Chapter 7: Lacquer (Part 3: Finale)

The four boys fell back two paces and stopped there, muttering about drama under their breath.

"You came!" Henry called. "Listen—"

He got three strides in before one of the gray coats sent him back with a raised palm.

"It’s probably not the Plague," the lead worker said, setting his case in the grass. "If it is, don’t worry about us. We’re immune to every kind this area has seen."

Milo eyed the dark stitching on the case. "What about kinds the area hasn’t seen?"

The lead worker raised an eyebrow at Henry. "That’s the delusional one?"

Layla nodded. "He was like this beforehand."

"Good. Face each other and stay inside once the wall goes up."

Bronze came out of the case, a rod the length of a walking stick and heavier than one in the man’s grip. Except for the green tinted glass fixed at the top and a small white cross under it, the staff looked built to hunt thunder.

He worked the point into the gravel and pressed his thumb into a notch.

Green haze spread around the trio, leaving every gray coat outside. The boys at the bend went quiet as it curved overhead.

Beyond it, the road swam like the far side of a bottle.

Milo raised one finger near the surface.

But since Henry was watching him, he lowered it.

Mist lit inside the glass at the rod’s crown. A beam swept the enclosure, into him between the shoulder blades and out the front of his chest. Cool pinpricks stippled his ribs, ran down his bad leg, sharpening at the swollen ankle into a maddening tickle.

Fighting the same itch, Layla twisted and strangled a squeal. "Hh... a-are we supposed to feel this?"

"Yes," a gray coat said. "Please remain steady."

Milo set the injured foot flat.

It felt warm and whole. He drew a breath that went all the way down without snagging. Beneath his breastbone, the pressure was gone, and so was the lacquer taste.

Layla might ask about the gun again. Henry might hand him to an examiner tonight. Both prospects stayed comfortably far off.

So that was real medicine.

If treatment always felt like this, no wonder they hid it. If word of a cure this pleasant ever got around, half the district would start getting wounded on purpose.

While the rod was like a gift sent down from the heavens, the second device a gray coat hauled up the road was plain human work.

The man steered the box of riveted steel with a clear tube coiled on top toward them, the four little wheels squeaking with each rotation.

When it reached the wall, the green surface folded around it and sealed shut again at its back.

"One at a time," the lead worker said. "Put the tube between your lips and breathe five times."

A walk home, or a polite grip on both elbows and a cot behind a door that opened one way.

Henry took the tube first, counting five careful breaths into the steel as though a sixth would condemn him. The machine rolled off to Layla, who spent exactly five and no more.

The tube came to Milo warm from both of them, the plastic bitter on his lips.

"Normal breaths," the worker said.

"Delusional or not, I know how to breathe."

"One," the man counted.

Something clicked in the steel with each of his last four breaths. With the third set of lungs sampled, the tube withdrew and the machine trundled back to its owners.

Three beeps sounded.

"And?" The question burst out of Henry before they finished. "Are we infected?"

From the far side of the haze, the man with the hand control raised a thumb.

"Thumbs-up, it’s a thumbs-up!" Henry snapped to his students. "It’s a thumbs-up."

After thinning from the crown downward, the green pulled back into the staff. The road stopped wavering. Fresh air struck Milo’s face, chilly at the temples after the closed-in warmth.

Henry exhaled and folded at the waist. "So we didn’t have it..."

"We don’t know that," the lead worker said. "If you had any, we destroyed it first."

"Oh. Sorry, I’m—was there not a step before that? Where you check?"

"Kid looked hurt." The man packed the rod away. "Did you a favor."

Plague, ash, plain bad luck, whatever: the treatment had destroyed every parasite in his lungs. If the Plague came with schizophrenia, the hallucinations should have burned with it. This was as clean a test as Milo would ever get.

A glance over his right shoulder showed nothing yellow; the left was clear too, unless mental illness liked teasing its victims.

"Materialization," he whispered, testing the summons on the open air. Nothing answered, maybe for the best, since out loud the word sounded like a cheap stage trick.

Only behind a shut door would he run real tests. Questions written out in advance, least insane first.

Deep in Henry’s pocket was the pistol, and since that was the surest trigger he had, the list would have to work around it.

Milo rolled his weight onto the bad ankle, all of it.

No sting!

On top of that, his mouth tasted like a mouth. The relief covered more than one joint and one tongue, and it flew straight into one firm decision: no more gun barrels between his teeth.

The four boys had watched the same thumbs-up.

"Booooring!" one of them yelled.

"Three men to wash an Ashpicker," Maigh said.

They slouched back the way they’d come. Tomorrow it would be Plague boy anyway. Jence was secluded and poor, and the four never wasted a chance to say so.

But poor wasn’t dirty. Like anywhere else, the town had showers. Soap, even.

Henry thanked the gray coats, began explaining whose fault it wasn’t, and was still talking when they left.

"We’re well now," he told the students. "So there’s nothing to report. None of this reaches the academy. Understand?"

The three of them set off for the waystation, where the instructor’s route home ran the other way. With a last suspicious pat of the pistol pocket, he left them on the platform.

Following a thirty minute wait on the platform, Layla and Milo boarded the capsule toward Jence. It pulled away with a soft, mechanical Whooooosh. Six seats, two passengers, four empty ones rattling in time with the rails.

He tracked the fields sliding by. In the window, Layla’s faint reflection watched him.

At last, her voice came from behind.

"How are you feeling?"

Milo turned from the scenery.

"Surprisingly good. Never had this kind of treatment before."

"Nobody out here has." She smiled back, until the expression dulled at the edges. "Hm. Do you want some more water?"

"No need, I’ll drink once I get home. Why?"

"I used to chew on toys when I was a little girl." Layla tilted her head. "That synthetic lacquer taste can be a bitch to get off your tongue."

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⋆˚࿔ Coming soon: "Beaten (Part 1)" ... ⤵︎ [!]