Django Wexler - The Thousand Names

“Feor. .” She hesitated, biting her lip. She couldn’t very well send the girl outside, not now . Even the Khandarai in the army train would no doubt be keeping a very low profile until the excitement of battle had subsided. “You don’t have to watch this,” Winter finished lamely.

She ignored that. “Will he live?”

Winter glanced at Graff, still picking bits of linen away from the ragged hole in Bobby’s skin. “I don’t think so,” she said in Khandarai.

“Oh.” Feor shifted, drew knees to her chest and hugged them tight with her good arm, but she didn’t look away.

“Give me some water,” Graff said, without looking up. “Right here, where it’s bloody. But gently . Just trickle it.”

Winter hurried over with one of the kettles. Looking closely at the wound made her want to gag, and the smell was beginning to cut through the battle stink of sweat and powder. She forced her hands to remain steady and tipped a shallow stream from the kettle across the boy’s skin. Pink rivulets ran down Bobby’s sides and soaked into the inside of his jacket.

Graff’s mouth worked silently, as though chewing something stubborn.

“Right,” he said, not looking up. “Right. Get some clean linen and tear it into strips. I’ll get the rest of this shirt off.”

Winter nodded and went to her trunk. She sacrificed the cleaner of her two spare shirts, and the fabric tore with a sound like a distant volley of musketry. She’d laid out a half dozen uneven bandages when she heard Graff fall backward, followed by a great deal of swearing.

“Oh, fucking Brass Balls of the Beast!”

“What?” Winter’s heart clenched. She turned. “What happened?”

“Just look!” Graff said. “Look at-”

At first she thought he meant the wound, around which he’d wiped the skin clean, until there was only a ragged red hole just to the right of the boy’s navel. He’d unbuttoned Bobby’s shirt to pull away the last bits of clinging linen, and-

“Oh,” Winter said quietly. She looked down at Bobby’s face-a young, soft, feminine face, cheeks unmarred by stubble-and felt a hundred little moments click into place.

“Fuck me,” Graff said. “He-”

“She,” Winter said.

“She,” he repeated dully. “I can’t-I mean-”

“Come on,” Winter said. “This can’t be the first pair of breasts you’ve seen up close.”

“What? But. .”

“Later,” Winter said firmly. “Now. Do what you can.”

Graff looked up at her, and she tried to put all the calm she could muster into her gaze. He swallowed, nodded, and bent over his patient.

• • •

Some time later, Graff sat back. Sweat trickled across his forehead, and he wiped it away absentmindedly, leaving a smear of red under his bangs.

“It’s no good,” he said. “The ball’s still in there somewhere, but if I go groping around trying to find it I’m just going to make things worse.”

Winter looked down at Bobby’s face. His- her -mouth worked silently, but her eyes were tightly shut, as though in a dream from which she couldn’t escape.

“If we were to take her to a cutter. .,” Graff began.

“Would it make a difference?”

“No,” he admitted. “Probably not. There’s too much bleeding, and h- She’s already running a fever.”

“Any idea how. . long?”

“A few hours at best,” he said.

“Will she wake up?”

Graff gave a weary shrug. “I’m no doctor, just a corporal who picked up a little stitching and sawing. Though I doubt even a doctor could tell you.”

Winter nodded. “You’d better go, then.”

“What?” He looked up at her. “Go where?”

“Someone in the rest of the company must need your help. Folsom, if no one else.”

“But-” Graff gestured helplessly at the girl on the floor.

“I’ll stay with her,” Winter said. “Someone should.”

He turned away, but Winter caught a fleeting glimpse of relief in his face. She tried not to hold it against him.

“I’ll check back in,” he said, retreating. “Later. And you can come and find me if he-I mean, when she-”

“I will.” Winter ushered him to the exit. When the tent flap had fallen closed, she stared at it wearily for a few moments, then turned around and sat down beside Bobby.

Graff had covered the wound with makeshift bandages, though the blood was already soaking through. Winter kept her eyes on the girl’s face. It was tight and drawn with pain, her boy-short hair clingy and matted with sweat. Winter smoothed it absently with one hand.

“No cutters,” she murmured. “Well, of course not.”

She hadn’t even thought about that possibility herself. This girl planned better than I ever did. The breasts that had so disturbed Graff were only slight swells, and Winter wondered how old Bobby really was.

I wish she’d told me. A fantasy, of course. Winter knew as well as anyone that a secret spoken aloud, even once, was a secret lost. But I would have asked her so many things. How she made it through recruitment. Where she came from. Why she came to Khandar. It was singularly cruel, she thought, to discover that she wasn’t alone just hours before she would be alone again.

Winter was surprised to find that she was crying. She closed her eyes against the tears, but they welled regardless, trickling down her cheeks and pattering onto Bobby’s jacket. One drop touched the corner of her mouth, and she licked automatically, tasting the salt and the acrid tang of sweat and powder.

“Winter.” Feor was leaning forward, peering at Bobby.

“You don’t need to gape at her,” Winter said.

“Her,” Feor muttered, as though tasting the word. “A girl.” And then something else, low and fast, that Winter didn’t understand.

“In fact,” Winter said, “I should cover her up. Somebody might burst in here, and I’ll be damned if-”

“I can help her,” Feor blurted.

Winter froze. A spark of hope, the tiniest ember, ignited briefly in her chest, though she felt stupid for encouraging it. But the priestesses of Monument Hill did collect all sorts of esoteric knowledge, didn’t they? Was it possible Feor had some strange powder, some recipe, something -

She quashed her sudden enthusiasm and said, “You might have said something earlier.”

“Earlier I did not know the corporal was a woman,” Feor said. “O bv-scar-iot will not bind to a man.”

Winter hadn’t understood the burst of archaic Khandarai. “What is it you want to do?”

“I can bind her to my naath ,” Feor said, so quiet she was almost inaudible.

“Ah.” The ember of hope flickered and died. “Magic. You mean you can help her spiritually .” Winter tried to keep her tone level-Feor looked so serious, and she didn’t want to trample on the girl’s beliefs-but she couldn’t help but a twist on the last word.

“It’s not-”

“Look,” Winter said, “if you want to. . to say a prayer, or what have you, I’m not going to object. But I’m not sure Bobby would want you to. She was a Free Church man-woman-like the rest of us.”

“It is not a prayer,” Feor said patiently. “Prayers are requests to the Heavens and the gods above and around us. A naath is an invocation, a command . It will be obeyed.”

“All right,” Winter said. “Go ahead, if you think it will do any good.”

Feor sat in silence for a moment, her good hand clenched on her injured arm. She looked-frail, somehow, and Winter felt guilty for her harsh tone. She moved carefully around the sickbed and put a hand on the girl’s shoulder in what she hoped was a comforting way.