him so that he understands how deeply you care. I will help you, if you wish. Together we can put him at ease. When his time comes he needn't be frightened or in pain."
At these words, I couldn't keep from looking at him with complete, unbridled animosity, even though I knew he was only the bearer of all these ill tidings and not their genesis. He gazed back at me, apparently unoffended. Something in his calm eyes and neutral expression made me think that many, many people had looked at him before with this kind of wroth, and that he was well used to it.
That thought made me sad. What he was asking me to accept was the worst by far of all the bad things that had happened yet, but it wasn't his fault, or his responsibility.
"I'm sorry," I mumbled, feeling my eyes fill and brim over. "It's not your fault." I was so tired of crying. It seemed strange to think there had ever been a time when I wasn't full up to my neck with unshed tears, and stranger still to remember how that time had lasted most of my life. "It's… been a hard couple of days." I corrected myself. "Weeks. I guess."
"You have nothing to apologize for," the man said. "You've been dealt a cruel hand, and I promise, I've seen far worse in my time than the desperation of a young woman forced to begin grieving her husband before they have even been parted."
Something in my face made him realize his error. "You aren't married."
"It's…. complicated. We weren't able to." I looked at Britt, wondering if there was a limit to the amount of despair a person could feel before it just killed them outright.
"I see."
We sat in silence for a while. I listened to Britt's tortured breathing and tried to strike a balance between getting used to the idea that he would soon be gone, and avoiding the thought entirely.
After some time the man spoke. "Would you like to be?"
It took me a second to understand what he meant. "You—is that something you do?"
"Yes, on rare occasion we take a quick five minutes from the maniacal celebration of grave ritual and quit our sepulchers to perform a wedding ceremony," he said drily. "On special occasions the participants are even still alive."
I glanced up at him.
"Sorry. When I said Kelemvor has a dark sense of humor, I meant me." He paused. "And when I said humor, I meant more like an occasional overwhelming sense of all-encompassing bitterness."
"I guess I'm in good company, then." I stroked Britt's hand. "You didn't offend me," I added.
"The offer stands. And whatever you choose, I will help you ensure his journey to judgment is an unencumbered one."
"What if he doesn't wake up again?" I asked after a short silence.
"I can wake him, for a while at least. Long enough."
I thought about the cold fury in Britt's voice when he said we'd taken a wrong turn somewhere. He probably wouldn't appreciate me being here at all, let alone making decisions for him.
"I want to. But I don't think I should," I confessed.
"Why do you say that?"
"He doesn't want to marry me. Last time I saw him he… I said all the wrong things and made everything worse. I think it might be better to leave it alone. I'd be doing it for myself, not him." I couldn't understand why I was saying all these awful, personal things to someone I didn't even know. Or, maybe not knowing him was what made it easier. "I don't think it would be right, when I know it's against his wishes."
"Well, traditionally," the man said in an ironic tone, "a wedding entails some expression of assent from both parties. I expect he may have had a change of heart. Talia told me he asked about you every time he woke up. That doesn't suggest a hateful disposition where you are concerned."
"Maybe so, but if he was fever sick he might be thinking of some happier time." I swallowed hard. "He was… so angry that he broke it off with me the day of the storm. It would be nice if he changed his mind like you said, but I don't think I have a right to expect that." I took a breath. "I already feel like a fraud being here, knowing how much he hated me the last time we talked." To my surprise, I felt a tightness loosen a little in my chest at having confessed to being there undeservingly. "I would feel even worse if I used his delirium to trick him into marrying me when I know that's not what he wants."
"Do you want to know what I think?"
"Not really."
He ignored me. "I think, you won't know, if you don't ask. And I think, if you don't ask, you'll regret it later." The man leaned forward, touched Britt's shoulder, and—
"—no, wait!—" I tried to stop him—
"Os?" Britt murmured, stirring to consciousness.
The man turned his back to give us at least the polite illusion of privacy, and stood in quiet contemplation of the patient on the other side of Britt.
The tears were spilling from my eyes already. "I'm here." I clutched his hand in both of mine, hoping he wouldn't remember our fight and send me away. "Are you still—"
"—I'm sorry, Oswin… I'm so sorry." I looked at him, shocked to see tears in his eyes. I'd never seen Britt, or any man for that matter, cry before. "I said… such terrible things to you." He stopped to catch his breath. "I wish I… could take it all back."
I waited anxiously for him to finish gasping for air. "Britt, you should save your strength. Don't try to talk too much. Please. It's all right. You don't have to explain."
He shook his head in weak defiance. "No. I do… have to. Your father's men—" He took in a draggy breath and began to cough violently.
The man turned back immediately and repeated the same trick he'd done for me earlier. Like mine, the coughing stopped right away. "Thanks," Britt told him, sounding stronger. "That's much better." He didn't have to stop to breathe every third word this time, which made me feel a little less guilty for wanting so badly to hear him finish saying he didn't hate me anymore.
The man resumed his vigil over the other patient.
Britt resumed his story. "A couple of men from Brighton came to the smithy, not long after you left. They wouldn't say exactly what they wanted with you, but they wanted to know where you were. I wasn't feeling very inclined to talk about you, considering, so I just told them you'd left and I assumed you'd gone home because we'd finished with each other like your father wanted." He glanced up at me, looking pained. "They asked so many questions about you… even before Dad talked to me I was starting to realize I'd made a terrible mistake."
I clasped his hand, I hoped reassuringly.
"Dad was in the kitchen. He saw you go and he came into the shop to talk to me, at the same time your father's men did. He didn't say anything to them, but after they were gone he bolted the door and we had it out."
"You fought?" I was confused. "About what?"
"The first thing he said was, what in the nine hells did you do to crush that girl so badly? Her face looked like death."
"But your father hates me. Why would he care?"
"He doesn't hate you. I didn't understand before, but now I get why he was so disapproving of us. He was concerned about the trouble we might get ourselves into, being from such different worlds, and being that he assumed one day your father would decide to marry you to someone else. He tried to warn me a few times, but I thought all that was so old fashioned, that it would never happen to us."
"Me too. My family's so modern in other ways. I really… thought we were different."
"I did too. Dad knew better. He was afraid of a lot of things, I guess—that you would get pregnant, that we'd get married without permission and pay the consequences with your father, that one or both of us would end up dead as a result. I guess a few years ago and a few counties over, something like that happened and the local lord put both his daughter and her lover to the sword for defying him. What a heartless thing—his own kin."
"I never heard that before." I shivered. "I can't tell you how shocked I was when my father threatened you. I called his bluff… only he wasn't bluffing. After I left I realized I couldn't really blame you for not believing me, when I didn't believe it either, at first."
Britt rubbed his thumb over the palm of my hand, a gesture that soothed me with its familiar gentleness. "I'd never heard it either. Before he explained all this—I thought he'd understand my side, if I told him all the things you said that were so ridiculous." He paused and looked up at me. "But instead he said I was a fool not to believe you, when you'd never given me the slightest cause to think you untrue, and cruel, for callously driving you away when you deserved my sympathy instead."
"Oh." It was still difficult to reconcile the notion that Britt's father, who had never treated me with anything more than chilly courtesy, was capable of thinking kindly toward me.
"'Oh' is right. It surprised me too, how ferociously he took up for you. It sounded almost as though… he likes you. It made me think, were you a baker's daughter or some other much less dangerous woman for me to love, Dad would have quite adored you.
"Anyway, he said the one thing I was right about was that running away with you was entirely out of the question, but that I was an idiot if I thought you suggesting something so desperate was some kind of sick ploy."
My eyes flooded. "I did such a bad job at explaining myself, though. My nerves were frayed, and I was so tired, and frightened. You weren't to blame there."
Britt changed the subject. "Did you know that when I was a boy, I burned down Chauntea's kiosk because I was playing with the devotion candles?"
I shook my head. "I didn't know that was you."
"It was. I'm the reason they use Caster's tapers there now instead of real candles."
I smiled and wiped my eyes. "What made you think of that?"
"Because I've never had a beating before or after like the one Dad gave me for starting that fire. And the tongue-lashing I got after you left was much, much worse."
"He was too harsh. The things I asked of you weren't reasonable."
"No, he was right. He said most people are never fortunate enough to be so loved that someone would offer to give up their entire life for a chance be with them. He also said he was beyond ashamed of me that I would repay that devotion with such uncharitable reprobation. His exact words. I remember, because they've been ringing in my ears ever since."
I didn't know what to say to that, so I climbed onto the cot next to him and slid my arm over his chest, trying not to hurt him. He slipped his arm around me and pulled me close.
"I understand now what an impossible position you were in when you came to see me. You really didn't have anywhere left to turn." Britt's voice sounded thick when he spoke again. "I'm so very, very sorry for how I treated you."
I lay my head on his shoulder. "It's all right. All is forgiven."
After a short silence he said, "It isn't all right. But I'm grateful for your forgiveness, even if I don't deserve it." He reached up and took my hand, slipping his fingers through mine. "What happened after you left?"
"Oh…" I hadn't expected him to ask about that, for some reason. "I don't…" I trailed off. I didn't want to make him feel worse by being honest about what I'd done and how desperate I'd been.
"It's all right." He squeezed my hand. "Bonnie came to the smithy just as Dad and I were finished talking, and—well, I got some idea from that conversation how bad it must have been for you, is all I mean. I won't make you talk about it, if you don't want to. But you can tell me anything you do want."
"All right. I'll… think about it."
"After I talked to Bonnie, I was pretty scared that I wouldn't find you… in time." He sighed. "I went looking for you. I knew it was stupid, but I was so desperate to find you and make things right. I even imagined I heard you call back to me once. But it was just the start of the fever. I passed out right after and woke up here."
I stiffened. "Where?"
"They said I was found at the edge of the village, near the dry creek. I don't know how I didn't freeze to death—it wasn't until the next day. Some farmer was passing through and brought me in. Why?"
The man's back was still turned, resolutely pretending not to listen to us, no doubt. I wondered if he already knew about any of this.
"That was real," I said. "That really happened."
"It did? You were there?"
"I thought I only imagined your voice. When I called back, there wasn't a reply."
Britt was quiet for a moment. "I probably gave you the fever, when we… well, anyway, it's probably my fault you got sick. Did you… collapse outside somewhere too?"
"Not exactly." I hesitated, then explained. "I fell into the dry creek in the dark and broke my leg. It was… really bad. I knew I was going to die there one way or another, and I was… going to take them anyway. So I drank the two bottles of sleeping draught."
He didn't answer, but I felt his arm tighten around me.
"I think maybe the reason we didn't die there…" I wasn't sure how to tell him the rest. I didn't really understand it myself.
"What is it? Os?"
"I said a prayer. To Kelemvor. It was… silly, honestly. It was barely a prayer. And I was out of my head on the sleeping draughts by then. But I asked him to look after Jessa, and you. I wonder if that could be part of why we lived."
"Well, not that I did anything to warrant being in your prayers, but thanks for that," Britt said in a tight voice. "I can't think of anything worse than not getting to talk to you one more time, after how terrible I was to you."
"Britt. Your father… did they tell you—"
"—that he's sick too? Yes. He hasn't been awake for days."
"I'm sorry."
Britt sighed. "Maybe it's better we both go. I hate to imagine him all alone in the world. He took it hard when my mother died. He never remarried, he cared so much for her. To lose me as well would be too cruel."
To lose him as well. I'd been doing all right keeping our reality at bay, but at these matter-of-fact words I felt my heart lurch painfully. I swallowed hard to hold back my tears.
"Os?" he asked.
"Mm." I nodded wordlessly into his shoulder.
"They did tell you, right? That I don't have a lot of time left." He didn't sound upset, just concerned how I might feel about that.
I choked back a sob. "Yes. But… how can that possibly be true? I know you're weak, but you're fine right now. You sound fine."
"I'm not fine, Mouse," Britt said quietly. "He can keep me going, a little while, like this. But it's using up energy I don't really have. It's only a temporary cheat. It's worth it to burn myself out like this, to have some time with you, but I can feel my body… trying to surrender. These spells… it's only borrowed time."
"No. It's not fair," I whispered, knowing what a childish thing it was to say, but unable to help myself. "We deserved better than all this."
"I know, sweetheart. I know." He wasn't strong enough to rock me in his arms, so he settled for rubbing my back with his hand. "We got cheated. But the time we had, it was good, wasn't it?"
I nodded into his shoulder. "I love you."
"I love you too." He squeezed me.
"I have to tell you something. I don't have your ring anymore. I… left it for Jessy after I bought the sleeping draughts. Because… it's the nicest thing I own and I wanted her to have it when I was gone."
He gave me another squeeze. "I'm glad. You did good. She'll understand how much it meant to you. To us." He slipped his hand from mine and used it to tip my chin up so he could look at me. "It looks like there's something else. You all right?"
"It's just… that priest of Kelemvor. He said before, he could marry us. Officially. If you wanted that."
"Never mind me, is that what you want?"
"I think it's the only thing I want."
He pressed his forehead to mine. "Me too."
