Dorna reached over and slapped Qown’s shoulder. “Go on, priest. I wasn’t there for this part. Tell us what happened next.”
Qown’s Turn. Barsine apartment, Atrine, Jorat, Quur.
As Ninavis and Brother Qown carried Count Janel away from the ambush, Qown pondered how much lighter she was than he expected. She took up so much space in a room when awake it was easy to forget her true size.
They had climbed several flights and made their way several buildings over from the ambush site, when they heard shouts and a scream behind them.
Ninavis looked over her shoulder. “Sounds like someone just found the bodies.”
“Stop.”
“We can’t,” Ninavis said. “They’ll chase soon.”
Brother Qown stopped, anyway, and with him, Janel. Ninavis began speaking in a language Brother Qown didn’t understand. He assumed Ninavis was engaging in a graphic description of his ancestry.
“What are you doing?”
“I can’t see,” Brother Qown said. “We left the lantern behind us. I’m worried we’re going to trip over a bench and fall twenty feet. Aren’t you?”
“There’s spill light—”
Brother Qown summoned up a small ball of yellow light. From a distance, it looked like a candle, bright enough to light their passage.
She shook her head. “Hell of a risk. If people notice, they’re not going to stop to make sure you’re Blood of Joras first.” She took the opportunity to reposition her grip on the belt and scabbard holding the giant sheathed Theranon family sword.1 She ended up slinging the whole belt and scabbard over one shoulder, cross-body. “Let’s go.” Her face looked pale, her expression grim. With the fighting over, the shakes were setting in.
She stooped to pick Janel up by the shoulders, while Brother Qown grabbed Janel’s feet. Ninavis and Brother Qown ignored the blood covering them both—Janel’s blood, mostly.
The apartment proved close, although Brother Qown would have missed it without Ninavis’s navigation. To the priest, one windowless corridor looked much the same as any other. But when they reached one—the right one—Ninavis whispered for them to set down their wounded charge. She pulled an iron key from her pocket, unlocked the rooftop gate, and let them inside. Together, they carried the Count of Tolamer into the apartment that had been set aside for the Baron of Barsine.
Brother Qown paid no attention to the decorations or furnishings, except to look for what he needed. That table there. Yes. “Help me put her down on this. On her stomach.”
“Do you need hot water? I can start a fire—”
“Do it. We don’t have much time.” Brother Qown gestured, and the small magical candlelight became a dozen candles, enough to illuminate the room.
Ninavis gaped, mouth open.
“Set a fire,” Brother Qown snapped. “Boil water. Who knows what poison these men used on their bolts?”
“Leumites don’t use poison.”
Brother Qown exhaled, relieved.
“But they do like to dip their arrowheads into dung.”
Something inside him tightened. He bowed his head. “Selanol grant me light.” Brother Qown tried to reach Illumination.
Ninavis stared at him.
He straightened as he pulled a small knife from his belt. “Well? Help me or find Dorna so she can help, but I don’t have time for you to get over your superstitions.”
Ninavis flushed. Her jaw worked, and then she turned, storming to the hearth. She began piling logs from the wood box into the fireplace.
Brother Qown began cutting Janel’s clothing away from the wound. It would have been easier—alas, so many things would have been easier—in the west, where most women wore midriff-baring rasigi. The Joratese preferred full tunics, and those with bosoms tight-laced a reed-strengthened bodice over their chests. It made cutting the fabric away difficult. Frustrated, Qown sliced open the bodice ties and ripped the garment open.
Brother Qown grimaced at the revealed wound.
Ninavis had snapped off the bolt shaft so the injury wouldn’t tear open as they ran, but now he had little choice. The moment he removed the rest of the bolt, the clotted black blood would rip loose, and the bleeding would resume.
Ninavis made a loud noise with something. Something metallic. A cook pot. He looked up.
“So was that because of the curse too?” she asked.
Brother Qown ground his teeth. “I’m trying to concentrate.”
“It was never just her using magic, was it—”
Brother Qown slammed his hand down against the table. “I don’t have time for this! She doesn’t have time for this. Be quiet!”
He didn’t wait on her response. He returned his attention to Janel and once more attempted to shift his vision. He could do this. He had to do this.
This time, Ninavis didn’t interrupt.
Count Janel’s aura appeared unlike any Qown had ever seen before. It twisted and blurred, folding in on itself like smoke buffeted by swirling zephyrs.
An aura that scoffed at his attempts to twist her body back into health.
Brother Qown tried again.
Again, he failed.
He couldn’t heal her. Panic twisted his heart.
Janel had paled from blood loss and shock. If Brother Qown couldn’t find a way to heal her …
If he did nothing, she’d die. The bolt had missed her spine but not her liver. She’d die from that alone, assuming infection and sepsis didn’t claim her.
Brother Qown fished in his robe and pulled out a small metal box.
“What’s that?” Ninavis asked. She must have been watching him the whole time.
“Desperation,” he said. The priest opened the box. Inside rested a nest of small twigs and feather down. A perfect blue robin’s egg sat in the middle.
Well, it looked like a robin’s egg.
The thin clay had been painted to look like the real thing, as beautiful and fragile.
Brother Qown smashed it to the tile floor, shattering it into countless pieces. “Father Zajhera, I need your help!”
The second stretched out into an eternity. A thousand worries gave birth to a thousand more.
Had the magic failed? Had something happened to Father Zajhera? Was he too busy?
Then the wall began to glow. Its luminance condensed, flowed into shapes and fractals circling each other while the center fell back into nothingness.
“What the—” Ninavis started to say.
Brother Qown remembered to breathe.
“Thank Selanol.”
He’d known Father Zajhera since he was a boy. Father Zajhera, tall and thin and wise. The man who had offered his parents another option besides House D’Lorus, when their son’s mage gift first manifested. He wore his white cloud-curl hair matted into thick strands, held back by bamboo clips, and dressed in robes the same as Qown’s. He looked like a simple monk rather than the leader of an entire religion.
Zajhera read the situation with a glance, dismissed Ninavis as unimportant, and rushed to Brother Qown’s side. “How long ago did this happen?”
“A half hour, perhaps? She’s lost so much blood, and yet she rebuffs my efforts to heal her.”
“I’m not at all surprised.” Father Zajhera pulled the agolé from his shoulders and set it aside. “Let us begin.”