He leaned back and saw Tabita coming down the last steps behind them. “Tabita, are you a good shot?”
“Yes, Mr. Lee,” the girl responded promptly, pale eyes hard.
He pulled his pistol from his sash and handed it to her. “Go with her. I’ll follow at a distance.”
Shironne walked toward the mews, the other girl’s free hand lightly under her elbow. They disappeared into the shadows.
When Eli took a step in that direction, Mikael stopped him. “No, Eli. Go out to the street and figure out exactly where we are. Street names, what inn this is. Then I want the two of you to head back to the Fortress and fetch elder Deborah with a coach. Wake her up. She’ll come if you tell her I asked for her.”
For a second, he thought Eli intended to argue with him again, his eyes on the stable.
“She’s hurt, Eli,” Mikael said. “She needs a doctor. You’re not going to be able to sneak her back into the barracks.”
Eli’s eyes met his, fear in his mind. “How badly?”
He didn’t actually know but had a vague sense from Shironne that it was bad. “She needs a doctor. Go get one.”
Gabriel went, sprinting back up the close and out to the street. Two would be better than one. “Go, Eli. I’ll take care of them.”
After a frustrated half step toward the stable, Eli turned and ran to catch up with his cousin.
Mikael walked down toward the mews. Tabita strode out of the shadows to meet him at the wide door.
“She’s hurt,” the girl said in her efficient voice, offering him his pistol back. “Someone dumped her in an empty stall when they were done with her. Shironne doesn’t want to move her just yet.”
“I’ve sent the boys for an infirmarian.”
The girl nodded, her emotions numbed and cold. She clutched her arms around herself now. “I gave her your coat.”
“Fine. Can you guard the entrance? I’ll go see if I can help Shironne move her. Call out if anyone comes near. Anyone.”
She agreed and stepped into the shadowed overhang of the stable’s roof. Mikael walked inside, giving his eyes a minute to adjust to the greater dimness. Only one lantern lit the entire stable. Horses protested his presence there with faint snorts and a whinny, probably knowing he was as perturbed to be in their presence as they were to have him there.
“Wait.” Shironne’s voice drifted out of one of the stalls.
Mikael stopped in the aisle between the messy stalls, giving her time. She called him a moment later and he went to the stall where she crouched over a huddled form. There was room for him to step around the girl, but not much more.
“I can’t untie these ropes,” Shironne said, “and I don’t really know if I should.”
The other girl lay on her side in filthy straw, mostly covered with his coat. Her arms were bound above her head, obscuring any view of her face. Mikael carefully stepped over the girl to get closer to the ropes that bound her arms. Her mind cried in anguish, reminding him oddly of Perrin’s guilt-ridden torment the week before. He wished calm at her, and he felt her fear abate, but only slightly.
She was a tall girl, certainly. Her blond hair straggled about her head. It looked as if a swath had been cut away at one point.
Shironne sat in the hay behind the girl, one hand touching the girl’s bare back. She breathed slowly, clearly struggling to maintain her calm despite the girl’s fear beating around her. Mikael wished calm at her and she relaxed. His hold over her overwhelmed her physical contact with Maria.
“Her left shoulder,” Shironne said quietly then, “is out of joint.”
Wonderful. “It’s going to hurt when I untie it, Maria.”
Maria didn’t say anything in response, but her jaw clenched.
“Mikael,” Shironne said, “the right forearm has a cracked bone.”
Mikael crouched down next to the girl’s bound wrists. “Listen to me, Maria. No matter how I do it, this is going to hurt.”
“Do it fast, then,” the girl whispered.
He could sense her gathering her will, a good sign. She cried in anguish inside, but she hadn’t given up. He put one knee on either side of her hands and clamped them between his knees to keep them as still as he could while he untied the rope. She groaned.
He worked at the thick knot, eliciting a few strangled moans. “I’ve never dislocated a shoulder,” he remarked as he got the first loop unraveled. “I’ve heard it hurts like hell.”
“It does,” she said. “Ah, Hel’s tits.”
He wasn’t going to censure her for cursing. Not the way she’d been treated. He untied the second loop and began pulling the short end of the rope from around Maria’s wrists. She whimpered when he jogged her left arm. He finally removed the last of the rope, still holding her hands with his knees. “Now I’m going to roll you onto your back, which is going to be even worse.”
He shifted the girl slowly to lay her on her back in the straw, trying to keep her oddly deformed shoulder immobile. Maria whimpered again, her teeth gritted together, but didn’t cry out.
“We need to keep this shoulder in the same place until Elder Deborah gets here,” he told her. “You don’t want me trying to fix this.”
Now that she lay on her back, he could see that she’d been beaten, badly. Whoever had done it hadn’t intended to kill her, only cause pain. Her nose was likely broken, a mask of blood obscured her lower face, and bruising already showed around her eyes and cheek. Her lip was split, or at least he thought it was.
Shironne wished at him to move away, and he rose, stepping over the prone girl. Shironne held a hand to Maria’s skin, keeping in contact with her. “I’m going to check her,” she said to Maria then, sliding the hand under his coat toward the girl’s belly. “Be still and try to stay calm. Don’t think. Count in your head.”
Mikael reinforced her wish for quiet.
For a moment Shironne remained motionless. “She’s all right,” she pronounced then. “I don’t think you’ll lose her.”
Maria broke into tears then, her relief washing around them like a wave.
Chapter 34
* * *
JAKOB HAD BEEN on duty and came with Deborah, leaving the infirmary under the nominal watch of one of the retired infirmarians until they returned. The two sixteens had been unable to give her a description of the girl’s injuries, so she’d packed up enough supplies to bandage a dozen girls and carried her satchel out to the waiting coach in the darkness.
Deborah had left the two boys with orders to stay in the infirmary. They’d only get in the way if they went with her. Fortunately, they had an address to give the driver.
What they’d failed to mention was that Mikael was there.
“All it wants is this,” she said in an exasperated tone as he helped her down from the coach. “Have you decided what you’re going to tell the council of elders in the morning? And about this? Because this is flying in the face of what they expected of you, Mikael.”
He looked sheepish. “Ma’am, I knew Shironne had left the Fortress. I couldn’t leave her out here alone.”
“Just . . . go wait by the carriage,” she ordered, not wanting to review his story in this smelly locale.
Mikael went, and she and Jakob made their way into a dimly lit stable that reeked of manure. Another brown waited outside a stall—Tabita, one of the yeargroup’s Second. The girl’s shoulders slumped when she saw Deborah’s uniform with the infirmarian’s trim markings across its chest.
When she glanced into the stall, Shironne was rising from her cramped spot next to the injured girl. Her short-cropped hair was tousled, a couple of bits of hay caught in it. Under normal circumstances, Shironne would hate that. She seemed near tears, but Deborah suspected it was relief, instead.
“I’m glad it’s you,” Shironne said, and gave her a quick description of the girl’s injuries, including the startling news that the girl was pregnant.
“You two go on back to the coach, and wait with Mr. Lee,” she ordered,
and after a moment, Tabita led Shironne away, leaving them alone with the injured girl.
Some children rarely came to the infirmary, and Maria was one of those, so she was familiar to Deborah mostly through her foster mother’s words. A beautiful girl, and clearly in pain, but not the sort who would like to be coddled. Deborah settled for a professional manner. Together, she and Jakob reset the girl’s shoulder and got her bandaged up, arm and shoulder splinted. Once they’d gotten some laudanum in her, they carried her carefully to the coach and settled her on one of the benches, still pathetically swathed in one of Mikael’s old coats. She and Jakob sat on either side, keeping Maria between them. The other three squeezed onto the opposite bench, Shironne in the middle.
“You are aware there’s no chance of hiding what happened, right?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Tabita responded softly.
“Why then didn’t you get help at the outset?”
Tabita didn’t answer. In the carriage’s lights, her pale face gave nothing away.
The coach began rolling out of the close, slower than normal at her request. It would take a good half-hour at least to reach the Fortress and another to carry Maria down to the infirmary. She and Jakob would be up half the night. Maria slumped more heavily against her, so Deborah carefully worked an arm about her shoulders to keep her still.
“Why are you here, Mikael?” she asked instead. He’d willingly involved himself with a handful of children. She only hoped he had a decent explanation.
“I had to go after Shironne, ma’am.” There was no hesitation in his voice.
“And how did you know she was outside the Fortress?”
“I woke up and I was freezing, ma’am. I wanted my overcoat.”
She stared. “Is that your answer?”
“Well, I realized I didn’t have any reason to be that cold,” he continued. “I decided she must be the one who was.”
“And why didn’t you think to ask for help, Mikael?”
“Ma’am, I didn’t exactly know where Shironne was, or why. I didn’t know if she was alone. All I knew was she was outside the Fortress, she was cold and she wanted an overcoat. I had no idea about Maria at that point.”
Children made her feel exceptionally old and stodgy. “Can I safely assume that the other three members of her yeargroup involved now know you have a relationship of sorts with her?”
Mikael tried a half shrug. “I didn’t say anything to them, ma’am.”
Deborah shook her head. He wouldn’t have needed to. “Are you ever going to learn to think before you do, dear?”
“At this rate, ma’am, I don’t think it’s too likely.”
“Idiot,” Shironne said, “you shouldn’t admit it.”
He took her nearer hand in his. If he said something to her in his mind, Deborah didn’t know.
* * *
Shironne was tired to dropping, and Maria’s slide into drugged slumber hadn’t helped. Mikael managed to keep her awake, though, his mind repeatedly stating his distress that she’d left the safe walls of the Fortress. Someone wants you, someone who’ll pay for you.
“Stop it,” she hissed at him. His worry went away for a time, then circled back to irritate her again. Yes, it might be true, but worrying about that was like fearing the stars would fall on her—nothing to be done about it.
When they reached the Fortress, Jakob carried Maria down the steps, heading to the infirmary. Her drugged sleepiness went with them, and Shironne felt more awake.
“We’d better get down there,” Mikael told her. “Deborah wants to lecture us.”
They would all be in trouble come the morning. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to involve you.”
He took her hand, pulling her in the direction of the side stairwell. “I realize that. Are you ever going to learn to think before you do?”
“Of course not.”
“She was cold,” Tabita said from nearby, “and you felt cold, sir? How?”
Shironne had forgotten Tabita was still with them. She thought back quickly and tried to think of whether she’d said anything embarrassing. “Elder Deborah said it’s easy for our minds to fool our bodies into thinking things, if that makes sense. So, when Mr. Lee has a dream, you’re afraid even though you don’t have a reason to be, right?”
First stair step, Mikael thought at her.
Shironne felt for the rail and stepped down.
“I know he can do it,” Tabita said quietly. “I just didn’t know you could. How did you do it?”
Shironne concentrated on getting down the grand stair. She’d lost count of the steps.
Four more.
“She can,” Mikael told the other girl. “That’s the most either I or she is allowed to say.”
Tabita’s mind began clicking away, her quick logic filling in all the holes, no doubt. “I am sorry for involving you, Shironne.”
“Next time you know the right thing to do,” Mikael answered instead, “you and Gabriel shouldn’t give in to Eli’s coercion.”
Tabita’s chagrin flared about her with a touch of defensiveness. “He’s our First.”
“And there’s a reason he has two Seconds. To keep him from doing something this stupid.”
“I know, sir,” she said quietly. “He just . . .”
“He didn’t want his father to find out,” Mikael said then. “He wanted to fix it before it got that far. I know what that’s like.”
* * *
Deborah settled the girl in one of the back rooms with Jakob’s help. She’d slept through the entire ordeal.
“I’m going to go get rid of our children,” she told Jakob, who had begun to clean the girl’s face.
He waved her away. “You were up all night last night, Deborah. Go to bed afterward and let us handle this.”
She watched him carefully dabbing at the drugged girl’s nose. Jakob’s young daughter had come to help and sat near her father, holding the basin for him. Deborah left them, knowing they would take care of Maria.
Her miscreants had gathered on the bunks near the back room, four figures in brown and one in black. Mikael held Shironne’s hand, not even flinching when Deborah glanced his way. No point in hiding it at this juncture, was there?
“At this point I don’t want to hear why,” Deborah said. “I want to know if any of you know who did this to her.”
“There was a boy, ma’am,” Tabita started.
“He didn’t do this to her,” Shironne said quickly. “I did get that from her. It was someone else. She went to meet her . . . lover, only someone else showed up and took her.”
Tabita raised her eyes, chin lifting. “Ma’am, I’ve suspected for some time that she was sneaking out of the Fortress. I chose not to report it.”
“Tabita had told me,” Gabriel added, “so it’s just as much my fault, ma’am.”
“I’m the First,” Eli said quietly. “It was my responsibility, my decision. I instructed the others not to discuss it with our sponsors. They did as I asked, elder.”
“Shironne? Do you intend to confess as well?”
“I knew,” she said. “Everyone in the yeargroup did, ma’am, more or less.”
Well, at least they’re hanging together.
“Mr. Lee?” Deborah asked then.
His eyebrows rose. “I actually knew nothing about this. I literally stumbled onto it tonight.”
“Will wonders never cease?” At least Mikael hadn’t been involved with a bunch of children. “Tomorrow morning, Mr. Lee is expected to meet with the elders regarding a separate issue. I suggest that you all be prepared to face them then as well.”
Tabita’s pale face turned grim, but she nodded. The boys glanced at each other but did the same.
“I’m going to have to be there anyway, aren’t I?” Shironne asked.
“Wait until you’re summoned, dear.”
Shironne’s face stilled, going expressionless as if she listened to an inner voice.
Deborah suspected she kne
w exactly whose voice that was. I’m too tired to deal with this. “I want you to go back to your barracks. I do not want you to talk to the other members of your yeargroup about this. Do you understand?”
They all agreed, rising to leave when she bid them and heading toward the infirmary entry, all save Mikael.
“Eli, please wait.” she said.
Eli stopped, shoulders stiff. He turned slowly and gazed at her, an apprehensive expression on his face. She noticed how very much he resembled his father. “As First of this yeargroup,” she asked, “what should you be doing right now?”
“I should be advising my sponsors of the incident, ma’am. And then our parents.”
She didn’t know how he felt at the moment but, looking at his strained face, she had a good idea. “If you would prefer, I can talk to your parents.”
“No, thank you, ma’am,” he said firmly. “I’ll do it myself.”
With that, he went on his way, leaving her with only Mikael on her hands. “And you are hanging around because?”
His lips pressed tight. “Ma’am, if you knew who was trying to purchase Shironne, who paid Faralis to send her to that sanitarium, would you tell me?”
“If I knew,” she said cautiously, “and it was something I was allowed to discuss with you, I would.” That was the most she could tell him, given the restrictions placed on her by the elders and Oathbreakers of the Family.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, then walked away without asking any more.
* * *
On the way back to their own quarters, Tabita had stopped at the mess to pick up a pot of tea. She was, she claimed, resigned to not getting any sleep. “Even if I lie down, I won’t sleep.”
Shironne settled with Tabita in the commons area on one of the couches and wasn’t entirely surprised when a few of the others came out of the barracks room to talk to them—the trio. The girls had waited up to find out where Tabita and Shironne had gone.
“What did Maria say to you?” Tabita asked Shironne in a quiet voice.
Shironne frowned, folding the warm cup in her gloved fingers. They weren’t supposed to discuss any of this, were they? “I don’t think I can tell you. Because I work in the infirmary, I can’t talk about it . . . since she’s a patient there now. Like Elder Deborah can’t talk about anyone.”
In Dreaming Bound Page 28