Kingdom of Scourge and Shadow (The Sightstone Series #1)

Chapter Thirty-Two: Alina

"Saroviya, my homeland, what have you become? 

Where are the days of old, when king's were great and monsters were but myth? 

Where are the days of sword and spear? 

Where are the days of saints and heroes? 

Where are the days of yore?"

-Saroviya, My Home, folk song, Western Saroviya

***

Alina hated the hospital.

It was a vile place, filthy and full of the smells and sounds of the sick and dying. Within days of the first patients' arrivals, the entire tent had filled up, and dozens of beds were jammed in, filled with the Scourge's victims. The Healers who'd been assigned to work there did so in protective clothing that had been covered in workings to keep the disease at bay, but it did nothing to protect them from the emotional toll of working there.

Alina avoided the building as much as she could, going only when Marina sent her to collect blood samples or administer treatments to see what worked. They rarely had any luck, but, occasionally, they managed to break a patient's fever or ease the black, spiderweb rash. It always came back, though, and the patients always died, no matter what they did.

But, slowly, as days turned to weeks and the autumn snows worsened, they began to have more and more luck. The treatments lasted longer, and occasionally did away with multiple symptoms, and, by the end of the month, they had their first patient recover.

A little girl, not a mage, just an ordinary human, was the first one they managed to halt all symptoms for. They still couldn't heal any of the mages–the Scourge ravaged them far more than it did ordinary people, killing them with their own work–but it was progress, and they began testing the treatment on all their patients. Of the non-mages, about half saw significant improvement in their conditions, and a handful, like the little girl, made more complete recoveries, at least from the symptoms.

But the fear remained. They didn't know if the patients they'd managed to treat would relapse–after all, it was a treatment, not a cure. But it was progress, even though sometimes it felt like they hadn't achieved anything, and Alina had to remind herself of the impossible odds they were facing.

A mage-made disease that no one had seen the likes of until a few months ago, that they still didn't fully understand... Coupled with the fear that Saroviya had manufactured it, and the king and Zima probably didn't want them to succeed, sometimes Alina wondered why they even bothered. But she silenced that voice in her head every time.

Only in the evenings, when they were done for the day, was there anything to look forward to. Most nights, Alina joined Elektra, Sofiya, and, occasionally, Marina in the East Wing. They would share bags of sweets, drinks, even dinner they pilfered from the East Wing kitchens, curled on the carpet in Sofiya or Elektra's room, talking about the most mindless, frivolous things–anything to take their minds off the Scourge and the secret they were coming, more and more, to suspect they knew.

Marina didn't join them every evening, but, when she did, talk would often turn to how they'd find the information they needed once night had fallen and the East Wing had settled down for the night. But Marina was often gone, which surprised no one after they caught her sneaking into Demyan's room one evening, so they didn't make as much progress as perhaps they should.

"How are we supposed to do this?" Sofiya cried, on one of the rare evenings that Marina joined them. "It's impossible!"

They'd spent more than an hour going back and forth on how to get the information out of Saroviya–assuming they could even find it, which was looking less and less likely by the day. The problem was, there wasn't a Caedish ambassador in Kirovburg. The two countries had been at war for so long that diplomatic relations between them were pretty much nonexistent. It would have been easy to slip the information to an embassy or official, but that wasn't an option.