My hands move automatically while my mouth runs through every shortcut, every mistake I've made so they don't have to.
"What about—" Dara hesitates. "Could they make it airborne? Like, instead of dipping arrows. If they ground the petals into powder, threw it as a cloud. Could it be inhaled?"
My hands stop.
I look at her.
She looks back. Bright-eyed. Still holding the pestle.
"Inhaled."
"Yeah."
"I don't—" My brain does a thing. A stuttering thing. "I haven't thought about that. I've never seen it. Topical, ingested, blood contact—those I know. Those I've treated. But airborne—" I'm still staring at her. Mortar forgotten. "If you breathed it in, the paste couldn't reach the tissue. Can't smear paste on the inside of someone's lungs. The dilution would have to be different. The delivery would have to be different. You'd have to—" Hands moving again, but not on the paste. Air in front of me. Gesturing at nothing. "You'd have to get the compound INTO the lungs somehow, not just at the surface, and the ratio would change because gut absorption and lung absorption aren't the same speed, and the alveoli are—where is this coming from, Dara?"
"There's been rumors."
"What rumors?"
"From the runners. Something one overheard the humans say. About powder. About what they were testing."
"Testing."
"That's the word that got passed."
I'm staring at her.
"Why am I just hearing about this now?"
"You're hearing about it now."
"Dara."
"I'm telling you now, Mel."
I exhale. Slowly. She's right.
"Okay." Hands back to the cloth. Wiping. "Okay. I have to think about this. I have to actually think about this. Not now—I can't lose the paste batch—but tonight. Tomorrow. I need to—" My brain is already three steps ahead. "If they did weaponize it that way, the treatment would have to be something I can get into the lungs. Something inhaled to counter something inhaled—"
"Mel."
"What."
"The paste."
I look down. The petals are over-crushed. Going to be too thin.
"Shit." I scrape the mortar out. "Start over. And next time the runners say something useful, you tell me before you let me grind petals for an hour."
"Noted."
Chapter 21
Out with Rhen at first light. Same trees. Same path. Same silence.
My shoulders have been tight since yesterday. Since she was on my back for hours. Every shift of her weight. Her hips when the terrain changed. She stopped fighting the movement halfway through. Just settled. Trusted. Her fingers loosening in my fur. Her weight moving with mine.
Don't.
