Tortus Bay

2.19: Following Directions

Teresa Bramble met Henry and Kara at her door the next morning, bearing a half-concealed scowl and a pot of what turned out to be exceptionally strong coffee. She beckoned them inside regardless. "My daughters spoke with you?"

"They did," Henry said. "Paying you a visit was pretty high up my on priority list in the first place, but they made it sound especially important."

"Are they around?" Kara asked.

"No." Teresa led them through to the kitchen, where she set to work hunting down three mugs. "They ran off before I got up. Who knows what they get up to recently. Kids love their little secrets."

They lapsed into comfortable silence for a time, arrayed haphazardly around the room, sipping coffee. They were a rough and disheveled trio. A casual observer might have reasonably guessed that all three of them had spent the last few days of their lives in jail, when in fact only one had. Neither Henry nor Kara had eaten breakfast, and he was just starting to wonder if it would be rude to ask to raid Teresa's pantry when she suddenly set down her cup and smacked her lips. "Alright, let's see it."

Henry didn't need to ask what she meant. He promptly pulled his shirt over his head; he hadn't bothered to wrap the wound that morning, and he regretted it as the cloth pulled away at drying blood.

Teresa swooped in like a hawk, circling him as she had before, but it did not take long for her to pull back. "You got the new ointment?" she asked.

"Yes."

"And you used it? Last night and this morning?"

"I did."

Her scowl returned, full force. "Well, fuck." The word hung in the air. She caught their aghast expressions. "What? I told you, my kids aren't home."

"Is something wrong?" Kara asked. "I mean, more wrong than normal?"

"It's gotten worse."

He knew that. Somewhere deep down, he knew that. Over the past few days he'd avoided looking at his shoulder. Took care to wrap and unwrap it in dim lighting. "I think it happened when I left Tortus Bay."

"Exacerbated or not by your leaving," Teresa said, "the fact remains that it is destabilized, changing for the worse, and not responding to treatment."

"What does that mean?" Kara asked. She was a good checkup companion. The important questions seemed to filter into her head so much quicker than they did into his.

Teresa sighed. "It's worse than I thought."

"How bad?"

With a caliper and a notebook in hand, she resumed her hawkish circling, prodding him occasionally and taking notes. "Difficult to say. I've done all of the research that I can, at this point. There's not a lot of records of wounds like these. But they do exist. And they're grim. You could lose the arm."

Henry felt capable of fielding the next question. "How do we stop it?"

"There are things we can try," she said, poking away with abandon, "on the next confluence. The festival. I need to learn more, but I know where to look now. Do you mind if I take a blood sample?"

He nodded. "What are my odds?"

"I'm not a doctor. And even if I were, I wouldn't give odds on a procedure I haven't yet learned and never heard of being performed before."

"So, low."

She inserted a needle into his arm, just beneath the red-raw rim of his eternally festering wound. He jumped, and bit down hard on his lip. "I never said that."