Fire Along the Sky
Page 200

Jennet made a face at him. “Where will you sleep tonight?”
That made him laugh. “Missed me, did you?”
Irritated, Jennet ran a hand up his breeches. “Look who's talking,” she said. “You could hammer nails with that.”
He hitched a breath and pressed her hips to his so that she felt every inch of him. “Sounds painful.”
She turned her face to give him the line of her jaw. “Then come back to the camp with me and we'll find something better to do with it.”
“No,” Luke said, letting her slide down to the ground. “I mustn't be seen anywhere near the camp, and I've got work to do yet tonight. It's less than two hours till first light.”
He turned his face up to the sky and his eyes moved across the sweep of stars. “I will see you on the ship tomorrow, and then tomorrow night I'll have you in my bed.”
“If all goes well,” Jennet added softly.
He caught her up against him tightly, kissed her hard. “Never doubt it,” he whispered against her mouth. “I wouldn't have it any other way.”
In the blessed and unexpected cool of the night, the men had found some relief in sleep. Hannah sat awake beside Liam Kirby listening to the uneasy sounds of their dreams. She was fuzzy-headed with weariness, but she would find no rest tonight.
Liam slept on his side, curled toward her, his breathing shallow and quick. Sitting beside his cot, she could feel the fever radiating off him, as if his belly were filled with live coals. In the light of a single tallow candle she examined his face and saw no surprises there, no miracles waiting. His eyes had already begun to sink into his skull, and his breath smelled of corruption.
She took a rag from the bowl beside him and wiped his face and neck, singing under her breath in a melody that she hoped would bring him some comfort. She sang the story of his life, as she knew it, in the language of her mother's people. It was a service she had never been able to offer her husband, and so she sang for him too. It brought her some measure of peace, though she was not sure she had earned it.
Manny Freeman's face came to her in the darkness, but it was Strikes-the-Sky whose voice she heard.
Why do you turn away from the truth?
She said, Haven't I had enough of death? Do I need to see it written out in words?
Liam stirred and coughed, convulsed with the pain and coughed again. Hannah dribbled liquid from a spoon into his mouth and he swallowed and groaned and swallowed again.
“Don't waste laudanum on me,” he said.
“Will you argue with me even now?” She made a soft ticking sound and managed a half-smile. In the candlelight his eyes were dull, streaked with red, his lashes matted. She wiped them gently.
“Dying shouldn't be so hard,” he said. “It shouldn't be harder than living.”
It was an odd piece of wisdom and it made Hannah smile. “How would you choose to die, then, Liam?”
“In my bed of old age,” he said. “With you beside me.”
“I am beside you now,” Hannah said.
He made a sound. She thought he would slip away again into sleep but instead his hand came out of the shadows and settled on her knee.
With an unsteady voice she said, “I have been wanting to ask you about Treenie.”
His mouth jerked at one corner, in surprise or displeasure, she wasn't sure. “Your mother never got my note? I wrote to her when Treenie ran off, it must be five years ago.”
Elizabeth would have shared that news, if it had been in her power, and Hannah said so.
“I thought she might head back for Paradise,” Liam said. “Women and red dogs do seem to run back there.”
“Ah,” Hannah said. “You think I should not go home?”
Liam coughed, lost the rhythm of his breathing and coughed again. It was some time before he had the power of speech again.
He said, “This is what you were born to do.”
“Pick lice?”
His face contorted. “You were born to be a doctor. There's a peacefulness about you when you are working among the men, I've seen it come over you like a veil.”
“I do what I have been trained to do,” Hannah said. “And when my work is done here I'll go home to Lake in the Clouds.”
“To set broken bones and lance boils.” Liam grunted. “To deliver babies. Will that be enough for you?”
“More than enough,” Hannah said, and unexpected irritation flooded up from her gut. “I'll be content.”
“You'll be bored.”
She said, “What is it you would have me do? Stay here for the rest of the war, watching men die because I don't have the medicines I need to help them?”
No answer came, because Liam had drifted away into the delirium that boiled up out of his fever, his face twitching with it.
Behind her came Jennet's low whisper. “Hannah.”
Jennet was usually so careful not to call her by that name while they were in the stockade, Hannah jerked with surprise. But when she turned she saw that her cousin brought news that must be good: her expression was alive with it.
She said, “We must wake Daniel and Blue-Jay.”
“Now?” Hannah said.
“Immediately.” Jennet leaned forward and pressed Hannah's shoulder with her hand. “They will be glad of what I have to tell them.” She gave it to Hannah in the words she had rehearsed on her way here, quick and neat, but she could do nothing about the tremor in her voice or the way her hands shook.