Wayward Page 16

  Ollivan set the flask down gently to avoid a repeat of his last mistake. Then he turned to face his friend. “What in the heaven, the earth, and all the constellations could you possibly mean?”

  “Come on, Ollivan. I swept in and snatched your best friend away.” He scrubbed at his hair, gaze drifting across the hall to where Virgil was kneeling before a soot-coated man as he cleaned the burns on his legs. “And at first it was alright. When Virgil and I were just friends and it became the three of us, instead of the two of you. But when we started wanting to spend time together alone, when we realised we weren’t just friends; that’s when things changed for you as well. It’s because we weren’t there for you that you started spending your time with Jasper Hawkes.”

  Ollivan tried to keep his expression neutral. He had told his friends nothing of Jasper’s role in his downfall. “What do you know of Jasper Hawkes?”

  “Only that whenever anyone asks him about you, Hawkes always says he tried to temper you, to straighten you out.”

  “And they believe him, of course.”

  “They don’t have the full history. They didn’t see the correlation as Virgil and I did. We knew you well enough to know about the duelling evenings, the stealing, those narcotic compounds you got so popular making – that’s not who you are. I don’t care that he comes across as boring as supper at my grandmother’s. Just try and tell me it wasn’t Jasper’s bad influence.”

  Ollivan longed to tell him everything, but a wary fear stopped him. He had shouted his innocence until he was hoarse; to his grandfather, his mother, half a dozen of his grandfather’s advisors. They had agreed unanimously that he was lying. They took it as further proof that the only solution was to take from him everything he cared about. The whole truth would only have made things worse, so he hadn’t told it; but surely he could confess to one of his dearest friends.

  He kept stirring the ointment and didn’t turn around, but Virgil’s presence across the room was like a burning hearth at his back. Each glance from the other boy carried a hint of wary suspicion, as if he were waiting for Ollivan to slip up and confirm his shattered trust. Lev might believe him if he told them the truth. But Virgil would not.

  So he flashed Lev a grin and replied smoothly, “If you know me so well, Lev, I will thank you to remember that I have always been the bad influence.”

  “There’s playing pranks on the border guards, and then there’s whatever you got caught up in.” Ollivan opened his mouth to deflect again, but Lev wouldn’t be dissuaded. “I’m trying to apologise. Just have the grace to accept it so I can go back to talking to that pretty healer.”

  “Impossible. For a start, one does not snatch another’s best friend away,” he said to the table. “People make their own choices.”

  “So you are resentful about it, just not towards me.”

  Ollivan felt a presence behind him. Virgil had come closer. He was replenishing his supply of gauze at the next workstation and pretending not to listen. Ollivan suddenly felt a pressing urge to say what he wished to; that they could each have fallen in love with anyone of their choosing, and they had chosen each other. That they had derailed their entire dynamic as a trio.

  “It was you who brought me into the group,” Lev pressed. “After that winter solstice party, do you remember? I stole a bottle of port and you found me sipping from it under one of the tables.”

  “Of course I remember,” said Ollivan.

  “You were the one who held the three of us together, and then you weren’t.”

  It was so close to what Ollivan had been thinking that he wondered if Lev hadn’t inherited some of his mother’s magic after all. Still, he shook his head, his eyes firmly on the task in front of him. “We can’t compare friends and lovers,” he said. “You and Virgil had every right to want to spend time together without me.”

  “Just because you understand, it doesn’t mean you enjoyed it.”

  Ollivan was spared from replying by a healer, who slumped heavily against their workstation and let out a sigh.

  No, not a healer. The man was dressed in soot-covered street clothes, his cap pulled low on his brow. And it had not been a sigh, but a moan of pain.

  “I’ll get him to a bed, you fetch a healer,” said Lev, but when he approached, the man shrank away from him.

  “Please,” he gasped. “Help me.”

  It was then that he looked up, glancing furtively around before his eyes met theirs, and Ollivan understood the problem. He had taken the pallid quality of the man’s skin as a mark of his injuries, but his entire people were naturally so bloodless, with skin that perpetually appeared to be coated in a sheen of sweat. But his most damning characteristic was his eyes, which had no iris and no pupil, but were a pure milky white through and through.

  He was an Oracle, here in a Sorcerer hospital, and gravely injured. One side of his shirt had grafted onto his burn wounds all along the arm and ribs. The Docklands were treating their wounded, but they didn’t have the capability, nor the care, to tend to their people in the same manner as the Heart.

  Ollivan swept closer, and stood between the man and the hospital floor to shield him from view, Lev blocking him from the other angle. He glanced about the room. The Oracle wouldn’t be welcome here. They certainly wouldn’t treat him. Should one of the healers – or worse, one of the enforcers lurking to oversee the injured – see him, he would be chased from the building; thrown, if he couldn’t walk, and it was clear he couldn’t, at least not quickly.

  But no one had seen him. As Ollivan looked around, no one was alerting the enforcers or coming towards them. The only person who was aware of them at all was Virgil, who was no longer pretending to be busy. He watched the bizarre huddle with a questioning look.

  Ollivan locked eyes with Lev, and between them, the decision was made. Without a word, Lev took the man’s good arm and steered him as fast as he could move towards the curtained end of the ward that healers had been using for particular gruesome or exposing treatment. Ollivan swept up the bowl of ointment-doused gauze and followed in his wake, barely slowing to mutter to Virgil as he passed him.

  “Scissors, cold water, sedatives.”

  Virgil asked no questions and disappeared to gather supplies.

  Lev had got the man to the beds in the furthest corner, away from the next nearest patient or healer, and Ollivan pulled the curtain closed around them. “Let’s make this fast,” he said.

  “And then what? He’s not going to walk out of here good as new after a few bandages and a little pain medicine.”

  They both jumped as the curtain was pulled back. But it was Virgil. One look at the man’s face caught him up on the affair. His mouth pulled tight and he drew the curtain back across, rolling his eyes at Ollivan.

  “Earth and stars, you really know how to find trouble, don’t you?”

  “It finds me.”

  “Just keep watch. Lev and I will handle this.”

  “Lookout? I am never lookout.”

  Virgil handed the supplies to Lev, who had already set to the task of separating skin and shirt. His patient whimpered, and accepted the pain draught without question. Virgil drew up to his full, impressive height and glared down at Ollivan. “Seventy Sorcerers dead or injured by a lack of competence in the Docklands has not exactly engendered goodwill with the Oracles. This will be seen as a betrayal of the Heart. And I have not come this far to see you last less than a week, so cast a distraction the other side of that curtain, and make yourself scarce if you see anyone coming.”

  Outside. Again. But even as Ollivan could feel the sneer rising to his face, he understood. Virgil was still protecting him. He was still on his side.

  He put the curtain between them and did as he was asked. He summoned his magic and installed a distraction; a kind of glamour designed to push away an onlooker’s attention. It was all they could do in the crowded ward, but it wouldn’t protect them long; as soon as someone needed this corner of the room, the glamour would crumble.

  Then he looked out at the hospital floor, and sighted trouble immediately. A healer had come to the workstation for more gauze. She appeared to have resigned herself to their absence – they wouldn’t be the first Successor volunteers to be less than helpful in their duties – and was looking for the gauze; the gauze Lev was using to dress the burns of the Oracle.

  It was only as their eyes met and she frowned that Ollivan realised he had cast the glamour around the curtain, but not around himself.

  “Oh, stars.” He backed towards the wall and leaned around the edge of the curtain. “No chance you’re ready to usher our friend out already?”

  Lev and Virgil were working with impressive speed and coordination, Virgil applying salve and Lev following behind with the bandages. They had dosed the Oracle with enough painkillers that his white eyes were closed and he made only the faintest murmurs of disorientated protest.

  “We’ve got trouble?” said Lev without looking up.

  “I’ll head her off,” Ollivan replied, “but hurry.”

  Virgil frowned. “Ollivan.”

  “I’ll handle it.”

  The healer was upon him. “Where’s the gauze?” she said. The distraction spell kept her curiosity away from the curtain.

  “Used it all,” said Ollivan, turning her back towards the room. In doing so, he lost sight of the opposite corner of the cubicle. His first indication of the mistake was the shriek of the metal rings on the curtain rail.

  “What is this?” said a second healer, a man.

  Perhaps Ollivan should make himself scarce. Lev and Virgil would get a stern dressing down at best, an audience with the High Sorcerer if they deemed the wasting of Heart resources on Oracles to be an especially grave crime. No one would be so forgiving of Oll
ivan. It would be best if he took Virgil’s advice.

  Perhaps that’s what I should do, he thought as he placed himself between the healers and his friends.

  “Just another walk-in,” said Ollivan, trying to sound casual. “We have it under control.”

  “You were informed of procedure,” said the man. “New patients need to be signed in so the enforcers have a list of all the injured. He can’t be compensated by the High Sorcerer if no one knows who he is.”

  “Thank you kindly! His name is Pendergast. P-E-N-D-E-R-G-A-S-T. I believe the sign-in sheet is back over there.” Ollivan put a hand on the man’s arm and pushed him gently in the direction of the door, and the sign-in sheet.

  “Wait a minute.”

  It was the first healer. Once the second had pulled back the curtain, Ollivan’s glamour had fallen away. Virgil was trying to block her line of sight, but the way she craned around him, and the alarm mounting across her face, said that she had seen his eyes flutter open for just a moment. “Is this man a Sorcerer?”

  “What a preposterous question,” protested Ollivan. “This is the Heart, is it not?”

  The second healer tugged free of Ollivan’s grip on his arm. “I’m fetching the enforcers.”

  “Sir!” Lev extricated himself from the business of wrapping the man in bandages and scrambled into the healer’s path. He was much shorter than the other man, who was forced to step back to meet his eyes. “We’re almost done, then we’ll drop him at the guard point and the acolytes can see to him. It will take us barely ten minutes. We can make more ointment.”

  “We can make a better ointment, in fact,” added Ollivan, “if only you’d let us. Opal root powder is a far superior binding agent when swiftberry is involved, which I tried to tell your splendid colleague here.”

  Drawing helpless rage out of others was one of Ollivan’s finer skills, and without using a lick of magic the healers were frozen to the spot as they absorbed the slight. As they did, Ollivan threw up a second ward, this time around them all.

  But the healer in front of him clocked the spell. His hand flexed like he was readying to stun him. In the man’s defence, it was bad magical etiquette, and had been an escalation on Ollivan’s part; he couldn’t fault him for responding. He could fault a healer for refusing to heal, however, and everything he might do to avoid it, including stunning him.

  “Listen,” Ollivan said. “We’re only doing what you cannot find the decency to do yourself. I don’t want any trouble, but if you loose that spell on me, I’ll do the same.”

  “He won’t,” said Lev, throwing a glare at Ollivan. Virgil continued to bandage the burned man at top speed.

  “No, Lev, I will.”

  “Venda, fetch Sibley,” clipped to healer to his colleague.

  Venda did not tempt a confrontation; she transported on the spot, landing across the long ward next to Sibley, the enforcer in charge. Ollivan knew of Sibley, and knew that he wasn’t furnished with the ability to transport; their only saving grace. They had thirty seconds at most.

  “Virgil—”

  “I can’t go any quicker.”

  The healer spoke between clenched teeth. “I know who you are. The High Sorcerer will thank me for reporting this to him.”

  “And I’ll thank you not to, so it seems you’re at an impasse.” Ollivan let a spell dance at his fingers. “If you know who I am, you know what they say I’ve done. Do you really want to get in my way?”

  “Ollivan,” hissed Lev in warning. He swung to face Virgil. “Are you going to let him fight this fellow?”

  “That’s his area of expertise, isn’t it?”

  “Virgil’s busy, Lev. Let him be,” said Ollivan without taking his eyes off the healer, but in his peripheral vision he saw Virgil help the patient to his feet. Lev dove to help them. They were almost clear. He just needed one final flourish to ensure this didn’t spell the end of him.

  But Sibley was upon them, Venda in tow. He was a heavy, square fellow with a nasty snarl that he levelled at Ollivan. “Sims. In trouble already.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about it, Sibley, lad. I don’t intend for anyone to find out about this.” He glanced over his shoulder. Lev and Virgil had their patient propped between them and were gauging the distance to the side door halfway along the hall. It was time. “Go now,” he told his friends, and then he transported.

  He landed across the ward, back at the medicine counter. His friends were watching him wide-eyed, abandonment on their faces, and Sibley and the healers closed in on them. Two years ago, they would not have second-guessed him in such a bind, but Ollivan pushed the hurt down, grabbed two rough handfuls of what he was there for, and transported back into the fray.

  Sibley, taken by surprise at his sudden reappearance, stepped back – to the perfect distance for Ollivan to dust him with the forgetting powder. He swept his arm in a broad arc, letting the blue dust gust into their faces, then tossed the second handful at them for good measure. Venda sneezed. The nearest patient glanced their way dully, but Ollivan’s glamour held, and they found nothing of interest in the scene. If they remembered anything later, they wouldn’t be able to describe it. All anyone would know was that Ollivan had been with Lev and Virgil as they bundled an unidentified man out of the hospital; suspicious enough for Jupitus to form opinions if he heard of it, but not enough evidence to send him back to the Otherworld.

  It wasn’t far to the border. They let Virgil approach the guard point with hands raised to explain the situation before they delivered the Oracle to the acolytes. Tensions were high, and the Oracles knew – even if the Sorcerer citizens did not – what had happened that morning at the distillery.

  The acolytes took him without a thank you or a backward glance, and then the three of them walked in silence back towards the Wending Place. They were almost there when Lev stopped suddenly.

  “Where – I thought that we – were we not just…” His mouth opened stupidly, and he looked about in confusion. A faint dusting of blue powder peppered his black hair.

  Ollivan winced. “Stars. Sorry, Lev.” He looked up at Virgil warily. “I didn’t get you too, did I?”

  Wordlessly, Virgil dusted the forgetting powder out of Lev’s hair, and ran a handkerchief over his face for good measure.

  “You, ah, missed a bit just—” Ollivan cut off as Virgil turned on him, his glower levelled like a weapon. A silence stretched between them until Ollivan was forced to break it. “What was I to do? Turn the man away? Trust me, Virgil, I’m not actively clamouring for ways to ruin my life. I would have been glad to—”

  “You were right.” Virgil folded his handkerchief neatly and put it back in his pocket. Behind him, Lev spun on the spot like he was lost. “There was nothing to be done. You didn’t turn him away to save yourself. It was the right thing.”

  Ollivan chanced a grin. “Noble, one might say.”

  “Don’t push it.”

  “Right.” He gestured to Lev, who had ceased spinning but was frowning at the ground like he was trying to remember where he had lost something. “I’m sorry about…”

  Virgil took Lev by the arms and lowered his face so they were eye to eye. “We were at the hospital, but you caught a little forgetting powder, so we left. You haven’t missed much, Mallory. You’ll be alright.” He brushed Lev’s floppy hair back from his face tenderly, and Lev calmed.

  “Oh,” he said, breaking into a grin. “Champion.”

  Virgil turned to look at Ollivan, and though he did not smile, his eyes softened, and Ollivan’s heart leapt. “About what Lev was saying earlier. I’m sorry too.”

  Ollivan still wanted to protest. He knew who he blamed for ruining his life; he knew it with incessant keenness of a splinter throbbing in his thumb. He had held it in his blackened heart for a year, as if it was something precious. He would not have his friends thinking differently. But it soothed something older to hear them acknowledge the pain that had driven him away from them. Pain that wasn’t truly anyone’s fault.

  “What was I saying earlier?” said Lev, still frowning.

  Ollivan put a hand on his shoulder and turned him towards the Wending Place. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, his eyes meeting Virgil’s. “It’s in the past.”

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