He glanced at Nantli, then looked up at Fillion. “A–Alright.”
After he hurriedly strapped in, Nantli crouched and leapt off the ground.
Alandra’s Sash divided the night sky above with a spectacular star-speckled swath of violet and indigo. It took his mind off the worry for a moment.
There was a strange kind of beauty in seeing the stars this limited way. Almost in the same manner that several of the paintings he saw in Bataan-Mok were beautiful. The depiction via paint on canvas was much less than what one’s eyes would see of the actual item being represented, but it was still beautiful. And often times, things were revealed in the ‘simpler’ form that would be difficult to see otherwise.
Chanté had only a minute to enjoy the view though, before voices from the plaza in front of the theater drew his attention.
“And just who are you to tell us to leave? Where is our show?”
“I’m Guildmaster Millinith of the Dragon Craft Guild. We are assisting the Stronghold police and the special investigators.”
“Dragon Craft Guild, eh?” The man’s lips curved in a little smile. He raised his hands, palms up, and gestured to those around him. “You going to use your beasts against us?”
Nantli set down next to Itzel and Huemac.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Master Doronal said. “We’re here to—”
A faint pulse of magic came from the Guildmaster. “Attention people in the theater plaza.” Her voice rang out, amplified as it had been at the dragon show.
Everyone turned her way.
“An emergency has been declared inside the theater. The Dragon Craft Guild is working with the Stronghold police and the special investigators to evacuate everyone inside. In order to do so, you must clear a path to the front doors. Thank you for your cooperation.”
With the Guildmaster in the saddle, Itzel began walking slowly toward the front of the theater.
Chanté grunted. That was smart. The Guildmaster wasn’t going to engage with the man who seemed only intent on confrontation. And why was he so determined to do so?
Chanté glanced at the people standing around. Are any thinking of rioting?
Most wonder why they are not being allowed to see the free performance, but a few are thinking of fighting.
Oh? Which few?
The man who was speaking, for one.
Chanté turned to him.
Eyes narrowed, the scruffy man was looking around at the people nearby. All were making way for the slowly advancing dragon. He reached for his waist and ran toward Itzel.
Look out! Chanté began unstrapping, gaze on the man.
“Damn elite classes always taking advantage of us!” Hands raised high, a dagger held tightly between them, the man jumped for Itzel, ready to plunge it down into her.
Before he or the blade could reach her, however, Chanté felt a pulse of magic from Master Doronal.
The leaping man struck an angled barrier and slid to the ground, the dagger fell to the flagstones next to him.
“What did you do to him?” A woman ran forward.
That one wants to fight as well.
Some in the crowd started murmuring.
“We did nothing to him,” Master Doronal said. He stepped down from Huemac. “I put a protective barrier in front of the Guildmaster and her dragon. In his effort to stab them, that man ran into it.”
Chanté hopped down. This could get ugly.
“So you’re going to use your beasts and magic against us?” The woman stood taller. “How typical!”
“We have yet to use anything against you,” Guildmaster Millinith said. “That man attacked. He ran into a barrier. It’s as simple as that.” She turned to the theater and Itzel continued walking.
“Please clear a path to the front doors so people inside may evacuate. Thank you for your cooperation.”
“Look at them!” The woman pointed to Guildmaster Millinith. “They think they can do whatever they want to us. Offer us entertainment and then take it away? Just like they took National Transportation and its jobs away. Even if we’re lucky enough to get employment, they work us hard for nothing more than a pittance. Then, once they’ve worked us to death, they toss us aside like garbage.” She pointed to the man who still lay on the ground. “That’s all they think of us.”
The people stopped making way for Itzel and instead started watching the woman.
“Bastards!”
Chanté looked toward the shout, but could not tell who’d yelled.
They want to start a riot, now.
A few people with angry expressions began moving closer, one here, one there. Others started following them.
Chanté pulled his bo from Nantli’s saddle. If we have to defend ourselves, it will not go well for them.
A surge of surprise came through the link from Nantli and she barked. Quillan needs help!
What? Where?
Gaze directed upwards, Nantli started running across the plaza, toward the theater, past people staring at her. Up there!
“Where’s Nantli going?” Master Doronal watched her near gallop.
“Quillan’s in trouble!” Chanté ran after her. What kind of trouble?
I do not know, he only told me he needed help.
Would the people gathered along the stairs in front of the theater let them pass? Chanté clenched his jaw and gripped the bo tighter. He hoped so, but either way, he was getting inside.
They had just crossed the middle of the plaza when the crashing sound of breaking glass drew everyone’s gaze upward.
Lit from within the building, what looked like a leather satchel flew off the top balcony, trailing glass shards. They sparkled like tiny jewels in the light.
Right behind, someone jumped up off the balcony, yelling, “Anchor!”
Chanté stopped his mad dash and stared. “Quillan?”
In the near-silence, the satchel hit the flagstones with a loud thump and the tinkling of bits of glass.
Eyes wide, Quillan stared at the ground as he hung there, suspended at about the same height as the top balcony. He started laughing and held up his arms. “It worked! I’m floati—”
An explosion from where he’d come from blew glass, debris, and flames over him. A piece of something struck his head, and he started plummeting down to the plaza.
“Quillan!” Chanté cast levitation on the run.
Nantli let out a bark of surprise and leapt into the air.
“Look out!” Master Doronal’s voice came from behind.
Quillan’s plunge ended with him hanging limply in the air, about thirty feet up, but the debris and glass still fell to the ground. People hurried away from area as what looked like sections of wood—a shattered door or window frame?—clattered to the ground amid more glass shards.
Above, something continued to fall from Quillan. Water?
Nantli hovered by him and let out a worried whine. Lower him, quickly!
What’s wrong?
He is bleeding!
Chanté modified the anchors, started lowering Quillan, and ran to stand beneath, not far from the foot of the theater’s front landing. Occasional drops pelted him.
“That’s blood!” Master Doronal said. “Hurry!”
The dark droplets continued to fall from Quillan while Chanté lowered him as quickly as he dared.
People made plenty of room on the right as Nantli set down. They were crowding in everywhere else, however, eyes on Quillan.
It seemed the whole plaza watched as the unconscious young man was set on the flagstones. He just lay there, unmoving, save the slight rise and fall of his chest.
Chanté knelt next to him and shook his shoulder. “Quillan!”
The bleeding must be stopped.
O–Of course. He tried to look over Quillan’s body, but it was so dark that details were difficult to make out. The one thing he could see was how pale Quillan looked in the starlight.
Damn it! He needed to find where that blood was coming from.<
br />
Just as Chanté finished casting a large glow half a dozen feet above, someone jostled him from behind, drawing his attention to all the people pressing in close.
“Is he dead?” “Why’s he not moving?” “Who is he?”
So many people were crowding around—elbowing for room to see, murmuring, whispering—that Chanté couldn’t even think.
He held out his arms as magic filled his body. “Give . . . me . . . room!”
With a low, barely audible sound, an unseen wave pulsed from him, pushing people away. Yells of surprise came from them as they were shoved a few feet back. In the now clear area around him, small sparks trailed along the edges of the flagstones for a moment before vanishing.
Chanté took a breath and examined Quillan’s head first. There was a dark, matted patch of hair on the other side, but it wasn’t very big. That must be where he’d been struck, knocking him out. There was a slashing cut on his left side within a large dark stain, but it wasn’t bleeding much.
Blood pools on his other side.
He stood and quickly stepped over.
It was Quillan’s right arm. His raised arm must have taken the brunt of the debris when the flames exploded out of that room. The sleeve of his riding jacket was covered in blood, and a few shards of glass protruded through the leather.
I will slow the blood flow while you tend to the cuts. Nantli reached down with a forepaw and gently wrapped it around the top of Quillan’s arm.
Alright. Chanté removed his dagger and carefully cut away the leather. When the sleeve was finally off, he sucked in breath between his teeth at what was revealed.
Aside from glass shards sticking out, and there were at least five of those, Quillan’s arm was severely lacerated.
Hurry. I do not want to keep blood from his arm for too long. It will start to die.
Chanté’s heart began to beat faster. Die? Would it need to be cut off? And if that happened, how would Quillan be able to continue as a machinist? Tinkering was his joy, his life!
Blood pounding in his ears, Chanté closed his eyes.
Stop panicking, damn it! That won’t help!
He took a deep breath and held it.
Chanté?
Two seconds later he let the breath out and took another.
“Chanté? How can I help?”
He let out the breath and looked up at Master Doronal. “My canteen. Get it from Nantli and pour the water over Quillan’s arm so I can see the damage.”
Master Doronal reached up to the saddle to untie the canteen.
“Clear the way to the doors, damn you! The building is on fire and those people need to get out!”
Chanté glanced up. Flames leapt off the top balcony now as if clawing for the night sky. Nearby, Itzel and the Guildmaster headed for the bottom steps in front of the theater.
“Let them burn! Those people in there are the very ones who starve us!” The woman had made her way to the landing at the top of the wide flight of steps. Some people were gathering around her, crowding the doors.
“Make way, you fools!”
“Don’t worry about all that,” Master Doronal said. “You focus on Quillan.”
Chanté nodded. The Guildmaster and the others could deal with the fire. Right now, he had to save Quillan’s arm.
Splashing water from the canteen revealed numerous terrible cuts.
Chanté clenched his jaws. Carefully, with only a slight tremble in his hands, he removed the glass shards he could see.
The slashes were so many and some were so deep that there could be damaged nerves and there might be tendon damage. Chanté drew his brows together. Even were he able to stop the bleeding so that the arm did not need to be removed, would Quillan be able to use his hand properly? Would he be able to continue making the devices he found so much interest and joy in?
Lying before Chanté on the flagstones, Quillan appeared to be sleeping. He had no expression, just a kind of peaceful, unaware blankness—nothing at all like when he was lost in some project.
Chanté’s hands turned to fists. He wanted to see that look again. The intense gaze focused on some device or another, followed by an enormous smile as Quillan explained it all to him. He did not want to lose that.
And he wouldn’t!
Removing his riding gloves, he glanced up at Nantli. I need your eyes.
They are yours.
Everything became incredibly sharp and the darkness of night nearly vanished. The increased detail was jarring.
Looking at Quillan’s arm, he figured he might as well start at the hand and work up. That was where the tiny, difficult work would likely be needed, so it would be best to start there before he got tired.
The shallow cuts didn’t matter—they would heal fine on their own, and as Nantli had said, there wasn’t time to waste, anyway—but there was a large slash that needed looking at. A little blood oozed into the cut when he gently spread it open. With an occasional press, however, the blood was cleared. With Nantli’s borrowed vision, he could see the muscle fibers, blood vessels, and the tiny nerve endings well enough.
Glass splinters and fragments he removed with Tretan’s Relocation, setting them on the flagstones nearby.
“Water, please.”
Master Doronal silently rinsed the wound.
Chanté then wove Aeron’s Vascular Sleeve—as it was taught and in modified form for other tissues—over and over, from the cut’s deepest part to the top. He didn’t complete the individual spells as he went along, however, as that would begin to tug the cut closed and make it difficult to see. He’d complete them all together when ready. He also didn’t attempt to knit every bit of the wound, that would take too long. Instead, he focused on the larger vessels and any torn nerves, and, along with some muscle fibers, the skin at top for support.
“I can feel the individual pulses as you create each sleeve. How are you placing so many in that confined space?”
Chanté ignored Master Doronal. There was no time for distraction. He moved on to the next laceration.
He was working on a large gash at the wrist when he found a tendon that had been almost completely severed and another near it that had been nicked badly. Those absolutely had to be repaired. On both, he used sleeves on dozens and dozens of the tiny cut tendon fibers.
He drew his brows together. The modifications to Aeron’s spell for it to work on delicate nerve and tendon fibers bordered on what was currently known and not known in Magic Craft and Healing Craft. But if he didn’t repair them . . .
Jaws again clenched, he kept going.
+ + + + +
When the dressing room door opened, Lord Koen turned around. “Cadoc! Where in hells have you been? Did you feel that explosion? And what’s wrong with your leg?”
The man walked in, leaning heavily on the walking stick. “I learned why the barrier dropped and addressed the problem. That was the explosion.”
“Good gods, man. Is that blood?” Koen stared at the trail behind Cadoc. “What happened?”
“One of those dragonlinked disabled the device. Did a good job of it, too. I had to improvise and was injured in the scuffle. Where are the people? I thought you were going to rally—”
“That damned Gella is evacuating everyone to the lobby! No matter, though. Let them all burn. I can still salvage this.” He walked past Cadoc into the hallway. “Let’s get out of here.”
The faint glow of fire came from the direction of the stage area. Good. He turned the other way and made for the elevator. Cadoc’s blood trail marked the way.
Lord Koen stepped into the elevator and called out. “Hurry up! We need to get out before the place comes down around us.”
Cadoc nearly stumbled. “My apologies, sir. I seem to have lost more blood than I realized.”
“Well get in here and we can tie your leg off while the elevator descends to the storage rooms.”
Cadoc didn’t reply, merely shuffled his way in.
Lord Koen pressed the stud
and the doors closed.
Cadoc leaned against the side wall and slid down, his injured leg leaving a long red smear across the floor.
The blood seemed to come from a gash on the calf, so Lord Koen removed Cadoc’s tie and wrapped it around the man’s leg just above, cinching it tightly. “There. That should hold for a while. Don’t pass out on me, damn you. I don’t relish the idea of carrying you through the storm tunnels.”
The elevator doors slid open.
“Come. Let’s go.” He walked out into the hallway.
Cadoc struggled to his feet and followed behind, slowly.
“What do you think about, ‘The loss of High Lady Hasana in the theater fire was a tragedy. In my niece’s memory, I’d like to help make her Fair Deal plan come to pass.’” He chuckled. “Yes. Something like that.”
“Sounds good, sir.” Cadoc made his way, the cane thunking on the stone floor with every other shuffling step. “I’ll . . . I’ll have a speech drafted for you.”
“Excellent.”
It was the second storeroom that Cadoc had previously unlocked, if he recalled correctly. He opened the door and stepped in then found and pressed the activation stud. As the small fixtures unshielded around the room, their barely sufficient light revealed a number of props about the space. From the door, an aisle led away between items to the back of the room and the exit to the storm tunnels.
As he walked along, they passed many of what appeared to be stock set pieces. Faux columns of various kind stood all in a line: marble, granite, crude stone, bronze, and more. There, various types of sword and spear poked out of a large metal vase. And beyond a poorly painted fountain that was likely intended to look like marble, he spied a pair of strange animals.
He grunted. “What are those supposed to be?”
“Camels . . . sir.” Cadoc stumbled and fell.
“We’re almost there, man. Come on!”
“I need . . . a . . .”
Damn it! He could see the access hatch less than ten feet away!
He turned back and shoved Cadoc’s shoulder with his foot. “Get up!”
No response.
A kick fared no better. The man didn’t move.
With an irritated sigh, he knelt, but shaking Cadoc did nothing. The idiot had lost consciousness.
Of Gods, Trees, and a Sapling: Dragonlinked Chronicles Volume 4 Page 94
