Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 280
Boros stables, and she never had recovered her pack with its
supplies of offworld technology. That had complicated
matters, over the past couple of days.
Axel Chan grunted something and shifted in his sleep.
His face was still flushed from the fever that had gripped him
since Turcaret’s attack. His diagnostic nano were supposed to
be able to handle routine infections. They didn’t seem to be
working. Without the proper equipment, Calandria couldn’t
determine why, though she suspected the local mecha were
suppressing the offworld technology.
Would the same mecha contact the Winds and warn them
of the presence of aliens here? Each night as she lay down,
Calandria found herself imagining the harsh armatures of the
Heaven hooks reaching down to pluck this small room apart.
It wasn’t like her to be afraid. But then, she was never
afraid of merely physical threats. This was something else.
She put the potatoes down on the room’s one table. Axel
coughed, and sat up.
"How are you feeling?" Calandria ladled some cold soup
out and put it next to Axel. He drank it eagerly.
"As the good people of Memnonis like to say, I feel like
a toad in a pisspot. Is this brackish swill best you could do?"
She sighed. "Axel, have you ever been truly ill in your
life?"
"No."
She nodded. "Why?" asked Axel after a moment.
"Because your nurses would surely have strangled you in
your bed, the way you carry on."
"Oh, ho," he said. "Leave then. I’ll be fine on my own."
He coughed weakly. "I’ll manage somehow... I’ll feed on the
rats and bugs, and be sure to die somewhere out of the way,
where no one will trip over my shrivelling corpse."