Of Liars and Thieves

by Gabriela Lavarello

  She sighed and knelt down by Aeden’s side, the fairy eyeing her with slight wariness.

  “I’ve kept it a secret my entire life,” Finriel said softly, and something similar to sorrow flashed across Aeden’s face and she looked down at her hands.

  Finriel looked at Krete, and the gnome simply gave her a sad smile. She knew that he would keep her secret safe, they both would.

  “I’ll go check on Lorian,” Krete said, and turned away.

  His kind voice echoed across the small clearing of birch trees and pines, and she heard him asking Lorian if he was okay as she set her concentration upon the wounded commander.

  10

  Finriel

  “Do you think he’ll be all right?”

  Aeden’s question rattled the growing fear in Finriel’s throat, but she only shrugged and peeled back the bloodied tunic sleeve of Tedric’s right arm. She stifled a gasp at the sight of a large bleeding gash that ran from the base of his shoulder down to his wrist. The chimera’s claw had torn through his flesh as if it were nothing more than gossamer and penetrated deep into the muscle and tissue.

  Finriel grimaced and leaned in to get a better look at the wound. Tedric’s arm had been all but shredded. Milky white tissue and muscle were torn and clearly exposed, while blood ran freely down his side and back, dripping onto the soft green moss. There was no time to find shelter. He would bleed out before they found the nearest village or city.

  “I can try to stitch his muscles back together and clot the bleeding,” Finriel grimaced, feeling through the torn flesh with her magic.

  Aeden nodded and shifted her position so that she was kneeling by Tedric’s head.

  “I’ve used a simple spell to put him into a deep sleep. He shouldn’t wake for at least an hour.”

  “That’s probably best.” Finriel nodded. “I certainly would not want to be conscious for what is about to happen.” Stitching the tissue and muscles back together, let alone clotting the wound to stop the bleeding, would drain Finriel of most of her magic. She needed time, and then she would need rest.

  “Setting the muscle and tissue will probably take quite a while,” Finriel said, and looked up at Aeden.

  Aeden held Finriel’s gaze evenly, and dread fell like a lump of iron in Finriel’s stomach as the fairy said, “I saw what you did with that arrow.”

  Finriel opened her mouth to argue, but Aeden shot her hand up. “Please, there’s no use in defending yourself. I wanted to thank you for it, actually. The laws of magic are too strict, and I feel for anyone with that much power and no way to use it.”

  Finriel had no words as Aeden once more inspected Tedric’s mangled arm, her worry-lined face drained of all color. Finriel furrowed her brow as she watched the fairy girl, the thought of what she had said quickly melting away and replaced by a strange revelation. She hadn’t noticed that Aeden had truly connected with Tedric in such a small amount of time.

  “How is he?” Lorian asked as he and Krete approached.

  Krete’s face paled and turned slightly green as he peered down at Tedric’s wound. He clapped a hand over his mouth and turned away, walking briskly into a small patch of bushes. Lorian raised a brow and gave Aeden a questioning look. She sighed and got to her feet.

  “Krete is ridiculously squeamish when it comes to blood,” she explained, then walked to Tedric’s feet and gestured for Lorian to stand at Tedric’s head. “Help me move him somewhere comfortable.”

  When Lorian didn’t move, Aeden placed her hands on her hips and sighed, then muttered a few words a language Finriel did not understand. Though she wasn’t sure of what Aeden said, Finriel was certain that it had been either an insult or a curse toward the thief.

  “I don’t know what you just said, but thank you.” Lorian smiled.

  Aeden huffed. “Just shut up and help me.”

  After a moment, he shrugged and scooped Tedric up by his uninjured shoulder. He grunted with effort as he waited for Aeden to pick up the warrior’s legs, and they began to carry him toward a plush bed of moss.

  “Couldn’t you put some kind of spell on him to make him any lighter?” Lorian asked with a gasp. “He weighs a ton.”

  “Finriel needs to conserve her magic to help him heal, not make your short job any easier,” Aeden retorted, also grunting with effort as they shuffled Tedric to the patch of moss.

  “How did you know how that touching the page to the beast would work?” Lorian asked after they set the warrior down.

  Aeden shrugged and wiped her hands on her pants, not quite meeting the thief’s gaze. “It was a lucky guess.”

  Krete emerged from the bushes and walked stiffly toward the patch of moss where they had set Tedric down, still looking slightly green and disgruntled. Finriel’s eyes widened in surprise as Nora bounded into sight behind Krete, her chest splattered with drying blood from the meal she had no doubt just come back from devouring.

  “I will never be rid of blood, will I?” the gnome groaned, and hastily looked away from Nora before he jogged to Finriel.

  “You lied about your powers,” he said, “and you almost lit me on fire.”

  Finriel clenched her fists and glared at the gnome, who met her with a calm gaze.

  “I was simply trying to help,” she retorted, “and I am wasting my time with you right now. Tedric needs my help.” Finriel didn’t wait for an answer and spun away, stalking to her fallen companion, who Aeden arranged in a position that would allow Finriel to work freely. The stench of death hit Finriel’s nose and she tilted forward as Nora pressed her head against her waist. Finriel held back a gag as the smell of blood and decaying flesh rolled off the mogwa in waves.

  “Go clean up,” she whispered softly to Nora. “I need to use my magic to help the pompous commander.”

  Nora regarded Finriel with a dejected expression and shot off into the darkening woods, hopefully to do as she had commanded. Finriel took in a deep breath and turned to Aeden. She prayed that they would be safe tonight out in the open, especially with whatever dangers in the forest Aeden had mentioned the previous day.

  “Do you still have that root you used to heal us from the shapeshifter attack?” Finriel asked, taking her mind from the looming shadows that were beginning to close in.

  Aeden nodded once. “Veloria root, yes. The forest is full of it.”

  “Good,” Finriel replied. “I’m going to need a lot of that. Get extra if you can, we’ll likely need some of it in the future if the men keep trying to play the hero.”

  “Do you need me to do anything?” Lorian asked from behind her shoulder.

  Finriel angled her head toward him and considered. The cold mistrust and anger from their unfinished conversation seeped into her skin once more, overpowering the strange desire to like him again. She shook her head.

  “Just stay out of the way.”

  Lorian’s expression turned into stony coldness and he nodded once before walking over to a still slightly pale Krete and clapping him on the shoulder. They both walked away and settled by a small group of trees, muttering to each other about making camp. Finriel focused her slightly heightened hearing on their conversation, cursing herself silently for wanting to know what they were saying.

  “You know, through all my years of being a messenger, I don’t think I’ve ever met a witch with powers such as Finriel’s.”

  Lorian grunted. “She’s certainly a fiery one. I wasn’t surprised in the least the first time she used battle magic.”

  “You knew of her abilities?” Krete wondered. “Why didn’t you say anything when we questioned it?”

  “I’ve done enough to put her life in danger,” was all Lorian replied, and Finriel’s stomach clenched.

  The gnome sighed and Finriel heard them mumble something about making a fire for the night. Finriel could not see Lorian’s expression, but she could feel his eyes upon her as she brought her attention back to Tedric’s wound with another whispered curse.

  Aeden had already disappeare
d in search of more veloria root, and Finriel took in a deep breath as she settled into a more comfortable position by Tedric’s arm. She closed her eyes, allowing for her magic to flow and gather at her core. The flames came at once, eager and hungry to be unleashed from her fingertips. Finriel grunted and began to mold the flames into something softer, something kinder. Through her four years as a healer in Crimson City, she had always known this part to be difficult. Her body yearned for the flames, and pushing them away felt wrong. And yet she found the dampening switch within herself in seconds, and the flames were gone.

  Finriel opened her eyes and placed her hands over his arm so that they were hovering just above the bloody, oozing wound. Finriel looked down and noticed that he was still bleeding too much for her to be able to fix the internal damage. She would have to clot the blood first so that he would not bleed out before she could even begin to stitch his mangled arm back together.

  She steadied herself and closed her eyes again. She focused on directing the soft healing magic toward the dripping blood. She pictured the crimson river stopping completely and the minor scrapes healing. A sucking noise sounded from beneath her hands, and Finriel opened her eyes to gaze down approvingly at her work. The arm had stopped bleeding and the thick crimson slowly began to disappear from the exposed skin of his arm. At least there was one good sign.

  Finriel screwed her face up as she readied to move on to the tissue. This would be the difficult part. Her hands were already shaking slightly as she placed them over the wound once more. She had not exerted much energy at all on clotting the blood, so perhaps it would not be so difficult to fix the muscle.

  Finriel reached out with her magic again to feel and examine the inside of his wound. A few cleanly severed muscles passed through her magic, and a surge of confidence went through her. Those would be easier to fix. The feeling of confidence plummeted when she landed on a shard of bone near his shoulder. She hadn’t realized the chimera’s claw had done that much damage. The bone was shattered, to say the least, with small pieces of bone scattered throughout the shoulder and bicep.

  Finriel had never tried to fix a bone this broken before and had no idea how to even begin. Doubt seeped into her chest as she continued to feel around, multiple ideas of the best way to fix the bone forming in her mind. She nodded to herself with resolve. First she would force the small bones back into their places and close the wound, then set the larger bone that had been dislocated back into the socket.

  She moved her hands up to his shoulders and slowly clenched her fingers, the larger shards of bone moving easily to their rightful place. The smaller pieces were finicky and slipped through her magic, and she cursed under her breath as she willed them to mend.

  Finriel gasped as her magic stumbled across a piece of bone lodged into a spot next to his shoulder. It was inserted directly into a section of Tedric’s arm mere centimeters from the brachial artery. If her magic slipped, he would be dead in minutes. She didn’t want to focus on that for now, at least not until Aeden returned with the veloria root. Perhaps that would help repair some of the less severe injuries in his arm. Yes, she would leave that bit for later. She instead set her magic on a long tendon near his elbow that had almost been severed cleanly in two. She began to move her hands slowly, allowing for the ends of the muscle to bend and move toward each other. A small breath escaped Finriel’s mouth as they touched, and she willed for them to slowly stitch back together.

  The sounds coming from Tedric’s arm were not pleasant, popping and sucking being the most prominent noises that filled the forest clearing around her. Finriel continued to force his tendons back together, moving painstakingly slow through blood and flesh. The meridiem lit up the forest after a good while of her work, making Finriel jump when a bright yellow light flashed behind her closed eyelids.

  She had successfully stitched a good amount of Tedric’s arm back together by the time she heard Aeden’s quick footfalls coming toward her. Finriel retracted her magic and opened her eyes, allowing herself a short break as she watched the meridiem change colors with each step Aeden took. She would need all the energy she could possibly muster in order to complete the task that was to come.

  “How is he doing?” Aeden asked worriedly as she came to sit by Tedric’s head, her hands and cloak pockets full of veloria root.

  “I’ve managed to piece most of the major tendons and muscle back together, but the chimera broke his arm in a place—” Finriel broke off, unable to finish the sentence. The act of speaking it out loud would surely make the pressure of performing the intricate task ahead too much to bear.

  “In a place where?” Aeden pressed, her eyes wide.

  Finriel wiped her brow and sighed. She was sweating, and as she looked down, she found her hands shaking harder than before. She was already beginning to tire, but she couldn’t stop now. She had to get that bone out of there and put it back into place, hopefully without killing Tedric in the process.

  “It’s a hairsbreadth away from an artery,” Finriel said finally.

  Aeden gasped and placed her hand on Tedric’s uninjured shoulder, her lips set into a determined line. She stretched her other arm forward and offered the foul-smelling root to Finriel.

  “I will help you in any way that I can, but you need to get that bone out of there.”

  Finriel nodded and gently reached out to nudge Aeden’s hand back. “If you can make a poultice with the veloria root and place it along the bottom half of his wound, that would be a great help in itself. The root will most likely continue to heal any smaller lacerations that need to be repaired.”

  Aeden nodded and lightly squeezed Tedric’s uninjured shoulder before standing. Finriel stood and winced as her knees groaned from being in one position for so long. She and Aeden switched places so that that the fairy was closer to the lower half of his arm. Finriel settled herself by Tedric’s shoulder and the crucial task before her. The wound did not look as daunting as it had before, but Finriel knew the worst was yet to come.

  “This better work.” Aeden shuddered between mouthfuls of the foul-smelling root.

  Finriel looked at her and scowled, then returned her focus to the mangled shoulder.

  “Just make sure he doesn’t wake up,” Finriel replied curtly. “The pain that he is about to experience would be best to endure unconscious.”

  Aeden did not answer, but Finriel was sure that her command had been heard. Finriel allowed for the magic to flow through her core and out of her hands, overtaking her body as she placed them over the hole in Tedric’s arm and began to feel for the shard of bone. It was not hard to find, and Finriel began to feel around for the best way to extract it without pressing too close to Tedric’s certain death.

  It was so close to the artery, almost too close. Tedric had been damn lucky that the bone had not hit it directly, or that the chimera’s claw did not stab right into it. He would have been as good as dead in minutes.

  Krete and Lorian’s whispered conversation carried to Finriel’s ears, and she stopped her work with gritted teeth. She tried to drown out their voices and focus on the task at hand, but it was no use. She was tiring quickly and found her magic drifting slowly back into her core.

  “Will you two kindly shut your mouths while I am doing this?” Finriel hissed through still gritted teeth, and she jumped as soft fur and a strong body rubbed against her back. “Not now, Nora,” she snapped.

  Her nerve was beginning to break, but she needed to concentrate and push on. Nora growled from behind Finriel’s back, but she listened and moved away toward Lorian and Krete. Finriel couldn’t afford to have stupid conversations and a damn cat make her accidentally kill their companion. But he was more than that, Finriel realized, almost surprising herself. He was becoming their friend, her friend. Finriel didn’t have any friends in Keadora, or any other kingdom. Her secluded life in her cottage with only sick and injured patients filtering in and out never gave her much opportunity to meet others, though she had never truly wanted
to. She enjoyed her life alone with Nora, spending her days helping others and studying whatever magic she could.

  The thought of her new kindling friendship made a block of fear land in Finriel’s stomach. She wiped her sweaty hands over her pants and got into position over Tedric’s injury. The bone was much easier to find this time, and Finriel’s heart began to pound as she wrapped a strand of her magic around it. She took in a deep breath and slowly, very slowly, began to pull. A thought entered her mind and she paused, sending another tendril of magic down to feel the size of the bone shard. The slightest wrong move and it would penetrate the artery. Finriel gasped and clenched her hands involuntarily, the bone wobbling in her magical grip from the movement. This piece was the largest out of the bone shards she had encountered. She ground her teeth and continued, willing it out slowly with her magic.

  Sweat began to trickle down Finriel’s spine and forehead, and she stopped in terror as Tedric stiffened and groaned beneath her. Finriel stopped pulling at once and flung her eyes open to watch Tedric writhe, his eyelids fluttering in pain. He was still under the effects of the sleeping spell Aeden had put on him, but it didn’t mean that he couldn’t feel the extraction.

  “Can you do something?” Finriel asked Aeden breathlessly. The fear in her stomach hardened as she watched him, certain that the bone would shift back down if he kept squirming.

  “I can try to ease the pain a little,” Aeden said uncertainly, her face clouded with nerves and concern. She had finished applying the veloria root poultice, and to Finriel’s relief, it seemed to be working. Aeden wiped her hands over her black breastplate, sending a smear of green across it before she stood and crouched at Tedric’s head. His light hair was damp with sweat and pain, and his eyelids continued fluttering and fighting against the magical sleep Aeden had put him under.

  “Hurry,” Finriel urged Aeden, who crouched frozen in place, looking down upon his pale face as if he were a lost gem she had finally found and was suddenly being ripped away from her again.