By a Thread

by Nyna Queen

  Alex planted her feet in a striking stance. A second knife slipped into her other hand and a sneer stretched her lips. Great Mother, she was so mad! “I don’t need magic to cut you into stripes. How about you?”

  He moved so quickly it was barely noticeable, even for her perception; he thrust his hand into his coat and a slender blade appeared seemingly out of nowhere.

  Wow, that was smooth! Now, where had that come from? It was an elegant sword, about a foot long, slightly curved to the tip and covered in arcane glyphs engraved into the length of metal. So that’s what she’d felt earlier. As he moved, it blurred, flickering in and out of sight, making it hard to focus on it. A concealment spell. Very powerful. Very expensive, too. She’d seen them in operation before, but never quite so masterly. It must have been woven into the metal in the forging process by a real master of his craft.

  So full of surprises, Mr. Trueborn.

  Alex smirked and let her knives twirl.

  They circled each other, teeth bared, weapons raised, carefully putting their feet on the muddy ground, assessing each other like two predators ready to go for each other’s throats.

  “Pretty toothpick.” Alex pointed with her chin to the shimmering blade. “That’s a neat little spell right there.”

  Darken bared his teeth. “So say many when I put it into their flesh.”

  Alex rolled her eyes. Trueborn at his finest. Just no false modesty there.

  Suddenly he changed his sword to the side, muscles flowing in the half-darkness, the sword’s tip raised above his head. Alex tightened the grip on her knives, stabilizing her footing on the soft floor. She felt the invisible threads of possibilities expand between them, knitting them together in a complicated glowing pattern between life and death. The threads were strung tightly, humming with energy and tension, waiting for the one move, the one strike, that would set them all in motion.

  “Hey!” Josy’s desperate voice cut through the tension, breaking the energy. “Could you please postpone your quarrel until later? Max is hurt!”

  Alex blinked, startled. What was wrong with that family, that a kid would call two pissed off adults rounding each other with drawn blades a quarrel? Those weapons were hardly toys at all.

  Their gazes met for a second. Darken stepped back and sheathed his sword with a quick movement, vanishing it in his coat once more.

  Without another glance in her direction, he hurried over to Max and crouched beside his nephew who had sunken down into the mud. Alex pocketed her own knives and joined him, squatting on her haunches on Max’s other side.

  The boy had turned so pale his skin seemed almost gray in the half dark, shimmering with a sheen of sweat. His lips were bloodless and blue-tinted, and he was shivering like mad.

  Worry furrowed Darken’s forehead as he bent over the kid.

  “M-my leg,” Max whimpered. “It h-hurts.”

  With an incredible gentleness that seemed completely at odds with the way he’d just wielded his blade a moment ago, Darken reached forward and carefully pulled up the soaking wet left trouser leg.

  Alex sucked in a sharp breath.

  A gash about the length of her palm gaped in the outside of his shin. She couldn’t see the bone, but it was, at any rate, a nasty flesh wound, and it was bleeding like hell, quickly forming a dark puddle beneath his leg. It looked like a cut from a flying piece of sharp glass or metal, probably from the crashing car.

  Alex didn’t need to be a healer to know he was in pretty bad shape. And she’d thought she’d smelled blood. Damn it, she should have paid it more attention.

  “So much for the controlled maneuver,” she muttered under her breath.

  Darken’s head snapped up, eyes flaring violently red. His nostrils fluttered. If looks could kill she’d be burned to ashes right now.

  She swallowed. But didn’t retreat. Wouldn’t retreat.

  Yet there was something else flickering in his eyes beside fury. Guilt? Oh yes, he was feeling bad about Max getting hurt—and she’d just reminded him who was responsible for it.

  With a moan, Max sank onto his back and closed his eyes. His breath came in harsh, short gasps.

  “He is in shock,” Josy said tensely, leaning over her brother beside her uncle, “from the blood loss and the cold water.” Her voice was neutral, almost devoid of emotion. A healer, knowing that those were misplaced in an emergency situation.

  “I need to heal him immediately.” She shoved up her sleeves and reached for Max’s leg.

  “NO!” Alex snatched her hand and wildly shook her head.

  Josy recoiled. Plain hurt whipped in her eyes. “I-I’ve done comparable healings in class already.”

  Ah, for the— “That’s not what I’m talking about! This has nothing to do with your healing skills. It’s just that we can’t use any magic so close to Gomorrha’s walls!”

  Josy stared at her as if she had lost her mind.

  “What? Why not?”

  “It’s part of Gomorrha’s defense work. See?” Alex pointed toward the black wall rising into the almost dark sky behind the trees. “What we have here, that’s not a historical castle wall. It doesn’t have any watchtowers or crenellations up there. That’s because those things are unnecessary due to its height and the ward spells that have been woven into its foundations. They don’t fear people getting over the wall—or under it for that matter. What they do fear, however, is people trying to get into Gomorrha by magical means. That’s why they have installed magical booby traps in a certain radius outside the walls that automatically spring and entrap you if you use magic in the vicinity.”

  She glanced at the concealed stone wall with a grimace. “Your healing magic might trigger those spells and we’ll be caught like flies in a spiderweb for the city guard to have their feast on.”

  Darken raised his eyes to the dark sky and swore softly.

  “But,” Josy glared from one of them to the other, her expression equal parts shock and outrage, “we have to do something! Max could bleed out! Also, there might have been germs or bacteria in the water. If his leg infects, he could die of blood poisoning!”

  Ah, humans. Alex sometimes forgot how damn fragile they were. Every little pinprick could kill them. She’d scratched her leg in the river as well but had completely forgotten about it. It was just a scratch. And even if germs or some such had entered it, her body would have destroyed them by now. But the same scratch could have dire consequences for this boy.

  Josy turned to Darken, eyes big and pleading, as if this simply hinged on his approval.

  Alex rocked back on her heels. “Well, maybe there is something we can do.”

  She stood up and retrieved the backpack she’d dropped on the riverbank after climbing out of the water. She opened the zip and grabbed into it, relieved when her fingers closed around the little plastic etui. She always carried a small medical kit with her for emergencies. You never knew when you would have to sew yourself together again and in her experience that happened more often than you expected. Or maybe that was just her and her lifestyle.

  Darken looked up when she approached. She flipped him the kit and he caught it with one hand, inspecting the contents through the transparent plastic wrapping. “Can you sew?”

  Alex shrugged one shoulder. “I’m not a surgeon. But I patched myself up quite a few times already.

  “It might scar through,” she added with an apologetic glance at Max.

  “That’s fine.” Max raised his head and gave them a wobbly grin. “Scars are cool. All great warriors have them, don’t they, Uncle Darken?”

  Darken started at the kid for a long second, emotions flashing on his face.

  “They do,” he finally said softly. “You don’t always see them, but they certainly do.”

  Alex glanced at his face. Something writhed inside those terrible deadly eyes. It was only a moment, but she was sure she’d seen it. Pain. Memories. Secrets. Again, it occurred to her that she wasn’t the only deadly predator here, hiding in
visible scars behind a wall of shadows and sass. But what in the Great Mother’s name could have scarred a man like him so much that he felt the need to close it away? Not the time to find out now.

  “There would be no scar, if I was allowed to heal him,” Josy muttered softly.

  “I know, darling,” Darken said, voice full of understanding. “But it can’t be helped right now. You said for yourself that something had to be done immediately.”

  The girl didn’t object, but she still didn’t look too happy either.

  Alex rose to her feet again, indicating with her head that Darken should follow. They took a couple of steps away from the kids, while Josy tied a makeshift bandage around her brother’s leg.

  “I need to put him under for the procedure,” Alex said quietly. “It would be better if he wouldn’t have to be moved for a while after I’m done.”

  She would sew herself without any sedative if need must be—hard to guide a needle in a dazed condition, anyway—but she couldn’t exactly expect a ten-year-old boy to grit his teeth through the pain and it wouldn’t serve their agenda if he screamed down the forest. Especially not with the ever-rising chance of law enforcement within the hearing radius. Darken seemed to pick up her train of thought, for he nodded and then turned back to the boy and carefully lifted him from the mud.

  Alex snatched her backpack and broke a couple of reeds to cover their tracks superficially. No need to provide them with a direct pointer.

  Darkness had finally claimed the land and the silver breath of the almost full moon illuminated the woods and rocks sheathing the wall that rose in the distance. Following the soft curve of the wall, they moved silently, except for an occasional groan from Max that made Alex’s heart clench. After about a mile they found a cave-like rock formation that screened them off from the riverside and offered some protection from the cooling night air and the wind that troubled the rivers waters, singing in the reeds.

  Darken ducked into the cave and laid Max down at the back, propping him against a sloped, flat rock. With a fluent movement, he pulled off his coat again, having his shirt ride up his ripped stomach. For a moment Alex couldn’t help staring.

  Sweet Jester, that man wasn’t built, he was carved. His body was an artwork: slender but with well-defined muscles sheathed in gold-tinted skin.

  With neat strokes, he folded the coat into a makeshift pillow and tugged it under Max’s head. The movement made the muscles on his back contract. Alex idly wondered how it would feel to let her hand slide down the hard ridges of those muscles.

  “Alex?”

  She blinked and realized he was watching her with a slight frown.

  She cleared her throat and quickly approached him, keeping her eyes firmly locked on the floor, hoping the darkness covered her blush.

  So, he’d caught her staring, what of it? It wasn’t a crime to look at a handsome man. Not even for a shaper. And he was … Hell, she wasn’t blind! It didn’t make him any less arrogant or overbearing for that matter. And that was all that counted. And if it hadn’t been for the kids, she would have cut up his pretty face for throwing her into that river. Oh yes, that’s exactly what she would have done!

  Still avoiding his eyes, she knelt beside Max. Unzipping her kit, she pulled out two pillboxes, calculating in her head.

  “Here, swallow these.” She handed Max a couple of pills. “Don’t chew. They prevent infections and will dull the pain. They will make you a little sleepy, too.”

  If she’d calculated right, they’d knock him out good and proper for a couple of hours.

  While waiting for the pills to work, she arranged all the things she needed, too aware of Darken’s watchful eyes on her every movement.

  Alex spread a stretch of clean foil under Max’s leg—it wasn’t one of those sterile ones they used in hospitals, as those where hard to come by, but it would serve its purpose. Max whimpered a little, when she adjusted his leg, although she tried to be gentle.

  “Would you take a hold on this for me, sugar?” Alex passed Darken a small flashlight from her pack and showed him how to angle it. Her spider senses were still not working well and it sure was getting dark.

  She opened the iodine bottle and dripped a good amount into the wound and onto the surrounding skin.

  “S’ orange,” Max mumbled sluggishly, his eyelids half closed.

  “Yep,” Alex replied, “and it will make your leg feel better in no time. Maybe even stronger than before.”

  “Cool,“ Max slurred, eyes opening and closing several times and Alex wondered what kinds of pink elephants he might be seeing. It seemed nice enough, though, because a wide smile split his face. It wouldn’t last long, but hopefully, he wouldn’t remember too much of the pain.

  “It makes the leg stronger?” Josy asked doubtfully.

  Alex gave her a look and shook her head while spraying some disinfection spray onto her own hands and then ripping open some foil holding sterile gauze pads. When she was quite sure that Max was slipping away, she leaned forward.

  “Course not,” she mumbled softly, “it’s just for cleaning and preventing infections. But he might have some nice dreams now.”

  She pressed one gauze pad into the wound to soak up some of the blood, trying to ignore Max’s hitched breathing and weak thrashing. She changed it twice, stuffing the bloody rags into a plastic sack.

  Since Max was flat out of it and the iodine would start to dry soon, there was no more time for stalling. She unpacked a sterile C-shaped needle with an attached thread and got into position kneeling next to Max, taking the needle with one tweezer and taking another tweezer to hold the wound margins.

  Josy was hovering close by, eying her with growing unease.

  Alex cocked an eyebrow at her. “Are you gonna assist me, or what?”

  Josy stared at her.

  “You could take hold of that leg in case he struggles. You can also hand me the gauze pads when I tell you to.”

  “You’re—you’re doing this with a needle!” Josy’s voice squeaked with more than a hint of hysteria. “That’s backwoodish!”

  Hah! As if she was planning to chop of his leg with an ax!

  “Sugar, that’s how the halfborn people do it all the time. Only the fewest hospitals in halfborn territories employ trueborn healers.” No doubt because it was beneath their dignity to use their refined arts on the under-bred halfborns. Plus, she doubted that many halfborn run hospitals could afford the wages normal for someone proficient in magic healing craft. “People survive it all the time. We don’t all have magic at our hands, you know.”

  With a flick of her fingers, Alex ripped open another gauze package. “Do you learn to do anything without magic at those fancy schools of yours?”

  “Well,” the girl sucked on a long chocolate brown strand of hair, looking thoughtful, “at college, there are mandatory physical healing classes as part of the fundamental medical education. It is supposed to help understand the body functions and processes.” A frown creased her forehead. “It’s also supposed to be humbling.”

  Never thought about it that way before, have you?

  “Why not start with it now?” Alex leaned forward and held out the gauze.

  Josy stared at it, not moving.

  Alex raised her eyebrow again. “Sugar, are you a healer, or not?”

  The girl looked even paler than Max, yet she pressed her lips together and took the pad.

  Alex patted her shoulder. “That’s the attitude.”

  MAX moaned softly and stirred a little in his sleep.

  Darken shifted his position on the damp ground and leaned over his nephew. Slipping off one of his gloves, he gently touched the back of his hand to the boy’s forehead. The skin felt cool and dry under his fingers. No sign of a fever, as far as he could tell.

  Darken sighed. The kiddo had put up a brave front, mostly, he suspected, not to embarrass himself in front of the dead-cool spider, but he had seen the tears pooling in his eyes when Alex and Josepha had starte
d working on his leg. Luckily whatever sedative it was Alex had given him, it had done its deed, and he had quickly slipped into a semi-unconscious state.

  He was asleep now, really asleep, his small chest rising and falling with every breath.

  Watching the slow, steady movement, Darken’s own chest constricted painfully. His gaze flickered to the bandage covering the leg, clean and white and almost glowing in the dimness of the cave, and his hand cramped in his lap. A bit higher and it might have been the chest instead of the leg. Another bit higher and it might have been the throat.

  If things had played out just a smidgen differently, would he now be sitting here cradling the dead body of his nephew in his arms?

  He closed his eyes and sucked in a shuddering breath.

  He had always known that it might one day come to the point, where he would wake beside the broken corpse of his niece or nephew—and that it would be his fault. Dead. Because of him. Because of what he was. Because he couldn’t content himself with the life set out for him by the rules of his caste.

  His lips pressed together, the old guilt wailing and screaming bloody murder in his ears.

  He’d grappled with the possibility, had forced himself to play it through in his mind again and again. They said that if you visualized the worst outcome of your fears it would make them easier to bear. It didn’t. Each time the pain was just as tormenting as before.

  Still, he had envisioned it countless times.

  But not like this. Never like this.

  So much for a controlled maneuver!

  Alex’s face flashed in his memory, eyes blazing with unrestrained fury. She said what she thought, and she didn’t mince words. And as much as he wanted to deny it, she wasn’t all wrong. If Maxwell or Josepha had died because of his crazy stunt, it would have been his fault and his alone. The possibility, albeit bygone, felt sharp and real like a sword pressed to his ribs and he wanted to tear something—or better someone—apart, to relieve some of the raving emotions swelling inside him.

  The worst was that it had been a controlled maneuver and maybe that’s what was unsettling him the most.