Dead and Buryd: A Dystopian Action Adventure Novel (Out of Orbit Book 1) (22 page)

“George?”

“I need those hyliha leaves. The ones I gave you for practice.”

Lacie blinked and stared back at her sleepily.

“I finished,” Lacie answered, stepping out further into the car.

Georgianna let out a cry of frustration, having hoped that the leaves were still intact. She glanced up at Beck, who looked more than a little confused. The man reached up and rubbed his hand roughly across the back of his neck, surveying the scene cautiously. Georgianna felt awful for waking him up, she knew from Lacie how little sleep he managed to get, but right now it was necessary.

“Where are they?” Georgianna asked.

Lacie stepped over Georgianna’s legs, moving to the other side of the car and collecting up a wooden box. Georgianna clambered to her feet and accepted the box from her, opening it to find the pale green powder, as perfect as if a skilled herber had done it.

She didn’t know if it would work, whether it would be able to do anything for Wrench in this form, but she had to try. If it didn’t work, she could always run and try to find some hyliha in the camps, but who knew how long that would take, especially seeing as she would have to wait until morning.

“George, what the hell is going on?” Beck asked, placing the gun back onto a blanket crumpled beside his chair.

“Wrench has been hit with a copaq,” Georgianna explained. “Jaid was following normal procedure, but Jacob came in and…”

“Jacob?”

“The guy down Medics’,” Lacie explained.

“Yeah, well Jacob said hyliha leaves really help!” Georgianna finished, brandishing the box.

“Should I…”

Georgianna quickly shook her head as Lacie offered to come back. While Georgianna knew that this was a good opportunity for Lacie to learn, she highly doubted Wrench would want to be surrounded by people when he was injured. Not to mention that Beck would probably have something to say about Georgianna dragging the girl off in the middle of the night.

“Stay here, I’ll tell you how it goes.”

Out of the car before she even thought to thank them, Georgianna called back an apology for waking them. She was soon sprinting back through the tunnels.

The change in Wrench’s condition was marked by the time Georgianna pulled herself back into the car. Despite not being gone more than thirty minutes, his breathing had improved and he was not sweating nearly as much.

“Did you get it?” Jacob asked, pausing with his hand and the canteen dunked into the bucket.

“Not exactly,” Georgianna explained. “Lacie had already ground it. It’s been dried and crushed, but…”

“What about a paste?” Jaid asked. “Put some in a bowl with some water? The water’s not cold, but it’s decent.”

Georgianna and Jaid both looked at Jacob expectantly. It was his cure after all. However, he simply stared back in surprise. Then he shrugged.

“No harm in trying.”

Opening the box and grabbing up a bowl, Georgianna tipped a generous amount of the powder in and went to the bucket. Taking the canteen from Jacob, she poured a small amount into a well in the centre of the mound, letting the granules of the powder float in and around the cool water. She handed the canteen back and swilled the bowl, digging her finger into the power and beginning to mix. It smelled just like hyliha trees in the rain, their large leaves working perfectly for protection from sudden downpours during the wash. After a few minutes mixing in most of the granules, Georgianna had the bowl filled with a thick green paste. She stepped to Jaid’s side, nodding to the older woman. Jaid pulled the cloth away, holding it tightly in her hands as Georgianna began slathering the paste onto Wrench’s side.

The man groaned loudly, startling both of them, but then a relieved hiss slipped through his teeth, and he laid his head back against the bed.

“Kid’s a genius,” he moaned, closing his eyes. “Tha’s… tha’s amazing.”

He didn’t stay conscious long, his breathing slowing and his body releasing the tension that had been held within it. By the time he was fully unconscious, Georgianna wasn’t nearly as worried as she might have been. The hyliha seemed to be doing its job and Wrench was beginning to look much better, if that was possible so soon after being hit.

 
22
Who She Was

 
Once Wrench had passed out, his copaq wound slathered in hyliha paste, and as much water as he could safely drink in his stomach, Jaid had sighed and slumped back against the wall. The woman, stubborn as she was, having been dealing with Adveni-made wounds for a decade, refused to thank Jacob for his input.

“We’ll see how he’s doing in the morning,” she insisted. “Better not to get our hopes up too high.”

It wasn’t long before Jaid left to go back to her husband, currently being watched over by a guard she’d dragged from duty. Georgianna had grinned in amusement, not only wondering what Beck would think about one of his guards being pulled off duty, but also what the guard themselves had thought about being used as a glorified babysitter. She decided it was best not to comment though. If Jaid hadn’t been there, who knew what would have happened. Georgianna also doubted that any Belsa would comment on it so soon after Jaid had partially lost her husband to the madness of the heat thanks to a Belsa mission nobody knew the details of.

With Wrench passed out on the bed, Georgianna cleared away the bucket and cloth. She closed the wooden box of hyliha powder and tucked it into the top of her bag. She would ask Lacie to make another batch, knowing now how useful it could be. She’d probably test a few other things, but as hyliha was so readily available throughout most of the year, it seemed an incredibly useful trick to know.

Taking a seat on one of the beds, Georgianna pulled out a journal from her bag, its horse-hide cover no longer crinkling in protest the way it used to, worn and supple with years of use. Her brother had given it to her as a present when she chose to take her training as a medic, a place for her to record all she had learned. The inside paper had been changed out three times since she had received the gift. Once when Georgianna was fifteen and the book had been so full of notes that she couldn’t fit any more into it, not even around the edges where she scribbled tiny things to remember. Georgianna had spent an entire freeze down in Nyvalau organising and rewriting the notes in order.

The next time had been when she completed her training and now, once again the book was full. Georgianna had separated the journal into different sections, one for procedures, one for supplies and their uses, a section for things Georgianna wanted to learn how to do, and one for everything else. Flicking through to the supplies section, she noted down hyliha’s use for copaq wounds before she found the section on copaq wounds and added hyliha, circling it a couple of times.

Georgianna looked up, her gaze landing on Jacob who was swirling his finger around in the hyliha paste, leaning against the wall. Moving herself to the end of the bed, Georgianna smiled at Jacob and nodded to the space next to her. He considered for a moment before he walked slowly over, perching himself delicately on the edge.

“How did you know about the hyliha, Jake?” she asked, closing her journal and replacing it into her bag. “Have you…”

“Not with a copaq,” Jacob answered, cutting her off, though he didn’t look up from the paste. “The cinystalq has the same sort of charge as a copaq.”

Georgianna glanced at the burn on Jacob’s neck, a white scar running down from beneath his ear until it disappeared under his shirt.

“Will his be like that?” Georgianna asked, nodding towards his neck.

Jacob rested the bowl in his lap and reached up, covering the wound protectively.

“No,” he answered. “This wasn’t nearly as bad before they removed the collar.”

“It wasn’t made by them removing it?”

“That made it worse,” he explained. “But I already uh… I had a number of burns there from… from Uyinagh.”

“Is that,” Georgianna paused. “Was that your owner?”

Jacob nodded.

“They can give you shocks through the collar. If you do something that displeases them.”

Georgianna frowned gently and carefully reached out. Jacob flinched, cowering a little as she came closer. She took her time, moving forward to take the bowl from his lap. The young man became as still as a statue until she moved a little further away.

“Do you mind?” Georgianna asked, holding the bowl up towards him.

Jacob kept his head down, but he glanced at her curiously. Georgianna indicated his wound.

“It’s older, but maybe this will still work for you.”

Staying still for a moment or two, Jacob finally nodded. Georgianna carefully scooped up some of the paste on two fingers and placing the bowl between them, she used her other hand to reach out and gently brush the hair back from Jacob’s neck before she smeared the paste over the wound. The entire time Georgianna was touching him, Jacob remained as still as if he had been made out of the stone his name spoke of.

“I don’t know anyone who has been through the things you have,” Georgianna lamented quietly as she scraped the last of the paste from her fingers into the bowl, taking a dressing and placing it carefully onto his neck. Gently, as to not restrict his breathing, she wrapped a thin bandage loosely around his neck to keep it in place.

Jacob didn’t say anything.

Finally pulling back, Georgianna held out the bowl for him to take. Jacob took it, a small smile flitting across his lips.

“So, when you got those wounds,” Georgianna said slowly. “How did you know about the hyliha?”

The smile, so small and inconspicuous at first, split into a broader grin. He seemed proud, something she had never seen in Jacob before. The only time she’d seen him smile was when he was playing Erpal with Lacie. This was more measured. It wasn’t a sudden smile of enjoyment, but of memories.

“I was training as a herber,” Jacob answered, finally turning his head to look at her.

“Really?”

Jacob nodded.

“That’s great. You know, we’ve been looking for someone to help out,” Georgianna suggested suddenly. “Maybe once you’re feeling better, once you’re up to it, you could take the job?”

Dropping his head immediately, Jacob looked like the young boy again, so scared and unsure of himself. He dipped his finger back into the paste and began drawing patterns into it, smearing it against the bowl.

“I only trained for three years,” he answered. “I’m not…”

“You’re more than what we have, Jake, and I know a couple of people in the camps. I could bring them here, maybe make a deal for training.”

“I… I don’t know where my parents…”

Georgianna shook her head. The usual arrangement for training was that parents would accept someone to train in exchange for another family accepting their own child for training. Either that or payments in trade were made every season. Georgianna’s parents had paid highly in furniture for Georgianna to be trained as a medic. Not to mention that her father took in two boys to train in carving and carpentry.

“I’ll do it,” Georgianna declared. “I’ll take a trainee so that you can train.”

Jacob’s shy nature seemed to vanish for a second as he stared at her, open mouthed, his eyes wide in surprise.

“You’d do that?” he asked.

Georgianna smiled and nodded.

“Of course I would,” she answered.

“What are you doing?”

Georgianna turned in surprise as Keiran climbed into the car. Smiling brightly, Georgianna got to her feet and moved over to him.

Keiran looked down at Wrench in concern for a few moments until he realised Georgianna was next to him. Turning his head, he pressed a soft, slightly absent kiss against her lips, quickly turning back to Wrench.

“What happened to him?”

“Hit with a copaq,” Georgianna explained, reaching up and touching her fingers to Keiran’s arm.

“He okay?”

“He’s going to be fine. Turns out, we’ve got a pretty great herber here.”

Keiran threw a glance over to Jacob, who, at the appearance of someone new, had retreated into himself again, keeping his attention on the bowl in his lap. Georgianna gave Keiran’s arm another squeeze.

“You alright?” she asked. “What you doing here so late?”

Keiran frowned distractedly, his tongue swiping out to wet his bottom lip. Georgianna wondered why he was even awake at this time. She knew he hadn’t been on duty, they’d discussed it the night before, so why wasn’t he asleep?

“I had to go meet a friend,” he answered. “Heard about Wrench as I was coming back into the tunnels.”

“Bit of a late meeting,” Georgianna said with a snort.

Keiran’s gaze flickered over to Wrench and he remained silent for a moment, as if he didn’t want to comment on why he had been out so late. Georgianna frowned and quickly looked away. She was pretty sure she knew who he’d been meeting. Well, not who, but at least what kind of meeting it had been… most likely one that didn’t involve a lot of words. If that was the case, it wasn’t really surprising he was coming back so late. Georgianna moved over to Wrench and placed the back of her hand against his forehead. His temperature had come down drastically since they’d put the paste on and given him the water. Jacob really did know his stuff.

“He’ll be fine,” she reiterated. “Jacob gave us a new method which is working far better than our usual.”

Keiran nodded.

“That’s good!” he answered. “You know how he got shot in the first place?”

“Cornered on a scout.”

Georgianna, Keiran, and Jacob all looked at Wrench in surprise as he groaned the words, his eyes fluttering open. He reached up, rubbing his hand delicately over his face, and his lips curved into a smile.

“Hey,” Georgianna muttered, brushing her hand over Wrench’s forehead again. “How’re you feeling there, hero?”

“Like I was trampled by a horse,” Wrench answered. “But better. That kid’s a genius.”

Georgianna glanced over her shoulder at Jacob, smiling at the young man. Back to staring at his knees, Georgianna saw Jacob grin briefly.

“You were on a scout?” Keiran asked.

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t I know about it?” he asked, frowning as he took a seat on the edge of Wrench’s bed, down by his feet.