“You’re in no condition to…” He let his words trail off as Marsh glanced down at Aisha, their eyes meeting in a look of complete understanding. Both of them had caught the flicker of Ilias’s eyes toward one corner of the room.
They moved as one, Scruffknuckle getting under the medic’s feet as the man turned to follow. His soft “oof” as he stumbled was enough to have them hasten their steps, Aisha taking Marsh’s hand.
“Dis one,” she said, stopping beside a blanket carefully spread on the floor.
The woman lying on it had seen more than one battle, but the one just gone through looked like it would be her last. Marsh caught Aisha’s eye.
“We got this?” she asked, and the little girl nodded, dropping to her knees beside the injured soldier.
“Got it,” she said as Marsh knelt beside her.
When she saw how far the poison had spread, Marsh muttered a silent prayer to the Deeps and then drew the shadows into the wound, hoping Roeglin had remembered to bring something for her to wrap the poison in after she pulled it out.
At one point, the poison threatened to evade the shadows’ grasp, and Marsh remembered what Ilias had said about the poison not being part of the shadows. The thought almost made the stuff slip from her grasp, but she reminded herself that even if it wasn’t related to the shadows, it could still be drawn into them. After that, her grip firmed, and she pulled both shadow and poison from the wound, relieved to find a pile of rags waiting. Burying the first ball of shadows and poison in the cloth, Marsh tried pulling the shadows free and leaving the poison behind instead of dismissing the shadows entirely.
It worked, and she used them to remove the rest of it. As she pulled the last of it, she realized Aisha had been working right alongside her, and the child’s healing magic was changing the color of the life force infusing the damaged parts of the soldier’s body. Once the poison was gone, those parts brightened and glowed more strongly.
When she was done, Marsh touched Aisha on the shoulder and watched the green fade from the child’s eyes. The little girl glared at her.
“Not done,” she declared, and Master Ilias cleared his throat.
“Medic Calaidon can take over here. There are others who need your help.”
Aisha hesitated, looking from the master medic to the woman standing beside him. When she spoke, it was to her and not her master. She waved a hand at the soldier.
“Can fix?” she asked, and the woman nodded, her eyes wide with awe.
“Can fix,” she replied, sounding stunned.
“No lie?” the child prodded, as though lying adults were part of her everyday life.
The medic looked shocked.
“No. No lie.”
“Good,” Aisha told her, then looked at Ilias. “Who next?”
To Marsh’s surprise, the medic pointed at her.
“Marsh,” he said. “She’s looking pale.”
Marsh frowned; she wasn’t feeling pale. She glanced down at Aisha as the child glanced up.
“Marsh fine. Next.”
Marsh heard a snort and turned to see Roeglin hiding a smile with his hand. Aisha kept her eyes firmly fixed on Ilias. The medic sighed.
“This way.”
The next wound wasn’t as bad, and Marsh found she didn’t get as tired working next to Aisha, even though the child leaned on her during much of the process. They were straightening up from the fourth patient when Marsh noticed Aisha wrapping her hand in the fur of Scruffknuckle’s neck while the girl reached for her hand.
As their palms touched, she felt a soft rush of energy and came to an abrupt halt.
“You healing me, Aysh?”
The child kept walking, trying to tow Marsh toward the next patient.
“Uh-uh.”
“Aysh…” Marsh growled, and the child stopped with a heartfelt sigh. “Well?”
Aisha turned and gave her a wide-eyed look of innocence.
“Yes, Marsh?”
“Did you just heal me?”
Aisha’s eyes widened farther, gleaming a more intense blue than before.
“Nooooo…”
Tamlin started snickering, and Roeglin swiftly followed. Even Ilias managed a chuckle.
“Busted, Aysh,” Tamlin said, then added, “and I think Scruffknuckle needs a rest.”
Alarm spread across Aisha’s features, and she turned to the pup.
“Scruffy! You ‘kay?”
The krypthund gave a snort wuff and licked her nose. Aisha looked down at him, scowling.
“No, you not. Go sleep.”
The puppy whined, and Aisha stamped her foot.
“Sleep! Now!”
Marsh caught herself wondering where she’d learned that tone of voice.
Have you listened to yourself at bedtime? Roeglin asked, keeping the comment between them.
I’m not that bad, Marsh thought, startled by the finality in the child’s tones.
Roeglin gave a short bark of laughter.
Wanna bet?
Whatever Marsh might have said in reply to that was lost when Aisha turned to Master Ilias.
“Have to wait,” she said. “I need Scruffy.”
She looked up, her hand tightening on Marsh’s.
“Marsh needs Scruffy.”
Marsh frowned.
“What does she mean?”
Tamlin groaned.
“The Rock Wizards taught her how healing magic worked,” he said. “They showed her that she could draw energy from the life around her when she needed it.”
He gave his sister a stern look.
“They taught her not to take too much, and that the creatures who lend her their strength need to replenish their own strength over time.” He paused, then added, “Sometimes she forgets to check.”
“The rock mages know healing?” Marsh asked, surprised since none of the ones she’d traveled with had known how.
“No,” Aisha said, scowling, but it was clear she was lying again.
Master Ilias sighed.
“Thank you,” he told them, his eyes darting to another of the forms lying on a blanket. “Perhaps you can come back later?”
“I can do another couple before I fall over,” Marsh said, sliding a sly look at Tamlin.
It was true. The boy and Brigitte had come back with food, and she’d eaten between patients, feeling her strength slowly return.
“I don’t want you falling over,” Roeglin said as Captain Envermet returned and added his own vote.
“We need your group to move out in the morning, so don’t overdo it.”
Marsh turned away from the pair of them.
“How many will you lose if I don’t?”
The medic didn’t reply straight away but looked over his shoulder at Roeglin. Marsh cleared her throat and tapped him on the chest with her forefinger.
“How. Many?”
“I…” Again his eyes darted past her.
Marsh turned, looking down at one of the soldiers, who was watching the exchange, his face carefully blank. She turned back to Ilias, Roeglin, and Envermet.
“We’re not going until I can’t help anyone else.”
Envermet turned his head, looking at two men waiting by the door.
“Ceres, Valglin, remove the shadow mistress from the infirmary,” he said. Marsh realized he’d come prepared to do exactly that.
“I don’t think so,” she said, and stretched out a hand, pulling shadows from the edges of the room and dropping them over Envermet’s head.
She’d forgotten he was a shadow mage too. Even as the shadows flowed over him, she felt them twist and turn in her hand as the shadow captain wrenched some of them from her control.
“I got dis,” Aisha said, watching her struggle.
Before Marsh fully understood what the child intended, Aisha had crouched and laid her hand on the stone floor, her eyes going as black as pitch.
“Aisha! No!”
Tamlin’s cry coincided with Master Envermet’s shout of surp
rise, and the guards on the other side of the room started running. It took Marsh several heartbeats to realize what the child was doing, but when she did, she reached down and grabbed her, lifting her from the floor, pulling her to her chest, and spinning in a circle.
“Stop!” she said in case the distraction wasn’t enough. “Please, stop!”
When she’d come full circle, she halted, relieved to see that the stone stretching up to encase the shadow captain had stopped at mid-thigh. Aisha was completely unrepentant.
“Not done yet,” she said and wriggled out of Marsh’s arms as a large form leapt through the door, knocking the two guards to the floor as it bounded over to Marsh.
Marsh groaned, but the hoshkat’s sudden arrival was accompanied by her appearance in her head. Concern washed over her as Mordan landed before her and turned to interpose herself between Marsh and the rest of the room. The big kat’s soft snarl stroked the air around them.
Once she was in position, the kat flicked her ears toward Marsh, a sense of confusion following.
Where was the threat?
The guards picked themselves up from the floor and looked at Envermet. He held up his hand and glared at Marsh.
“I think someone’s mentioned the examples you set?”
Marsh didn’t dignify that with an answer. Of course, someone had. He was standing right beside the shadow captain, and Monsieur Gravine had spoken of it as well. To her. No one had said a word to Aisha about following those examples.
She’s five, Roeglin muttered inside her head, but he didn’t move, and Marsh knew why.
With Mordanlenoowar standing guard, not even Roeglin would dare to intervene. The kat tilted her head to eye the shadow mage, and Roeglin raised his hands and backed up a step. Ilias did the same when the beast turned her head toward him.
You are in so much shit that I may never be able to dig you out. Roeglin told her. Master Envermet is furious!
Marsh ignored him and turned to Aisha.
“We are in a lot of trouble,” she said, then pointed at the injured soldier. “Help me fix him?”
“Yes. Dan help, too.”
Oh, Dan would, would she?
The big kat backed up slowly so Aisha could lay her hand on her haunches.
Marsh raised her eyebrows. Well, apparently she would.
“We need to do this fast,” she said, but Master Envermet interrupted, his voice full of sarcastic grace.
“Oh, no. By all means, take your time. I’m not going anywhere.” He gestured at the stone encasing his legs. “I’ll be right here when you’re done.”
Beyond him, Brigitte bit her lip, until Marsh wasn’t sure if the journeyman was stifling a smile or worried about the frustration in the captain’s tones.
Big trouble, Roeglin repeated, and Marsh resisted the urge to stick out her tongue.
As though she’d heard him, Aisha shifted to look toward him and held up one hand, carefully folding down her fingers with all the concentration of a five-year-old doing something new and trying to get it right. When she was done, she held up her perfectly arranged middle digit, accompanying it with a perfectly tailored glare.
“Not. Done,” she told him, firmly, wagging it back and forth in a gesture Marsh didn’t remember teaching her, and then she turned back to the soldier.
Marsh went to kneel beside the child. The soldier was staring at the pair of them, his gaze one of apprehension mingled with faint hope.
“Thank you,” he said, but Marsh was already focusing on what she needed to do to ensure his survival.
This time, she was aware of Aisha’s small hand covering her own as she worked.
“Dan has lots of healing,” the child said.
As if to confirm it, the kat sent a sense of concern for the welfare of her pride. She was happy to do what was needed to ensure the health of all of its members. When they were ready, the hunt could continue.
This time, when Marsh drew the poison from the wound, Tamlin was waiting with a cloth to contain it. Marsh looked up at Ilias.
“Where next?”
He didn’t argue, just pointed, and Marsh and Aisha continued to the next patient. They didn’t stop until Ilias looked around the room and shrugged.
“I think that’s everyone,” the medic said.
He paused, casting a nervous glance toward where Envermet and Roeglin were standing in the middle of the room.
“Thank you.”
Marsh gave him a small smile.
“We’re sorry for the fuss,” she began, but Mordanlenoowar gave a curious growl and turned her head to survey the patients around them.
As Marsh watched her, the big kat lowered her head and drew a series of gentle, snuffing breaths before pacing purposefully to one of the soldiers lying on the floor. Again, she gave a sound of curiosity and nudged the soldier’s arm.
Marsh stared, receiving the kat’s thought that this one too smelled of darkness.
“Truly?”
The hoshkat lifted her lips in a silent hiss, and the man before her drew a sharp breath. Marsh crossed to him, Aisha hurrying in her wake. His gaze flicked from the kat to her to the child, and back to the kat again. Marsh’s voice drew his attention back.
“You got clawed?”
Again, he looked up at Mordan, and, again she raised her lips in a silent snarl. He looked quickly at Marsh.
“Bit.”
Behind her, Ilias gasped.
Being bitten was worse?
Marsh didn’t stop to ask, she just searched for what he’d been hiding from the medics. A chunk had been taken out of his hand and the wound was flaring red, its edges starting to blacken and flake. Marsh guessed it had been missed in the midst of the other injuries that had already started to heal—and that the man had then hidden it so as to keep the healers from worrying about something they could do nothing to heal. He cast a guilty look at Ilias.
As well he might, Marsh thought, but the soldier was trying to explain.
“Some circled back. One got past.”
Ilias looked horrified, and Roeglin’s eyes sheeted momentarily in white.
Oh.
His eyes cleared and he pointed at three other men.
“Have the kat check them as well. See if there are others carrying injuries they haven’t admitted to yet.”
One of the men shifted uneasily on his blanket.
“Start with that one.” He looked at Marsh. “You know your eyes shift between green and black when you do this, don’t you?”
Marsh shrugged.
How in all the Deeps was she supposed to know that? She wasn’t exactly looking in a mirror.
“And watch out. The venom works differently.”
Marsh nodded and took the man’s wrist in her hands. She was aware of Mordan settling down beside them and Aisha twining her fingers in the kat’s thick, soft fur. A frown marred the child’s small face as she studied the injury, and then she looked at Marsh.
“No touch,” she said, and Marsh was wondering how the child knew when Aisha added, “Not yet.”
“Sure, whatever you say, kiddo.” Marsh sat back and looked at the soldier, seeing how the colors of his life force faded and crisped around threads of black that were slowly snaking their way up the veins in his forearm. This time there was more than just the ebon webbing. As Marsh studied him, she saw a faint patina of darkness creeping over his skin.
The venom had spread farther than just the crisp blackness already visible on his hand. The life force sheathing his skin had started to fade all the way up his forearm, and a lichen-like discoloration was visible past the wrist she’d grabbed. So much for not touching.
Well, it was too late for regrets. Roeglin could groan all he liked, but she couldn’t change the past. What was done was done.
Idiot.
“Use your outside voice,” Marsh murmured, gathering shadows and smoothing them over the soldier’s skin.
“Idiot.”
“Oui, thanks for that.”
&nb
sp; She figured the venom was a bit like lichen, so it should soak up shadow the same way lichen soaked up water. Once it did that, she should be able to coax it off the skin and onto—she looked around—onto a cloth or a… She thought about it.
“I need a shroom,” she said out loud. “A brown nose, or something with the same kind of flesh.”
“Yes,” Aisha said, and her small voice hissed with effort.
She glanced up at Marsh.
“Show me how.”
It made Marsh wish she’d had time to pursue Roeglin’s idea that she might have some kind of mental magic, but she thought he might be mistaken.
“Ro?”
“I’ll link you. Aisha, watch Marsh. Can you see?”
“Uh huh. Oh. No need shadow!”
That last came out as a squeak of delight, and Marsh waited, hoping the child would explain. When she didn’t, Marsh continued to soak the venom with shadow. She hoped Tamlin would hurry, and heard running footsteps.
“Got it.”
“Put it beside his arm.”
As soon as Tamlin had done as she’d asked, Marsh focused on moving the shadow-soaked venom from the soldier’s skin to the shroom, but it didn’t move. The shadow came out of it and moved to settle over the mushroom’s flesh, but the venom stayed exactly where it was. Marsh stared at it in consternation.
“No. Like dis.” Marsh watched as the lively green of Aisha’s power swept over the man’s skin, burning the lichen-like growth marking his flesh in a swift burst of heat and light. The man gave a short, sharp gasp of pain, then relaxed.
“You killed him,” Tamlin said, and Aisha stuck out her tongue.
“Did not.” She looked up at Marsh. “All done.”
All done, huh? Marsh had her doubts about that, but when she looked, she saw that Aisha was right. She was all done. Not a smidgen of venom remained to mar the man’s wound, and there wasn’t any sign of the tracery of black that had been running through his veins.
She remembered the flare of heat and studied the bright threads of life running beneath the soldier’s skin. They seemed okay, and the man’s life-force looked a bit brighter than it had been before.
“Dis one,” Aisha said, and Marsh realized the girl had already gone to crouch beside the next man.
Before she could do or say anything to stop her, the child had touched the man on the head. Her eyes flared bright emerald, and he gave a short, sharp cry before losing consciousness. Aisha looked down at him as though studying the effects of what she’d done, and then she glanced at the kat.
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