Measure of a Messenger ch 4: Madness is Contagious

As he moved, Zah swore he heard his joints snapping like winter twigs. He was stiff, but he was alive.

He entered Mesadu’s quarters unchallenged. No guards or sentry. No doctor or med-aide either.

Odd. Last Zah had been updated, the Defender had been very ill. Mesadu didn’t have miraculous recoveries like Zah did, so even if he were perfectly fine now, the doctor still would have insisted on medical supervision.

Zah had really hoped the doctor would have something for his ravaged shoulders.

Beyond the furnished foyer and a small office was the Defender’s bedchamber, and this was where Zah found him.

Defender Mesadu was considered a handsome fellow with strong features and a broad smile to match his booming voice and compete with his heavy brows. He had a proud face and the physique to complement it.

He did not look proud now.

Dark bags under his eyes stored bruises. He was unnaturally pale, cheeks sunken. Unhealed puncture sites dotted his arms with further umbrage. His breaths were wheezy, shallow, and inconsistent. Unaware of Zah’s approach, he slept, though several times the long pauses between breaths let Zah believe he had come too late, that he had arrived just in time to see his Defender die.

He smelled of death already. Zah had only the minimum of required medical training, but in his professional opinion, he could already see Mesadu upon the funeral pyre, eternal wrappings almost complete.

The Defender’s heartbeat was so faint, Zah couldn’t hear it. Intent on finding a pulse, he took Mesadu’s arm and was assaulted with the words, “I hate you.” Eyes still closed, condition unchanged, but Mesadu was awake.

Zah smiled. “Hate is such a strong word. Let’s just say you don’t particularly like me.”

“Eenan?” The Defender gasped, eyes opening ever so slightly. “Zah Eenan, you’re alive?”

“More so than you at the moment. Please don’t look so shocked.”

Mesadu tried to sit up, head shaking in denial, but for all his effort, he accomplished little. “They told me all my Messengers were dead, but…was it all a trick? The school, then—”

“Gone.” With one hand keeping its grip on Mesadu’s arm and the other supporting his back, Zah helped him sit up. “I saw that happen. I got blamed for it. They told me…”

Zah stopped, words choking him. His too-acute eyes had witnessed the school’s destruction, and still he couldn’t believe it. Words gave it too much weight, condensed vapor and a hologram into solid walls. If he didn’t talk about it, maybe it could still be undone.

Numbers marched through his mind, seeking order and calm. An average of sixteen thousand Aylata born each year, a fifth of those belonging to Amoya. There had been at least twelve thousand boys at that school, every one of their murders pinned on him. How could he ever begin to atone for that?

Mesadu looked at him expectantly, but Zah could not yet bring himself to speak the names of the three other Messengers in this legion. Nor could he think of their bodies’ gory injuries as recited to him by the interrogators.

“They told me,” he said again, “the others were found slain, and they decided I must have done that, too. I haven’t seen them yet, alive or dead. Who told you?”

“The doctors. Same ones I meant to express my hatred for.”

“They still don’t know what’s wrong with you?” As soon as the words left his mouth, Zah realized that could have been phrased more eloquently, but what was said was said.

Fear prowled in Mesadu’s eyes. “No, and with every injection they give me, it only gets worse. I tell them to stop, but they keep coming back with more needles!” Coughs racked him, and Mesadu threw himself back on the pillows, eyes closed, jaw clenched. “I’m losing my mind!”

A stench in the Defender’s breath caught Zah’s attention.

“Where did they inject you last?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere on this arm,” Mesadu mumbled, right elbow flapping.

Zah caught the limb in question and inspected it, bringing his nose near the puncture marks that decorated the Defender’s inner wrist.

“That looks really weird,” Mesadu complained.

Zah paid him no heed. “It’s the same.”

“My arm is the same as what?”

“Not your arm. They injected you with the same reeking stuff the lightcurver tried to knock me out with in my cell.”

“That’s disturbing to hear. Please elaborate, Messenger.” He sounded beyond belief.

Zah shook his head. “You tell me first. What happened just before you took ill?”

“We were close to the Atetu border, meeting the transport that carried Lady Sarika.”

Zah knew that. Lady Sarika, High Defender Asheema’s daughter, was Mesadu’s lady of interest, and when her presence was imminent, Mesadu spoke of little else. Because of her father’s prestigious position and the fact that she belonged to another territory, their dates took considerable planning.

“Her arrival went well, and we ate dinner in my quarters. She was even more alluring than I’d ever seen her. I’ve always been told the most gorgeous Sereh come from Atetu.”

Zah rolled his eyes. Sure, tell me where the beautiful Sereh are.

Messenger genes were not worthy of being passed on. No Sereh would give Zah a second thought, and even if she did, he would never be allowed to take her.

“I passed out sometime during the meal, though I have no recollection of exactly when. I’ve been seeing things, hideous creatures, things that make sense only to one insane. She must think I’m completely mad.”

Lady Sarika had vanished. Their Defender had taken ill, and a Sereh, along with her entire entourage, had gone missing. The legion had panicked. On the advice of their doctor, they had rushed to the nearest dock, that of the Amoya school, and sought medical backup. And then…

“It wasn’t her,” Zah breathed.

“It wasn’t her that thinks I’m delusional?”

“You didn’t eat dinner with Lady Sarika. It was an illusion, her whole party was, a lightcurver in disguise. He poisoned you, then pretended to be the doctor to keep poisoning you, even as he got us to come here so I could be framed.”

“Wonderful. My madness is contagious.”

“It’s true. I’d bet my life it’s true.”

Mesadu looked at him with pitying eyes. “My madness now claims you’re about to get your head bashed in by an unidentifiable object.”

Zah rolled to the side. Where he had been, a metal-lined med-kit struck the mattress with a thunder-like clap. The case dented and burst open, spilling syringes and shattering glass vials.

“Plead no one takes you up on that bet, Messenger,” the familiar voice hissed.

The sound came from everywhere, but Zah’s gaze was drawn to the hideous figure that appeared between him and Mesadu. Its face and form were melting wax, but its eyes were the worst. Still whole and unaffected by whatever ailed the rest of the flesh, those eyes were just as dead, twice as cold, and they held Zah.

He scrambled back, heart thumping. Logic told him it wasn’t real, but that gaze felt like the filthiest of hands on him, like a curse he could never wash off.

The stench from the broken vials already made him feel lightheaded. Zah held his breath and closed his eyes. The lightcurver’s illusions could not distract him if he couldn’t see them. He let his ears be his sentries, his scouts. Mesadu had passed out, and the illusion before him was completely silent.

It was the breeze that gave his assailant away. Air pushed ahead of the lightcurver’s blow, and years of drills had an arm in place to block it before the thought even registered.

Zah struck back, first fist redirected, second slashing through empty air. Both hands retreated quickly, catching an arm swung at his neck, but the lightcurver was already airborne. He used the leverage of the hold to add power to his kick.

Zah flew, bounced off the wall, and landed in a heap on the floor. His ribs felt shattered, but he knew if that were the case, he would not have been able to gather in his arms and push himself up.

Maybe there was something broken. On hands and knees, eyes open, he couldn’t catch his breath, and a cough revealed a dark sprinkle of blood on the carpet.

The tamp of his adversary’s padded boots drew closer, the exact tread Zah had heard the last time he lay on the floor. He forced his feet under him, confusion a hot, swirling fog shimmying through him. The grotesque image hovered closer, still stabbing him with that gaze. It matched the released poison’s stench.

“You saved me in the engine core. Why?”

A sneer. “Because you need to die by the correct hand.”

Zah’s eyes avoided the apparition, focusing instead on a small refraction by the doorway. That was where the lightcurver would be, the scene tweaked as he hid in its light. He heard no more footfalls.

“You change your mind about Kimidjee then?” He would wait for the lightcurver to move, then he would charge, scooping up one of the syringes along the way. “Find him more dangerous than you bargained for?”

The voice sounded bored and still didn’t seem to come from any particular location. “I’ll let you form your own opinion of how dangerous Ravi Kimidjee is.”

Zah’s heart fell. “In the cell, when you said reciprocal, you didn’t mean you would kill Kimidjee. You meant Kimidjee would kill me.”

Something snapped tight around his left wrist.

But he hasn’t moved!

The distortion was still in place. Zah had heard nothing. Dread replaced confusion’s fog with boiling pools of oil.

I only hear him when he wants me to.

Zah’s right fist swung, but it, too, was captured, bonds recoiling so as to lock his arms together.

His right foot was not far behind his first attempted strike, crashing into a hip. His other foot cut in from the opposite direction and swept into ankles. The lightcurver fell, and by the restraints on his arms, Zah was yanked down with him.

As he hit the floor, the lightcurver was visible for only a moment. Zah grabbed one of the scattered syringes, but an unseen foot stomped on his wrists. Crying out, he kicked at his foe but found his ankles were also bound.

“It’s a shame, your cleverness,” the lightcurver lamented, “and I had hoped for something more useful from your chat with Mesadu. Instead you told him more than I would have liked.”

“So, I was right.” Zah strained against the bonds in hopes of getting at least one of his limbs free.

“You shouldn’t bet your life, Messenger. It has never belonged to you.”

His right leg pulled free of the restraint, and he lashed out. The lightcurver leapt back, visible yet again in his surprise.

Zah rolled into a crouch and stood. “It still makes no sense. What would make Kimidjee—”

A foot slammed into his stomach. The lightcurver had not appeared to move, but Zah doubled over.

Blinding pain exploded in his head as a second blow connected, this one just above his right ear, and Zah collapsed.

Continued in Chapter 5: All of This

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