“How are you feeling?”
I open my eyes. “Like I’m going to die.” It’s dusk or I’m indoors. Whichever, the torturous sunlight has abated.
“Well, I’ll see what I can do about that.” The voice is gentle, low, understated. But there is a power there, a certainty of control, a glaring confidence. Even before I see who has spoken, I know I am talking to String.
I turn my head and there he is, sitting calmly beside my bed, Jade standing behind him and Tiarnan next to her. String is a surprisingly small man — for some reason I had been imagining him huge and powerful — and another surprise is that he is black. It is only now that I realise I have seen no other coloured people on Malakki. The world is getting larger.
“I thought Jade, perhaps, would have told you about me?” He is trying not to smile, but there is laughter painted all over his face.
“Only what you can do,” I say. I manage to sit up, cringing as the Sickness sends a wave of shivering heat through me.
“It’s progressed quickly, hasn’t it?” he says. It is more a statement than a question, so I say nothing. “May I?” He reaches for my shirt before I can object and gently pops the couple of remaining buttons. I look down as he bares my chest, and even I recoil in disgust.
String, however, retains his composure. He passes his hand close to the ugly growths and I’m sure I can feel the subtle movement of air. It is comforting. He is frowning, his big eyes so full of a pained compassion that I cannot recognise the look for several seconds. Even Della is more concerned than compassionate, a state that I think is based upon realism rather than choice.
“It must hurt,” he says.
“You bet.” But I’m used to the pain, the burning that tears at my chest as if some rabid animal is trapped within, trying to escape. Used to it, but still it tortures me unremittingly, driving blade after blade of discomfort between my joints, into my limbs, piercing my lungs. It’s the faints I cannot conquer, the regular grey spells when my body seems to say, right, that’s it, enough for now. “But the pain won’t last forever.”
String looks at me, then his face splits into an infectious smile. I feel myself mimicking him, and it appears that Tiarnan was born grinning. I look at Jade. She smiles back at me, but I still don’t know her quite well enough to read the expression. I wonder once more whether everything bad has happened, or if there are still terrible things left for me to see.
“That’s true, Gabe,” he says. “Because I’m going to cure you.”