The Warden, page 16
There was nothing she could do for the loss of blood except to try and stanch it to a trickle. She pressed one of the sleeves against the edges of the wound, folding it haphazardly with one hand. The other she quickly cut into a longer strip so that she could bind it around his stomach. Otto was a sizable man, but the short rations and hard life of a farmer had kept the fat from gathering around his middle, and for that she was thankful. She made as tight and fast a knot as she could, tying the whole around the knife that was stuck in him. That, she wasn’t pulling out till she had her case of instruments and bags of herbs and medicaments to hand.
And getting it was going to prove a problem. She was already running through her options; she hadn’t the strength of an Enchanter to reach to anyone’s mind from a long distance, nor had she the Illusion or Conjury to call forth a bird—real or otherwise—to act as a messenger. All she truly had in the moment were her lungs.
Aelis ran for the door of the cottage and was there in two steps, having snatched up her wand in one blood-smeared hand. Her uncertain mind called up feeble arguments. A Warden can’t be seen to panic, it said. Spreading fear is to be avoided at all costs.
“A Warden also can’t leave a man to fucking die because she’s afraid to look frightened,” she told herself.
“Help!” she screamed, her voice as loud as she could muster the wind to make it. “Murder! HELP!”
She heard her voice carry across the village, echoing back at her, and almost immediately she could hear the pounding of feet, the yell being taken up and passed on.
The first to arrive was some young, fleet-footed lad, sweaty from his early-morning labors but barely breathing hard as he came toward the door of the brothers’ cottage at an easy lope. She didn’t know the boy’s name, but guessed that he was perhaps a year or so younger than herself.
Aelis brought her wand up and, before he could brace himself to offer any resistance, released a Second Order Enchantment upon him; Holbein’s Compulsion. Green flashed from the tip of her wand and his eyes went wide, his face slack.
“Run to my tower! If you see a horse along the way, take it and do not spare the beast. Inside there is a large leather case with two handles and brass fittings. It will be heavy. You are to bring it back here, immediately, as fast as you can, with no thought of anything else! GO!”
Having paused only long enough to absorb her orders, the boy took off at a sprint that made his earlier run look like a casual stroll.
He’ll pay for that later, she told herself. You’ll have other wounds to treat. Strained muscles and ligaments.
Yes, she answered, but Otto might live.
As other villagers arrived, she spared them the brunt of her Enchantments and simply issued garden variety orders; to one, the cleanest cloths he could produce. To another, boiling water. A third she set to fetching wood to build up the fire.
And as she waited, agonizingly, for the boy to return with her case, she knew Otto’s life was slipping away and that she’d but one chance—and it was an experience neither of them would find pleasant.
Aelis splayed her hand out around the handle of her dagger so that she could touch Otto’s skin with both her blade and her fingers, and then she reached for the words to one of the most complex Second Order Necromantic Bindings she knew: Aldayim’s Refinement.
For almost as long as magic had been practiced, Necromancers had been feared and reviled for that most basic of functions ascribed to the working of Onoma’s magic; raising the dead. In truth, they did not raise the dead, but rather animated dead flesh, sometimes with their own spirits, more often with whatever free-floating spirit or magical energy was available to the caster.
Aldayim, the greatest of Necromancers and among the handful of the greatest wizards of the past few centuries, had been the first to realize the lifesaving potential of that very magic.
Running the words through in her head half a dozen times before speaking them aloud, Aelis felt the power coalescing in her, gathering from the power inherent in the world, focused by the enchantments bound into her dagger. The silver runes engraved upon it began to glow faintly.
And with this small change to the basic spell to animate a corpse, Aelis bound Otto’s spirit, his soul, his life-force—so much ink had been spilled over what, exactly, to call that spark without which flesh was so much meat—into his own dying body and held it there for the near quarter of an hour it took the boy to return.
When the farmboy came pounding on the door of the shack, her case in his hands, he was practically stumbling. She took the leather handles from him, still holding the words of the Refinement in her head—and keeping a tight metaphysical grip on Otto’s spirit. The farmboy collapsed into a panting heap, his arms and legs twitching.
“Someone fetch him water, get him sitting up and stretching his legs out. Don’t let him drink too much, but don’t let him fall asleep,” she yelled to the crowd that had assembled outside the door.
Once Otto’s soul had been held, protesting, it seemed to her, in place, she no longer had to stand still and keep herself and her knife in contact with his skin. In fact, had she done so, Aelis was not entirely certain she would’ve remained conscious. By holding the spell as one small hard point of brightness in her mind, she could move and perform other basic tasks without losing herself to the demands the magic was making of her. She hadn’t been idle.
She’d gotten the fire built up and irons wedged deep into it, elevated Otto’s head and legs, and located a bottle of vile-smelling hooch that one or both of the brothers had kept hidden inside the thatch of their roof; it was mostly clear, it smelled strong enough to strip paint from wood, and she had splashed half of it into a cauldron she’d plopped right into the fire, there being no hook or spit set over their mean hearth.
Otto was still alive, thanks to the Refinement, but the blade rising and falling in his guts with his breath was doing him no good. Her barked orders—and her blood-smeared hands and heavy, rune-written black dagger—had cleared out the crowd, or at least kept them from pushing inside the cottage. She heard shrieking and crying, but pushed it away, thankful for the amount of light the loose thatch and uncovered windows let in.
With her case of instruments open beside her on the floor, her hands splashed with the most powerful astringent she had, strips of cloth, and three needles of varying sizes threaded and stuck against one of the cloths wound around the upper part of her forearm, Aelis finally paused for a deep breath.
“I’m sorry, Otto,” she muttered, then seized the handle of the knife and pulled it free in one smooth motion, while the big farmer moaned and wheezed and blood burbled from behind the long—and, Aelis realized with a thud in her stomach—serrated blade.
* * *
Aelis spent the next hour with her fingers buried in Otto’s steaming innards, making the minutest of movements, pausing to take a reading through her Anatomist’s Dagger, it seemed to her, every half a minute.
She should’ve been performing this surgery in a room of stone and marble that an Invoker had swept clean with controlled fire just before her entry. The instruments should’ve been silver and steel and meticulously cleaned by Conjured servants. If she were truly lucky, an Illusionist would’ve been on hand to create images in a large mirrored surface of exactly what she was doing.
That was all, of course, little more than a dream. Perhaps if one of the Crowns or a leading member of the Estates House were to require the ministrations of one of the best Anatomists of the Lyceum, and they spared no expense, such luxuries would’ve been possible.
Otto could’ve used any or all of them, though. Instead, she had her dagger, her case of instruments, and her own two hands.
Which are as good as those of any Anatomist currently living, she told herself. Still, trying to tie knots with the smallest movements of the tiniest scissors and tweezers she owned, with her own hands slippery with blood and gore, was proving more than slightly difficult. She’d never performed surgery of this complexity before, and there was a significant chance that she was going to have to fix one or more mistakes she was making at that very moment at a later date.
When Otto’s healthier and has had the time to replace the blood he’s lost and recover his strength, she told herself. When, she repeated firmly, as if to ward off the if—and it was indeed a large and lurking if—that her mind wanted to supply.
There were limits to what Otto’s body and spirit could stand, and to her own endurance, physical and mental, and they were all drawing close, if not already passed. When she made the last knot that closed the ugly wound in his stomach, Aelis wanted to collapse right there on the dirt floor and sleep.
Caring for the wounded immediately after performing surgery is likely to be just as important as the operation itself, she remembered, words from some textbook or lecture she didn’t, at the moment, want to recall too closely. “And there is no one else here to do it,” she muttered.
Finally, as her senses came back to her, she was conscious that a crowd—the entire village, give or take—had gathered outside the cottage. Bruce, Rus, and a few other men had kept the curious villagers back from the door. She made a mental note to thank them all later, but for now, it seemed likely that more imperious action was called for.
Wearily, she pushed herself to her feet and went outside. Emilie, tall and fierce-looking in the front rank of the crowd, was holding a crying and terrified Pips at her side, but could keep her back no more. The girl took off like a quarrel loosed from an arbalest’s string, slipped past the knot of men blocking the entrance to her home, and nearly bowled Aelis over in her rush. She tried to grab at the girl’s sleeve but she made it into the doorway and saw the spectacle of her uncle lying on the floor, blood drying over his entire torso, Aelis’s dirty instruments, the bright red line of the wound. Phillipa let loose a scream of anger and frustration.
Aelis moved to the girl’s side, intending to comfort her, when Phillipa whirled on her, her jaw fiercely clenched, eyes narrowed.
“Who did this? You’re going to find who did it and punish ’em, aren’t you? That’s your job, isn’t it, Warden?”
The entire village could not have failed to hear what the girl shouted in that tiny room, and so she was bound by the moment, and Aelis knew it.
“Yes, Phillipa,” she answered, trying to steady her voice with what remained of her energy. “It is my job, as you’ve said. And I mean to do it,” she added, pitching her voice louder for everyone to hear. “But first I must see to Otto’s health.” She extended one hand to Pips, and the girl moved to take it before seeing the blood and gore still smeared on it and recoiling away.
Aelis sighed and waved her out the door, following with commands in her voice. “I’m going to need the strongest, steadiest men of the village to carry a litter,” she began. And, to her surprise, the people of Lone Pine snapped right to every task she set without so much as a complaint.
12
THE TRACKER
When Otto was settled in one of the ground-floor rooms of the inn and she had washed her hands with water as scalding as she could stand, Aelis finally lowered her chin to her chest. For a moment, just one, she allowed herself to feel all the fear and panic she’d kept at bay while dealing with Otto’s injury. The residue of the emotions was too dim and distant to do her any real harm, and as the immediate threat was past, she could allow herself these few seconds.
A ripple of fear and a shiver passed down her arms, which she only just seemed to realize were bare. She felt the trailing threads where she’d ripped the sleeves off to bind Otto’s wound, and suddenly remembered that she was in the kitchen of the inn, a far too public space to go to pieces, even briefly. She walled the impulse away and looked up to find Martin watching her closely.
“Are you well, Warden?” The lankier of the two inkeepers moved rather awkwardly, with his right arm oddly bent and stiff, his shoulder slightly humped. But the kitchen was his domain, and though he did appear awkward to Aelis’s eyes at first, as he bustled about, looking at this or that bit of progress—rising dough, a pot on the stove, the heat and height of the fire, the woodpile—he moved with total assurance.
“As well as I’ll need to be, Martin, thank you,” she said, summoning as much steadiness as she could into her voice.
“I think that’s true of most of us,” he murmured as he reached for a ladle hanging from a peg fixed to the wall above the woodstove. “Lone Pine folk’ll be shaken, except maybe those who were in the fighting. But the sheep and the goats still need tending, and the barley and the oats don’t stop growing, either.”
She watched him drag the ladle through whatever he had cooking in the pot and hold up a bit of it to his nose to smell. He began rummaging around in some wooden bowls he had set on a long table behind him. She could see the thousands of knife blows the wood had taken, could smell the scents of bread and meat and broth that hung perpetually in the air in the room.
“When’s the last time Lone Pine had to build a scaffold?” she muttered aloud, uncertain why she said it. Martin heard her, though, and only raised an eyebrow at her.
“Can’t say it’s happened since we’ve been here, but that’s only four years. Not a lot of crime done around here, you know? Not much for folks to steal, little reason to kill…” He frowned as he set his ladle down on a spoon rest on the table behind him. “I don’t think they’ll look kindly on fratricide, though.”
“We don’t know that’s what happened,” Aelis said, a quick reflex that was perhaps too quick, given the disbelieving look Martin fixed on her. “And I remind you that Otto is still alive.”
“Elmo’d hardly be the first who brought the war home with him and couldn’t find a way to lose it,” Martin said, leaning against his table. “And I’m sure I’m not the only one thinking this. Folk had been waiting for this to happen for years.”
“Please,” Aelis said, “don’t speak as if anything has been determined. At least, not to me. I can’t control what you’ll say to anyone else, and I won’t try—but I have to remain as objective as I can about it, and I cannot be seen to favor anyone’s theory.”
Martin looked a bit stung, and sheepishly turned his eyes down to his boots. Aelis sighed and headed for the door to the taproom, patting him lightly on the shoulder as she passed. “Thank you for the use of your kitchen fire to clean myself off. And for all the help, and the food, you and Rus have provided me. Like as not I’d have starved by now if it weren’t for the two of you.” She gestured to the heavy iron pot she’d boiled water in to wash her hands and arms. “You’re going to want to throw that water out and scour the pot well. I’ll help if I can.”
“You’ve got bigger tasks to worry you, Warden. I know,” Martin said. Aelis leaned against the wall of the kitchen for a moment, letting herself feel her own weariness. She watched Martin move around the kitchen, navigating it by touch and memory, reaching for tools without looking for them, composed and in control of himself and his environment in a way she hadn’t seen him before. Questions bloomed in her mind, but she pushed them away, straightened her back, and went out to the taproom. Without meeting the eyes of any of the Thorns, who were gathered in their corner still, she went straight to Otto’s room. Inside she found Rus, his face fallen and grim, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, along with Pips, who was clutching her uncle’s hand, and Emilie, who was standing over him with one hand on his forehead.
“That man is my patient,” Aelis snapped. “Keep your hands to yourself.”
“He was my friend first,” Emilie answered absently, “and I had medical training in my home, and in the army, I am perfectly able to…”
Aelis hadn’t the time or the patience. Perhaps it was fortunate for the taller woman that she hadn’t much power left in her either, but she had some, and she used it. With her hand wrapped around the hilt of her still-scabbarded sword, she called a ward into place around Otto’s bed. Emilie’s hands were thrown immediately aside and she looked to Aelis in shock.
“What did you do? What witchery is this?”
Ignoring the woman’s angry words and shocked face, Aelis addressed Rus, speaking through clenched teeth.
“Get this woman out of this room, and do not allow her back in, or I will bind her for an assize,” she grated.
“You’ll not bind me for anything,” Emilie spat, taking a half step toward Aelis before Rus interposed himself. The innkeep wasn’t an imposing man—in fact Emilie was taller than him by a handsbreadth or better—but he murmured to her, carefully took her arms in his hands, and guided her toward the door.
Aelis turned to Otto—and to Pips, who was rubbing her hands and eyeing her back suspiciously.
“What’d you do that for?” the girl asked, a sniffle in her voice. “She was only trying to help.”
“Phillipa,” Aelis said as she put one hand onto the bedstead in order to lean on it without looking like she was leaning on it. “Until I know how your uncle is doing, I can’t have anyone trying to help in any way I did not ask them to. I need to help him get better, and I hope to be able to ask him questions.”
“Was Uncle Elmo that did it,” Phillipa said with a sigh. “I saw the knife, it was that big saw-tooth thing, yeah? Uncle Otto always told him to get rid of it, trade it away or somethin’, that it was no good for farmer’s work. Elmo said he would one day. Then Otto would say ‘not today, though,’ and Elmo would stalk off.”
The girl looked down at her uncle’s prostrate form and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “It was scary, when he got all lost in his head, but I never thought he’d—”
Putting it into words made the girl’s resolve crumble and brought on a fresh wave of tears. Aelis was half tempted to turn for the door and ask Rus or Emilie to deal with her. Calming grief-stricken children was hardly in her purview.
And yet, she was one of the people of Lone Pine, and that made her Aelis’s responsibility. The Warden laid one hand on the back of the girl’s neck and pulled her close.
