Mission House
Rodney slammed the door behind him, rattling the doorframe and making the flame of the lamp beside her dance.
Priscilla started, looked up to see his face tight with anger. Her husband was normally very conscious of how his great size and strength could do unintended damage when he lost his temper, so any such display was unusual, to say the least.
“What is it?” she asked, putting down the needle and thread next to the piece of pork shank she’d been practicing on and stood up. Figuring the battles to come would produce plenty of wounds that required suturing, she’d been passing the time until Rodney came home from the late shift overseeing Dara’s care by suturing cuts in the shank.
“Smell this,” he said, tossing a length of silk at her as he stomped to the table.
Not particularly interested in rewarding his bad mood and concerned lest she contaminate it with something from the uncooked pork, Pris didn’t try to catch the length of fabric. It fell to the ground as she went to the wash basin and started soaping her hands.
Behind her, she heard Rodney give one of his great gusting sighs and stoop to pick whatever it was from the ground. She finished cleaning her hands while he calmed down.
“So, care to tell me what’s up?”
“Sorry about that, honey. I’m pissed.”
She turned to face him, toweling her hands dry, and leaned against the table. “You don’t say.”
He chuckled. “All right, I deserved that…” He held the length of silk out to her again. “Please, smell this and tell me I don’t have anything to worry about.”
She took the silk and examined it. “Is this a bed hanging?”
He nodded. “From the emperor’s own sleeping chamber,” he said, gesturing again for her to take a sniff.
Wondering what, exactly, he hoped she would smell, she sniffed cautiously. Stale tobacco…and something else… Pris felt her nose wrinkle as she tried to sort it out. Stale smoke and…vinegar?
That was it: the not-quite-vinegar tang of opium smoke underlying the sweeter scent of the tobacco blend favored by the highest echelons of the court.
“He’s hitting the pipe again?” she asked.
Rodney’s shoulders slumped. “Damn. I hoped I was just imagining it.”
“Did you ask Dara about it?”
“I did. He lied to me, said he hadn’t been smoking since we weaned him off it at Amritsar. I was close enough to see his pupils were as big as dinner plates, though.”
“Oh, man. I’m sorry, Rodney.”
He waved one big, thick-knuckled hand. “No, I am. Shouldn’t have brought it home. Sorry.”
She caught his hand, kissed the back of it as she stepped close to him. “I understand why you did. Who else knows?”
“No one, yet. I was going to get some advice from Gervais about it, but he’s already in bed. John and Ilsa’s lights are out, too.”
“It’ll wait. There’s only so much we can do just this minute.”
“It’s got me real worried.”
“I get it.”
“I know you do. I’m sorry,” he repeated.
“I know, Rodney. This qualifies as a really bad day, especially…” She kissed his hand again, the action preventing her finishing the thought. That was all right. She didn’t have to. Not with him.
Rodney didn’t tell everyone the origin of his concerns about addiction, but she knew. Knew about Jimmy Saunders, his college teammate and best friend. Knew about Jimmy’s back injury and subsequent spiral into addiction. He’d gone to the coaching staff with his concerns at the beginning of Jimmy’s spiral and been told it wasn’t something they could do anything about. How the eventual overdose hadn’t been a surprise, but wounded him still. Knew how Rodney had found Jimmy in the bathroom, needle in his arm, cold to the touch. Knew his death and the coaching staff’s refusal to take even partial responsibility for it were the reason Rodney had quit football and come back to Grantville. Just as she knew that, however aware he was of the dangers of painkillers, his experiences as an EMT in the aftermath of the Battle of the Crapper made him acutely aware that the suffering that would follow every battle would leave them utterly unable to relieve their pain with what little medication Grantville had brought back across time.
They held each other for a long while, found their own painkiller in each other when the embrace turned passionate, as it always did.
Chapter 17
Mission camp west of Patna
Ricky looked askance at the waters of the river…or rivers, maybe? He wasn’t sure, exactly. Strand after strand of sand emerged from the slow-moving water, with occasional higher spots of forest-covered land to obscure whether a particular stretch of brown water was its own river or merely a branch of the Ganges. There was a lot of traffic on the river, most of it transporting covered loads that the boatman made sure to keep a safe distance from the shore and any other boats that came along.
There hadn’t been a repeat of the attack on their camp, but they’d seen the results of what Jadu had called a pirate attack. The hacked up and looted bodies had been a sobering sight, and more than enough confirmation that the rivers were no safer than the roads in these days of confusion and uncertainty.
“I’d go swimming if the air didn’t keep a fella as wet as a dip in the river,” Bobby said, mopping his brow. “If there’s one thing I miss, it’s air-conditioning…”
Ricky gave him a worried glance, saw Bobby’s brow already beaded with fresh sweat. Water he could ill-afford to lose. Bobby had recovered from whatever had been making him puke and crap with such regularity you could set your watch by it, but only recently. His recovery had been slow, and left him thinner than at any time since they’d met in middle school.
“Relax, man, I’m not going to fall off my horse or
