Chapter 750: Eastern Shelter

"Dad."

Beatrice reached the bed at the back of the shelter. The moment she took her weight off the staff, her injured leg buckled and she caught herself against the mattress. She barely noticed the pain. Her father lay beneath the thin blanket, his eyes closed.

He opened his eyes and stared at her for a moment. Then he reached toward her face.

"Beatrice?"

She caught his hand in both of hers.

His fingers were warm.

All the way here, she had tried not to imagine finding him beneath a collapsed building. She had watched people die in the buried city and kept walking because he might still be waiting for her.

Now he was in front of her, weak and pale, but looking back at her.

She lowered her head over his hand.

"I couldn’t contact you."

"The messages stopped." His voice was rough. "They brought us here from the hospital."

"I know. I went looking."

His gaze moved over the blood on her clothes and stopped at her leg.

"What happened to you?"

"I’m hurt. I can still walk."

He tried to lift himself.

Beatrice put a hand against his shoulder. "Don’t. Please."

He stopped when he saw her face.

She had wanted to tell him she was fine. He wouldn’t have believed her with the staff beside the bed and her weight kept off one leg.

But seeing him try to get up frightened her more than admitting how badly she had been hurt.

A woman in a nurse’s coat came around the next bed.

"Let him rest," she said. "He wasn’t strong enough to leave with the people who could walk."

Beatrice turned toward her. "Is he getting worse?"

"He needs care. Moving from the hospital exhausted him. We haven’t had enough people to move everyone again."

The nurse looked at Beatrice’s leg, then at the staff on the floor.

"You should sit too."

Beatrice shook her head. "We need to get him out."

She looked around the room for the first time since finding the bed.

The Eastern Shelter was still operating beneath the administrative hall. Emergency lamps lit the rows of patients, and the remaining staff moved between them with supplies taken from open crates.

Some beds were empty. Others held people who couldn’t sit up without help. A man near the wall was trying to wrap his own arm while the patient beside him held the cloth in place.

No one looked ready to leave quickly.

Rovan stopped near the entrance to the room.

He had followed her down into the shelter, but he had stayed back when she found her father. Now he looked toward the corridor they had used, then up at the ceiling.

A distant impact shook dust from it.

"Beatrice."

She heard the warning in his voice.

"I know."

Her father tightened his fingers around hers. "Who is he?"

"Rovan. He helped me get here."

Rovan turned at his name.

For once, he didn’t look as if he had prepared something to say. He came closer with one arm held stiffly against his side.

"Thank you for helping her," her father said.

Rovan’s eyes moved away from him.

"She helped me too."

Beatrice watched his face. He had carried her when she couldn’t keep moving and had refused to leave when she told him to take the others away. He had also belonged to the family whose influence had ruined her father’s life.

She was grateful he had stayed. That didn’t answer her questions about his family, but she could ask them once her father was safe.

"We need a way to move him," she said.

Rovan looked at the bed frame. "Does this thing have wheels?"

The nurse came to its side and released the locks near the feet.

"Yes. There’s a service ramp out of the shelter. But once we’re outside, we have no transport."

"We didn’t see any rescue vehicles on the way here," Beatrice said.

The nurse’s shoulders sank. Beatrice wished she had better news to give her.

A stronger tremor passed through the room.

One of the emergency lamps flickered. The man wrapping his arm stopped and looked upward.

"What was that?" he asked.

No one answered immediately.

Rovan moved back toward the doorway and looked along the corridor. "The fighting’s getting closer."

Beatrice could feel the power through the stone. Whatever was happening outside was far beyond anything she could face, even if her leg and qi had been normal.

Her father tried to pull the blanket aside.

"I can help you move me."

"Then keep your arms inside the bed."

He looked at her, surprised by how sharply she had spoken.

Beatrice forced herself to loosen her grip on his hand.

"You don’t have to stand. Let us do it."

His gaze dropped to her injured leg.

"Not you."

"I’m not carrying the whole bed."

Rovan took hold of the frame with his good arm. "I’ll move it."

The nurse guided the other end as he pulled it away from the wall. The wheels rolled over the floor until one caught on a loose piece of tile. Rovan pulled harder, but pain tightened his face. He stopped forcing the wheel before he tipped the bed.

Beatrice bent carefully and moved the tile with the end of her staff.

"Tell me when something’s in the way," she said. "Don’t just keep pulling."

Rovan nodded without arguing.

They moved the bed into the aisle.

Her father watched them. Beatrice knew the expression on his face. He had looked much the same when she told him they would have to sell the building.

He was still looking for something he could do to help, even from that bed.

"We’ll talk about the shop later," she said.

"I wasn’t—"

"You were."

He fell silent.

Beatrice looked down at him. The anger she had carried since the loan and the scam had not disappeared. Neither had the exhaustion of trying to keep everything from falling apart afterward.

But she had spent the last part of the journey afraid she would never be able to argue with him again.

"You can ask about the new owner when we’re somewhere safe," she said. "You can tell me why you don’t trust him. Just stay with me until then."

Her father’s eyes reddened.

"I didn’t want to leave you with all of it."

"Then don’t."

He held her hand for another moment, then let go so she could pick up her staff properly.