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The rest of the afternoon went by in a fog for Karigan. Luke riding ahead, Cade driving the wagon, and she in the very back bouncing along in the straw. Every now and then Raven would poke his nose over the tailgate as if to reassure himself she was still alive.
She’d gone from craving only sleep, to still being exhausted but too agitated to truly rest. If she could have more morphia, maybe she could be at peace again. She tried not to think about it. She faded in and out, waking in a cold sweat, head aching. Unbidden, there would be Raven looking at her. She raised a trembling hand to stroke his nose.
She drifted in and out of awareness, glimpsing the tall, hard buildings of towns, inhaling air that tasted like dirt and rotten eggs. She came to once when the wagon abruptly stopped.
“Papers,” an authoritative voice ordered up ahead, followed by Luke’s chipper tones. A checkpoint. Again, she tried not to cringe when an Inspector and Enforcer came back to look at her.
“What is wrong with you?” the Inspector demanded.
She wiped sweat from her forehead. She did not have to answer for Luke reined Gallant around and said, “Don’t get too close. Tam there has a fever.”
The Inspector stepped back. “You should not be transporting sick people around the empire.”
“He came down with it along the way. I’ve been keeping him away from people.” There was a pause before Luke continued, “Say, Inspector, I don’t suppose you and your men get to taste very much good wine here. I wonder if you might care for a sample?”
Luke drew off the Inspector with that, but the Enforcer paused, its eye focusing an intense moment on her face until the mechanical belched a puff of steam from its stack and click-clacked away.
After they were cleared and underway once again, the haze moved back into Karigan’s mind until Cade paused in the shade of trees in a stretch of countryside to rest the mules, the sun glancing off the silent canal beside them.
“—too easy,” Cade was telling Luke.
“Too easy? You want them to search the wagon?” Luke countered. “Interrogate us?”
“Of course not. I just can’t get over the feeling it should be harder for us to get through those checkpoints.”
“Neither of us have done much traveling,” Luke said. “Maybe the empire just wants us to think it’s hard so everyone will stay put. Not to mention I am a very convincing wine merchant, if I say so myself.” The last was said with a certain dash of pride.
“It is a sheer tragedy the scouts for the Imperial Players overlooked you.”
“Gah! And waste my talent in propaganda pageants? No, this is much more the thing—the theater of life!”
“Yes, and it is well done,” Cade admitted.
“Applause. Where is my applause?”
Luke’s question was followed by Cade’s desultory clapping. Karigan peered ahead just in time to see Luke bow with a flourish.
That evening they stopped at another inn, and in an arrangement like the previous night’s, Karigan and Cade had an entire bunkhouse to themselves. Karigan dove for one of the beds and wrapped herself in a blanket, still shaking.
“You need to try to eat,” Cade said. “Luke had some soup sent over.” He lifted the lid on a tureen and sniffed. “Chicken. Again.”
It appeared that Luke’s solution to Karigan’s affliction was soup at almost every meal. She had to admit that while her stomach wasn’t interested in anything at all, chicken soup was the least offensive offering she could think of. She forced herself to rise and join Cade at the table. He ladled them both bowls of soup, a good thing, too, with her hands so shaky. As it was, it mostly splashed out of her spoon before she could bring it to her lips. She all but tossed the spoon down in frustration.
Cade watched her. “It will pass,” he assured her. “The shakes and so forth. It means the morphia is wearing off.” To his credit, he did not offer to feed her like a baby.
“Keep trying,” he said quietly. “You need to keep your strength up.”
“Right,” she said, “because all the people in Mill City are depending on me.”
“Not just you. The decision was mine, and they actually agreed to go along with it.”
“Mirriam, Jax, and the others.”
“Yes. Many others. If it . . . if we fail, then the responsibility is mine.” He stared into his bowl of soup as if trying to scry some secret message. He chuckled.
Karigan gazed at him, startled. “What’s so funny?”
“Who knew this would be my fate?” he replied. “I started out among the Dregs, stealing to get by. I never expected . . . I never expected to come by such responsibility. I never expected the professor to die, leaving me to make the decisions.”
“Cade,” she said, “the professor wasn’t making decisions. Not the difficult ones, anyway. He was just maintaining the opposition’s usual state of affairs. Keeping safe.”
She was intrigued by the tiny glimpse into Cade’s past. So, he’d been a street thief when he was a boy. She wanted to ask more, but a heavy oppression seemed to have settled on him.
In the course of eating her supper, she ended up with more soup on herself than in her belly, so she did her best to clean up and get ready for bed. Cade remained at the table, chin on his fist as he stared into space. That was her last vision as she drifted into an uneasy sleep: he sitting there in the golden lamp glow.
