The Name of the Wind

Her expression went from angry to terrified in a flash. She opened her mouth and let the wad of dark stuff fall to the ground. Then she spat, her saliva thick and black. I pressed my water bottle into her hands. “Rinse your mouth out,” I said. “Rinse and spit it out.”

She took the bottle, and then I remembered it was empty. We’d finished it during lunch.

I took off running, scrambling through the narrow passage. I darted up the ladder, grabbed the waterskin, then down and back to the small canyon.

Denna was sitting on the canyon floor, looking very pale and wide-eyed. I thrust the waterskin into her hands and she gulped so quickly that she choked, then gagged a bit as she spat it out.

I reached into the fire pit, pushing my hand deep into the ashes until I found the unburned coals underneath. I brought up a handful of unburned charcoal. I shook my hand, scattering most of the ashes away, then thrust the handful of black coals at her. “Eat this,” I said.

She looked at me blankly.

“Do it!” I shook the handful of coals at her. “If you don’t chew this up and swallow it, I’ll knock you out and force it down your throat!” I put some in my own mouth. “Look, it’s fine. Just do it.” My tone softened, became more pleading than commanding. “Denna, trust me.”

She took some coals and put them in her mouth. Face pale and eyes beginning to brim with tears, she gritted up a mouthful and took a drink of water to wash it down, grimacing.

“They’re harvesting Goddamn ophalum here,” I said. “I’m an idiot for not seeing it sooner.”

Denna started to say something, but I cut her off. “Don’t talk. Keep eating. As much as you can stomach.”

She nodded solemnly, her eyes wide. She chewed, choked a little, and swallowed the charcoal with another mouthful of water. She ate a dozen mouthfuls in quick succession, then rinsed her mouth out again.

“What’s ophalum?” she asked softly.

“A drug. Those are denner trees. You just had a whole mouthful of denner resin.” I sat down next to her. My hands were shaking. I lay them flat against my legs to hide it.

She was quiet at that. Everyone knew about denner resin. In Tarbean the knackers had to come for the stiff bodies of sweet-eaters that overdosed in the Dockside alleys and doorways.

“How much did you swallow?” I asked.

“I was just chewing it, like toffee.” Her face went pale again. “There’s still some stuck in my teeth.”

I touched the waterskin. “Keep rinsing.” She swished the water from cheek to cheek before spitting and repeating the process. I tried to guess at how much of the drug she’d gotten into her system, but there were too many variables, I didn’t know how much she had swallowed, how refined this resin was, if the farmers had taken any steps to filter or purify it.

Her mouth worked as her tongue felt around her teeth. “Okay, I’m clean.”

I forced a laugh. “You’re anything but clean,” I said. “Your mouth is all black. You look like a kid that’s been playing in the coal bin.”

“You aren’t much better,” she said. “You look like a chimney sweep.” She reached out to touch my bare shoulder. I must have torn my shirt against the rocks in my rush to get the waterskin. She gave a wan smile that didn’t touch her frightened eyes at all. “Why do I have a belly full of coals?”

“Charcoal is like a chemical sponge,” I said. “It soaks up drugs and poisons.”

She brightened a little. “All of them?”

I considered lying, then thought better of it. “Most. You got it into you pretty quickly. It will soak up a lot of what you swallowed.”

“How much?”

“About six parts in ten,” I said. “Hopefully a little more. How do you feel?”

“Scared,” she said. “Shaky But other than that, no different.” She shifted nervously where she sat and put her hand on the sticky disk of resin I’d knocked away from her earlier. She flicked it away and wiped her hand nervously on her pants. “How long will it be before we know?”

“I don’t know how much they refined it,” I said. “If it’s still raw, it will take longer to work its way into your system. Which is good, as the effects will be spread out over a longer period of time.”

I felt for her pulse in her neck. It was racing, which didn’t tell me anything. Mine was racing too. “Look up here.” I gestured with my raised hand and watched her eyes. Her pupils were sluggish responding to the light. I lay my hand on her head and under the pretext of lifting her eyelid a little, I pressed my finger against the bruise on her temple, hard. She didn’t flinch or show the least hint that it pained her.

“I thought I was imagining it before,” Denna said, looking up at me. “But your eyes really do change color. Normally they’re bright green with a ring of gold around the inside....”

“I got them from my mother,” I said.

“But I’ve been watching. When you broke the pump handle yesterday they went dull green, muddy. And when the swineherd made that comment about the Ruh they went dark for just a moment. I thought it was just the light, but now I can see it’s not.”