~ Tema ~

Who knew white walls could be so infuriating?

For ten minutes now, Tema had been stood in the nearest bathroom, sharing a lonely congress with the stubborn mirror on the wall. She might stay another ten. It had been too long since she’d shaved, twelve hours or more. Dark hairs speckled the flaking foundation above her lip. And she stared at them, her thoughts racing faster than the stars which the Eia had burnt past on its long voyage. Her lips were dry. Her hand shook. She wanted to take a fist to the mirror, scrape the offending flesh away with the shards. But that would do no good.

For sanity’s sake, she had to shave twice daily. Make-up too. Some of the others liked to mock her for it, Mary Ellen Tolcross and Soraya Cisel and their like. “You should spend more time worrying about your patients and less on your face,” they said. “Are you going to hide from the sick in case they cough and mess up your perfect look?” She always shook off the mockery. She knew she was good at her job. And she knew there would always be make-up on her face. As much as she could muster, anyway—the kohl around her eyes was the last she had, and her only concealer was the little compact in the pocket of her peacoat. Sooner or later it would run out. And when it ran out, she would cover every mirror she saw. She would not allow him to show through.

Everything about the hospital was growing irritating now. The lockdown had stretched on for a week already. She thought it was a week, anyway. It was difficult to tell. Trapped within these walls, she was losing track of day and night. Shifts ran on longer than they were supposed to, blended into one another seamlessly. In between there was nothing to do but find a quiet corner and try to get some sleep. Nowhere offered a respite from the noise.

Doctor Maynard was in a bad way. The infection had reached her veins, and it had spread throughout her body. She’d lost conscious yesterday. Now, angry red pustules snaked up her neck and onto her face, pulsing, tracing the course of her bloodstream. Betsy Clanackan had spent an hour bagging her at the worst of it, when Maynard stopped breathing. It had been a tense hour. A day later, the bag valve remained by her bedside. A ventilator was standing by.

Two of the nurses were tending to her. Tema was watching them. Her shift had finished an hour ago, but she was too tired to crawl into an empty ward, so she stayed bleary-eyed to look over the younger workers.

These were the greenest of girls. Martha Salcombe had practically walked directly from her graduation to the Eia. Viola Watling hadn’t even finished medical school. They were following the same ineffective procedures. What else was there to do?

Tema hadn’t come across a disease like this, at least not outside her textbooks. Doctor Maynard would have known what to do, and Doctor Ballard would have too, but they’d both gone down sick. Doctor Staniforth had locked himself in his office the instant he found out about the lockdown, self-protection in the guise of research. And the others, Sinclair and Fleming and Warburton, they’d been elsewhere when the doors were locked. Tema was alone.

Maynard had been hooked up to one of the vitals monitors. The machine liked to beep every time one of the numbers changed. Beep. Beep. In her semi-asleep state, Tema had tuned out the noise. It was just a constant high-pitched drone, the soundtrack to her subconscious. Beep. She heard it all the time even in her dreams.

As Viola moved around the bed, her shoe slipped off her heel. It bent and caught beneath her foot as she walked, causing her to stumble. She screamed in anger as she kicked out. The offending shoe flew across the room. Viola’s bare foot hit the foot of the bed, and she cried out again. Tema was only idly aware of the young nurse walking out of the room, her eyes rimmed red with tears.

A minute or so later, her brain got around to processing the events she’d seen. Martha Salcombe was tending to Doctor Maynard alone. Tema got to her feet, letting out a low sigh as she did so. Her legs were stiff and cramped from sitting awkwardly; one had gone to sleep, and she hobbled through pins and needles to the door.

At first she couldn’t tell where Viola had gone. Certainly the corridor was empty. But then she caught a flicker of movement, and a door swinging shut. The storerooms. There were several scattered throughout the hospital, some housing medical supplies and some housing food. The planners weren’t stupid. A lockdown could never be an option if a lockdown was guaranteed starvation. Combined, the stores had enough tinned goods and dehydrated produce to feed a hundred people for half a year.

It was one of these stores that Viola had entered.

Tema followed her there, feeling the relief as blood flowed back into her legs and restored her to pain-free mobility. Opening the door to the storeroom rewarded her with a waft of stale air. The girl was stood at a row of shelving upon which were several glass bottles, the contents running the gamut from lilac to aureolin. Her arms were full of these bottles, and she had her head tipped back, pouring the contents of one down her throat. When it was empty, she threw it to the ground. It flew past Tema to smash into the wall, making Tema yelp in shock, and then Viola noticed her.

“Viola,” Tema began. Before she could say anymore, the girl pushed past her. Her eyes were saucers. “Viola, you need to put those back.”

“Fuck off,” screamed Viola. She hurled another bottle at Tema. It sailed harmlessly over her head, making contact with one of the shelves on the far wall. The impact decapitated the bottle. Shattered hunks of glass and sweet chartreuse blood sprayed everywhere, soaking several large sacks of flour.

In the time it took Tema to notice this, Viola had gone, the door slammed shut behind her. Tema picked up the broken bottle. Booze. At least Viola hadn’t downed poison. Her hand was bleeding, she noticed—she must have nicked it on the jagged glass. She pulled a wad of tissue from the bag around her waist, and formed from it a makeshift bandage, tying it several times around her hand.

Viola was sat on the floor outside, her back against the wall and her head in her hands. A couple of bottles lay on the ground next to her, the stoppers out. She didn’t look up as Tema approached.

“Miss Watling?”

The girl didn’t respond. Tema cleared her throat.

“Viola? Can I sit here with you?” Viola grunted, which she supposed meant ‘yes’. She sat down slowly, tucking her thing back out of the way and smoothing the skirts of her tunic. “Are you okay?”

Viola nodded her head. “I’m fine.”

She found her hand on Viola’s shoulder, and a gentle smile on her lips. “It’s okay to be upset, you know.”

“I’m not upset,” Viola sobbed.

Tema picked up the bottles and moved them to one side, replacing the stoppers. The label, and the thick smell of the lilac liquid inside, marked them as a starflower tope, the most potent nepenthe. People didn’t drink starflower tope when they were happy. “If you’re not upset, you don’t need these,” said Tema. “So why don’t we put them back where they came from, and forget all about this.”

“No,” said Viola, reaching for the bottles, but Tema held them out of her reach.

“Tell me what’s the matter,” she said. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me.”

There was silence for a little while then. Only the drawing of each heavy breath Viola took. At last, she spoke. “It’s all too much for me. I’m no use, Doctor Caerlin, I’m going to pieces.”

“Everybody thinks that,” said Tema. “And that’s fine. What’s important is you keep going.”

“How? I’ve got nothing to look forward to, no end in sight. I’m just getting more and more tired every day, waiting until it’s my turn to get ill.” Viola bashed at the wall with her fist, then howled in pain. “I just wish it could stop.”

“I know how you feel,” said Tema. “I was new once.”

“And did you ever have a situation like this? It’s alright when everything’s normal.” Viola’s voice was raised. Tema saw Martha Salcombe poking her head out of the door to the ward, and gestured to her to go back to tending Doctor Maynard.

“Calm down, Viola. Shouting won’t make anything better.”

“It feels better,” Viola moaned.

“So does helium. Until you take too much of it, and the anoxia gets you. If you’re not careful, you’ll swell up like a balloon—and then you’ll pop like a balloon. You’ve already got the colouration.”

Viola’s face was crimson beneath her hands. She giggled at Tema’s remark. “I should quit,” she said, sobering up. “I’m just causing chaos here.”

“You’ve heard of Balking, I trust?” Tema didn’t need an answer. Balking was a prime case study in the Academy’s teachings—if Viola hadn’t heard of it, she’d never have got near the Essegena job. “I had a placement there, when I was slightly older than you are now. You can imagine my anger when I found out that was where I’d been sent. When you’re a fresh-faced sixteen, you want to go somewhere glamorous. My friend Barbara was going to Tol Margred’s, right in the middle of the Merrowain Heights. The girl who used to put vinegar in my drinks was off to the Hive. And I was being sent to some tiny little town on the quietest part of Tol Manase. I was pissed. Before the munitions went up, it was so incredibly boring. I was counting every minute, just like you were when we first arrived here. After the explosion, I’d have given anything to go back to counting the minutes.”

“What was it like? Being there?”

“Bloody terrible.” Quite what caused Balking to blow was never made clear, but Tema had seen the explosion from her room at the hospital. The flames had burned blue, and the town had smelled of sulphur for weeks afterward. “There wasn’t much of a town left by the time we got there. Bits of charred wood, bits of broken stone, lots and lots of blood. I don’t know what was worse, the smell or the sound. All those people screaming... Some of them must have known they were going to die. It didn’t mean they accepted it. And some were worse than others. There was one woman, a soldier. I’d spoken to her a few times. Even gave her a twisted leg in a hurney game one time. When they brought her in, I thought she was already dead. The explosion had ripped her head in two, from here to here.” Tema ran a hand from her chin to her forehead in demonstration. “I gave her some opium for the pain, and told her what she wanted to hear, and when she died I wanted to cry. I’d signed up to make people better. I’d never been so helpless as when I realised that we can’t always make people better. I remember going to my supervisor and telling him I wanted to go home. I couldn’t keep doing this. But we can’t always save people. It’s a grim reality, but it’s the truth. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep trying. That’s what my supervisor told me, and he was right.”

Viola lifted her face out from her hands. She’d stopped sobbing, at least. “She’s going to die, isn’t she? Doctor Maynard? Nor Doctor Ballard either? We’ll make them well again, won’t we?” The way she spoke, she sounded just like a young child. Tema said nothing. She didn’t need to—Viola already knew the answer. “It’s a beastly thing.”

“You never really get used to it, I’m afraid. You just sort of... think of other things.”

Viola frowned. “Other things?”

“If you can,” said Tema. “Imagine you’re walking through the woods. It’s all peaceful. The sun’s drawing lines of gold where it creeps through the canopy. Perhaps there’s a stream there, or groves of starfire, or an old friend—the specifics are up to you. It’s your safe place, yours. Somewhere you can retreat to when it all gets too much, so you can find the strength to keep going. My paradise is a grove at the dying gasp of spring, all green leaves and sunlight and pockets of cape jasmine. Yours can be whatever you like. Make the woods your reward. At the end of your shift, when you find a quiet place to lie, you can think of them, actually go and visit them in your head. You can spend the whole night there if you choose—longer, perhaps, since time works differently in dreams. But I need you, here, now. If you spend your reward now, you’ll never earn it. And neither will anyone else. It’ll all be sour, spoilt.”

Viola sniffed. “I miss the feel of fresh air on my face. I don’t know whether I’m coming or going anymore.”

Tema looked into the young girl’s face. It was pretty beneath the grime, soft and round and young. Viola was too young to be here now. But she was. Fate had decreed it, and fate could not be argued with.

She brushed some dangling strands of hair from Viola’s eyes. “I know it’s hard. Viola, I promise this will end, but I need you. Help me save Doctor Maynard, and Doctor Ballard, and all the others who are sick.”

The girl’s eyes were big and dark when she looked at her, and uncried tears glistened in the light. “I’m scared, Doctor Caerlin. What if we do all this for nothing? What if the sickness gets out?”

“Out? You mean out of the hospital?” Viola nodded. “If it gets out, all of the Gods, all of the spices of Amora, all of Kelsiern’s armaments, all the wealth of the diamond mines of Carax... none of it can help us.” It was a prospect as dismal as it was true. So far there was no suggestion of anybody getting better. It was just a matter of keeping the sick alive as long as they could, and making them as comfortable as possible while they were still alive.

But Tema didn’t enjoy saying it out loud. Viola fell into her open arms, and she hugged her tightly.

And suddenly they were hugging each other, and the blood was rushing. The stubborn snake between her legs begged for attention, but she squeezed her thighs together to press it down. Viola’s hand was on her breast, and hers on Viola’s cheek. Their lips met, and for a second they were Bessily and Maven, lovers beneath the dovetree, untouchable by worldly cares.

Then Viola broke away, and gasped. Her breath was heavy, and she was shaking her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” She started to run down the corridor.

“You don’t need to be,” Tema called after her, but Viola was gone. And then it was Tema’s turn to cry.

She cried until the night came, then—eyes sore from the tears—she crawled to the nearest empty ward. It was dark there, and quiet. There, she could sleep. They’d designated some of the unused wards as sleeping quarters to wait out the lockdown. With the cots wheeled to one side, mattresses flung to the ground, and the lights turned off, these wards became bunkrooms.

They reminded Tema of the dormitories at school. Rindehall was as prestigious as schools went on Belaboras, a fortress sitting alone on its island in the cold sea. Just as every Caerlin for five hundred years, Tema had gone there. She hated it. The way to survive was to prove that you were more a man than any of your peers. For Tema, it had been six long years of the lie, hoping each night that she’d wake to find she no longer belonged in the boys’ dormitory.

It only took her a second to drift off. Her nightmares were of Viola’s face—cheeks flushed and eyes shining with tears. Viola’s voice came from an unspeaking mouth, accusatory. “This isn’t right. You’ve ruined me.”

Twice in the night, she woke up halfway through apologising. The second time, she found Janna Davis sat with her in the darkness. Automatically she squeezed her legs together, hoping she hadn’t treated Janna to an all-access show of what she had beneath her skirt.

They looked at each other in silence for a miniature eternity. Tema slowed her breathing, and felt better as she did.

“Are you alright, Miss Tema?” Janna’s soft voice was always welcome. Right now, it might as well have been a bird’s song.

She nodded. “I’m fine, Janna. I had a bad dream, that’s all.”

“You said you’ve ruined her. Who have you ruined?”

“Have you been listening to me?”

Janna shook her head. “It’s not like that, Miss Tema. I couldn’t sleep, that’s all. It’s the smells.”

Tema sniffed the air. It smelled of a cocktail of chemicals, ammonia and blood and opium, the whole thing slightly stale. There was an undertone of vomit too. She’d certainly smelled worse, and unless the Unity had removed some of the more unpleasant demonstrations from its medical school curriculum so had Janna. This was the sort of smell that was easy to get used to. “It’s not that bad,” she said.

“It’s not a homely smell,” Janna replied. She made a fair point. If ever Tema found herself in a house this malodorous, she’d be excusing herself at once and returning post-haste with a bucket of soapy water and a dozen jars of air freshener. Janna shifted a bit. “Sometimes I think about running for it. Nobody really knows who I am, out there. I could get away from the valley easily.”

“The universe is scary. Even the worlds we know. Better to stay here, where it smells bad.”

Her eyes had barely adjusted to the dark. She could just about see that Janna was smiling through thin lips. “I’m not a rule breaker,” she said. “I cried when the teacher held me back after lessons.”

Tema fumbled for Janna’s hand, and squeezed the palm gently. “I won’t abandon this place while it needs me. It would be nice to know I’ll have somebody with me no matter what. Never give up on those who need you, Janna. Even if they tell you they don’t.”

“I won’t, Miss Tema. I swear it. I studied my Books like a good girl. ‘Even the darkest night will end,’ that’s what Matheld said. I know she can’t ever have imagined a situation like this, but it’s true, isn’t it? It’ll all end eventually.”

“We can but hope,” said Tema.

Outside the ward, somebody was walking. Their footsteps were faint through the walls. Since the hospital had gone into a state of lockdown, life had become artifice. Nothing had meaning anymore. The shifts were the same, working themselves to exhaustion trying to cure a disease that had no cure. Between shifts, they had the same conversations with the same people, sitting in the same rooms. They ate the same condensed food from the same enamel-shell dispensers. And they slept.

Within the ward, this effect was doubled. She had no concept of time here, no idea whether it was day or night. She could stay here forever. She’d never need to know how bad things were.

If she never left the ward, how could she say she helped? It takes a true coward to hide away from the danger and still pretend to be a hero. Caroline Ballard might die, and Emmeline Maynard, and all the others.

If she never left the ward, she’d never meet her nephew. Tasha had been so excited to finally be having a child. The moment this was over, she’d go to Tasha. Let them bury the past, let her apologise for Tasha’s wrongs if she had to, but let them be friends again. Let her not be alone.

She had to leave the dark ward. She had to go and do her shift, and carry on as she had been carrying on up till now.

But if she never left the ward, she wouldn’t see Viola again. She wouldn’t have to have that conversation. If only they hadn’t kissed. Before then, she fancied they were friends. Now Viola was a ruined girl, and Tema was...

What was she, exactly? Women loved men. It was a biological imperative. Sure, there were exceptions. Neither Bessily nor Maven was a man, and theirs was the archetypal tragic love. Greta Crowther, Tema’s best friend from the Rindehall days, was married to another woman. But Greta Crowther didn’t have to contend with people trying to tell her she wasn’t female. Tema had. She remembered the day she told her parents the truth. She’d had a lapse in concentration, returning home after her first year at medical school. It wasn’t until she was sat on the train, two hours from the rickety old halt where Mother and Father would be waiting for her, that she realised she was all dressed and made-up, all of her womanhood on display. Her parents had no idea. To their credit, they’d said nothing at the halt. They didn’t ask for an explanation until they got home.

Tema had told her parents that she was attracted to men. In truth, she’d never really had any romantic inclinations at all growing up, but it seemed like the best response to both shut her mother up and make herself seem like eighty percent of the other women in the Unity. She’d convinced herself that she was like them.

What if she was wrong?

“You never told me who it was you ruined, Miss Tema. In your dream.” Janna’s voice dissolved the miasma of thoughts and memories that had enveloped her.

Viola, she wanted to say. And myself, too. Myself most of all. “I don’t remember,” she said, maybe a little too curtly. “I’ve forgotten the dream already.” She got to her feet. She was awake now, and she didn’t really feel like opening herself up to another nightmare. Might as well get some work done. To her surprise, Janna followed her.

“It’s not time for the changeover, Janna. You can stay here and sleep if you want to.”

“I’ll be alright, Miss Tema.”

Outside, she passed by one of the nurses, his face covered in a rubber mask as he pushed along a gurney. The body on top had been covered by a sheet. That was seven dead in as many days. More, perhaps. The deaths were accelerating. The nurse caught her eye, and rolled his. “What?” she called after him. He ignored her, and walked off shaking his head.

She drew a large dollop of disinfectant soap from the dispenser on the wall beside her, and rubbed her hands together so hard she could feel the heat. She didn’t know who that nurse was, but he knew she was ruined.

That kiss fucked everything up.

She left Janna washing her own hands, and walked on towards the active wards. By the time she reached the main stairwell, she could easily hear the voices of the workforce. It sounded wrong. Why did it sound wrong? She listened again. The words were obscured, but the voices were obvious. That was Delphine Janley she could hear talking, and with her Doctor Staniforth. And... yes, Viola Watling too.

Tema didn’t realise she’d come to a standstill until Janna caught up to her. “Why have we stopped, Miss Tema?”

“Listen,” she hissed, shushing Janna with a finger over the mouth.

“What am I listening for?”

She didn’t have an answer for that. She couldn’t say why she’d decided to eavesdrop on her own co-workers, couldn’t even say she’d been conscious of doing so. They’d be laughing at her if they knew.

But of course! That was it. All the voices, and she hadn’t heard any laughter. Someone was always laughing. Even when Caroline had fallen ill, and Emmeline after, even then there had been humour.

Why, now, had it stopped?

A door opened, a few steps below Tema. Delphine came through it at a run. Wayward hair was stuck to her face by sweat and the raw outline of a mask was etched around her mouth. She squeaked when she saw Tema. “Doctor Caerlin. You’re not due for another hour.”

“An hour and twenty minutes, actually,” she said, reading the exact time from the big mahogany-framed clock hanging on the wall before her. “Why waste time? Lives are in danger, after all.”

“Yes.” Delphine looked at the ground. “I won’t keep you. Not if you’ve got lives to save. Good luck in there.” She winked and jogged down towards lower-level storage, taking two steps at a time.

The chatter died abruptly when she entered. A dozen pairs of eyes turned to her, a dozen faces suddenly pretending they’d not been talking. Viola was in the midst of it all, in shades of brown. The tragic heroine in a painting. She alone would not meet Tema’s gaze.

“Viola.” She called out the young nurse’s name, and collectively the room intook of breath.

The girl looked at her with the eyes of a lamb. “I have to go. I’m so sorry.” Viola ran past her, out of the room. Doctor Staniforth was in pride of place, the first to rise when she was gone. The others formed up into their positions of attack. Frances Dunn stood, and Tommy Morton, and six more besides. Others stayed on the benches, watching her closely. Every face was grim.

Janna edged closer. “What’s happening, Miss Tema?”

“Come along, Janna,” Staniforth snarled. “Step away from Doctor Caerlin.”

“I don’t want to.”

Staniforth continued. “It’s for your own good. You don’t think you can trust Doctor Caerlin, surely?”

“She doesn’t know,” said Fran Dunn. “Nobody’s told her.”

“The Doctor here’s been lying to you, Janna,” added Mary Ellen Tolcross, a podgy lady with a boil on her cheek. “He’s not a woman at all.”

Poor Janna looked confused out of her mind. “Who’s not a woman? What’s going on?”

“Come over here, Janna. I won’t ask again.” Staniforth spoke firmly. Janna tensed visibly, and her eyes flicked Tema’s way.

Tema smiled at her. “It’s okay, Janna. You can go. I won’t be upset.” A lie. Already she was struggling to hold back tears. As Janna crossed over to the crowd, stopping twice to look back at her with no hint of understanding, she had to choke those tears down.

Doctor Staniforth smiled his lizard smile. “Good. Now we can get on with the matter at hand. We aren’t happy. To be forced to stay here, in lockdown, for as long as it takes for us all to die off... shouldn’t we at least get a say? I don’t remember anybody asking me if I wanted to be this side of the lockdown. Why should I be forced to lay down my life, while others get to be free?”

“I didn’t get asked either,” said Fran.

“I did,” came a small voice at the back of the room. Janna’s voice. Sweet Janna, too green to see the politics at play. She might yet be Tema’s salvation. “It was written in the contract I signed.”

Whether or not he heard her, Staniforth gave no indication of listening to her rebuttal. “Bad enough to be forced into this situation, but by a liar of all things. Viola’s told us all about you, Doctor Caerlin—how you’re really a man. When were you going to come clean?” He spat at his feet. “Halfwives and concubines, that’s what your kind is for. You’re vermin, and vermin’s best off dead.”

None took up the spitting. Fran Dunn looked suddenly uncomfortable. Tommy Morton retook his seat. Betsy Clanackan gasped audibly.

“Tema’s a liar, not vermin,” said Fran.

“Call him what you want,” said Staniforth, dismissive. “He still needs exterminating.”

Fran shook her head, eyes rolling. “Don’t be so bloody dramatic, Rupert, you look like a twat.”

“I thought we were on the same side here.” Staniforth must have popped a vessel or two in his head. “You want to work for this cumbucket?”

“We want to be allowed out,” said Mary Ellen Tolcross. “It’s really that simple. You have no mandate to be our boss, no right to keep us here.”

“Doctor Ballard didn’t have a problem with me,” said Tema.

Tommy piped up. “Doctor Ballard’s dying on a gurney. What she did or did not have a problem with is by the by. She certainly wouldn’t countenance a lockdown like this.”

Tema sighed. “I’m sorry you’ve all been caught up in this. Really, I am. But Janna’s right, this is what we signed up for. People rely on us, when they get sick—we don’t get to just run away because we don’t fancy it. The quarantine was necessary, and I stand by it.”

“And when does it end?” shouted Betsy. “When do we get to say ‘yes, that’s it, we can leave now’?”

“When we’re all dead,” said Doctor Staniforth. “There’ll never be a cure. We’re the sacrifice, to die off in turn so the sickness has no host to carry it outside.” This prompted angry murmurs from the massed group, mutterings which Tema would have struggled to quell even when she still had them all on her side.

She swung her arm back, hitting her hand hard against the metal door. It clanged loudly, bringing her arm into spasm and drawing the attention of everybody in the room. Why did I do that? It was a stupid thing to do. Now she was embarrassed, and her fingers hurt where they’d hit the solid steel, and she couldn’t let any of it show.

“You can go if you want to,” she said. “I mean it. I’ll open the doors right now, and you can walk right out of here. All of you. But I will remind you all of the oath you swore, before you so much as touched a patient. You vowed to protect the sick and the infirm, for as long as they needed help. No matter the cost. I won’t leave until this is all over. You’re welcome to stay with me and do your jobs. I’ll leave that choice to you.”

When she’d finished speaking, she was panting, and her heart was thumping. She squeezed her right hand tightly within her left to stop it shaking, only to realise that her left hand was shaking just as much. She saw all of the eyes facing her way.

And then Janna stood up, stood forward, walked all the way back to her side. “I want to stay,” she said. The words were as a puncture to the room’s tension. At once it burst. With Janna came a few of the others, some who’d stayed sitting.

They didn’t follow Janna to Tema’s side, but each one in turn swore to stay.

Fran Dunn sighed. “The Lightness can take you, Doctor Caerlin,” she said. “You make a good speech. I’ll stay.”

“You’ll stay?” If Staniforth wasn’t careful, there’d be no unpopped blood vessels in his head.

“She’s right. We did swear an oath.”

That was the turning point. Tommy was next, then Betsy, and more after them. Mary Ellen Tolcross made it a point to call Tema a man at least five times, but she too stood by her oath. Each sat down after their choice, if they were still standing. Soon, only Staniforth remained.

He looked at Tema, and Tema looked at him, and they both knew that he’d lost. His allies had abandoned him.  There’d be no coup today. If he was the only one to leave, it would reflect terribly on him.

He shook his head. “Don’t go thinking this means you’re not vermin.”

Tema fixed him with a sweet smile. “The vermin just won, Rupert.” Doctor Staniforth glared at her.

When he took his seat, Tema found one of her own. There, in full view of everybody, she sobbed. She didn’t care. What could they say to her? What would make her feel worse? She’d trusted in Viola, and Viola had betrayed her, and now she had no friends left at all.

No friends except Janna. She could always rely on Janna.