Chapter Forty of my current wip. As before, all and any comments very much appreciated

Please note: This is a weekly post

“The short-sighted Techs,” Jess said on his return to the textile farm with Esplin, the newly assigned domestic operative. “They trained only one operative to work the irrigation plant. Fortunate for us that Poalt took the time to show me.”

Jess wasn’t about to repeat that lack of foresight. He instructed Eulal and Niapse as well. He then left them to repair the damaged wall. He had a heap of reports to write – or rather, to rewrite. Since moving out of Hive One, Armar’s attention to his deputy zem duties had frayed. Maybe his closer association with the medic pulled and refreshed the memories of his former occupation. Maybe he’d rather be an apothecary than a zem? Jess couldn’t blame him for that, especially now they’d no Techs to make the decisions and control the clutch.

He’d just settled to his task when Kookka appeared in the doorway. “You’re needed. Miax and Zeke have just brought in our walker.”

“Canipse? Where is he?”

“They’ve taken him to Hive Two – for now.”

“How is he?”

“Two parts removed from death. That’ll teach him to dip his toes in the sea.”

“Dragons?” Jess didn’t wait for an answer but was fast to his feet and following Kookka to the medic’s hive. Miax and Zeke had laid the scabbed and torn bundle of bones on the low table in the front cell.

Antel looked up as Jess entered. “Profuse bleeding and he’s gone into shock. I can stop the bleeding – if Armar can find the right med in the Techs’ store. Dov’s fetching blankets. More?” Antel shook his head.

Armar pushed past Jess and Kookka to deliver a small vial to Antel. “Do you need a needle? Intravenous? Only I couldn’t find any.”

Antel grunted. “Dribble it into his mouth, that’s fine. We’ll have to massage his throat, his muscles aren’t cooperative. A wonder his heart still beats. What the Pendoling Bells was he doing out there alone?”

“Best you ask our wonderful zem,” Armar said.

“He wanted to go,” Kookka spoke before Jess could.

“And we were keeping an eye on him,” Zeke added.

“Yea,” Miax butted in. “Even though he’d gone way beyond our range, and we had to fly in shifts to reach him.”

“A wonder he lives,” Antel said.

“Stubborn,” Jess remarked. He bit back the words he could have said in his defence. That he’d given Canipse a map, he’d insisted he took supplies and the makings of a shelter. And as Zeke had said, they were keeping track of him. But the slug-wit would have to dally down by the shore. Though he hadn’t asked he assumed that’s where they’d found him.

The Techs’ drug worked, the blood clotted. Canipse’s heartbeat strengthened. But he didn’t regain consciousness. Dov and Antel transferred him to his own hive and Inch swapped cells with the healer, Dov, so Dov could attend him.

“Fever,” Dov reported. To Antel. Jess received the report third-hand. “The bite’s infected.”

When Joel brought Jess that update, he was taking a much-needed break, stretched out with Cela-Byi on a patch of grass close by her small hive, where aften they lay at night to look at the stars. But now the fierce heat that had roasted them since their arrival was ebbing into something altogether more refreshing. Cela-Byi said soon the rains would come.

“The bite’s infected?” Jess said. “That’s a killer.”

“What’s the big concern?” Cela-Byi asked him. And when he repeated it in Itamakkuese, she was up on her feet and heading into her hive. “I can heal dragon bite.”

Joel watched her before looking to Jess for a translation.

Jess had already regained his feet. He spread his hands. “She says she can heal the dragon’s bite. They’re her spirit-kin. But also, she has local knowledge, so maybe she can.”

“Why don’t you give her our speech? It would be easier.”

“No. Easiest would be if we spoke hers. We need to understand their culture.” That was their purpose here – officially, though since seeing that cave-drawing he queried it daily. And how much could they learn simply by looking? He had learned far more from Cela-Byi, though her talk of the spirits made little sense to him.

She returned with a pottery bowl, a fresh spicy scent loud around it. “Where is he, which hive?”

“I’ll take you.”

“This I have to see,” Joel said, perhaps to himself, following behind Jess and Cela-Byi.

At Hive Five, Antel blocked the door before he even knew their mission.

Jess explained, “Cela-Byi says her local medicine will heal Canipse.”

Antel peered into the pottery bowl.

“Spice spirit out-fevers the fever, spice spirit chases away badness,” Cela-Byi said, and Jess translated. Antel raised a sceptical brow. “Root-fibres for padding around bites. Infusion to drink.”

Antel stood aside though he wouldn’t allow them to be alone with Canipse. He watched even as Jess watched, peering over Cela-Byi’s shoulder as she scoped the pulverised root from the bowl and padded it over the swollen flesh around the bites, the skin so hot it seemed to sizzle on first contact with the poultice. But Antel wouldn’t allow Cela-Byi to dribble the remainder of the juice between Canipse’s slack lips. He motioned for her to give the bowl to Dov.

“I’ll make more,” Cela-Byi backed out of the hive.

Jess had seen what she called her spice pots, too small to contain very much. “What happens when you’ve used it all?”

“Then I gather more.”

“Is it easily had?”

“Spice spirit shows me.”

“Would spice spirit show Armar?” This could be a way to heal their rift.

“If Armar asks me.”

Two days later Joel arrived at Hive One with a message from Armar. Armar didn’t speak Itamakkuese, so Armar couldn’t ask Cela-Byi for her help. Jess chuckled at that. Couldn’t, or wouldn’t?

“No, I have the perfect solution.” Why hadn’t he thought of it before? It was that talk he’d had with Joel. It was fine for Joel to teach Tawan and Segul to speak Monza when they were just two Itamakki amongst thirty Monzas. But the Monzas were thirty amongst several hundred Itamakku. It made more sense for the lesser to learn the speech of the greater. Jess had acquired their speech in the psi-sphere. His clutch could do the same, taking it from him.

On further thought, he amended that. His obs team could take it from him, and he’d give it to the three overseers. The overseers could then pass it on to their operatives.

“Is everyone able to access the psi-sphere?” Joel asked when he joined Jess and Kookka later that evening in Hive One.

“The Fire-keepers on Colabri use the psi-sphere, and everyone here has been there.”

Joel sat back, relaxing into the deeply comfortable back of the front-cell’s long seat, a beatific look to his face. “To compose songs to my Segul, songs she’ll understand in all their artful nuances.”

Kookka and Jess exchanged a look.

“Wait till his playing and plunging starts to bear fruit,” Kookka said. “Baby-bumped Itamakku aren’t so sweet.”

“Tawan?”

“So she says.”

Jess suppressed a shudder, not to alarm his friend. But he saw again the bones in that cave, the Itamakku women with their infants.

Continues next week

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed

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