Heart of Winter by Lauren Gilley
13
“I’m worried about him,” Tessa said as she and Revna started down the grand staircase side-by-side. “He doesn’t like to admit when he feels poorly, but I know that he does now. I don’t want him to hole up somewhere and deny it if he needs help.”
“There’s plenty of places to hide here,” Revna said. “It seems to go on forever sometimes – but I know all the best hiding spots. We’ll find him,” she assured.
They’d already checked his chamber and the library. Tessa had set out to ask him down to supper, after having spent most of the afternoon with Rune, talking to him until his dark mood seemed to have lifted and he’d begun to smile again, and even laugh, trading childhood stories. He’d grown tired, though, she could tell, and Revna had decreed that he needed rest – and, if Olaf approved, a night of complete sleep without having to be awakened every hour.
As they descended to the great hall, the usual clatter of meal preparation was underway – and then was suddenly broken. A hush fell, followed by a smattering of whispers and hisses and soft exclamations. Tessa glanced up, and saw why.
King Erik strode toward them, his stride ground-eating, his expression all clenched jaw and blazing blue eyes. He was only half-dressed, in boots, trousers, and a simple tunic, unlaced. His guards hurried to keep up with him, one on either side.
It took a moment of staring in incomprehension before Tessa realized that the white-wrapped bundle he carried in his strong arms was her cousin.
She gasped. “Ollie!” She lifted her skirts and ran down the last few steps, straight toward Erik. Who nearly collided with her, pulling up at the last second. This close, she could hear the harsh, fast rhythm of his breathing; could see, when she glanced toward his face, the suppressed panic shining in his gaze.
She turned her attention to Oliver. He was swaddled in towels, but, based on a glimpse of arm, and throat, and the sight of his bare feet, he appeared to be naked beneath. His auburn hair was dark and damp, plastered to his neck and forehead. His eyes were closed, shifting restlessly beneath the lids, and his face was unmistakably flushed.
She touched his cheek, shocked by the intensity of his fever. “Oh, Ollie. No.”
“He was in the baths,” Erik said, roughly. “Gods knows how long he was in there. He roused a little – babbling nonsense.”
One of the guards spoke up, his expression worried – she thought his name was Magnus. “I thought he was just a little sore from last night. If I’d thought he was sick…” He shook his head.
“It’s the marsh fever,” Tessa explained. “He’s had it since he was a boy, and it flares up now and then.”
“It’s what?”
Erik’s voice snapped her head back, and she was shocked by the intensity of his gaze.
“Marsh fever,” she said. “You’ve heard of it?”
“Yes. Of course.” But his gaze flitted wildly down to Oliver’s slack face. “But I didn’t know – know that he–”
To her surprise, Tessa felt a sudden urge to comfort him. “It’s frightening, but he always pulls through it. He needs rest, and time. Our physician always made him a feverfew tea.”
Revna bustled over. “Oh, he looks terrible.” She glanced up at her brother, and Tessa saw their gazes lock – saw, for one wild moment, the way Erik looked nothing like a king, but like a frightened boy.
Revna’s jaw firmed. “Come on,” she said, gently, “and let’s put him to bed.”
~*~
Tessa might have been young, and she might have been physically innocent, and she could acknowledge that she was naïve about certain matters. She was sixteen, that was only natural.
But she wasn’t stupid.
And she was observant.
Oliver had never said it outright, but she’d noted the direction of his gazes, on occasion; had watched his face twist with regret, and shame, and a hollow sort of longing that spoke of repression. She knew in which direction his amorous feelings lay, though, if he’d ever had his heart outright broken by an affair, he’d kept that information tightly guarded.
Upon their arrival, she’d noticed two things straight off: one, that Oliver thought King Erik a pompous, heavy-handed prick. And two: that he was, probably against his will, attracted to him. He masked it well, but he had her eyes, the Drake eyes, and she’d seen the faint spark of want in them, hastily tamped-down.
It was only to be expected, she supposed. Erik was a handsome, powerful, striking man. Too old for her, but older enough to be thrilling for someone her cousin’s age. She understood.
But she wasn’t at all prepared for what she was witnessing now. For Erik’s shocking tenderness and worry.
He carried Oliver all the way up two flights of stairs, despite the guard’s offer to take him. When they reached Oliver’s room, Tessa folded down the covers and watched, fascinated, as Erik laid him gently down, a hand cupped behind his head at the last, before surrendering him to the pillow. He didn’t draw away, after, but remained, one hand pressed to Oliver’s chest, the other palming over his forehead, checking his temperature.
“Is it normally this bad?” he asked Tessa, glancing up at her from beneath knitted brows. The way he was bent over the bed put them on eye level – she’d never imagined a king in such a position, especially not over a visiting emissary.
(Oliver’s not that, she thought. Not anymore.)
“We thought he would die, once, when I was ten,” she said, and the furrow between Erik’s brows deepened. “But he didn’t. I’m sure he won’t. We’ll make him comfortable, and the fever will run its course, like it always does.”
He looked unconvinced.
Revna moved around the bed to stand beside her brother; laid a hand on his shoulder. “It’ll be fine, Erik,” she said in a low, soothing voice. “I’ve already sent for Olaf – no one handles fever better, you know that. We’ll have him back on his feet and being impertinent in no time.”
Erik stared at Oliver’s face, still touching him, stricken.
Revna turned her head and caught Tessa’s gaze. Something hard flickered there, like a warning, and Tessa was taken aback by it.
Revna turned back to her brother, hand tightening on his shoulder, and Tessa remembered the calluses – the evidence of sword work. This was a woman who would protect her family from any threat.
Tessa wanted to tell her that they were on the same side – on the side of relatives with much to lose. But for now, she kept silent.
~*~
After a thorough examination, Olaf pronounced the patient as exhibiting the classic signs of marsh fever. He carefully spooned feverfew tea down Oliver’s throat, applied cool compresses to his forehead, throat, and chest, and left them with a list of instructions that Tessa took with a capable-looking nod. He promised to be back soon to check on him, but, upon his parting, advised them that there wasn’t a great deal any of them could do aside from work to keep his fever down and ensure he stayed hydrated with water, broth, and honey.
Tessa transformed immediately, from shy, retiring girl – though Revna was certain that was simply her good manners taking the fore most of the time – to a brisk, efficient nurse. A maid – Thyra – with some physician’s training came to assist, and things seemed to be well in hand. Revna was worried for Oliver, for she’d grown quite fond of him, and his cousin, but she knew that only patience would get any of them through the fight that lay ahead – the fight Oliver must wage with his own body.
It was Erik that gave her the most worry.
It took more effort than it should have to tow him from the room. In the hallway, Revna looped her arm through his, locked her fingers around his wrist, and pulled him unresisting down to his study. He walked along beside her, but without his usual purposeful stride, the one that always left her picking up her skirts and hustling to match. This evening, he came along docile as a lamb, and when she finally let go of him, with the study door shut and holding the world at bay, she turned to him already knowing what she’d find on his face.
It was worse than anticipated, though. That withdrawn, faraway stare, the glazed eyes, the lax jaw.
“Erik.” She took both his large, rough hands into her own, where they lay limp and unresisting as dead things. “Erik, it isn’t the same. It isn’t the same at all.”
She’d been only a baby when their eldest brother, Herleif, died of a sudden, terrible fever, and so she hadn’t been there with Arne and Erik when they’d stood outside the closed chamber door and begged to be allowed to see their brother. Hadn’t caught a glimpse of a flushed-red face tossing on a pillow, nor heard the low, pained moans that had been the last sounds he’d uttered, but she knew that was where Erik walked now, in the past with ghosts. There were so many of them, and she knew that Oliver, pink and sweating and unconscious, looked bound to join them.
His gaze shifted, restless and unseeing, over the room before landing on their hands, and then shifting to her face. It cleared, then, and his jaw tightened, and his hands came alive in her grip. “No, it’s not,” he ground out, savagely – too savagely, a harsh cover for his inner turmoil. “That was my brother, and this is just some soft, foreign stranger.” He twisted out of her grip, and stalked across the room toward the sideboard, and the decanters there.
Revna sighed and settled into one of the chairs by the fire. Tossed another log onto the dwindling stack and watched it send a shower of sparks up the chimney. She heard wine being poured – a more than generous portion of it. “You might be older than me, but that doesn’t make you wiser. Don’t play him off as a ‘soft, foreign stranger,’ at least not in front of me.”
The decanter thumped down heavily, followed by the sure tread of his boots. A goblet appeared in front of her, and she took it with brows lifted in surprise. “Thanks.”
He grunted a response and braced a hand against the mantelpiece, gaze fixed on the fire, brow furrowed. He sipped his wine and didn’t comment on her statement.
She wasn’t going to let him avoid it that easily. “What I meant,” she said, “is that Herleif’s fever was sudden, and overwhelming, and came with a host of other complications. He had scarlet fever – it was not a chronic, recurring condition like Oliver’s. He may not be built like all you great oxen here, but he’s otherwise strong, and healthy. He’s pulled through this many times before, and there’s no reason to think that he won’t now.”
He slanted her a dark look.
“Don’t pretend indifference. You were the portrait of a prince in a fairytale just now, carrying him that way.”
His gaze dropped again, a muscle in his jaw pulsing as he swallowed. His hand tightened on the mantel, rings scraping at the wood.
“Erik.” She softened her voice. “I know you. I know that under that cloak of dignity and responsibility, under all your grief and anger, that you are still my wild, sweet brother. Rune reminds me so much of you, sometimes–”
“Rev.” It was a warning.
One she ignored. “I’ve seen the way you look at him. It doesn’t matter if he’s soft, or foreign, or strange, you are utterly charmed.” She sat forward. “When you look at him, the years and the worry melt off your face.”
He turned toward her, and it broke her heart to see that, beneath his veneer of bristling aggression, he was frightened – not just for Oliver’s health, she didn’t think, but for his own heart. His own sense of equilibrium. “I am a king. It’s my job to worry. I am all that stands between Aeretoll and the wilds of the Waste, and the hatred of the South. I” – he jabbed a finger roughly at his own chest – “am the great wall that keeps both sides safe from one another. And walls do not care about fairytales.”
“Yes, you’re a wall. A bloody thick one. But you’re a man, too, and you deserve to want things for yourself.”
He grimaced and faced away. “I am duty-bound.”
“To never love? To never laugh? Erik, in the short time that he’s been here, you’ve smiled more than you have in–”
“That’s enough,” he snapped. “I will hear no more of it. If the boy survives, we’ll ship him back to his people in Drakewell as soon as he can manage the journey.”
She sighed loudly, to show her displeasure. The pig-headed idiot! “Listen, I know that you’re worried about propriety, about looking strong in front of–”
“Revna.”
She bit back the rest of her sentence. There was no reasoning with him when he got like this, at least not in her experience.
He sipped his wine, and brooded, and, even if he would never say so, she knew that he ached.
Please, gods, let that boy live. I desperately need him to kiss my idiot brother.
~*~
Oliver was gripped by fever for five days.
“Do you think he can hear us?” Rune whispered, leaning in close enough that his hair tickled at Tessa’s ear.
She suppressed a pleasant shiver. “Maybe. I’m not sure. If so, I don’t know that he can understand us all that well. Fever delirium, and all.”
“Ah.”
It was midday, and the two of them sat in chairs by the hearth, eating the simple lunch of late harvest apples and cheese that Rune had brought her. Leif had been visiting, helping to keep quiet, solemn vigil over Oliver as he tossed, and fretted, and murmured in his fever sleep. He laid a comforting hand on Tessa’s shoulder, and offered gentle smiles, and words of encouragement.
Rune, though, brought an infectious cheer with him. He fussed over Oliver, worrying, asking if there was anything he could do, his expression marked with true concern. But then he would find wide smiles for her, and tell her ridiculous stories until she laughed, despite her own worry and tiredness. He brought her things, too: a scone, an apple, a cup of wine. A lap blanket stitched with snowflakes and wolves that he’d said had been his own, once, when he was smaller. And small, crudely-whittled wooden animals – a reindeer, a wolf, a bear, a horse – that she suspected he’d made himself. Those she’d lined up in the window ledge, and her glaze flitted to them often, in the dark hours of night when Oliver was at his worst. Astrid helped where she could, and Thyra had been a blessing, around forty, sturdy, strong enough to lift Oliver up so they could change his sweat-soaked nightshirts, unshy about bathing him with damp sponges, and resolute in her efforts to spoon broth and honey into his mouth.
Tessa spent most of those five days in his room, applying fresh compresses to his flushed skin, helping Thyra, save for the moments when she was shooed out on the grounds of her virginity, which was just dumb. She cat-napped in the armchair when she could, though Revna was constantly coming to spell her, urging her to seek her own bed next door. She did a few times, but guilt and love pulled her back before too long.
It was the fifth day, today, and she was sore, and exhausted to the point of tears. Rune’s visit had lifted her spirits, for a time, but as the light faded beyond the window, so too did the last of her strength.
Something warm splashed onto her hand, and she realized she was crying. Silent, though insistent tears; they’d snuck up on her, but once they’d started, she couldn’t stop them, dashing at her cheeks fruitlessly with the backs of her hands.
“Do you – Tessa?” Rune’s tone shifted to alarm as he turned toward her. “Oh no. I’m sorry. Did I say the wrong thing?”
“No, no.” Her voice was clogged and awful-sounding. She reached into her sleeve for a handkerchief, but didn’t have one there. She’d worn this dress for two days solid. “No, I’m only being silly. It’s just – I’m so worried. And he’s still so – so–” She pointed at Oliver, helpless and flushed, his hair dark with sweat. “I don’t know what else to do for him,” she whispered. His cheeks looked hollow, shadowed with obvious weight loss. His head turned restlessly on the pillow, and the movement gapped his nightshirt, showing collarbones gone blade-sharp.
A heavy weight settled across her shoulders, and she realized that it was Rune’s arm. He pulled her into his side, and the heat and solidity of him was such unspeakable relief. She let herself sag; lowered her head onto his shoulder.
“It’ll be all right.” His breath stirred her hair; she swore she felt his lips at the crown of her head. “I promise you, Tessa. He’ll get better.”
She knew he was only trying to comfort her, but it felt nice all the same.
~*~
“I’ve talked with all the maids,” Revna said over a late cup of wine in Erik’s study. “Covertly, of course. None have noticed anything missing, or anything out of place.”
Birger nodded, as if he’d expected as much. “I think we need to consider that it wasn’t an intruder at all. Just one of the lads sneaking out late one night, for his own reasons, and not wanting to fess up to it.”
“Meeting a mistress, maybe,” Revna said, and Birger nodded.
“The tracks led into the woods and crossed a stream,” Bjorn said, frowning. “What sort of tryst is that?”
Revna shot him a wink over the rim of her cup. “Use your imagination.”
Birger chuckled, and Bjorn turned a delightful shade of pink beneath his beard.
When she glanced toward Erik, though, she saw that he wasn’t listening, hands folded on top of his desk, staring into the middle distance. She bit back a sigh.
For five days, Oliver had lain abed, stricken with fever. Revna had done her share of tending to him, spelling Tessa when the girl would allow herself to be steered to bed. Conferring with Olaf and asking if there was anything they might do. He kept saying the fever had to run its course, but this morning, she’d detected a note of more-than-normal concern in his voice. Five days was a long time for a body to burn like that.
And it was a long time for a king to brood like this one had. Erik had refused to hear petitions from citizens, had barely eaten, and his eyes were shadowed with sleeplessness. If he bothered to respond when spoken to, it was with an absent, terse remark.
Revna wanted to shake him.
She traded glances with Birger and Bjorn, a question forming on her tongue–
And the door slammed open. Rune strode in, his thunderous expression the image of his uncle from days gone by. “Uncle!”
His tone snapped Erik out of his trance; he glanced up sharply, gaze already narrowing. “What?”
“You must do something about Oliver!” Rune flung out an arm, half-supplication, half-challenge. “Tessa was crying, and it’s been five days, and he’s still sick, and you must do something.”
Erik held still a moment, then he dragged in a rough-sounding breath that lifted his chest, and snarled, “I’m not a physician. What would you have me do?”
The same fury flared in both of them, that of helplessness, of frustration, but it painted Erik as glacial and heartless, and Rune as fiery and impassioned. “You could tell Olaf to get off his old ass and actually do something! There must be other herbs – other cures. Things we haven’t tried. Write to Drakewell, if you must – send for a shaman! But someone knows something, I know they do, and we can’t just give up.”
The fire snapped in the hearth, and Rune’s fast, open-mouthed breathing sucked up the rest of the quiet in the room. This was to be a test for Erik, a turning point – for good or for ill. He’d faced such challenges before, and always he chose duty; chose country; chose coldness. She expected that now, heart already sinking, because each time her brother closed himself off from all feeling, he chipped away another bit of his hope and happiness. One day, she would be left with only a shell: an Erik-shaped puppet who could run a nation without flaw, but who couldn’t remember what it felt like to smile.
She traded a glance with Birger, who shook his head fractionally.
Bjorn looked glum.
But then, with a screech of chair legs over stone, Erik stood. His face settled into the mask he wore to battle: the resolve and determination of a warrior who would take any measure, risk any injury to achieve victory. “Go and find him. Drag him away from whatever he’s doing – whatever he’s doing. Bring him to Mr. Meacham’s chamber.”
Rune blinked at him a moment – then grinned. “Right.” He spun and ran out of the room.
Revna took a sip of wine to cover her smile, and Birger did the same, she saw, gaze sparkling over the rim of his cup.
~*~
“Ice rose?” Olaf’s bushy white brows shot up. “Your majesty, that’s – that’s recreational. It’s a hallucinogen.”
“I’m quite aware of what it is.” Erik had put on his king voice. His Do Not Question Me voice. The sound of it had sent Olaf from groggy to shaking in his robes. “We were given some at last year’s Midwinter Festival. A gift from the Beserkirs. Do we have it still?”
“Y-yes. I keep it under lock and key.”
“Get it.”
Wide-eyed, almost dazed-looking, Olaf stepped out into the hallway and turned toward the tower where he kept his surgery.
“Ice rose,” Revna said, smiling. “Now there’s an idea. I never would have thought of that.”
Erik’s gaze shifted to the bed, and the too-still, too-pale figure lying upon it. “Well. Desperate times.”
For five days, Oliver had been flushed, sweating, and restless, kicking and stirring beneath his covers, murmuring nonsense.
He’d clearly taken a turn for the worse in the past few hours, though. All the color had left his complexion; he was as bleached as the pillow beneath his head. He’d been losing weight, she’d known, but looked as if he’d dropped a stone since dinner, the bones of his skull sharp beneath waxen skin, his throat as fragile as a flower stem. His chest barely moved as he sipped shallow breaths through parted, chapped lips. He burned to the touch, though.
Tessa mopped at his brow with a damp cloth, looking too pale and thin herself, worn out from tending to her cousin. She glanced between them and said, “Ice rose?”
“It grows north of the mountains,” Revna explained. “Not a rose at all, but a kind of weed; it’s so hearty its roots grow on top of the soil, with little hooks that grab onto the ice. Its leaves look like little white roses, which is how it gets its name. Shamans use it to inspire sacred visions – they say it enables them to commune with the gods, or with spirits that have passed beyond the veil. Young clansmen chew it for a thrill. It makes you see and hear things that aren’t there.
“But the Beserkirs say they used to keep a few leaves of it tucked inside their cheeks when they went raiding down South. Said it kept the awful heat down there at bay.”
“Will it break his fever?”
“It’s worth a try. I don’t think he can get anymore incoherent.”
“No,” Tessa agreed, glumly.
Erik paced tight circles at the foot of the bed, leather tunic swirling around his legs, darting glances toward the bed on every pass, his hands – linked together behind his back – tightening on one another until his knuckles turned white beneath his rings.
Oh, you silly fool, Revna thought, fondly, sadly, hurting for him.
“It’ll work,” Rune said, overflowing with optimism now that he’d gotten Erik involved. His faith in his uncle had always been unfailing, and Revna hoped that it always would be. He laid a comforting hand on Tessa’s shoulder, a touch that had the girl looking up and smiling softly at him – poor Leif, Revna thought with an internal sigh. “You’ll see. The ice rose will work.”
Olaf finally returned, huffing for breath, a small, sealed chest in his arms. Two serving boys followed him, toting a wooden tub between them. “The ice rose,” he said, setting the chest on the desk. He motioned for the boys to set the tub down before the fireplace. “And I have another idea, too. Ice rose or not, it’s time to get his temperature down, and cold cloths aren’t going to be enough.”
A third boy entered, and then another, the first carrying pails of water – the second pails of snow.