by Sally Slater
“Is it that bad?” Braeden asked.
Sam slapped her palm to her forehead. “You can’t see your shoulder properly, can you? I’m no doctor, but I’d wager my right hand your wound is infected.” She touched his brow again and hissed. His skin was so hot he had actually scalded the back of her hand. “Braeden, you need a doctor.”
Braeden gingerly sat up, using his good arm to shift his weight. “Sam, I appreciate your concern, but you need to stop treating me like I’m human. I’m not, and I never have been. This—illness—or whatever it is will pass on its own accord.”
Sam bit her lip. “Will you at least let me help you wash it? It can’t be good to leave dirt in an open wound, even for you.”
He shrugged his shoulders, and then winced. She gave him a knowing look. “If you must,” he conceded.
“Thank you,” she said, rolling off the bed. “I’ll be back with supplies in a minute. Don’t move from this spot.”
Sam filled a small basin with water in the privy and retrieved a spare tunic and salve from her pack. She soaked the tunic in the water and then returned to Braeden’s side. She lay his hand in her lap, gently wiping away the dried blood and debris on his forearm. “Does this feel okay?”
Braeden nodded, his lids heavy. “Feels good.”
Sam edged her ministrations higher, closer to the site of the wound. “Still okay?” she asked.
“Fine,” Braeden said, gritting his teeth. Beads of sweat formed on his upper lip.
“I’m going to clean your shoulder now,” she told him. He nodded, squeezing his eyes shut.
Sam held the wet cloth just above the bite marks. “Here goes,” she said, and pressed the fabric directly to the wound. The instant she touched his skin, Braeden’s eyes rolled up into his head and he fell backward against the bed.
“Braeden!” she cried out, thinking for a panicked moment that he was dead. But she saw the ragged rise and fall of his chest, his breathing labored. Still, he was breathing. She almost sobbed in relief. “Idiot man,” she said to his passed-out form. “I’m getting Tristan. If you die while I’m gone, I swear I’ll bring you back from the grave and kill you myself.”
With a last, backward look at Braeden, Sam dashed down the hall and pounded on Tristan’s door. He answered almost immediately. “He’s bad, Tristan,” she said, swallowing down the lump in her throat. “He’s out cold, and I think his wound might be infected.”
“What wound?” Tristan asked sharply.
“H-his shoulder,” Sam said, looking down at her feet. “He was bitten during last night’s battle. He didn’t want me to tell you.”
Tristan made a visible effort to contain his anger. “We’ll discuss your lack of judgment later,” he said. “For now, take me to him.”
Though he’d been slow to act before, Tristan now moved as though he were keenly aware of the urgency of the situation, shoving Sam aside and marching over to Braeden’s prone body straightaway. He checked Braeden’s pulse, listened to his heart, and inspected his wounded arm, careful to not touch the wound itself. “It’s bad,” Tristan confirmed.
Sam threw up her hands. “I told you! Now what? If he dies, I’ll—”
Tristan eased off the pallet and came to stand in front of her, placing his large hand on the top of her head. “Let’s not worry till we have to. His vitals are still very strong.”
“But his skin is so hot. I’ve never felt the like.”
“Sam, we can’t judge Braeden by the same standards we would ourselves.”
“He’s still human!”
Tristan dropped his hand from her head, stepping back to look at her. “He’s human where it matters, Sam. I want you to know I believe that. But you can’t deny the demon’s blood that flows through his veins. I don’t think Braeden himself fully understands how it affects him.”
“So what do we do? Sit around and pray to the Gods he doesn’t die?”
“Of course not. I don’t believe in leaving a man’s life up to fate. I’ll find a doctor, one who is used to dealing with the unusual.” He headed for the door. “I’ll leave now.”
“And me?” Sam called after him. “What do I do while you’re gone?”
“Pray to the Gods he doesn’t die.” Tristan sniffed the air and wrinkled his nose. “And bathe. For all our sakes.”
Bathing seemed so self-indulgent, but Tristan was right that there wasn’t much Sam could do for Braeden. She knew how to clean and bandage a basic wound, but she knew nothing of treating an infection, and she didn’t dare touch his shoulder again, not after the last time. She had no choice but to wait for Tristan to come back with a doctor.
To her great displeasure, Tristan didn’t return till dusk, with none other than the Uriel surgeon in tow. “You brought him?” she asked incredulously. “But he’s with the Uriel!”
“Lovely to see you again, too,” the surgeon said. He set down a large physician’s bag by Braeden’s pallet. “For the record, I’m not ‘with’ the Uriel—I work with the Uriel.”
“There’s a distinction?” Sam asked, eying him skeptically.
“Aye, it means they pay my bills, but the only loyalties I owe are to my oaths of medicine.”
“Don’t rush to conclusions,” Tristan said. “I assure you, he’s the best man for the job.”
The surgeon began unpacking his bag, dumping out the conical mouth gag and three long needles. “It’s true,” he said. “The only other doctor in Pirama is barely fit to treat a sick dog.” He withdrew a magnifying lens, hooked retractors, a bottle of leeches and a hand fan. “Besides, I studied demon anatomy. Your Paladin thought that might come in handy.”
Sam ignored the smug look on Tristan’s face and said, “I wasn’t aware that demon anatomy was a study.”
“It isn’t officially. But when more and more of my patients started coming in with injuries from demons, my curiosity was piqued. I’ve conducted quite a few autopsies on demon corpses over the course of the last year.”
Sam scowled. “Braeden’s not a corpse yet, in case you haven’t noticed.”
The surgeon returned her scowl with his own. “I’ve yet to mistake a live patient for a dead one. Now, move aside.” He sat down on the edge of the pallet and grabbed Braeden’s wrist, feeling for his pulse. “He’s severely overheated, but his pulse is steady. How long has he been out?”
Tristan looked to her. “Sam?”
“A few hours now,” she said. “I touched his shoulder, there, where the skin’s all black, and he collapsed.”
“Did you try to rouse him?” the surgeon asked.
She’d been too nervous to touch Braeden again after he’d lost consciousness—she hadn’t wanted to make things worse. “No, should I have?”
“No harm done,” the surgeon said. “I’ll try now.” He slipped his arm underneath the armpit of Braeden’s good shoulder and wrapped another arm around his lower back, carefully moving him into a seated position. The surgeon snapped his fingers at Sam. “Grab that paper fan. He needs cool air.”
Sam jumped to obey him. “Like this?”
“Good.” He tapped on Braeden’s chest with his knuckles, eliciting a hollow sound. “Braeden,” he called softly. “Braeden, can you hear me?”
Braeden’s eyes fluttered open. Sam exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “What happened?” he croaked. His gaze swung to the surgeon. “What are you doing here?”
“According to Sam, here, you passed out,” the surgeon said. “You’re quite ill, lad.”
“Impossible. I don’t get sick.”
“On a scale of one to ten, where one is no pain and ten is excruciating, how would you say you feel?”
“Three,” Braeden said.
The surgeon lifted an eyebrow.
“Maybe four.”
“So we can agree, then, that your body is out of balance with its normal state?”
Braeden huffed. “I suppose.”
“Then I would characterize you as ill, and I’m consid
ered somewhat of an expert on the matter.” The surgeon rubbed his chin, as though an interesting thought had just occurred to him. “Why do you say you don’t get sick?”
“I’ve never been sick. Never.”
Sam stopped her fanning. “But Braeden, your wound was inflicted by a demon.”
Braeden scoffed. “You think that matters for someone like me?”
“Explain your shoulder, then.”
“What of it?”
Tristan held up his hands. “Stop, you two. Sam, you should know better than to rile up a sick patient.”
“Sorry,” she muttered. She hated quarreling with Braeden, but his obstinacy was enough to make her scream.
The surgeon ignored them both. “I’ll take a look at that shoulder now.” He grasped Braeden by the ankles and shifted him so that his legs hung over the side of the pallet. Braeden’s face darkened; Sam could tell he didn’t appreciate the indignity of being manhandled.
The surgeon held up the magnifying lens to Braeden’s shoulder, peering through the glass for several minutes. “The tissue around the wound is dead or dying,” he said, drawing back. “I’ll need to remove it surgically.”
“His whole arm?” Sam asked, her heart in her throat. She flashed back to the Uriel infirmary, the horrible crunch of metal sawing through bone still fresh in her mind.
“Don’t get overexcited,” the surgeon said, retrieving a razor-thin scalpel and placing it on the bedside table. “I just need to excise the topmost layer of skin around the shoulder area. It’s a relatively minor surgery.”
Braeden’s crimson eyes went wide. “You mean to remove my tattoo?”
The surgeon blinked. “It will be necessary to remove part of it, aye.”
“You can’t.”
The surgeon crossed his arms. “The tissue death will spread to the rest of your arm if I don’t. So unless you prefer I amputate the entire limb—”
Braeden gripped the surgeon by the wrists, hard enough to make him flinch. “Keep your knives away from my tattoo, surgeon.”
The surgeon let out a puff of air through his nose, rubbing his bruised wrists. “Do you want to die, boy?”
Braeden’s mouth tightened. “If you remove my tattoo, you’ll wish me dead. Trust me on that.” He ran the tips of his fingers along the complicated glyphs that curled around his bicep. “I can’t be allowed to live without it.”
Sam and Tristan looked at each other with silent questions. What did Braeden mean? He’d never said anything about his tattoo before. And to think he knew all her secrets.
Tristan glanced at the surgeon. “Asa, would you leave us for a moment?”
He gave a terse nod. “I’ll wait outside.”
Once the door was shut behind him, Tristan took the surgeon’s place by Braeden’s side. “This better not be some nascent fit of vanity. A bit of pretty ink isn’t worth your life.”
Braeden’s lip curled into a sneer. “What use have I for vanity?”
Sam winced at the rancor in his voice. She would never have accused Braeden of vanity, even in jest—he wore his self-loathing on his sleeve—though she still hoped his opposition to surgery was unfounded. “Help us understand,” she pleaded with him. “Why would you risk dying for a tattoo?”
“It’s more than a tattoo,” Braeden said heavily. “It’s a seal. This ‘pretty ink,’ as you call it, is the only barrier that keeps my demonic side in check. It’s what allows me to function as human—or maintain a semblance of humanity, as the case may be. Without it, I’m no better than any other demon.” He smiled without humor. “I’d rather risk infection as a human, than die with a Paladin sword through my neck, and the Gods only know how many more deaths to my name.”
Tristan angled his head to better view the tattoo. “Have you always had it?”
Braeden shook his head. “Not always, no, though I was little more than a child when I was marked.”
“And before?”
Braeden squeezed his lids shut, as though the memory pained him. “I was a monster,” he whispered. “I had no control, no way to repress my violent tendencies. I have no idea how many innocents died at my hand—it could have been tens or hundreds or thousands. I would lose myself for hours, days, weeks, and wake from my madness with no recollection of what I did.”
Tristan compressed his lips into a thin line. “And a design on your skin is what holds this violence at bay?”
Braeden lifted his chin. “It’s no mere design. It’s a ward.”
Sam let out a small gasp, and Tristan was silent for several moments. “Who alive knows warding?” he asked in an awed voice.
“The man who raised me,” Braeden said, his crimson eyes gone distant. “He took me from an orphanage across the Rheic Ocean, in a city called Yemara. I called him Master.”
Sam pictured Braeden as a small child, his strange, crimson eyes overlarge in his thin face. He must have been so lonely, so afraid. “Your master, why did he come for you?” she asked.
Braeden hesitated before answering. “He came for me because he knew he could help me, in a manner of speaking. And that I could help him in return.”
“Was he good to you?” Sam asked, because she had to know.
Again, Braeden hesitated. “In his own way, yes. If he was not kind, he was never cruel, not to me.” His fingers danced over his tattooed skin. “And whatever else he did, my master saved me from myself. I could forgive him everything for that.”
She drew in a long, shaky breath. “You won’t part with your tattoo, will you?”
Braeden held her gaze. “Not for anything.”
Sam pulled her gaze from his, focusing on a spot on the carpet. Tears welled up behind her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. Damn Braeden for making her tear up in front of Tristan. She didn’t cry on principle.
“Your mind is made up?” Tristan asked.
Braeden nodded. “If I’m going to die, I want to die as myself.”
“Understood,” Tristan said, rising from the bed. “I’ll inform Asa.”
A moment after Tristan stepped outside, the surgeon reentered the room, muttering under his breath about foolish boys and their foolish pride. “Boy!” he barked. “Let me make it clear that I don’t agree with your decision.”
“If I drop dead, no one will blame you,” Braeden said dryly.
The surgeon grunted his displeasure. “I’ll do what I can without touching your tattoo. Your Paladin says it’s off limits to my scalpel.”
“Thank you,” Braeden said, twisting his torso to give better access to his injured arm. He sat there stoically as the surgeon poked and prodded. The surgeon pinched a large abscess near Braeden’s elbow and squeezed till a thick green discharge squirted from the head of the swelling. Feeling sick to her stomach, Sam had to look away while the surgeon drained several more abscesses.
After an hour or so of these ministrations, the surgeon stood and wiped his hands with a small towel. “I’ve done all I can. We’ll just have to hope that the necrotic tissue will heal itself. Drink plenty of water and stay abed for the next few days. If you aren’t improved by then, we’ll broach the topic of your tattoo again.” He began repacking his medical bag.
Tristan rummaged through his coin purse and extracted two gold sovereigns. “For your time.”
“Generous of you,” the surgeon said, dropping the coins into the front pouch of his bag. “Oh, before I go, Adelard asked me to give this to you.” He withdrew a sealed enveloped from the front pouch and handed it to Tristan. “I’ll be on my way, then.” Slinging his bag over his shoulder, he tipped his head and exited the room.
As soon as he was gone, Tristan tore open the envelope and scanned the contents of the letter. His mouth dropped open. “Well, I’ll be.”
“What is it?” Sam asked.
Tristan folded and unfolded the letter, reading it again. “It’s an invitation to dinner,” he said. “From Sander Branimir himself.”
Sam gaped at him. None of the Uriel behaved like they
were supposed to. “Let me see the letter,” she demanded. He handed it over wordlessly.
Sam stared at the words, written in a neat, flowing script. She read aloud, for Braeden’s benefit.
Paladin Lyons,
I have been informed that you are traveling through the west to find us. Welcome back.
“Welcome back?” she asked. “What does that mean?”
“I was born out West,” Tristan said. “Though how he knows that I haven’t the faintest idea. Keep reading.”
As it so happens, I am also interested in finding you. If your travels take you through Luca, it would be my pleasure to host you for dinner at our encampment. Your trainees are invited as well, should you wish to bring them.
I know of you, Paladin Lyons, but you likely know little of me. Know this: though perhaps you think us at odds, I am a man of my word, and a man of honor. No harm by my hand or my men’s will befall you in Luca. I give you my solemn promise.
It is high time we meet, don’t you think?
Awaiting your response,
Sander Branimir
Braeden gave a low whistle which turned into a racking cough. “Sorry,” he said between gasps of air. When his coughing eased, he asked, “Will you accept the invitation?”
“Accept?” Sam sputtered. “You can’t be serious.”
Tristan leaned against the wall by the door. “I might. It’s a good opportunity.”
“But we could be walking straight into a trap!”
“I don’t think so,” Tristan said, stroking the stubble on his chin. “I don’t know this Sander’s motives, nor do I know the Uriel’s. The High Commander believes they intend to supplant us, but we have no proof of that yet. Without having met the man, it’s hard to assess how much of a threat Sander and his Uriel present. Regardless, if any of the Uriel threaten or attack us, they might as well declare war on all the Paladins. No sane man would do that lightly.”