by Ellyn, Court
She raised wide, glistening eyes. “Don’t let it hurt.” Then she opened her arms and embraced him. A long while they stood there, with the fay light from the shrine casting their shadows, broken and dancing, across the floor, her cheek pressed to his shoulder, his resting on the crown of her head. Eventually, he felt her arms relax. She stopped anticipating it, and let herself drift in the moment. It took only two gestures. His left hand moved aside the heavy black river of her hair and held her head gently in place; the fingers of his right flipped open the blade against his palm and he drove it into the base of her neck, severing spine and nerves, spirit and body. She uttered not a sound.
How heavy she was suddenly. Lothiar held her up, and his heart tore loose. His body heaved with wracking sobs. He must’ve cried out, for the door shuddered under frenzied fists.
With tender reverence he carried Aerdria to a settee and laid her out upon it. No crumpled heaps on the floor for her. He straightened her hands upon her chest and the hem of her gown at her ankles and the long black river at her side.
“Change of the watch,” he muttered as he reached for the flask of marsh water on his belt. He dipped in his finger, then traced the toad-shaped sigil on the nightwind. “Paggon Ironfist,” he commanded. The portal crackled open, revealing a ransacked room in the barracks. Blood smeared the floor. Best see that the ogres hadn’t mucked up their end of things.
The door to Aerdria’s apartment burst open. Dardrion in plate armor and dark blue velvet rushed across the threshold, led by Captain Cheriam herself. They cursed in horror, stared in silent disbelief, unsheathed weapons; one of the ten even charged Lothiar. But Lothiar raised a hand, crying the Spell of Arrest, “Vil’och eleth!” The guard froze mid-stride, paralyzed, and collapsed in a boneless heap.
With a derisive snort, Lothiar stepped through the portal. “Impotent bastards. I’m ashamed of the lot of you.”
A blade somersaulted toward him, orders to pursue bounced after him, but Lothiar slashed a hand through the biting cold of the crackling rim and slammed the portal shut.
~~~~
5
Carah wiped sweaty palms on her skirt as she stepped into Tírandon’s infirmary.
Her body ached from the stresses of channeling explosive amounts of avë, but she had permitted herself only a few hours’ rest. Too much work awaited. Once the ogres had retreated from the plain, the human and Elaran wounded were collected.
The ground floor of the Bastion’s north tower brimmed with Fierans and Miraji. A scattering of Leanians and Aralorris joined them, filling cots and bedrolls. A long line of soldiers with minor wounds trailed out into the sunshine. Without their uniforms dividing them, they all looked the same.
The room sweltered. Only skinny arrow loops provided a breath of air. But it wasn’t the heat that caused sweat to rise on Carah’s temples. People stared: orderlies moving the wounded from one room to another; a scullery maid, brought in to scrub blood off the floor; the wounded themselves, taking water from wooden cups. Was it scandal they thought of when they saw her, or the earth rearing up on hind feet?
She listened for snide remarks but heard none. Oh, for the chance to dive into work and forget. Needing an excuse to duck her eyes, Carah dug through a bin of aprons for the least stained. The smell of lye was overpowering.
“I didn’t think you’d be back so soon.” Aisley’s voice was as soft as feet tiptoeing around a sleeping bear. The raven-haired girl offered a tentative smile in greeting.
“What is sorrow when there are dying soldiers to tend?” Carah spoke more severely than she intended. Aisley should understand. She had volunteered to lend a hand only a day after learning the last of her family had died on the battlefield. She was made of stern stuff; did she expect Carah to be made of something less, or was she merely being kind?
The girl wrung her hands. “I … I am sorry for … my part.” It was she who had seen Carah coming and going from Rhian’s rooms, she who had informed the duchess.
“It isn’t your fault. My mother bullied you. Let’s not discuss it. Where am I needed?”
Infection and deep internal injuries had become Carah’s specialty, those wounds that a surgeon couldn’t mend. She was directed upstairs where the wounded highborns convalesced.
Daxon, Lord Ulmarr writhed on a cot and raised a ruckus. Orderlies fought to restrain him as Madam Sergeant struggled to apply astringent to appalling gashes. An ogre had tried to rake Dax off his horse; long dull claws had gouged wounds the length of his thigh, the underside, where the plate armor did not reach, then lodged behind his knee, digging deep into muscle and tendon. With his uninjured leg, he kicked at the Madam Sergeant’s hands. “Goddess damn you, hag! You’re killing me.”
Such a whiner, Carah thought. “Agna? Shall I take over?”
The pinch-faced Madam Sergeant tossed up her hands, and for once seemed grateful to have Carah’s help.
Daxon, on the other hand, growled like a beast. “Not you! Anyone but you.”
“Anyone but me will leave the infection in there, and your leg will rot off.” She shot him a sweet smile and added, “Orderlies, rope. Agna, a double dose.”
Only once Dax was subdued did Carah take a chair beside him and begin a deep cleansing of the gashes. Drugged though he was, slipping toward poppy-induced oblivion, his glare clung to her. Did he loathe avedrin so much? His aunt’s disliking for Carah was no mystery, but her aversion was merely distrust, not hatred.
Will not thank you, Aralorri—never. His thoughts bounced toward her, unguarded. Through the contact of her hands upon his skin she received more than words: the image of a red wave, a wave erupting from a neck and a man’s head tumbling away, of a silent step and a dagger’s thrust, one a memory, one a wish. Stab him in the back—hurt you instead—that’ll make Kelyn squirm.
Carah’s hands leapt away. She staggered to her feet. Her brain reeled with the vision, with the flood of savagery. Before she realized what she was doing, she grabbed Daxon’s shirt and gave him a violent shake. “Harm my father and I will boil the blood in your veins!”
He struggled feebly, drunkenly against the ropes that bound his arms and legs to the cot’s frame.
Across the room, an orderly set down a tray. “M’ lady?”
She didn’t break the glare. Her teeth grated, and lavender flame ignited over her palm. Fear roused in Daxon’s eyes.
“My lady!” shouted the orderly.
Carah doused the fire and stepped away from the cot. “I cannot tend to this man. He is an animal. I will fetch Agna.” Her legs shook as they carried her downstairs. Should she tell her father what she’d seen? Yes, first chance she found. Men often hated and did nothing about it, but if Da was aware of Daxon’s murderous yearning, he could be on guard.
The rest of the morning passed in exhausting, red routine. Carah visited each cot in turn. Soon her hands were raw with the channeling of energies, her palms slick with extracted infection.
She saw to the Elarion early on; the Madam Sergeant’s treatment of them remained dubious. In an upstairs room, a Miraji surgeon knelt over Commander Sha’hadýn, shaking his head and muttering incantations. The commander herself clenched her teeth and sweated into a pillow.
“What’s the problem?” Carah asked the surgeon.
“Eh?” He turned a bronze-colored ear, and his amber eyes glowered, incomprehensive.
Nearby lay one of the Regulars from Avidan Wood, an officer by the number of fierce red stripes on his brow and cheeks. Though his arm and chest were swaddled in bandages, he had breath enough to translate Carah’s question. The surgeon responded with sharp, unhappy gestures toward his commander.
“He says her horse nearly crushed her. Bleeding on the inside. His spells do little good.”
“May I tend to her?” asked Carah.
The surgeon shook his head in refusal.
The Regular officer urged him sternly. “Er rëa bi’ev avedra.”
The surgeon’s glare scored Carah up and down. Reluctant, he gave her
the bedside but hovered within arm’s reach.
Applying her hands to the bruised flesh of Sha’hadýn’s abdomen, Carah winced at the extent of the injuries. “Give her poppy wine,” she requested, then got to work.
An hour later, she sat back, inhaled deeply, and dabbed a sheen of sweat from her forehead. The commander appeared to be asleep, but when Carah rose to leave, Sha’hadýn opened her eyes, groggily, and whispered.
Carah looked to the Regular officer. “She says, ‘Thank Dathiel for me, for raising the earth’.”
Her vanity bucked at that, but she couldn’t tell them that Thorn had been unable to perform such a working. She glanced down at her raw, swollen hands. “My uncle was busy with other things.”
“That was you, rëa?” exclaimed the officer. “You saved us!” He rattled off the truth to Sha’hadýn.
Speechless, the Miraji nodded in gratitude.
Carah’s work on the commander’s wounds had spent the last of her reserves. You must rest more than the others, Rhian had told her. Foolish to ignore him now. There were simpler tasks that needed doing. She scrubbed her hands with a stiff-bristle brush and lye soap, desperate to cleanse away the clinging stink of infection, then helped the orderlies deliver the midday ration of poppy wine. She climbed the Bastion’s stair with a bottle of the milky liquid in one hand and a tray of thimble-sized cups in the other.
Nearing Daxon’s door, she sped up, taking the stairs two at a time. Someone else could take Dax his medicine, and if he suffered till then, so be it.
Voices tumbled across the threshold, Daxon’s drunken murmur and someone else, a burst of laughter, then someone turned out the door, colliding with Carah’s arms. The tray struck her under the chin. Tiny cups went bouncing, pinging, skittering down the stairs.
She whirled to save as many as she could, but they were lost, rolling around on the steps. Several skipped out of sight, spiraling down, down. “Curse you!” she shouted, rounding on the careless orderly.
But it wasn’t an orderly.
The White Falcon stood frozen on the step above, a wince etched on his face, his hands outstretched in a futile effort to stop the disaster. When the last thimble stopped bouncing, he cast her a sheepish sideward glance. “Apologies?”
“Sire, what—?”
“I was just…”
He so strongly resembled an abashed child that Carah had to laugh, but she choked it down and stooped to regather the cups.
“Here, let me help.”
“That’s not seemly.”
He ignored her attempts to tell him about his station, picked his way past her and out of sight, light-footed enough to avoid crushing any cups, and started collecting them from the bottom up. He returned with both hands full and presented the cups like an offering. “This is what happens when I dismiss my herald. And my Mantles.”
His constant escort was supposed to clear his path, so indignities like this didn’t assault his person. “Is that safe?”
He laughed, still too embarrassed to meet her eye. “Not for ladies carrying trays, apparently.”
Carah took the cups from his hands a few at a time and lined them up on the tray.
“I thought I might go it alone for a few hours,” Arryk said, watching her square up the cups as if it were some intricate art form. “Before I hanged the lot of them. Feels strange not having my train following me about. Almost like going without clothes.”
The idea of so many people fussing, clustering, circling at every moment made Carah feel like shrugging off a heavy cloak. “But why have you?”
“I’m sick of them. They mean well, but … they won’t let me do anything. Even Rance will only spar with me halfheartedly. And this morning I was trying to train Daisy how to tackle ogre, and Rose got too exuberant and soon they were fighting. Moray, the idiot, pushed me aside as if my dogs had turned into assassins. My guards broke up the fight for me.”
“Are you surprised? Those are big dogs.”
“They’re my dogs.” One direct glance from him reestablished his authority. “Point is, I became irritated and sent them away. Then I snuck away here.”
Carah bit away a grin. “Snuck. You?”
Hands now empty, Arryk gestured wildly. “The tower is full of Fieran wounded. It’s my duty to come.”
She shouldn’t have asked so many questions. A king wasn’t obligated to justify his actions to anyone. “Of course, sire.” She balanced the tray on her forearm and retrieved the bottle of poppy wine from the step. “May I continue with mine?”
Frowning, he waved her off. She curtsied, then resumed her climb. She hadn’t gone three steps when she heard Arryk’s boots scuffing along behind her. “In truth,” he began.
Carah paused, and when he joined her on the same step he rubbed his palms on his pant legs. Did kings get sweaty palms? How absurd.
“In truth, I came to ask you …”
Hnh, as she’d suspected. Visit the infirmary, my foot, she thought. But his reason was not the one she anticipated.
“Give me work,” he said.
“Pardon?”
“Look, I can train my dogs only a couple hours a day. I’ve played enough chess to make my brain bleed. I’ve discussed philosophy with Etivva until we’ve solved every issue that has plagued humanity in the past thousand years, and I’ve read every book in the library, such as it is. I take it Lander wasn’t known for his scholarship. I don’t even have administrative tasks to occupy me. Ruthan doesn’t need my help. Your father doesn’t need my help. No one needs my help. I am bored to tears. Have pity. Give me something meaningful to do.”
Carah wondered how long he’d put up with taking orders before he fled back to the keep, then handed him the tray. “Ever carried one of those, sire?”
He examined it, stretched out between his hands, as if it were an enigma to be solved. “No, this is my first.” He raised a boyish smile. “But I’ve seen it done every day. How hard can it be?”
Carah led him upward, nearly one full turn of the tower. She didn’t know how it happened, whether Arryk caught a toe on a step, whether one cup fell over and he tried to right it, but suddenly the stairwell echoed with the sound of clattering thimbles.
Arryk swore with the skill of a pig-farmer. He glared, red-faced, as they escaped him.
All Carah could think was Somehow he overpowered his brother and killed him. She slunk down a couple of steps, muttering, “Allow me, sire.” She gathered the cups quickly, shoving them into her apron pockets, listening for a roaring fit to descend after her and shatter her good opinion of him. When she crept back up the steps, she found him sitting on the steps and laughing so hard he could barely catch his breath enough to speak. “H-har-harder than it looks.”
Don’t laugh at a king, don’t you dare, Carah warned herself, and gently extricated the tray from his hand. “Let’s forget the tray, sire. We’ll use our pockets from now on.”
In the end they managed to deliver rations to each patient on the upper floors, even Daxon, because Carah feared to tell the White Falcon that one of his subjects harbored such malice toward her.
Downstairs, she showed him how to grind herbs and lace the poppy wine to make it stretch. Measuring out a vial of silverthorn tincture, Carah paused, troubled. Danger might come from anywhere, at any time. Daxon helped her see that. “Sire? If you stay to work, I must impose one condition.”
He raised an eyebrow, donning a ruler’s negotiating mask without missing a beat.
“Keep Rance with you.”
His eyes narrowed.
Carah turned on the charm. “I’ll sweep you out of here with a broom unless you agree.”
Arryk nodded only when he found an advantage. “Good, we’ll put him to work too.”
Behind them, someone coughed sharply, intrusively. Madam Sergeant’s wiry fists stabbed her hips as she shamelessly measured up her new help. Carah introduced her to the White Falcon. The woman was too confident in her own sovereignty over the infirmary to be cowed.
“You may not command His Majesty at any time,” Carah insisted, wagging a finger. “Only make requests.”
Could Agna raise her nose any higher? “And His Majesty will carry out these requests to my specifications?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“Will he drag his feet when it suits him?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Very well. Move those crates of poppy wine back to the storeroom when you’re finished filling them. They’re muddling up my floor.” She glanced sharply at Carah. “If it please you, sire.”
It did. Arryk rolled up his sleeves and got his hands dirty. He ground herbs, sorted supplies, scrubbed surgical instruments, and lugged buckets of water from the well. He only voiced “Why?” Because he was who he was, no one reprimanded him for questioning his orders, and once he understood the need for his mission, he carried it out with single-minded determination.
His greatest contribution was in lifting the spirits of the wounded. Didn’t matter if the soldier was Fieran or Aralorri or Leanian, dwarven, human or Elaran; none expected a bedside visit from a king or to be served a cup of water from his hand.
Rance shadowed him from room to room, as silent as a ghost in his white armor, as aloof and watchful as a hawk.
Early in the afternoon, Queen Briéllyn emerged from surgery, drained pale with exhaustion and cleaning her hands on a towel. Orderlies carried the amputee past on a stretcher. Carah started after them, but Briéllyn’s outburst stopped her. “What is this? Your Majesty?”
At the long supply table, Arryk reached into a bucket of steaming water to fish out the next instrument to be scrubbed. He merely looked at her, feeling no inclination to explain himself, and kept scrubbing.
“We have sculleries for that.”
“Do sculleries need to rest less than you and I?” he countered.
Briéllyn’s glance found Carah. It was all the queen could do to suppress a grin. Oh, to scour that smirk off her face! Arryk’s volunteering had nothing to do Briéllyn’s hopes for Carah’s future. Did it? To be the object of a scheme, a drawn-out siege against her own desires, made her flush hot with resentment.
