Half Discovered Wings (26 page)

‘
What would you like to know?’

‘
If she’s going to be okay.’

‘
Looks like it. Her heart rate has increased already. The
muscles are atrophied, I’m afraid. She might need extensive
physiotherapy. It’s that which I’m worried about now.’

‘
We’re on a journey,’ Gabel explained. ‘We need her able to
walk. Soon. We’re on a pilgrimage to the Western mountain range. We
fear she’s desperately ill.’

‘
I was going to ask you about that,’ the doctor said. She too
put her cup down to speak. ‘You said she was stung.’

‘
Yes. Lanark said it was a bolt-hornet.’

‘
Did you capture it?’

‘
No. My ally crushed it.’

‘
Get a look at it?’

‘
Its body looked almost like lightning. Purples and blues and
yellows. It was large.’

‘
How long?’

He showed her
with his hands, and she nodded silently to herself for a moment,
thinking.

‘
Hmmm. Quite large, then. Though hornets are naturally large,
people are often surprised when they first see one.’

‘
Or afraid,’ he said.

‘
Yes, there is that. But, you say it stung her only
once?’

‘
Yes. Why?’

‘
Because she shouldn’t have been affected like
this.’

‘
How should she have been affected?’ he asked, irritated by the
prolonged question-and-answer session.

‘
Well,’ she said, shrugging, ‘it should have killed
her.’

~

As she said
it, the door opened and a furred, bulky creature pushed its way
through and padded across the room. Its heavy-lidded eyes slid from
one wall to the opposite, taking in the entire room, its muscles
rolling as it moved.

‘
This is Pardalis,’ said Fenn. ‘Here, Pardy.’

Purring
deeply, the ocelot made its way to the feet of the seated doctor,
scattering the pikas and dropping its heavy body onto the wooden
floor. The pikas scurried back immediately, but gave the cat a wide
berth.

‘
Is it vicious?’

‘
Only when he has to be. He must have heard us talking about
him and came to see what the fuss was about.’ She stroked it behind
the ears, across its striped cheeks. ‘Who’s a clever Pardy? See how
he rests, with his head on his paws, like a dog? The ocelot is the
only small cat to do this.’

‘
This is small?’ Gabel asked, a little taken aback.

‘
Compared to, say, a leopard, yes.’

‘
What’s a leopard?’

‘
Like this but bigger, with similarly chained
spots.’

Gabel frowned
slightly, and said, ‘You mean like Irenia’s Sentinel?’

The Sentinel was a creature from the H’ouando faith: a giant
cat that was blistered with the love of Irenia, and chained by its
devotion to God. It guarded the Heavenly realms and fought with
Irenia on the battlefields, gently teasing the fallen righteous
from their bodies and carrying their souls in its jowls.

‘
Not literal chains, Mister Gabel,’ Fenn said. ‘It’s
figurative. But we were talking about your friend: by all natural
accounts, she should be dead. The bolt-hornet is as dangerous as it
is rare; every story I’ve heard of such a creature involved the
victim dying. I really don’t understand why Rowan is alive. I’d
like to take some blood to see what is different about
her.’

‘
That won’t be necessary,’ said the hunter. ‘But she was very
ill, even before the accident with the hornet. We were told there
were doctors in Hermeticia that could help her.’

‘
Hermeticia?’

‘
Its people call it Shianti.’

‘
Ah. Why do you call it Hermeticia?’ Then: ‘Oh, I see! Yes,
that’s very clever.’

‘
It’s just what the people our side of the Lual call it,’ said
Gabel. ‘Is it true there are doctors there?’

‘
It is true, there are doctors in Shianti. The most skilled in
the entire world, I’ve heard, so all is not lost. For now, though,
I think it’s necessary that Rowan stay with me.’

Gabel nodded
as he stood. ‘We are looking for a place to spend the night. When
we do I’ll make sure that one of us comes back in the morning to
let you know how to contact us.’

‘
Thank you.’

‘
Look after Rowan.’

He left the
room, giving the slow-breathing ocelot a lot of space as he passed.
It eyed him silently as he left the room, and flicked its banded
tail.

~

There was no phone at the hotel, so all Gabel had to hand to
Doctor Fenn in the morning was an address: two simple lines and a
door number written on a ragged scrap of paper. He gave it to the
manservant, who nodded gracefully and led the hunter up the stairs
and once more into the doctor’s study.

‘
Please, sit down,’ the doctor gestured. ‘Did you all sleep
well?’

‘
Presumably. I was alone when I awoke. The others must have
gone looking around the town. I came with the address of the hotel
we are staying at.’

‘
Thank you. And I think I have good news. Rowan seems to be
responding very well to the treatments.’

‘
Already? Can she speak yet? Is she awake?’

‘
No, I’m sorry, but in a few days, yes, I’m certain of it. Her
heart rate is almost back to normal, thankfully. Her muscles seemed
to have settled down somewhat.’

‘
Is that important?’ He watched the small birds chirping and
fluttering restlessly inside their delicate wire-frame
aviary.

‘
Yes,’ replied the doctor. ‘As I explained yesterday, they
can’t be too tense, in case she spasms. Her neck muscles were
especially tightly knit; if she had had a seizure in that state she
could have broken her neck. But, as far as I can tell, she is
improving. I’m making notes from this, I hope you don’t mind. I see
it as doctor’s duty to record everything, since the hornets are so
rarely seen.’

‘
That’s okay. As long as you make her well,’ he
said.

‘
She means a lot to you?’

‘
She is the sister of my fiancée,’ said Gabel
quietly.

Is that all she is
?
he asked himself. Fenn said something he didn’t
hear, and he looked up, blinked away memories. ‘I’m
sorry?’

‘
Have you set a date yet? For the wedding?’ she
repeated.

‘
I wasn’t clear. My fiancée died not too long ago.’

‘
Oh dear, I am sorry. I beg your pardon. Perhaps I can make it
up to you,’ she said seriously, standing. ‘Would you like to see
some of my animals?’

‘
No thank you, I only came to—’

‘
Come on, they’re only next door. I think you might like them,
a man of the outdoors like yourself.’

The hunter stood, brushed down his shirt and picked up his
hat. He was preparing to make a clearer refusal when the doctor
opened the door and disappeared through it, saying, ‘Pardalis
usually sleeps in here, since it’s dark, but he’s fairly docile and
doesn’t hurt the others…’

Gabel thought
he could hear the animals through the wall as he surrendered to the
doctor’s hospitality, moving from the room where they had been
sitting and out into the corridor. He heard a barely audible
chattering, not unlike the sparrows, but indefinably different. It
was a sound he’d never heard before, but familiar in a way he
didn’t understand.

The door opened and he was allowed to slip through, Fenn
holding it open a fraction, permitting only the scarcest sliver of
light to shine through. Through the darkness Gabel saw the sleeping
form of the ocelot, head on its paws. The hunched back moved slowly
up and down with the beast’s breathing, and the hunter heard its
rasping breath in its throat, and fancied he was also picking up
the
whub-ub
of
its strong heart.

The chittering
he had heard was above and around him now.

‘
What’s that—’

‘
Shhh
, quiet please,’ Fenn whispered.

She let the
door click shut, and there was no light now for them to see by. The
perimeter of the room was illuminated with a faint luminescence as
the woman rotated a rheostat an inch or so from the doorframe.
There was just enough light to pick up the black silhouette against
the far wall – Pardalis’ slumbering form – and the oppressive
darkness of the ceiling.

‘
What am I looking at?’ Gabel whispered.

‘
Above you, do you see them?’

‘
They’re bats … aren’t they?’

‘
Yes. They’re moro bats, “wolf bats”.’

Teague the
theriope on the rooftop, wiping Bethany’s blood from its lupine
snout with the back of its hand, and then—

‘
Have you ever seen moro bats before?’

‘
Only flying away.’

In the feeble light Gabel saw her looking upward at the dark
shifting mass. A light danced in the centre of his mind’s eye and
he feared that it was a second onset of the rusalki’s
dream-suggestion, but no.

‘
They’ve a much undeserved reputation, you know,’ the doctor
was saying quietly. ‘Said to attack indiscriminately, drawing blood
with savage attacks so that they can feed…’

—
and then, when the lightning flashes, the theriope is gone
and Gabel feels the claws in his back, cutting deeply like the
blades of multiple hatchets
—

‘
My
God, are you okay?’ Fenn dropped beside him as he fell to his
knees.

‘
Just my back, it hurts a little.’

A heavy, bulky shape brushed past him. It was the ocelot
nuzzling against his shoulder, purring softly in the almost-pitch
darkness.

‘
Let me look, come outside…’

And then he
was back into the fully-lit corridor, standing unsteadily against
the banister as Fenn removed his jacket and lifted up his shirt.
‘There’s a little bruising, but it doesn’t look much. Does this
hurt?’

‘
No,’ he said.

‘
Well, looks almost healed. Have you been in the wars or
something?’

‘
Occasionally.’

The ocelot
nosed open the door and padded up to him, rumbling against the
cloth of his trousers.

‘
He likes you. Must be something in you he
recognises.’

The old man knows what you really are, the smoke and flame
that bore you, even though you do not.
Who
had said that? A woman … The rusalki?

Then Gabel saw an image of Irenia’s Sentinel, the chained
cat, burned by Irenia’s kisses, who guarded the battlefields of
Heaven and buried the corpses of the Hellish spirits that had been
killed there, showing respect even to those born in—

Born where
?

‘
Mister Gabel, I think you’d better sit down…’ He was slumped
against the banister, the drop into the lobby just another inch
backward. ‘Come on, you look unwell.’

The doctor
helped him across the landing to the study, where she heaved him
into the large leather-backed chair that sat in front of the desk.
‘Have you been depriving yourself of sleep?’

‘
We’ve been on a long journey.’

It was all he
said that morning; when he awoke, it was afternoon.

*

Sixteen

MEDICINE

The doctor
told Gabel that Rowan’s body was still cold from her slow heart
rate, and asked him if he would help carry her upstairs.

‘
I have a solarium, she’ll be okay there,’ she said. ‘We’ll let
our sun warm her.’

Gabel put his hands under her arms and lifted from that end,
while the doctor took Rowan’s feet. Together they moved up a flight
of stairs that sprouted from the landing outside the study. Gabel
went first, and together they took her into a small room that had
only two walls. The remaining sides were glass from floor to
ceiling, which was also glass. The sunlight streamed in, warm and
welcoming.

‘
It’s much better in the evening,’ said Fenn. ‘It faces west,
you see, so there’s more light with the sunset.’

‘You chose to
have it facing this way? Most people would have it looking
south.’

‘
I
like
the
sunset,’ Fenn said.

There was a bed already set up beside the window, empty of
sheets and blankets. Carefully they set Rowan down, facing out the
window with a single flat pillow beneath her head.

‘
Are you sure she’ll be safe here? Anyone can see in. She might
be attacked.’

‘
She’ll be fine. I’ve fallen asleep in here several times and
never come to harm.’

‘
People can still see in.’

‘
From this height? We’re three storeys up.’ The doctor busied
herself placing blankets over Rowan’s still body. ‘There’s nothing
in this room, no valuables. I do that deliberately. No-one would
even dream of breaking in through here, not in Goya.’

He seemed
satisfied, then asked, ‘How come this town is so empty?’

‘
Worried, I’d bet,’ she said, wringing her hands together.
‘People get nervous around this time of year. It’s when the rusalki
start getting stronger.’