Sunlight breached the horizon and flooded the city. It didn’t take long for people to notice the blood splattered, limping, sword-wielding Saint smelling of smoke and death making her way toward the town square. When they called her name, asked for her help, she gestured for them to follow her. Her voice was getting hoarse, and she needed to save it.
The warm glow of the sun bathed City Hall, gleaming off the building’s bronze dome. Across the square in front of the shining symbol of the city council’s power, Winter climbed over the edge of the empty fountain and pulled herself up to the top. People gathered around the fountain’s edge. A few chanted “Plague Saint” until she lifted a hand to silence them.
Despite her bleeding and shaking and uncertainty, for a moment, she felt more in control than ever before in her life. She raised her voice.
“I have come to save you from a new plague. White plague. There is a cure for it, and this cure will treat the other five plagues as well.” Winter drew the first vial from her bag. “I’ve taken it to the hospital and given it to the doctors there.”
A few concerned whispers reached her ears. A woman directly below Winter, leaning over the fountain’s edge, raised her voice. “Plague Saint, please, my son is dying—” Her outstretched hand trembled.
“There’s more to the story. Please, hear me out.” Winter tossed the vial into the woman’s hand and reached for another. “I’ve brought you the cure, but there are people who oppose me. People who want to keep it for themselves. Your leaders, your city council, your hospital director—they are ready to poison you for their own gain. They will let you die so that they can live and stay rich.”
And this would be Marcus’s biggest mistake. Whether he’d made himself into the Saint for glory, or the money, or purely to put himself in a position to experiment for his future plans, he’d created a figure outside of his control. Winter had never liked the people’s worship of the Saint, but now she was going to use it to save them.
For a moment, clutching the vial in one hand and the sword in the other, looking down at the desperate faces that thought they were standing beneath some kind of savior, Winter felt a pang. Of hesitation, of disgust, of guilt, the wave of every terrible thing she’d done hitting her at once.
You’re saving them. You’re saving them. You have to do this.
She tossed another vial into the crowd. “Please, don’t panic. You have nothing to fear anymore. The doctors at the hospital have the cure and the means to make more.” Her resolve hardened. “And the people who wronged you will drop dead for their sins.”
More vials went out into the crowd.
“Anyone who tries to work you to death, to use you for their gain, anyone who—”
“Plague Saint!” Ellen Bates’s sharp voice cut through the air.
The crowd shifted, and Winter glimpsed the doors of the city hall swinging shut behind the financial advisor. Bates was accompanied by two city guards. In fact, she appeared to be leaning on them for support.
“Clear a path,” Winter ordered the crowd. “I’d like to speak to her.”
Bates reached the foot of the fountain. Pale. Bruised. Jaundiced. Even worse than Winter had imagined the serum’s victims would look. “Plague Saint, what’s happening? Everyone who took the cure is—”
“Where’s Mayor Atherton?” Winter demanded.
“He’s in his office, with a doctor he called. He’s in even worse condition than I am. Please, do you have any idea what’s happening?”
“Did you really think I’d let you all go through with your plans?” Winter demanded.
Bates’s eyes widened. After a fit of coughing that sprayed blood on the fountain’s edge, she asked, “What do you mean? Director Blackburn said—you were helping Adams—”
“Adams is dead because he hurt people. Same with George Gordon. And Jonathan Forrest. You will all face the same fate.”
Bates tried to climb into the empty fountain but collapsed against it instead. The guards reached out to help her. To Winter’s surprise, the crowd moved forward to grab them. To stop them. One of the guards managed to get out his gun.
“Stop!” Winter shouted. “It’s already too late for her.”
She’d hoped the crowd would have the sense to back off at the sight of the guard’s gun, but they continued pressing in. He aimed, but he had to know things weren’t going to end well for him if he fired, right? He was outnumbered.
Bates pushed herself up but couldn’t bring herself back to a standing position. “Why me?” she asked weakly.
Winter lifted her chin. “How many here know friends, family, neighbors who couldn’t pay their hospital bills and were removed from their homes? Thrown in prison?”
People in the crowd shouted and raised their fists.
“Do you know where the money goes?” Winter pointed her blade at Bates. “The money that belongs to the people the city locked up? It goes to her. And with all that extra money sitting around, the money paying for food and wine at assembly meetings and maintaining the extravagant homes on the east side, I find it funny that the hospital feels the need to charge hundreds of times the amount it spent failing to cure patients it had the means to save!”
The crowd was growing more and more agitated by the second. The guard, who’d lowered his gun, spoke into a radio, calling for backup.
“And most of that money’s not going to staff. The doctors and nurses are hardly more well off than the rest of us. It’s mostly been going to the director—”
“This has gone on long enough!”
Marcus Blackburn pushed his way to the front of the crowd. He held out a hand to help up Bates, but she was beyond saving now. She weakly sank to the ground, ignoring the offered hand, and Marcus didn’t give her a second glance after that. His attention was solely focused on Winter.
Winter assessed him as well as she could from where she stood, perched at the top of the fountain. He wasn’t in nearly as bad of shape as Bates, but Winter couldn’t help thinking he didn’t look great either. Maybe that was just her hoping. He likely would have taken more cure the moment he started feeling unwell.
“Speak of the devil,” Winter said. “I’ve taken your cure and given it to the people, Blackburn. And I won’t let you poison them, either.”
The crowd was rabid now, moments from turning on Marcus. Winter held up a hand to stall them. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
“You’re making a mistake,” Marcus said. “You don’t understand everything that’s in motion. If all of the city elite drop dead of the plague—”
“That ship has sailed.” Winter nodded at Bates. “She’s not the first to succumb to the poison you made, and she won’t be the last.”
“Even you can’t poison us all one by one,” Marcus hissed. One by one. He hadn’t figured it out then, had he? “You may have stolen our cure, but you’re just one girl.”
Winter’s hand tightened around her blade’s handle. “Are you going to expose my identity?”
“Nothing you can do will stop me. I’ve got city guards on their way to arrest you. All you’ve done is made a mess.”
“I’ve saved lives. If I go to prison or even hell for that, that’s fine by me.”
Marcus climbed up onto the edge of the fountain. “I suggest you all disperse, before the city guard gets here and starts making arrests for rioting.” His hand rested on a dagger hanging from his belt. “That person up there isn’t a saint or a savior, she’s just a foolish teenage girl named—”
“Sorry, Blackburn,” Winter cut him off. Her hand moved up the edge of her mask. “You’re not getting any more victories, if I can help it. Besides, don’t you know a person can be more than one thing?”
She removed the mask.
“My name is Winter Pierce, I am your Plague Saint, and I am going to save Devil’s Pass.”