Nightsworn | The Whispering Wall #2

Seventy Nine: Orthan

"It's just one dark-damned thing after another." Lin paced around the room for the hundredth time that evening. Dela watched her from her pallet. She was too tired to pace. She had been at the end of a very long shift at a shelter when the call came to bolt windows and doors and sit tight. There had been no time to get back to the boarding house they were staying in while the temple was repaired, and the sick needed as much tending as they ever did. The acolytes had appropriated spare pallets from the shelter stores and set up on the floor in a spare room instead. The walls were thin in this place, and from their respite they could still hear the noises of the ward. It wasn't hugely relaxing.

"You're telling me," she muttered. She slowly rubbed a circle into one sore shoulder with her fingers. Her feet ached abominably, especially the one she had cut the night of the temple fire, scabbed and tight but still tender – and not thanking her for spending the whole day rushing around. She would be glad when the light returned in full. Not long now – the moons were out and demon numbers dwindling, and with the light could come a reconstruction of the battered city.

She only hoped her own problems were resolved by then, too. She had slept badly since her encounter with the Devils, always expecting them to be there when she woke up, or to pop up when she let her guard down - so she simply didn't let her guard down, and the lack of sleep was draining her. When one of them – a tall, rangy man with a shaved head who smiled far too easily for her to be comfortable – had come to give her the signal for her first task a couple of weeks ago, she had almost been sick with terror. It had gone off fine – Kerrin had agreed to meet with Cael on the false pretence that Dela had been told to use, and surprisingly Harkenn's Unspoken, Yddris, had backed her up. She didn't know if it had served the purpose intended and did not care to ask, nor to find out whether Yddris somehow knew of the plan. She felt filthy for deceiving the Lady that way, even if it was ostensibly helping Harkenn. She'd never wanted to be of help in such a manner.

Despite that task's success, getting access to the Orthanian private wing was a different matter. She simply didn't know how she was going to do it. She knew where it was, but little more than that. Perhaps that was all Arlen's apprentice needed to get in, though she doubted it. The otherworld boy had seemed as intimidated by the plan as she'd felt.

"You're not listening, are you?" Lin's sharp question intruded on her spiralling thoughts, snapping her back to the present. Her friend glared at her with her hands on her hips, though she read more frustration and concern there than anger. Remembering the last time she had assumed that Lin hadn't realised anything was wrong, Dela pinned a smile on her face.

"I'm sorry. I'm just so tired, my thoughts are all over the place. What were you saying?"

Lin looked unconvinced, but to Dela's relief she didn't press the point. She thought she might have crumbled if she had. "I was saying, there's not been much news from out there. Do you think it's worse than we thought? Nika ran out yesterday and hasn't come back."

Knowing Nika, Dela thought there was probably a very good reason keeping him away from his patients, and tried not to indulge the surge of anxiety that reared up at the thought. "I heard it was four demons and twelve patients. It surely won't take them much longer to round them up."

"Got to quarantine them, too," Lucine piped up from the corner of the room, where she huddled on her own pallet fixing a hole in her stockings. She bit off a thread and continued, "Twelve can turn into a lot more if we're not very careful."

"That's what the plague hospital was for," Lin grumbled. She eyed Dela. "Did you know there was a plague hospital?"

"No. Why would I know?" Dela, for a miracle, kept her patience. They had mostly made peace, but there were moments when Lin's jealousy reared its head again. It didn't take much to dissipate it, but Dela was long tired of doing so. "Lin, she might like me, but I'm still a second-level acolyte. She would never tell me something like that, and I bet half the Clerics didn't even know about it."