Quickburned

Delirium

Now...

Lysistrata spent an unsettled day, listening to Caleb during his semi-conscious moments, and keeping up with just enough camp chores to keep both them and their mounts fed and clean. Caleb had fallen into a deeper unconsciousness in the hottest hours just after noon of the next day, leaving Lys at loose ends. She wet the fabric over his forehead and chest, trying to keep his temperature down, and fretted. Internally, where no one would notice.

Kallias's favored method for dealing with worrisome situations was always tea, and Lysistrata found herself falling back on her mentor's ways. The ritual of heating water, of measuring out leaves and letting it steep, as familiar it might be didn't re-center her as it did for Kallias.

Still, after setting Caleb's medicinals to steep, she took her own plain cup and curled up into an overstuffed chair where she could keep an eye on him.

Lysistrata had once, early in her training, shamelessly abused Kallias' training to seduce a Chosen of Secrets into letting her into an old archive, detailing the lives of old First Age solars. The Chosen had been tutoring her in more purely academic subjects, since Lys had not had the benefit of being raised in Yu-Shan along with other destined Sidereal Exalts, and attempting to educate her as to the dangers of unchecked Solar Exalts.

The man had been attempting to groom her for admission into the Bronze Faction, those Sidereals responsible for locking Solar Exaltations away from Creation for the last millenia, but all he'd successfully done was make her curious.

Caleb's story—what she managed to piece together from the disjointed, fragmented way he'd told it—matched with no other Exaltation account she'd read. Those Chosen by the Unconquered Sun exalted amidst triumph, success, and excellence. Never pain, loss, or death.

She was missing something. Or Caleb was. Delirious he might be, but she'd never known the man to lie so inventively, it wasn't in his nature. He was nearly as good at dodging topics and questions he didn't want to answer as she was though...when he was conscious.

Lysistrata was making the gestures to summon a Pattern Spider to retrieve the relevant records when Dirt's distinctive stallion squeal challenge rang out.

There was an echoing, stuttering reptilian growl from outside the tent.

Lys drew her knife from its scabbard in her hairstyle and moved across the tent to just beside the opening, listening.

There was another growl, shorter, more thoughtful. A mottled snout, green and black above and pale below, poked inside, along with a clawed hand at the edge of the heavy fabric. "Surem Steeltooth greets the Star-r-r-born. Kallias of Eternal Sunrise sends me."

Lysistrata put the knife away, and with a final glance at Caleb, flung open the flaps. A sobeksis stood in her doorway. Like all of his kind, he had the body of a tall well-muscled man wrapped in scaled crocodilian flesh and a crocodile's heavy-jawed head. He wore a kilt of immaculate white pleated linen, and was covered in gold, from a pectoral collar studded with gems to bracelets and arm bands. There was enough of the precious metal adorning his scales to buy several lavish estates.

"Hello, Son of the River," Lysistrata greeted him, bowing just slightly enough to not cause offense to the proud spirit.

"I owe a debt," the sobeksis said, ducking his head to enter at her gesture. He filled the tent, standing straight, and took care lest he hit lanterns hung around the space. "I am to pay it to you. What would you have of me?"

"A man under my care lies gravely ill. Help me heal him. Please."

The sobeksis followed her gaze to Caleb. Reptilian faces were not suited well to conveying emotion, if indeed he had any, but she watched Surem's throat pouch flare and he nodded. He sat down at Caleb's bed and tasted the medicine she'd been giving the gunslinger, then gently made the man roll onto his back, examining him from head to toe.

Lysistrata leaned over Surem's shoulder, but she knew the extent of Caleb's injuries without looking. An assortment of nasty but minor burns and scrapes, fading bruising especially around his ribs—and the stab wound in his belly.

Lysistrata had distributed a fair number of such injuries to others. When Sophie had first uncovered it Lys had been both professionally contemptuous and personally relieved at the attacker's sloppiness. It was nasty, certainly, but they had not managed to pierce clear through into the abdomen. It only dragged upwards across several ribs and stopped short of the third, trailing a comet's trail of green supernaturally-enhanced blood poisoning streaks.

Finally the sobeksis placed his palms on Caleb's head and chest, his head cocked to one side, listening.

"This, the fever is too high," Surem declared. He scooped Caleb up in both arms. The gun was no longer in the Solar's limp fingers, lying abandoned on the bed.

Caleb was not a small man but the sobeksis carried him as though he were a young child, and Lysistrata was stunned for a moment by how lean he looked in the spirit's arms. And how pale he was, even under the southern-burned tan, as she followed the pair outside into the light.

Surem strode into pool at the center of the oasis where Lys had pitched her tent. With another stuttered growl and commanding stomp of his foot, the flora nearest him bent and fluttered and bowed to lean out over the water and create a small pocket of shade. Surem laid Caleb down there, submerging him almost completely in the water, and beckoned Lysistrata over with a jerk of his head.

"Hold him," the sobeksis commanded. "I will return. Further medicine to retrieve. He must cool if it is to have effect."

"If he is to live, you mean," Lys said, slipping into the water heedless of her chiton. She settled into the cleanish sand in the shallows and hauled Caleb's head into her lap once more, keeping his face above water.

Surem shrugged. "Exalts, always react differently to disease. This one clings. He might shrug it off without help, might not. Coolness is better either way." He poked and prodded until both the water and Caleb was arranged to his satisfaction, gave another stuttering growl, and straightened. Lysistrata noted his kilt was still bone dry and hanging in perfect pleats, even where it was ostensibly under the water. Spirits.

The sobeksis turned without further commentary and dove in a flat graceful arc into the center of the pool, disappearing without hardly a splash into the depths.

Caleb had not stirred during the entire matter. He was a hot dead weight on her lap, only the restless movements of his eyes beneath his lids and the uneven rise and fall of his chest under her hands proving he was not, in fact, dead. She draped the edge of her sodden dress across his forehead, letting the cool water make rivulets through his hair.

"Don't you dare die on me, Caleb Shai Mayberry Raith. Stay, stars take you, stay right here," she told him, and summoned a pattern spider.