by Karen Myers
It was a horror. George was naked and unconscious, and a trail of blood marked where his ruined leg had dragged along the passage floor. His back was fully exposed and Rhys shuddered at the blackened skin and deep burns.
Pull yourself together, he told himself. They need you, both of them.
“Listen, Maelgwn. Don’t look at him. Look at me. Can you get me water, food, cloth for bandages—all without getting caught? I need light.”
“I’ve got candles.”
“Good, bring them and something to hold them. A sharp knife, a small one. You’ve got his pocket watch, what about the rest of his things?
“I got it all,” Maelgwn said, “I’ll go bring it. Wait here.”
Rhys grabbed him before he could leave. “We’re going to need shoes and blankets. If you can’t find shoes, how about leather and laces? We can make moccasins.”
The boy nodded and was off.
Rhys moved over to George’s other side and knelt down. He didn’t want to turn him over onto his back but he needed to see what else needed immediate attention. When he saw his face, he gasped and sat back on his heels. He had a good idea now whose screams he’d heard.
“Oh, cousin, what have they done to you? What will Angharad say? Your poor eyes.”
Seething Magma showed Angharad and Edern that Maelgwn and Rhys had gotten into the way that George had sealed off.
She confirmed they were both alive, and that Rhys wasn’t much hurt, but she had to stop there. Granite Cloud was now attuned to Rhys, as she had to be to have found him, and she was very sad that he was so upset about his friend.
*Mother, is he going to die?*
Seething Magma knew she meant George.
*I don’t know, dear. We’re going to try and save him.*
*If I hadn’t run away, this wouldn’t have happened.*
*It’s not your fault. You’re not the one who hurt him.*
*But Rhys is so sad.*
*I know. Why don’t you leave them alone for a while and tell me about all the exciting things you’ve done today.*
She turned and opened the door of the conservatory, headed for the night woods. She needed some time alone with her child and away from the short-lived and their sufferings.
CHAPTER 25
Rhys made a plan of action while he waited for Maelgwn. He’d had basic medical training, as any cadet would, but he’d never seen actual battle wounds before. The scars on his instructors were informative of just what sort of damage could be survived, and he was hopeful. He remembered his training—if the wounded man was breathing, then the next step was to stop the blood loss. After that, keep things clean and watch for fever. They didn’t have a lot to say about how to treat fever.
He put his hand to George’s forehead. George didn’t stir. He couldn’t feel any fever yet. He knew that burns cauterized the flesh, but infections came when dirt got into the open injuries. George’s back was a mess, but not dirty, as far as he could tell in the dimness. That knee, on the other hand, was filthy from George’s crawl to freedom. He needed more light, but the knee worried him. It was still leaking blood diffusely, not enough to help clean the site. He’d have to deal with that as soon as possible.
The eyes… well, there was little he could do about that but clean them up and hope they weren’t life-threatening. Blind men died of head wounds, not loss of vision, and this had been done cleanly. Rhys had a fleeting suspicion that Madog didn’t want to look at a butchered face on a regular basis, he wanted things neat and tidy. His lip curled at the thought.
Maelgwn returned with the first set of items in a lumpy sack, and a bucket of water.
“I brought cloth, and two knives, with a stone, oh, and a cup. Here are all the blankets, candles, flint and steel. Put these on your feet.” He pulled out two long strips of wool that could be wrapped into makeshift socks.
“Any way to make a fire?” Rhys asked.
“Not without being seen or smelled. We’re right next to Madog’s keep.”
He didn’t like to use cold water, but there wasn’t much choice. “Too bad. See if you can bring his clothes, if you’ve got them. And we’re going to need some bowls or small buckets. I’ll get started, and then you can help me when you come back.”
The boy vanished again.
He lit the candles, fumbling with the flint and steel. We’ve gotten soft, he thought, relying on those human lighters. He cut the edge of the cloth and ripped off a strip from that start. He tore it into smaller strips about a foot long. He folded the first one into a pad and began cleaning the part of the knee he could reach without turning George over, to find out exactly what was still bleeding.
By the time Maelgwn came back, Rhys had cleaned George’s face and wrapped a bandage around it, with soft pads over his ruined eyes.
“Good, I’m ready for you. We’re going to have to roll him over to his other side and it’s got to be done over his front, not his back. That’ll be awkward. And we should move him at the same time to that blanket pad I’ve laid out. I’ll pick up most of his weight at the top, but you’re going to have to manage the bad leg. Can you do that? It’ll be heavy and you don’t want to put any stress on it.”
Maelgwn looked sick, but he nodded.
Rhys straightened George’s right leg which was drawn up supporting his balance on his left side. He bent over George’s torso and lifted his left shoulder from the bottom, letting him rotate forward face-down and around until he had to put him down for the next step, this time on his right shoulder. Maelgwn held both legs together and tried to keep the left one from flopping. George moaned.
“Good job,” Rhys said. “Now all we have to do is walk him up a few feet and lay him on the blanket.”
Rhys couldn’t just pick him up around the body without hurting the burns, so he bent over and lifted him by the right shoulder from below, high enough not to bump the drooping head, and slowly walked backward, Maelgwn holding the legs as best he could, until they could lay him on the doubled-up blanket, out of the pool of blood and off the cold passage floor.
The change in position of his knee brought George semi-awake.
Rhys had kept the water in the bucket clean so far by not dipping the cloths in it once they were used. He scooped up some water with the cup now and knelt behind George’s head. He lifted it up and held the cup to his mouth. “Come on, cousin, have a drink.”
“Rhys?” George said, confused.
“Never mind, just go back to sleep for a while, until we’re done. You’re safe now.”
George obediently drank and dropped off again. Rhys spared a grim thought for the meaning of “safe,” here in the heart of Madog’s domain, but it was better than a cell.
They spent the next hour trying to reach every bone fragment in the ruined knee and cleaned it as best they could. Rhys was sure they hadn’t succeeded, they just didn’t have the tools. The joint was loose, and he knew what that meant. If George didn’t succumb to infection, it would heal rigid, the bones fused and unbending. Impossible to ride, or even climb a staircase. He’d met a man in that situation, once.
“Maelgwn, you’ve done very well. One last task, can you find us some food and two long sticks I can use for the leg? And one more, for a staff.”
The boy was pale and drooping, but nodded like a trooper and went off on the errand.
While he was gone, Rhys worked on the back, cutting away some of the dead blackened skin. He was relieved not to find any open oozing spots—this might heal cleanly. He’d need the boy’s help to bandage it, wrapping cloth around and around George’s chest while he lifted.
He stood up and stretched while he waited, to work out the kinks in his muscles from working in such an uncomfortable position. It felt so good to be free and useful again that he was grateful for whatever chain of events had brought George together with this strange boy. He sobered, fearing George had paid too high a price.
He rewrapped the woolen strips around his feet and started to give some thought to
clothing in the cold exposed air. He’d been afraid to ask Maelgwn to close Cloudie’s entrance while he was away. If George didn’t wake enough to open an end and the boy was captured, Rhys had visions of being trapped inside this little passage with a dying friend. He’d make do with clothing in the meantime, until the boy was back for good. George would sleep in blankets tonight, so he borrowed his coat, much too broad for him, and drew it around himself for warmth.
When Maelgwn returned, lugging George’s pack with difficulty, he finally let him close the entry. They splinted the leg and wrapped a bandage around the back, then covered George with two more blankets and let him be.
Rhys wrapped himself in two blankets and made himself eat the cold sausage and cheese from George’s pack slowly, limiting the amount of this first meal. There was plenty, enough for them all for a day or two, even without a fire. As he dug through the pack wondering what else might be there, he fell upon the two spare pairs of socks with rapture, putting one pair on immediately, and the other pair onto George.
Dawn was breaking outside. Maelgwn slumped next to him in his own blanket, his eyes drooping. Rhys brushed away the last of the crumbs and said to him, “Now, don’t you think it’s time to tell me what’s been going on?”
Edern woke Gwyn at daybreak to deliver the news of the rescues, and they both went and roused Rhian. Gwyn was disquieted to hear that Seething Magma had left without explanation. Is she coming back, he wondered. We need her.
Maybe she’s decided it would be best to make herself unavailable for use as a weapon. He could hardly blame her.
He came to the conservatory before breakfast with Rhian to visit with Edern and Angharad, getting all the details they knew. Angharad looked up as she saw Mag approaching from the outside, and opened the door for her.
“I’m so glad to see you back. Are you well?” she said.
Pause. One knock.
Gwyn thought, she’s probably appalled at our cruelty to each other.
An answering knock startled Gwyn as he realized she can read all our thoughts, if she chooses.
Mag confirmed that Rhys and George were alive and together, but refused to say more.
She relented only once, when Rhian understood that Cloudie must now be more fully aware of Rhys and thus all this adult worry. She stood and made a formal curtsy to Mag. “My lady, please thank your daughter for helping to rescue my brother. I’m in her debt.”
Mag paused, then picked up the gray cloth, pointed at the picture of the speaking mouth, and the picture of the smiling mouth.
Rhian thought about it. “Cloudie says, she’s glad?”
One knock.
Gwyn walked up beside his foster-daughter. “Our thanks to both of you, from all of us. Whatever happens next,” he said.
Rhys and Maelgwn spent the day alternately dozing and talking. They couldn’t leave George alone. He wasn’t responsive when Rhys shook him lightly, and he thought the best thing to do would be to let him sleep as long as he could.
The boy told him about meeting George. Rhys could see the impression he’d made. There was a certain curious way he had of speaking that already put him in mind of his cousin, though he had difficulty pinning it down.
He asked about his family and got a spare, laconic version of their deaths that wrung his heart. He tried to distract him by telling him something of his own life, though, when Maelgwn asked about his own parents, he admitted Madog had killed them.
“You, too?” Maelgwn said.
“There are probably lots of us,” Rhys said sardonically, and was saddened to see his young companion nod wisely in agreement.
George lay quietly, though every now and then Rhys could see he was dreaming, nightmares. He uttered inarticulate protests and his hands clenched, but each time he subsided.
Around mid-day, something changed. George was rousing, but not completely, He plucked at his blankets, trying to remove them.
“Whoa there,” Rhys said, coming over to stop his hands.
“Have to get up, I have to…”
“Hush, I know.” Rhys had been expecting this, from his training about treating injuries. He reached over for a small bucket he’d put aside for the purpose. “Let me help.”
After he covered him up again, he made him drink more water, and George dropped off into a deeper sleep.
Maelgwn took the bucket from him since Rhys couldn’t see the ways outside to dispose of the contents safely. He returned in a few minutes, having cleaned it with snow.
Throughout the afternoon, Rhys checked George’s forehead, but it was Maelgwn who first noticed him sweating and woke Rhys. He cursed. George was warm, some infection was loose. He knew it was almost inevitable but he’d hoped to avoid it. So far it was light, maybe it would stay that way.
And maybe it wouldn’t. He needed to work on a plan on getting out of here himself with Maelgwn, in case George was incapacitated. Or worse.
At last, he thought. Benitoe lay the pen on the table and stood up. “All yours, with pleasure,” he told the middle-aged lutin who took his place, the first member of the Edgewood Kuzul to come forward since the awakening.
Ives had confirmed his authority to take temporary charge of the lutins in Edgewood, and he knew it was a necessary task, but he wanted to be out with Maëlys, helping her find her husband. His uncle. It hadn’t taken long for the sense of a deep and varied family clan to seem perfectly normal to him. All he had left to do was to match faces to the names Maëlys had entertained him with, whenever they rode out together.
He saddled his pony and rode to the village to talk to her. He knew he’d find her at the inn, setting things up.
She’d lost no time once Cadugan had granted her first rights, rent to own over ten years. Edern had guaranteed her character, on Benitoe’s say-so, and funded her starting costs. He knew this was part of the debt Edern believed he owed Isolda, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but he was happy enough that Maëlys benefited.
Maëlys was determined to provide food, basic and simple to begin with, as quickly as possible as the village came to life around the inn. She’d named it the Golden Cockerel, and the freshly painted inn sign, rehung on a sturdy new bracket, was one of the first signs of the revival.
She had cadged buckets, mops, brooms, and all the things used to clean a house from the storerooms at Edgewood and gotten the inn scrubbed by the simple expedient of trading her materials for the labor of her neighbors. Everyone who borrowed a bucket spent some time cleaning the inn, too.
Carpenters for house repairs were in very short supply, but she hired one of the first to make himself known, a middle-aged fae, and arranged for lumber from some of the unoccupied buildings that were too damaged to repair. She shared both his work and the materials with her neighbors, and provided food for them as well. There were no regular channels for trade yet, but the manor kept a steady stream of wagons running to all the villages until ordinary trade resumed.
As she’d explained to Benitoe, her neighbors were going to get food from the manor anyway, but she could cook it for them in quantity more easily than they could themselves for now, and she was building up goodwill from all of them once the emergency was over. Already she’d had visits from grateful tradesmen who promised her first pick and favorable prices for their goods and services as they got restarted.
She’d appealed directly to Edern for the loan of the next mason to turn up. He’d appeared three days ago, with his old assistant, a korrigan. Unlike most, they’d hunkered down together instead of seeking out their own kind. They’d just gotten used to each other, was how they explained it. Both were still relatively young and, Maëlys was pleased to discover, not too proud to turn their hand to rough plastering in the kitchen once they’d seen to the main repair work. Like her carpenter, she’d offered to sponsor their work in the neighborhood, but they preferred to set up an independent establishment down the street. They came in every day for their lunches.
Benitoe rode into the inn’s s
tableyard which was still a mess, and tied his pony in a ruined stall for a bit of shelter. He walked to the side door, ducking around a woman bearing a loaded platter of food.
The main room was bustling, even in the middle of the afternoon, and he saw more real tables, fewer improvised ones. People were sitting on chairs and stools and even, he saw, on boxes. He spotted Maëlys at the far end and wove through the crowd to reach her, his smaller size an advantage among the tall fae.
She hooked his arm and pulled him into a side parlor, not yet put back into use. “I’m free, auntie,” he told her. “They’ve got one of the old Kuzul members back.”
“That’s great news. I’m stuck here for another couple of days, but we’re making progress. No bedrooms or stabling yet, and only the one main room, but the kitchen’s in full swing, as you can see. People have to eat. Laundry, next, I think.”
Benitoe said, “I thought you might be tied down here. What I want to do is go looking for more lutins, and your Luhedoc among them. I want as good a description as you can give me of him. I have an idea.”
“What?”
“I’m going to put up signs, everywhere, directing him here. If you can’t go looking for him, maybe I can send him looking for you.”
CHAPTER 26
George woke up gradually. It was still, where he was, and it felt like an enclosed space. He was lying down, not strapped to the iron chair. He was clean and warm. He felt wool blankets but no clothes. His knee throbbed, and his back, but as long as he didn’t move it was tolerable.
Why can’t I see anything? Then he had a vision of a red-hot needle with bits of cinder.
He lifted a hand to his face to remove a wrapping and someone stopped him.
“Better not.”
“Rhys! What’s happened? Where are we?”
“I don’t know what you remember, but here’s the tale as I’ve heard it from your protégé. Maelgwn and Cloudie broke into your cell and released you. They got you into a way and persuaded you to kill it afterward to remove the evidence.”