Heatstroke

"You look ill, Rige," Lottir understated.

"Really? Where does it show?" asked Lord Suitov of Applestone, who was sweating bucketfuls, trembling slightly, breathing so hard he was almost panting, and apparently undecided about whether or not to throw up.

Induban summer notwithstanding, the lad had remained as pale as an anaemic snowman this last week. He only had to venture out unprotected by a hat brim and he burned within minutes. Lottir came from further north than Suitov, but he had adapted more successfully to the intense heat and developed quite a tan.

"Serious. You should go home," said Lottir.

Suitov tutted. "Can't do that." He upended a full jug of water over his head.

"You'll die if this keeps up," said Lottir.

Suitov wiped a sleeve over his face. "Things would be no cooler for me if I had to explain that kind of disobedience to our gracious king."

He wasn't Lottir's king, but they both knew that, so he didn't argue the point. "So you'll die rather than explain the situation?"

Suitov looked at him. "I do not intend to die. Or go home tail tucked. I have a job to do." At the same time, one of his hands, apparently under its own volition, snaked back and forth. The puddle of water, glowing faintly, poured itself back from the rug into the jug.

"I never knew you were so dutiful," said Lottir, one eyebrow raised.

"Haughty, more probably. I just can't stand the idea of letting a constitutional weakness beat me." Suitov glanced down into the jug, then tipped it over his head again.

Lottir shrugged. "Hasn't this come up before? I thought your people were always travelling the world on Grand Tours and things."

Suitov wiped his face again. "My people?" he inquired.

"Your species, the rich."

"Ah, Pan opulens. Well, I can't speak for the rest of the feckless youth, but the limit of my peregrinations, such as I remember them, were one or two visits to Soprone on father's business and many summers spent up north in Montuone."

Lottir, who considered Montuone and everything beyond it to be the realm of blasted southerners, held his tongue.

"And since then, one trip so far north that they ran out of names for the land. Now that was fun. I'm fine in the cold. It's only when you put a bit of sunlight on me that I shrivel and expire. One really feels the Indubans ought to have had the good manners to take that into account when we invaded them." Suitov returned the water to the jug again, set it aside and started pacing. Steam was rising from his clothing, which was also pressing itself back into knife-edge creases. His breathing was less shallow, still fast.

"Are you sure you can't get reassigned?" asked Lottir, not that he expected the answer to have changed.

Suitov sighed impatiently. "Does anyone really believe it's an accident that Roy sent me out here? He wants me as far from the crown city as possible. Even making the request would raise suspicion."

Lottir folded his arms. "I don't know why he thinks you're such a threat," he said.

"I know. Even after I told him to his face that if I had wanted him out of the way, the army would already be executing somebody completely different for his murder."

"You didn't?" exclaimed Lottir.

Suitov held his eye for several long moments before giving in and grinning. "Well, I might have wanted to, but that kind of suspicion is always insinuated, never spoken. Any courtier would expire at once from the scandal if he heard someone talk plainly." He paused and put a hand to his chin. "Actually, that's an option."

"Can you be serious, Rige?"

"Not in this heat." Suitov sighed and picked up the pacing again.

"You have to find some solution."

"I know. It's so hard to think!" Suitov stopped abruptly, pivoted on his heel and inhaled. Then he blew out a lungful of air so hot that Lottir could feel it from across the room, and the very mosaics on the wall opposite seemed to distort through it. Suitov blinked a second, then said "That feels better," and threw himself into a writing-chair with a notebook.

Lottir tapped the side of his mouth thoughtfully. "Don't let the troops see you do that."

"Quite. It's not a terribly dignified way to vent heat."

"I meant that if word gets around that you breathe fire, you'll really be in hot water."

Suitov scoffed, already writing at breakneck speed.