Blurred Weaponry (Saints of the Void, Book 1)

by Michael Valdez

Chapter 16

  Needles and Traps

  Saan-Hu had sewn stitches into Dastou once before, after a training accident eighteen months prior. He decided to have the minor procedure done in an operating theater, with students watching. First, the Saint had the theater prepped, making the necessary arrangements by radio on his way into the Medical Plaza. Once that was done, he called for certain students to be removed from class while he bled down the south hall and made a mess for the custodians. He knew Saan, a private at the time, was not in another class for an hour, so his final instructions were for someone to find her and get her to be his nurse. She was shocked by this, as her grades during that first half of her first year were abysmal.

  Dastou took no anesthetic, and told Saan to work slowly and allow him time to address the audience of confused students watching from the glass-encased balcony. When she began, so did his instruction toward the onlookers, starting from the description of how she was cleaning the wound, checking for unseen injuries, and making sure there was no internal bleeding. This was a “situation blind” test for her, and she was allowed to use only what she would be carrying in a backpack on the field. While Saan progressed, Dastou also described the pain he was in, how his vision blurred at certain points, what he needed to do to help a medic get things done and not further injure himself. He actually slipped in a joke about using hypnotism on the patient if possible – a Stitch while getting stitches. Saan did not laugh.

  None of the medical information was new to the students. They ranged from people at the end of their first years to the end of their second, trainees that would long ago have learned how to sew up a wound. Dastou never told her, but Saan figured out the two real reasons for the impromptu performance in the operating theater. Primarily it was to make sure she could perform under sudden pressure and scrutiny. She excelled, as expected by Dastou. Secondly, and less obviously, it was an important event to solidify him not only as the Academy’s headmaster, but also their military commander and just a man, not a god. His blood, pain, and sweat revealed that he was vulnerable in the same ways as anyone else, yet his ability to speak clearly and teach while being put back together with no anesthetic showed that he was not be underestimated.

  It was a brilliant bit of manipulation on his part and, also as expected, the students who watched the procedure talked about it to others, who further spread the strange incident around. It was all for the sake of lowering the expectations around him as any sort of savior – the students needed to know that all their training was necessary, that it would help them, their fellow classmates, and anyone else who needed them in the future. Advanced medical training volunteers nearly doubled the semester after Dastou’s show; again, this was anticipated.

  Something else that came of this, which Saan has yet to tell anyone other than Nes, was her re-dedication to her own future. Unable to return to her isolationist clan upon taking her uncle’s advice and going with Dastou to the Academy, she was abjectly miserable for months. Half her grades were fails, the other half going in that direction. Saan felt afloat, alone – until the afternoon in the operating theater. Once they were done, Saan had stayed to clean up while everyone left and Dastou changed in the prep room. Somehow he already had another version of his standard leather jacket and another white shirt on, both clean and neat, when he came into the theater space to speak to her.

  “You doing alright, Saan-Hu?” Dastou had asked, using the formal version of her first name.

  “Yes, sir. Did I perform as needed?”

  “Heh, how proper. You did great. That much pressure at that unexpected an instance, most students would have shirked away. But you have had more medical training than almost anyone else in the school.”

  “I see. Because I’m not from a city, I’m an isolationist. Was.” She spoke with no confidence, something she’d gotten used to at the time.

  “Were,” Dastou agreed with a sigh. “You had to learn how to perform a suture when you were nine, I think – that’s the normal age. I wouldn’t be surprised if you learned a year or two earlier. Add to that the fact that you’ve got little to no fear of blood thanks to that, and to hunting. For almost everyone here it’s the opposite. Every instance they had to deal with anything more than a minor cut, the Social Cypher took over, hypnotized them or someone nearby into performance.”

  “Is that why you called on me, my experience?”

  “Partly. I needed someone who would do it right, sure, but I needed you specifically.”

  “Why?” Saan asked plaintively.

  “Because you’re pathetic right now,” Dastou said bluntly. “Your grades are so awful I should kick you to the curb, and you seem to have no desire to improve. But where would you be if not here? You definitely can’t go back home, which I have to apologize for.”

  “If I am so terrible, why not kick me out, why not let me out into the wind?” Saan lost her temper with those words and stated the question with too much of the half-hidden lonely fury she’d kept in check thus far at the Academy.

  The Saint smiled at her, and it melted her bitterness enough that didn’t try and punch him then and there after finding her fist already balled up. Her emotions were as thin as water tension, and anything seemed to set her in one temperamental direction or another.

  “Because I don’t want to, and I’m in charge,” Dastou said. “I want you to do better, like you did today. Honestly, I don’t give a shit about whether you ever go back to your clan. You’re here now, and I need you more than they ever could. I don’t recruit those who I don’t see a future for, this Academy is too small for that. Your classes for the day are suspended, get some rest and calm your nerves.”

  Dastou walked away, gingerly thanks to a fresh suture, exited the operating theater, and left Saan to think. In the present, in the monastery, she realized for the first time that her uncle did the same thing – leaving her alone to think about a change in her state of mind – at the time in her life when she began to not think of the last Saint as an unclean monstrosity.

  Students of a highly advanced, absurdly exclusive school once watched her put a needle and medical string into Dastou. Today it was Trenna Geil and Nes. The latter was fine with it, merely looking restless after the first minute, wanting to get out of this place. The former, though, was pacing anxiously, hands clasped in prayer the whole time. Each footstep made a slurping noise thanks to the water that had spread out from wherever Dastou escaped from, water which she had run in to go get the Saint while she fought Nes.

  Saan shook her head, trying not to think about being in a fight to the death with her best friend. She was also having trouble not thinking about the myriad possible terrible scenarios happening at the embassy. Dastou blacked out right after telling them all that their mobile headquarters, the Caravan, was likely stolen. He woke up now, mere seconds after the first bit of the suture was in place.

  “I’m not decent,” Dastou groaned.

  He’d been soaking wet and at risk of hypothermia when they all met up, and when he was out cold Saan and Nes put a medical tarp on a wall bench, undressed him down to his underwear quickly, and placed him on his back to be examined. Nes then went back to the forge to start a fire in the hearth and set the clothes flat on a slab to dry, grabbing the weapons and supplies they left behind the coal mound. While he did that, poked at the Saint to find the rough cut she was now taking care of.

  “You’re close enough to decent,” Nes said. “We left you your underwear. Thanks for wearing one of my sister’s designs by the way.”

  Dastou was wearing undershorts with a subtle violet and blue pattern that was not something you would get shopping in Cypher controlled areas.

  “She does good work,” Dastou said of Nes’ sister. “I still have to have her put together something more casual for me.”

  “You’re gonna give her a big head about her sewing skills.”

  “As long as she doesn’t raise her prices.”

  “Do not move, sir,” Saan warned whe
n she felt him shift. “My own sewing skills are in practice at the moment.”

  Saan felt a small punch on her shoulder as Nes congratulated her on the joke as if she’d never made one before. She glared at him while holding the needle still, and he put on a mask of exaggerated pride. She went back to her task.

  “What are you doing over there, Saan?” asked Dastou finally. “Can’t feel a thing right now and I’m having a little trouble not slurring my words, therefore painkillers are in play.”

  “You have a gash in your side and I am stitching it closed. I do not know how you failed to notice it.”

  “I got slammed around a lot. There’s three or four times I could have gotten that cut and been too pumped full of adrenaline to pay attention to it.”

  “You’re covered in bruises,” Nes added. “Three or four times is probably an understatement.”

  Saan was only passively paying attention to the conversation. Instead, her thoughts drifted to what she was reminded of after finding out Trenna was forced to kill one of her own to survive, of how much of a crime that was for most isolationists. How was it different to leave people you were in command of behind? If those people were dead now by Vaiss’ hand, had she not essentially committed a terrible, selfish act by leaving them alone?

  Someone had said something, someone else responded, and then she was brought out of her internal reverie of shame.

  “As if you had a choice,” Dastou said, predicting his nurse-by-default’s musings.

  Saan was annoyed that he guessed her thoughts, but she had also been told that she needed to be better at keeping her worst moods from her face – she apparently still needed to practice that.

  Saan focused on sewing flesh as she spoke. “And were you not the one who always taught us that there are choices aplenty, no matter how terrible the situation?”

  “That’s damn near our credo,” Nes piped in. “But black void did we all ever fuck up.”

  “Hmph,” Saan grunted in agreement.

  “To address my back-talking corporal,” Dastou said, “our credo doesn’t matter this time. We got tricked, all of us. Choice was taken away. Trap after trap. Like drugged rats in a maze, we kept stumbling into walls. Funny thing is we would have done not a thing differently if we knew a little more. I wouldn’t have, anyway.”

  Trenna was no longer pacing as quickly, but still walked around behind Nes. Her nervousness lowered greatly once the Saint was awake.

  Nes thought for a moment, then snorted. “Not much different for me either. Someone was coming for us, and something was gonna come to a head, despite, uh...”

  “Not knowing what has come to a head?” Dastou finished.

  “Basically. The only other choices we could have made were to do absolutely nothing at every opportunity. And we’re pretty bad at that. Plus, this Citizen Vess guy...”

  “Vaiss,” Dastou corrected. Nes waved it away.

  “Vaiss, can use hypnotism way, way better than you can.”

  “Ass.”

  Saan grunted when Dastou shifted slightly again. He lifted his fingers up in apology and stayed still.

  “But you see my point,” Dastou said. “Even if we dodged what we were being sent into, it would’ve hit us soon enough. Everything that led us here seems to have been a long-incoming set up.”

  Trenna stopped near Nes, and Saan glanced over in time to see the young woman put her hands down at her sides. Saan could guess what made her slow down: the girl had shot one of her friends to death earlier and may have been thinking, this whole time, about whether she could have done something differently, maybe spared the man’s life.

  “What, you too?” Dastou asked as his eyes moved to Trenna. She looked down at him. “I’m surrounded by the pitiful. You realize that you were never meant to die at the bombing, right?”

  “I...” Trenna started. “I wasn’t?”

  “Pfft, no. How else could we have found your camp without being able to interrogate anyone else? You were the most interesting thing that happened during the attack, and that got our attention. You led us here because you wanted to help, and I would get caught because that’s they underestimated me. It was very well orchestrated.”

  “So this Vaiss guy can also read you like a book,” Nes said. “We’re dead, you know that right?”

  Dastou chuckled. “You are incredibly bad at pretending to be scared.”

  Nes laughed, too. “Yeah, yeah. Apparently crazy rubs off.”

  “It tends to. I’ll add more to this by going farther back because everything culminating in today’s events started with us being in Blackbrick to begin with. Therefore, there’s one final piece of business we have to take care of before leaving the city.”

  “Tryst,” Saan deduced, then peeked at Dastou’s face to see him nod before continuing. “I personally received and previewed Councilor Jandal Tryst’s invitation to the meeting that brought us here before sending it over to you. This started with that invitation.”

  “Well, darn,” Nes said while scratching his temple. “Tryst and Vaiss are working together? We’ve been so busy I hadn’t had time to think about that.”

  “Maybe the councilor was hypnotized?” Trenna wondered. “Like Mr. Dastou said my people all were.”

  “Maybe, maybe not” Dastou said. “Milser didn’t seem hypnotized at all when I met him, though. He wasn’t being repetitive or overly stiff. Overly aggressive, that’s all. Tryst also seemed in control.”

  Nes rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that guy is a first class dick. He was probably just paid off. That would be easier than hypnotism, too – ‘strong suggestions can lead to behavioral anomalies’ according to the very basics of Stitch work.”

  “Speaking of stitches, I am nearly done,” Saan said.

  The room went quiet as Saan dabbed some numbing disinfectant on the wound after the two-inch-long suture was complete. She put her needle and remaining opened medical thread into a small red hazardous waste tube before spraying the wound and surrounding area with a disinfectant that also served as a sort of “skin glue,” which would keep the wound from opening outside of heavy exertion. She held her hand out and Nes put a bandage into her palm from his own pack, which she told him to have ready. Saan removed wax from the adhesive strips, set the gauze-padded bandage down onto the wound with some pressure, then traced the edges of the small square dressing with a finger to make sure the adhesive stuck to the skin properly.

  While Saan balled up the wax strips from the bandage and threw them aside, Dastou started to get off the narrow bench on his own. He winced, moved slowly, and then Nes took him by the elbow to get him to his feet.

  “Thanks,” Dastou said to Nes. “Now, can you make me less naked?”

  “Oh! Right, yeah,” Nes responded.

  Saan helped Dastou stay standing while Nes ran off to retrieve the Saint’s clothes. Then she and Trenna helped him leave, squeezing past the half-a-meter of space made at the entry gap by moving the spools back a touch while Dastou was out like a light. They got past the fasshim corpse as Nes came up behind them, and they walked to the area where Saan cut out the map, before the stairs leading down to the cathedral floor. They stopped there for a moment.

  “Everything is at least mostly dry now,” Nes said, “but the boots are pretty moist.”

  “Better than soaking wet,” said the Saint.

  Dastou dressed himself slowly with Saan constantly helping him stay balanced. Dastou put on his pants, shirt, and socks, and held the boots in one hand. His stomach growled as he finished up and he gave a sheepish grin.

  “Sir, did you eat anything today?” Saan asked.

  “No, I was too busy.” Dastou patted his stomach as if to calm it down. “Getting outsmarted does build an appetite, though. Now, would someone mind helping limp down these stairs?”

  ~~~~