Ida’s hand rested on her shoulder, a light sympathetic squeeze along her collarbone. “If the goat’s milk gets here soon, we can—”
“It’s too late.”
Adelei gestured at the horse’s rear quarters, a mess unrecognizable in the bloody foam. When Midnight cried out again, bright red foam erupted from his mouth and nose. Captain Fenton balanced on one foot as he leaned forward. He gripped Ida’s shoulder for support and stabbed Midnight through the heart.
Michael left the sword where it was, quick to release it lest he be contaminated as well. Midnight whinnied softly, the sound more a gargle than anything else. His eyes rolled toward Adelei, and then he stilled.
The ooze continued to devour Midnight’s corpse, and Adelei returned her dagger to its sheath.
“Worth the sword. No one should suffer like that, be they beast or man.”
“I have the goat’s milk.” The bucket knocked against the stable boy’s knees as he approached.
Adelei ignored him. She watched her battle steed’s body instead.
The first time she had seen him, a foal among a field of horses. Each one to be trained as a battle steed. He was a beast of solid black, a creature meant to replace Master Bredych’s fallen mount. Before anyone could tell her otherwise, Adelei had clambered over the fence and into the field. Never mind the battle postures of the horses around her, she bee-lined for the foal.
“Adelei, come back,” Master Bredych had cried. Only the Horsemaster and his crew had been given clearance to the field, and for good reason—all those half trained mounts. I’m lucky I wasn’t killed. Which was exactly what Master Bredych said when he got a hold of me. But by then, that foal was convinced I was his second mother.
No one could explain why we bonded so well, only that we did. She had visited him daily until Master Bredych had gifted him to her. Adelei’s first battle steed.
Milk spread across the floor, and the hissing ceased. Ida scooped cups of it out of the bucket and sloshed it across the stall doors and walls. Anywhere that was infected. When the milk touched Midnight, Adelei watched, part of her hoping that somehow he’d rise up, whole and fixed again.
But the body didn’t move. He lay still. A foul mix of decay, ooze, and goat’s milk. Bile rose in the back of her throat as she turned away. On hands and knees, she crawled into the nearest stall where she lost her dinner like a war-green soldier.
Midnight’s stall.
The hay still fresh with the smell of him, his saddle slung across a side-wall. He was a gift. He was family.
“Master Adelei,” Ida called softly from the door. “The poison’s stopped. It’s safe now for the stable boys to clean up.”
“That’s fine.”
Ida shifted back and forth in the remaining hay. “We… we didn’t know what ya wanted us to do with Midnight’s body.”
Adelei glanced up and met a sea of blue holding back unshed tears. “His body should be sent back to Sadai, but… but I don’t think that’s possible now. There’s not enough left to…” A lump rose in her throat, and she swallowed. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Are ya sure? I can help—I know what it means to lose—”
Of course. Ida had been Amaskan, too. Adelei nodded. “I thought to burn her body here, at home, but is it safe? The poison—”
“The milk stopped it, so the body should be safe enough. Just in case, I’d recommend we do this outside the city walls—maybe in an open field nearby.”
Outside the stall, half-awake stablehands chopped at the damaged wood and carried pieces of it away. “You recognized this poison,” Adelei said, eyes hardening. “You knew how to stop it. What is it? Tell me what you know, please.”
Ida sighed and leaned against the corner frame of the stall. “Bein’ so close to Shad, Alexandrians know much more of the Tribor than we do of Amaskans. There are rumors that they use dark and evil techniques to kill, unclean ways to damage a body and remove evidence of their murders. One way is through a thrice boiled plant said to grow only in the high reachin’ mountains of Shad. Something about this plant creates a bubblin’ plague that eats through most things.”
“But you knew how to stop it.”
“Yes.” Ida’s eyes darkened. “While on my first mission, my mark was a Tribor who’d killed a Duke. He used a similar poison cap to kill himself when I found ’em. The ooze burned down half the inn and killed several people before ’twas stopped, and then only ’cause it started rainin’. Rain doesn’t normally stop it. Not completely or anything, but this time, it poured so heavy that the rain washed most of it away. What I didn’t know at the time was that some of it ran into the town’s water well. People drank the stuff.”
Ida shuddered, her blue eyes haunted and lost as they stared at nothing. “A friend’s child touched what was left of her mother’s body, her screams bringin’ half the town to her door. In pain, the child knocked over her glass of milk while thrashin’ about, and when her burnin’ hand touched the milk—”
“—It stopped the poison.”
“Yes, it did. It’s called adenneith in Shadian. I’m not even sure there’s a word for it in Alexandrian, and I’m certain there’s not one in Sadain. I’m not even sure the order knows much about it.”
“Didn’t you report it on your return?” The chopping of wood had stopped, and the clopping of horse hooves sounded as horses were returned to the remaining stalls. Adelei gathered Midnight’s gear without looking too closely at it. She couldn’t.
Ida hefted Midnight’s saddle over her shoulder. “I did, but I don’t think they believed me all that much. My own brother swore there was nothin’ in the Order archives about such a poison, so they wrote it off as the overactive imagination of a journeyman.”
When Adelei
