Night of the Highland Dragon

by Isabel Cooper

  “I’ve always been healthy,” said Judith, and she wondered if he’d have even made the remark a year ago. “And lucky.”

  He didn’t regard her with the same knowledge Hamilton did—and she couldn’t entirely curse that knowledge either, as she suspected it was the only thing that had finally persuaded Hamilton to try the experiment in the end—but McKendry’s gaze wasn’t credulous either. There is more here than meets the eye, it said. I won’t press you to tell me what, but don’t get the notion that I’m blind.

  “We’ll pray your luck holds, then,” he said at last. “Hamilton?”

  “I’m as ready as I’m likely to be, given the need for haste.” Stepping over to Judith’s side, Hamilton passed a porcelain basin—incongruously robin’s-egg blue—and a complicated mechanism of tubes and syringes over to the doctor. He himself held a thick strip of white cloth. “Your arm, my lady?”

  Holding up her arm for the tourniquet felt odd—not the constriction itself, though it was mildly uncomfortable, but the passive obedience of the gesture.

  Hamilton didn’t look at Judith’s face as he readied the syringe. If she existed beyond her vein, he clearly didn’t know it just then—or he didn’t want to think about it. McKendry’s face was worried and present; Hamilton had retreated into the abstract details of procedure. Judith was “patient A” in his mind, or perhaps “the donor,” not the woman he’d chatted with at the harvest festival or the inexplicable creature who’d appeared on his doorstep. That was necessary.

  Knowing a bit about doctors, Judith thought it might even have been necessary had she been just a mortal woman.

  She felt a pinch as the syringe’s needle went into her arm. The pain was almost nothing. But as the needle slipped farther past the skin and she felt the metal inside her body, Judith’s stomach clenched. She looked away from her arm and the tube that was now attached to it, back up at the ceiling.

  “Good,” said Hamilton. “Now the recipient.”

  Before she’d looked away, she’d seen that the tube fed into a metal column, and that another tube ran out, with a needle on its end. When McKendry and Hamilton walked around to the other side, she knew they were inserting the needle into William’s arm. That was good; that was progress. The needle in her arm wiggled a little in the process. Her insides lurched.

  She had been lucky. And healthy. The closest she’d come to surgery was having bullets dug out of her after battles. Usually she’d been drunk then. The last time had been by a stream in the colonies, Pennsylvania or Delaware or one of those states with hills, and if the man with the knife had been trained anywhere, it hadn’t been in medical school. That should have been worse.

  But there’d been the shock of battle to keep her numb then, not to mention rotgut. Besides, the damage there had already been done. Clawing foreign bodies away from her flesh was instinct. Lying quietly while someone inserted them, Judith found, went against every natural inclination. She wanted to snarl and fight. Failing that, she wanted to be sick.

  She bit down hard on her lip and looked over at William.

  His eyes were closed, dark auburn lashes vivid even against his tanned skin. Unconsciousness took all animation from his face, whether cheer or worry, and left Judith aware of just how much there normally was, how much of this man was dedicated to expression—or willful concealment.

  She’d never seen him asleep. Of course she’d never seen him asleep. She’d never even considered it, but now the thought saddened her, made her think of trains she’d barely missed and mementoes she’d lost without knowing their absence. Judith closed her eyes.

  “Check his pulse,” said Hamilton.

  Judith heard the faint sounds of cloth and flesh that went with motion. A minute passed. “Steady,” said McKendry’s voice. “Still too quick, but steady.”

  “Good.”

  Time crawled on. Judith didn’t count the seconds, but kept her eyes closed and tried to think of anything but where she was or the sensation of the needle in her arm or William’s condition. It didn’t go very well. She’d once memorized a poem for such occasions, one by Dryden that began with “Fair Iris I love,” but the years had taken it away.

  Every so often, McKendry would take William’s pulse. A little less frequently, he’d ask how Judith was feeling. She always said she was fine. It wasn’t quite a lie; he was really asking if she could go on.

  “Color’s returning,” McKendry said, after the fifth or sixth such time. “And his pulse is going back to normal.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll not say anything yet, but—”

  “Not yet,” said Judith, shaking her head. She clamped down hard on her own relief. “This has only been the first step.”

  Thirty-eight

  The first thing William knew was pain.

  Centered in his stomach, where the Consuasori brother had stabbed him, it spread jellyfish tentacles through his whole frame. He was pain and the world was pain, as if some deity much less merciful than the god he’d been raised with had taken it upon itself to revise the first lines of Genesis. Let there be agony. Let there be torment. And the Lord saw that it was not good—that it was very bad, in fact—but damned if he’d do anything about it.

  That went on for a long time. Gradually he found he had enough energy to scream. At least he thought he was screaming. He didn’t hear himself. Screaming hurt his throat more, so he stopped, and was aware once more that he had a throat. Other bits of his body returned to his consciousness: stomach, head, arms and legs that he couldn’t move, any more than he could lift his eyelids.

  Was he paralyzed? No. He could feel every finger, every toe. They hurt. The nerves were still there.

  Hands tilted his head up. Other hands set a spoon at his lips and tilted. Cool liquid flowed down his throat. The pain receded—not gone, but fainter, behind a barrier.

  William thought he slept.

  There came a time when he could open his eyes, and when the sounds around him reached his ears. He knew that he was in a bed in a room, and not dead. A shape perched beside him, feeding him broth. He swallowed what was put into his mouth and tasted none of it. Another figure stood nearby, frowning at an object in its hand.

  “One hundred and two,” said the figure. The voice was male, with a Scottish accent. McKendry? Most likely. “No change there.”

  “His eyes are open,” said the figure feeding him, also male and probably Hamilton. “It’s a good sign. Mr. Arundell?”

  William swallowed broth and tried to respond. He succeeded in making a noise in his throat, all nasal n’s and a g at the end that he barely got out. He tried again. “Present,” he rasped.

  “Don’t exert yourself, lad,” said McKendry. “But I’m glad you’re with us.”

  Then it was later. William knew it was later because Hamilton was gone, and another figure sat by his bed. He knew this one even before she spoke, knew her by form and face and even smell: Judith. She bathed his face, her hands cool and strong and sure.

  McKendry was talking. “…some awareness of his surroundings, aye. And there’s no infection showing. The wound’s healed quite cleanly, though it’s likely done some permanent damage. But his fever’s still very high.”

  “Yes,” said Judith remotely. Her hands never stopped moving—dipping the rag into a bowl of cool water, wringing it out, and wiping William’s brow again. “It will be.”

  The grave certainty in her voice was unmistakable. William looked up at her. Her green eyes were the only real color in her face. The rest was pallor and shadows.

  “Lady MacAlasdair—” McKendry began.

  “I tell you as much as I can,” she said, “and if I knew anything that would help, I’d tell you that. I swear it.”

  “You dinna’ need to,” said the doctor. “I’ve only to look at you to know as much.”

  She laughed silently. “That’s something. Can I ask you to leave u
s for a moment?”

  “Aye, of course.”

  McKendry took his leave. William heard the footfalls and then the solid thunk of the closing door. “Judith,” he said and touched her wrist with one hand.

  “No moving around,” she said, but she took his hand, lacing their fingers together. “I’ve a confession.”

  “Another one?” William would have raised his eyebrows, but it hurt too much.

  “I never really confessed to the rest of it,” she said and squeezed his hand. “I gave you my blood. It was—the only thing I could think of. You were in a bad way. You may still be.”

  “Figured that,” said William, glancing down at his unresponsive body. “How bad?”

  “You would have died,” she said, so tonelessly that it had to be with deliberate control. “We heal from things mortals don’t. But the transfer doesn’t always work. Your body resists the change.”

  “Oh.” He had no strength for emotion either, and the world was starting to slip away again. “What do I do?”

  “Hold on.” She leaned forward and brushed her lips against his. “I wish I could tell you more. I wish I knew. As far as I know, none of us has done this with a mortal before. Just—hold on. If you want to.”

  “Yes,” he said, though the word was half exhale. Her kiss had sent warmth and strength through him for a second, but it was fading fast. Images and sounds broke into small bits. He focused on Judith’s face. “Sleep. You should sleep.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do,” she said, pretending anger. Her voice thickened on the last word. Judith looked away again, then met his eyes, her own shining green in the rapidly closing darkness. “I love you,” she said, each word as slow and serious as her oath had been, back when she’d sworn not to harm him. Her hand tightened on his, and when she drew in another breath, it shook. “I couldn’t let you die. Not if I could do anything. Not if anything I know or am could help you. I don’t know if it will, but—I love you. I want you to hold on. I don’t know if that will help either.”

  “Love,” he said, and wonder shone in the whirling void that was rapidly overtaking his mind. He said the word again, the feeling alien on his tongue.

  It was the last time he spoke for a long while.

  Hours or maybe days went by in broken moments, like moving landscapes seen from the window of a train. By turns William was cold and hot; by turns his senses receded, cut off from the world by a thick blanket of numbness and then sharpened to the point where he could smell steel across the room and hear birds on top of the house. The pain dwindled, but the disorientation grew as it did.

  Someone was always in the room—at least, he never came back to awareness without seeing at least one person close at hand, and from that he inferred that they never left him completely alone. The constant presence of other people was reassuring; what it implied about his condition wasn’t.

  Most of the time his companion was Hamilton, McKendry, Judith, or some combination. Once in a while, particularly later, others were there. William opened his eyes once, when his senses were acute but not blindingly so, to see a strange couple standing in the room with Judith. The man was tall and dark, and the lines of his face were a masculine cast of Judith’s, though his eyes were gold rather than green. The woman had dark blond hair and the forbiddingly businesslike air of a head nurse.

  She was the one speaking. Judith and her brother, probably, were glaring at each other, Judith’s hands on her hips and the man’s arms folded across his chest. If Judith had slept in the time since their conversation, William noticed, her face didn’t show it.

  “It was different for me, naturally,” the blond woman said, looking at William with a sigh. There was no trace of Scotland in her voice. He heard the East End there, with education buttoned tightly up over it so that only the edges showed. “More gradual, like. I wish I could be more helpful. I think he’s worse than I ever got, but I never saw myself from the outside.”

  Her eyes were dark blue. William saw the rings of iris and pupil stand out sharply. When she blinked, he saw every eyelash. He looked away. The shadows in the corner of the room, dark in the sunlight, rippled like pools.

  “Maybe a bit worse,” said the man, his lips going thin. “Not very much, as I remember.”

  “You’re biased. And this is exactly the sort of thing you’d have done, Stephen.” The woman left William and put a hand on Stephen’s arm. Their shadows were rippling too now, and their motions left small shining trails in the air. He thought of falling stars and then of traveling slugs.

  “Exactly the sort of thing he did, I’d say—” Judith began.

  The scene shattered. Voices became notes; people became blips of color and motion; everything was too close to make sense. When William pulled himself back from that edge again, it was night, or at least no sun came from outside. Judith’s probable brother and his probable wife had gone. Judith sat in one chair in the corner, a cup of tea in one hand and a meat pie in front of her. At least she was eating.

  Baxter sat in the other. His round face was somber, his clothing funereal—although William had never seen him in any other attire. He looked at the teapot as if it contained all the world’s sorrows.

  The look on Judith’s face was familiar. She’d regarded William himself that way more than once, with that mixture of forced trust and profound suspicion. Her clothing was crisp and sober tweed, every hair had been pinned up under a dark hat, and her back was ramrod-straight. The emerald ring on her finger shone green, even in the dim light.

  “…chose to come here, I’ll remind you,” she was saying. “Or rather, you chose to send him. I’m grateful for his assistance and yours, but I’ll not be rushed into anything. Nor will my brother, but I expect you already know that.”

  Baxter had the grace to look embarrassed. He was a good man for gathering information, but no great hand at diplomacy. He was also easily ten years older than William and naturally would have tried to talk first with a man and the head of the family. William would have done that himself, had the option been available. He was glad now that it hadn’t. His vision kept doubling and he had the energy to lick his dry lips for the first time in God knows how long, but he was still glad.

  “Lady MacAlasdair,” Baxter said, calmly and probably gently, “I mean no offense, but you do know that you were likely the reason for Mr. MacDougal’s activities here? And while it seems that he only had one confederate, the fact remains that there are matters you can’t understand.”

  Judith froze in place. One hand still held the teacup, which might have been funny if not for her expression. William had seen that pain elsewhere before, generally just when a knife had entered some vital organ; the guilt was less usual. Baxter had said nothing she hadn’t thought of before, clearly. Rather, he’d given voice to every silent reproach that had haunted her since they’d discovered Ross.

  “Mr. Baxter,” she said, maintaining a very arctic composure, “I am very well aware of that.”

  “Baxter.” William moved his lips, but the sound that emerged was only a hard breath. He thought of solidity: the room’s, Baxter’s, and mostly his own, whatever that consisted of now. He had a throat. He cleared it, summoned air into his lungs—did they hold more than they had, or had it just been a long time since he’d had to breathe deeply?—and spoke the other man’s name again, loudly enough that he and Judith both turned, shocked, toward the bed. “This is still my mission.”

  William felt the truth of that settle on him, into his very blood and bones. He welcomed it. It was a weight, but one that would keep him pinned to the world. Duty was a decent handhold.

  He watched Judith hurry to his side, forgetting both tea and Baxter—who, to his credit, had left off speech himself and was following her. The pain was gone from her face; hope was all that remained.

  Duty was a decent handhold. Love was an even better one.

  Thirty-nin
e

  Time had a vile sense of humor.

  For the first six days after the transfusion, while William had drifted in and out of consciousness and nobody had been able to give odds on his survival, there had been almost nothing to occupy Judith’s time. Without Ross’s disruptive presence, Loch Arach was settling peacefully in for the winter; the Connohs’ new store was going up smoothly; and Judith’s own recovery would have kept her from hunting in either form, even if she had wanted to go that far from William. The days had ticked by while she sat at his bed or attended to the minor tasks that did wait for her in the castle.

  Stephen and Mina’s arrival, with little Anna, had been a relief. Even Baxter had been a welcome distraction in his own way—but the day after his arrival, when Judith had taken him to the sickroom, William had come back to himself enough to speak, and to speak lucidly. After that, his periods of consciousness came closer together, and a day later, McKendry said that his fever had subsided as well.

  He would live.

  Judith went home, slept for twelve hours, and then ate all of the huge breakfast that someone—probably Stephen, who’d always been a favorite with the kitchen staff—had sent up on a tray. She held back from too much joy—joy was a fragile thing and a temptation to old and malicious forces. When she opened the note from McKendry, she made herself expect the worst.

  Mr. Arundell is awake and of sound mind.

  The letters blurred and danced in front of Judith’s eyes. She set the note down, blinked hard, and picked it up again.

  I don’t advise much conversation just yet, as he still seems easily tired, but I believe your company would be welcome.

  She dressed quickly but carefully, glad that she had slept and more aware than ever before of the face looking back from the mirror. It was a much paler face than it had been nine days ago, and it had a hollow look as well. Judith wished she’d had time and strength to hunt, but thankful for small blessings, she was just glad she’d slept.