Juliet McKenna - The Assassin's Edge

“Will you be able to?” Temar took the stained dressings Allin held out to him and then wondered what to do with them. “I mean, if they couldn’t brand him.”

Allin stroked Naldeth’s forehead. “Go and find anything that might dull the pain; tahn, thassin, spirits. Ask all the sailors.”

“Let me do that.” Usara followed Halice out of the cabin. Temar would have gone too but Naldeth suddenly writhed on the bunk. “Hold him,” Allin cried in alarm and Temar forced the mage’s shoulders back on the blankets. Naldeth’s eyes stayed closed, lips drawn back from clenched teeth, panting breaths rasping in his throat. A pulse beat fast and ragged in the hollow of his neck. Temar held him, expecting heat to sear his hands at any moment.

“Apple brandy.” Usara appeared at the door, offering a dark bottle sewn into a leather sleeve.

“Use liquor to clean the wound,” said Guinalle from the corner where she was standing, eyes unseeing as she worked some Artifice. “It won’t help the bleeding to have him drink it.” She looked at Usara. “The enchanters are trying to read Muredarch’s intentions. Now we are retreating, they have no interest in harassing us. You could speed us home with some small magic worked just around the ship. But I cannot keep watch for you,” she warned, eyes huge, “not if I’m helping Naldeth bear the pain of the cautery”

“Usara knows some elemental defences against Artifice,” Allin was still concentrating on Naldeth’s stump, fingers pressing tight to stem the bleeding. Temar moved closer to the door and seized the chance for a breath of fresher air as the mage departed.

Guinalle laid a gentle hand on Naldeth’s forehead. “Concentrate on my touch, on my voice. Let me take you away from the pain.”

The stricken wizard flinched but Guinalle persisted with gentle, inexorable hands bending close to whisper her incantations. Naldeth swallowed a sob, deep in his throat, eyes rolling beneath flickering lids. Gradually his laboured breathing slowed, the rigid tension lessening down his body.

Temar saw tears trickling down Allin’s face. She sniffed irritably, trying to scrub her cheek dry on her shoulder. Temar dug in a pocket for his kerchief and went to dry her face. As she mouthed her gratitude, he thought how remarkably sweet her smile could be.

“Mind your backs.” Halice held the cabin door open as the Dulse ’s shipwright carried in a small brazier held tight between thickly padded leather gloves. His apprentice followed, lugging a hefty slab of slate. “Set it down there.” The shipwright steadied the brazier as it rested on the tile. “I don’t know what irons you might want, my lady, so I brought a fair selection.” The lad ground pincers, tongs, a small prybar and a plain length of iron into the glowing charcoal.

Allin pulled on a glove the apprentice offered her. As she took the iron bar from the coals, the end glowed with a white heat the brazier could never have imparted. “Hold his leg for me,” she appealed to Temar.

Catching his lip between his teeth, Temar knelt to grip Naldeth’s thigh as steadily as he could. Allin quickly uncovered the butchered flesh, fresh blood flowing from the ruin of torn skin, chewed muscle and sheared bone. Temar had to turn his face away. He’d seen his share of battlefield injuries but this was worse, a man so savaged by a mindless seabeast.

Allin bent closer to wield the thick bar with the delicacy of a fine pen picking through a manuscript. Naldeth whimpered and Temar felt his thigh tense beneath his hands. This close to Guinalle and with all that linked them, he sensed her fighting every impulse that screamed at the mage to rip himself away from this torment. The stink of burning flesh assaulted Temar’s nostrils, stinging his eyes but he could not turn away, lest he hinder Allin, lest he meet Naldeth’s eyes.

“Nearly done,” Allin murmured. The second application of the iron only took a moment but the smell was just as bad. Feeling Naldeth falling slackly unconscious, Temar couldn’t help clapping a hand to his mouth.

“He’s out of his senses.” Guinalle tried to stand but her knees gave way and she would have fallen if Temar hadn’t caught her. She began to retch, catching them both by surprise.

“Outside.” Temar gripped her around the waist. “Come on.”

Allin, moisture beading her forehead, continued determinedly dressing Naldeth’s stump with fresh linen. “Not for the moment.”

Temar realised sweat was sticking his own shirt to his back as he half escorted, half dragged Guinalle out on to the main deck. The noblewoman was ashen but the salt-scented breeze saved her from vomiting.

“It’s working Artifice on water,” she said faintly. “I just need a moment before I go back.”

“Is he going to die?” Temar dragged clean air deep into his lungs and his own nausea faded.

“Not just at present.” Guinalle smoothed her braids with shaking hands.

“Then you work no more healing on him until we are safe on land,” Temar told her bluntly. “You push yourself too hard.”

“Who else is there?” Guinalle glared at him.

“For combating the Elietimm enchanters, no one,” Temar retorted. “So I will not permit you to exhaust yourself tending Naldeth. Sailors and mercenaries have lost legs before now and lived through it without aetheric healing. I’m sure Halice and Master Jevon know what to do.”

“You will not permit me?” Rage lent a spurious colour to Guinalle’s pale cheeks. “How do you intend stopping me? What right have you to command me when your callousness cost that poor boy his leg in the first place?”

“Me?” Temar gaped at her.

“You could have had him safe and whole!” Guinalle stabbed an accusing finger in Temar’s chest. “For the sake of some nails and some sailcloth!”

“And that would have been the end of it?” Temar folded his arms to stop himself slapping Guinalle’s hand away. “Don’t be so foolish! Yield once to a bully and he comes back asking for twice and thrice.”

“What price a man’s life?” cried Guinalle.

“What price would Muredarch settle for, once he had me on the run?” countered Temar angrily. “He plans to hold these islands for his own and Kellarin can go hang for all he cares. We stand against him now or he’ll bleed us dry and spit out the husk.”

“This has been a trying day for all of us.” Usara’s hand closed on Temar’s arm, catching him unawares. “Why don’t you leave this discussion for some other time, somewhere a little less public?” For all his peaceable words, the wizard’s voice was tight with anger.

Guinalle blushed a ferocious scarlet, turning her face out to sea, back stiff with outrage.

Temar took a measured breath. “What have you there?”

Usara carried a haphazard collection of jars and bottles in a frayed wicker basket. “Half the sailors seem to have some shrine-sanctioned cure-all in their sea chest, or a salve with the seal of the Imperial Apothecary.”

Guinalle looked over her shoulder. “Do you know what’s in them?”

Usara shrugged. “Not really.”

“I’ll see what Allin and I can make of them.” Guinalle took the basket without ceremony. Usara would have followed her to the cabin but Temar caught him by the arm.

“I didn’t start that. It was Guinalle.” Sounding like a whining apprentice again, Temar thought crossly.

“What has that to do with anything?” Usara was unforgiving. “You’re our leader and you should be setting an example.”

“By refusing to give in to extortion?” Did no one appreciate his impossible position? Temar shook his head. “Never mind. It’s Guinalle I’m worried about.”

Usara’s annoyance softened to wary concern. “You and me both, but she insists she’s all right.”