The Physician's Apron

Pela turned, stiffening her back against the laundry table.

Warden Bato stepped through the archway, flanked by two senior wardens in stiff gray tunics. The wardens carried four-foot cudgels of seasoned ash, their iron shod ends tapping in rhythm against the wet flagstones. Bato wore his spotless physician's apron over his dark tunic, a ring of heavy brass keys swinging from his rope belt.

His sharp, gray eyes swept the laundry room, cataloging the empty vats, the dripping linen, and finally settling on Pela standing beside the rinse tub.

He stopped ten paces away. His boots made no sound on the damp stone.

"Shift orderly Pela," Bato said. His voice had the dry, abrasive rasp of an iron file on lead. "The bell for the mid-morning dressing change rang twelve minutes ago. You are not in the lower trench ward."

Pela kept her chin low, her hands folded beneath her stained apron. "The boiler flue backed up into the lower washhouse, Warden. Orderly Tali asked me to clear the damper soot before the afternoon linens were boiled."

Bato did not look toward the flue. He took three deliberate steps closer, his gaze dropping to her stained sleeves, the soot embedded in her fingernails, and the sluggish trickle of blood clinging to her lip.

"You look like a corpse pulled out of the lime ditch," Bato said flatly.

"The soot was thick in the shaft, sir."

"Soot does not cause the nasal veins to weep black blood," Bato replied. He reached out with a gloved thumb, caught the droplet of blood from her lip, and rubbed the fluid between his forefinger and thumb. He brought the glove to his nose and inhaled once, deeply. "And soot does not carry the smell of sweet copper."

Pela’s heart hammered against her ribs, but she forced her shoulders to remain slack, adopting the submissive, dull-eyed posture of a beaten servant. "A soldier in Bed Nine threw up his bile while I was binding his stump this morning. He coughed in my face."

Bato studied her face for five silent seconds. The air in the corridor seemed to thicken with the scent of vinegar and damp wool.

"The lower ward is a cesspool of common rot," Bato said, his voice dropping into a hard, measured cadence. "Fools believe the war is fought with iron and cavalry. They do not understand that fifty thousand men rotting in the marsh create their own contagion. It crawls into the water, into the bread, into the lungs of every useless girl who cleans the chamber pots."

He turned to the warden on his left. "Who is on primary rotation in the sealed annex?"

"Orderly Maro, sir," the warden answered. "He began vomiting brown phlegm two hours ago. We threw him into the isolation pit behind the stables."

Bato nodded once, a sharp flick of his chin. He looked back at Pela, his expression devoid of pity or anger. It was the look a master stonemason gave to an iron chisel that had begun to chip at the edge: still useful for rough work, but destined for the scrap heap before nightfall.

"You have the fever in your blood already, Pela," Bato said. "If I leave you in the lower ward, you will infect forty wounded men whose tithes we still need for the perimeter lamps."

"Warden—"

"Silence," he snapped, not raising his voice, yet cutting through the room with the force of an iron bar. "You will not touch the common wounded again. Take a clean linen respirator from the drying line and report to the quarantine annex behind the high sanctuary."

Pela maintained her lowered gaze, though a tremor ran through her fingers beneath the apron. The quarantine annex was the restricted wing where the Order kept the most extreme cases—including Sula, the comatose officer who carried the original strain of the engineered infection.

"Warden," Pela murmured, keeping her tone hesitant, almost fearful. "The quarantine doors are barred from the outside. Orderlies do not come back from the annex."

"Orderlies who do their duty and keep the basins clean are given three pints of sulfur broth and ten days in the mountain air once the patient ceases to breathe," Bato said, though the lie was so routine it barely ruffled his tone. "Maro failed because he was lazy and let the patient’s sores crust over. You are meticulous. You clean the dead as if they were your own kin."

He unhooked a heavy, square-toothed brass key from his belt and tossed it onto the laundry table. It clattered against the zinc top, spinning twice before coming to rest.

"The officer in the center bed is named Sula," Bato said, his voice dropping an octave, cold and absolute. "She was brought down from the northern redoubts twelve nights ago. She does not speak, she does not open her eyes, but her spine weeps fluid every six hours. You will swab the spinal drain with carbolic wash. You will collect the drainage in the pewter flask and set it inside the door hatch for the chirurgeons. You will not touch her bandages without gloves, and you will not allow her to die before Chirurgeon Kiri completes his harvest."

Bato stepped closer, leaning down until his sharp face was inches from hers. The scent of bitter camphor and dried parchment drifted from his coat.

"If the officer expires before the dawn bell tomorrow, Pela, I will personally hang you from the courtyard crane, fever or no fever. Do you understand your duties?"

Pela reached out with a trembling hand, picked up the cold brass key, and closed her fingers around the metal teeth.

"I understand, Warden," she said softly.

Bato turned without another word and walked toward the corridor archway, his two wardens falling into step behind him, their iron-shod cudgels clicking against the flags until the heavy oak door thudded shut behind them.

Pela stood alone in the humid laundry room.

She opened her hand and looked at the brass key resting in her palm. The metal was cold, heavy, and stained with old verdigris.

She pulled a clean square of linen from the drying rack, soaked it in a dash of vinegar, and tied it securely over her nose and mouth. Then, adjusting her boots so the stolen rib shard rested snug against her ankle, she turned toward the heavy iron-banded door that led up to the locked quarantine annex.