“No, good lady, give me the kit,” Livorus told Abigayil, instantly, taking it from her hands. “We’re all quite well here, I suspect.”
Trennus trudged into the room last, scraps of his shirt tied around his hands for the moment, soaking wet and wearing little besides a kilt and boots. He moved into the dining room, pressing past Adam’s two younger sisters. “We’re going to need to burn the claw,” he said, as Lassair’s phoenix-shape leaped off his shoulder and fluttered to land on the table beside Sigrun. “Not a souvenir any of us want to keep. Sigrun, I’ll get you some dry clothes while I’m digging for mine, all right?”
“Let me fix your hands first,” Sigrun said, reaching for Tren’s wrists. There was a single bloody streak on her left cheek, and the open wounds on her arm had scabbed over already. White rune-light began to pour out of her, and the wound on her arm went from raw, livid weals of red to thinner, pinker lines. She managed to raise her eyebrows, humor shining through the pain. “I don’t want your blood all over my clothes.”
“You worry about you right now.” Trennus told her firmly. “The phoenix can take care of these little bumps and bruises, if I ask her nicely.” He patted her shoulder with one bandaged hand, winced, and left the room, pushing past the crowd at the doors once more.
Sigrun muffled a curse as Adam lifted her foot in gentle hands and began to tug, gently at the claws of the demon’s paw. “I think it’s embedded in the bone, Adam. The skin and muscle just healed around it.” She latched onto the edge of the table and swore, viciously, in her native language. “Much the reason why when I have been shot before, I have had the ball extracted before the healing can begin. Gods . . . please, don’t pull.” That, from between clenched teeth. “You’re going to have to cut the skin open.”
Adam shook his head. Unlike every other wound he’d ever seen her take, this one was red, inflamed, and swollen. “Looks like an infection,” he told Livorus, who’d just moved over to look, kit in hand, while Abigayil hovered nearby, uncertainly, staring at them all.
“Poison, I think, is more likely. That is what that demon reigned over, apparently. Disease, poison, filth.” Livorus opened the kit, and extracted a scalpel. “You generally aren’t subject to poisons or disease, are you, my dear?”
“No, sir. This . . . is probably magic. Extract the claw, and everything should heal well.”
Livorus held up the scalpel, fresh from its package, and asked, calmly, “Do you want something for the pain, my dear?”
Adam already knew what the answer was going to be, and simply unbuckled his belt, handing her the leather strap. “No,” Sigrun replied, leaning her head back against the wall and looking up at the ceiling. “No blood of the poppy for me. It takes too much to do any good, and it dissipates too rapidly.” She looked back down, and gave Livorus a pained smile. “As a side effect, I have never been drunk, either.”
“No great loss, my dear. I find that the more someone has had to drink, the less interesting they become. Anyone who has to shield themselves from the harsh light of reality with a comforting haze of alcohol is a coward.” Livorus knelt, and said, “Matrugena?”
“Here, sir.” Trennus pushed his way back into the room, pulling a fresh shirt over his wet hair, his kilt still dripping all over the floor. He tossed Sigrun’s bag down beside the table.
“Your hands are well enough to hold our valkyrie down?”
Trennus looked at his hands, grimaced, and beckoned to Lassair, who hopped over, landing on his forearm, and stroked her head along his palms. “Should be, sir. My, ah, spirit here . . . she fixed my knee in Nahautl pretty well, and these were just surface cuts.” The phoenix fluttered up now, landing on the room’s chandelier, and preened, her golden light outshining the electric candles there, even as the fixture rocked precipitously.
I can assist with Stormborn’s healing, if she will accept my aid, as well . . . but I think that once the claw has been removed, that her flesh will heal as it always has. Lassair’s rich mental voice spilled like honey through Adam’s mind, and he watched half his family flinch at it.
“Thank you, sister,” Sigrun replied, giving the spirit the same title that Lassair had used for her, months ago, in Rome. “I trust I will not need any further assistance.”
“Can we have a little space?” Livorus asked, calmly. “Matrugena, hold her legs. Ben Maor, keep her down on the table, if you can. Sigrun, my dear, please do not actually damage the rest of my lictors. I know you’re perfectly capable of doing so. Eshmunazar . . . clear the room for us, if you would, please?”
“My pleasure,” Kanmi said, quickly, from near where his wife stood, staring at him, as his sons clung to his legs. “You heard the propraetor, everyone. No one needs to watch surgery unless they’re an apprentice doctor . . . .”
“I am a doctor,” Bastet said, trying to push her way into the room. “I’m not going to stand by, and watch someone butchered at the hands of an amateur.”
“Rest assured, dear lady, I have extensive experience with battlefield wounds.” Livorus tone was dry. “Sigrun, my dear? Your choice. My hands, or hers.”
“Yours, sir.” Absolute trust in her voice. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Those arrows in the lands of the midnight sun were somewhat annoying for you.” Livorus’ tone was bland.
“They healed. Just do it, sir. Get it over with.”
“It’s your funeral,” Bastet said, folding her arms across her chest and scowling. “Or rather, your amputation.”
“Out, please, everyone. Now.” Livorus’ tone brooked no further arguments.
Adam settled the belt between Sigrun’s teeth, gave her an encouraging nod, and let her hold onto his wrists, while holding hers in his. Trennus knelt down and locked his massive arms around Sigrun’s legs. “Sorry about this,” Trennus told her, setting his head down on the table beside her knee, and looking away.
Her entire body arched when Livorus made the first cut, and Adam could smell the foulness of the pus coming from the wound. Could hear the drip of fluids and blood as they poured out on the floor of his parents’ dining room. “Necrotizing poison,” Livorus assessed. “Like some snake bites. I’m down to where the claw pieced the bone . . . and I think my scalpel is already dull.” His tone was dry. “Your skin requires a hacksaw, my dear. Eshmunazar! Your assistance, please!”
Kanmi came back into the room, pushing past his irritated wife, trying to leave his children at the door. “Keep the skin and muscle pulled back,” he said, his voice detached. “Sigrun, try not to heal too fast on us here. I can barely see anything. Also, don’t move.”
The muffled sound from the back of Sigrun’s throat carried the imprint of syllables, though none were readily distinguishable. “That didn’t even require translation,” Kanmi noted. “I don’t see a way around this. It’s going to have to be burned out.”
Sigrun’s body when slack for a moment, and then tensed again, like a bow being strung, as Kanmi set to work. The foul stench of burning hair . . . or in this case, claw and bone . . . rose chokingly . . . and then Kanmi reported, “That’s the first claw tip.”
“Work anything that remains out of her bone. Don’t want any of that remaining behind,” Trennus warned.
“Tell me something I don’t already know, Matrugena,” Kanmi returned, acerbically. “I think I’ve got it. Next side . . . dominus, go ahead and make the cut . . . .”
Fifteen agonizingly slow minutes later, they were done, and Livorus lightly bandaged the ankle. “Just to keep the blood off the floor, my dear. I know you’ll likely heal up inside of the next hour.” He patted her leg. “Nice work, Eshmunazar. Very steady.”
“Not my first time cutting something out of someone’s bones. First time where the patient wouldn’t take pain medication, though.” Kanmi replied tersely.
Trennus sat up, releasing Sigrun’s legs, and patted her knee lightly, as he helped her sit up. “Doesn’t do any good, Esh,” Sigrun told him, quietly. “It’s not a question of
bravery. The medicine lasts all of five minutes, and then I need another dose. And then another. And I won’t go down that road.”
“You, me, and Trennus. The happy trio who can’t, shouldn’t, or won’t take our medicine.” Kanmi shook his head as Sigrun flexed her foot, experimentally, and Adam could see that red and blue lights were flashing in the darkened hall outside the dining room, coming in from outside. The gardia had finally arrived.
___________________
Trennus gave Sigrun one last, apologetic pat on the knee, even as she reached out and gripped her friend’s big shoulder. “It’s all right,” she told him. “Needed to be done.” A faint smile. “Even the binding outside . . . needed doing.” She focused in on him, now that the sickening pain was down to a dull, aching throb, and told him, “Thank you, Tren, for not letting me kick anyone.” Sigrun hardly ever used nicknames or shortenings of people’s names. To do so . . . let them in, and she hardly ever let anyone in. But she’d called Kanmi Esh, and Trennus Tren, and had done so reflexively . . . and for a moment she had to let herself feel it. A sense of belonging.
Trennus flashed her a quick smile, his eyes lighting up behind his glasses as he stood, and Sigrun could see both of Adam’s sisters—she had yet to get names for half of these people, and it was irking her—eying the tall Pict, and falling back into the hallway to giggle to each other behind their hands. Sigrun understood precisely why; the man was built like his family’s namesake, a bear . . . but in spite of it, there was an essential gentleness and grace about him that showed in how he moved, how he’d hold someone’s hand on being introduced to them. And, additionally, he had the added bonus of being exceedingly foreign, bordering on exotic. Sigrun herself couldn’t help but notice all of it, but there was also something fundamentally innocent and young about Trennus, that made her categorize him differently than Adam or Kanmi. The innocent, the idealist, and the cynic who’s had his ideals betrayed, she thought, muzzily, and looked out one of the doors at Livorus, who had just reached his wife and children, and had bowed, very correctly, over Poppaea’s hand. I suppose that makes Livorus the pragmatist. And that makes me . . . nothing, really. An observer of the human condition. She picked up her sodden swan cloak and tossed it over a chair to dry. Checked her spear, noting that the hand-forged steel blade looked corroded from the demon’s blood, and set it aside, before digging for more dry clothing. Trennus had only brought her fresh jeans. He hadn’t apparently wanted to go through her shirts and bodices. The least she could do for Adam’s family was to not smell of wet leather and blood. Or, for that matter . . . she ran her hands down the backside of her jeans, and sighed again. Yes, the cobblestones tore this pair to shreds. I probably shouldn’t be walking around their home with my arse showing. It lacks a certain respect.
___________________
Pandemonium. A dozen conversations going on at once. Kanmi, back out in the hall and dealing with his wife and sons. “Kanmi, I’m a doctor. I really want to take a look at that leg. None of you had any business doing surgery in a non-sterile room. None of you are qualified—”
Kanmi paused in the hall, and gave his wife a look. But it was a gentle one, or at least, as gentle as he could make it. He was usually extremely careful to leave work at work, and home at home, and he really didn’t like the two parts of his life mixing in this way. He never talked about work at home, if he could avoid it, and having to explain his work reality to her . . . didn’t feel right. “Bastet . . . I’ve pulled enough musket balls and arrows in my day, and cauterized the wounds, to know a fair bit about field medicine. And believe me when I tell you, Caetia’s going to be fine. She’s god-born. I’ve seen her pull out of far worse.” He turned away and shouted down the hall to Trennus, “Will any fire do for that demon claw? Or does it need to be special, burning blue with salt in it or something?”
“Fire should be fire,” Trennus called back, once more digging in the suitcases and packs that lined the hallway.
“You finally changing your skirt?”
“I thought I might put on something drier, yes, now that I don’t have to hold Sigrun down.”
“Don’t see how you can stand that thing, anyway. One good gust of wind from Caetia at the wrong moment, and suddenly, the whole world has confirmation of what you Picts don’t wear beneath it.” Kanmi caught the sudden wide-eyed looks of Adam’s two sisters, as they ducked into yet another doorway, and looked up at the ceiling. Oh, that’s precious. The good news is, Adam won’t have to kill Trennus for touching either of them. I’m not sure he’d know what to do with either—or both—if they sat themselves down in his damned lap.
Trennus, for his part, looked back across the hallway and actually bantered in return, “You’re just jealous, Eshmunazar. I had my fill of chafing in Nahautl, thank you. If I don’t have to be inconspicuous, I’m damned well not going to deal with trousers if I don’t have to. I’ll wear something in a hot climate that allows for airflow.” A bright smile. “Which is probably why the traditional clothing of Tyre is a long and flowing robe, is it not?”
“Caftan, yes, but I still wear pants underneath.” Kanmi grinned right back at him. It was far more fun when people started issuing retaliatory fire. “Say, if L . . . your spirit could fix your knee back in Tenochtitlan and your hands just now, couldn’t she have fixed the chafing issues?”
Trennus flushed. “I wouldn’t ask her to do that.”
Kanmi grinned more widely. “You do have a tendency to miss the best opportunities, Matrugena.”
“Stow it.”
“Besides, it wasn’t chafing that was the real problem in Nahautl,” Kanmi went on, relentlessly. “It was the mosquitoes. I heard this high-pitched scream one night, looked up, and there one went. Size of an owl. Had a mouse impaled on the end of its proboscis. Mouse’s little legs were wiggling, like this.” He held up a hand in front of his nose in demonstration. “Mosquito was so big, it had landing lights on the bottoms of its wings.” He looked down at his sons. “No joke.”
Bodi looked at him suspiciously. “You’re teasing us, Daddy.” Himi, being older, actually got the joke, and just laughed.
“You two are all right?” Kanmi asked, crouching down beside them for a moment. “All the noises were pretty loud.”
“It was a little scary,” Bodi was willing to admit.
“Bodi’s a baby. I wasn’t scared.” Himi folded his arms over his chest with a worldly air.
“Well, then it was your job to make sure he wasn’t scared, wasn’t it, Himi?” Kanmi pointed out, reasonably. “Just because you’re older and bigger doesn’t mean you’re better than he is. It just means you have more work. Both of you, let’s get you out from under everyone’s feet. I think there’s a kitchen around here. Move.”
The two boys skittered off ahead of him, and Kanmi regarded Bastet warily. There was an edge in his wife’s expression that suggested she hadn’t liked being put off, and that she had questions that went beyond the fact that he had a pretty good grip on emergency medicine. Actually, his grasp on that was probably better than hers; she worked in a hospital, certainly, but she was a general practitioner. He’d seen a lot more wounds and outraged bodies, he was certain, than she had. He reflected, quickly, on what had gone on outside, and decided that, fortunately, as sorcerous combat went, what he’d done had largely been invisible. All right, other than wrapping a red-hot lamppost around the creature. And lighting up its armor. She probably didn’t see that, and she couldn’t see any of the other things I did.
“Kanmi,” Bastet asked, her eyes narrow as the boys ran towards the kitchen, ducking and dodging around the dozens of other people in the house, “I have a few questions . . . .”
Kanmi wasn’t sure if he should be relieved or not as ben Maor popped out of the dining room, interrupting them. “Esh,” Adam said, looking down and putting a hand on his shoulder. “Really good work out there, as usual.” He shook his head.
“I work with what people give me.” Kanmi flicked a glance at Bastet a
nd added, neutrally, “The grenade right in its mouth was all you, ben Maor.”
“Sure it was.” Adam’s tone was dry. “Keeping it off of Sig, forcing it out of its armor . . . that was you. Still surprised you didn’t really light it up—”
“Only fuel I had was the hydrogen in the water—”
“Yes, no. That would have been a bad idea. That’s a little combustible.” Adam grinned. “That’s one of the primary propellants for rockets, actually. I like the houses around here where they are.” He jerked a thumb at the front door. “I think I need to get out there and coordinate with the local Praetorians. Quick question before I go do my job. I could see that the bullets were doing the trick, but very slowly. This might not be the only such creature we see here, at the rate we’re going. You think you can enchant my rifle clips or pistol bullets, or something?”
“It’ll be bullet by bullet, unless I enchant the actual rifle itself. Either way, I’m going to need the specifications on your weapon. I add too much heat or friction to each bullet coming out the barrel, and you can say goodbye to it as it melts to slag in your hand.”
“Let’s take a look at that tonight. If we have to, we can run tests.”
“What’s our next step, boss?” Kanmi didn’t actually mean the words ironically. But every question from him was a poke. It was a matter of honor. Or habit. Or both, really.
“Getting Livorus the f—” Adam glanced at Bastet, and cut off the word. “—out of here, if we can. We need a different location. Problem is—”
“They tracked him here once. I’d be willing to bet, from what Matrugena’s spirit said—”
“Yes, blood, I got that much. Damned if I know where they got it from—“
“Same place I would. Laundry services. You think the people who work in the laundry get paid worth a damn, ben Maor?”
Adam grimaced. “Fair point. But the last time he was here was twenty-five years ago. Someone kept it that long?”
The Valkyrie (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 1) Page 61
