“Indeed,” the Regent answered. “Can Varina be moved?”
“I can,” Nico heard Varina say, though her voice sounded weak and trembling. He saw her then, sitting up in the bed and swinging her feet over the edge. The blood on her clothing was dark and wet-looking. “I’m ready. Just let me change my clothes.” She waved a hand at them. “Go on, get out of here. Wait for me outside. I’ll be just a mark of the glass.”
“Come on, Nico,” Karl said, nodding his head toward the door, but Nico shook his head, hugging himself.
“Let him stay,” Varina said. “I’ll bring him with me. Go on.”
“All right,” the Ambassador replied, but he looked uncertain. “We’ll wait in the antechamber. Hurry.”
The men left, and Varina sank back on the bed for a moment, her breath quick and pained. She moaned as she sat up again, groaning as she tried to undo the ties of her tashta. “Nico,” she said. “I need your help…”
He went over to her and undid the ties, fumbling with the knots and trying not to notice the blood that stained his fingers. She slid the tashta down to her waist, and he looked away quickly, blushing a bit, as she pushed herself one-handed to a standing position. Her breasts under the binding cloth were smaller than Matarh’s, and looking at them covered only by thin cloth made Nico feel strange. “There’s another tashta in the chest at the foot of the bed,” she told him. “A blue one; would you get it for me? That’s a good boy.”
He rummaged in the chest, the smell of sweet herbs tied in linen sachets filling his nostrils, and handed her the blue tashta. “Turn around a moment,” she told him, and when he did he heard her soiled tashta slide entirely to the floor. He heard her pulling up the new tashta awkwardly with her injured arm, and when she cried out in pain, he quickly went to help her, pulling the ribbon binding tight under her breasts, tying the shoulder wraps and the back lacing. “There are bandages in the bottom drawer of the chest,” she said. “If you could bring me some…”
He hurried to get them for her, rising with the white strips of soft cloth in his hands to see her unwrapping her arm. He gasped as he saw the deep, long, and jagged cut there, still oozing blood and gaping wide, the edges pulling apart even as he watched, so deep that he thought he saw white bone at the bottom. He gulped, feeling nauseous. “I know,” she told him. “It looks bad, and I’m going to need to find a healer to sew it up. But right now, I need to tie a new bandage on this to keep it closed. I can’t do it one-handed. Can you help me?”
Nico nodded, swallowing hard. As she directed him, he placed a folded pad of the bandages on top of the wound, then-as she pressed the edges together as well as she could-he wrapped the bandage around it. “As tight as you can,” she told him. “Don’t worry, you won’t hurt me.” She showed him how to tear the end of the bandage in two, then tie it off to hold it in place.
She was crying as he finished, looking at her hand as she tried to move her fingers. They moved, but slowly, and she couldn’t bring her lower arm up. “It’ll be better, Varina,” he said. “It just needs time to heal.”
She smiled at him through the tears and pulled him to her with her good hand. “Thank you,” she whispered into his hair. “Now-some water. I want to get the blood off my hands and yours.
A quarter turn of the glass later, they left the room, with Varina walking pale-faced but steady.
It was raining, it was cold, it was dark, and Nico was miserable.
Nico stayed close to Varina as they hurried across the Avi a’Parete under the seeming glare of the famous teni-lamps of the city. The Regent was with Nico, and Varina and Karl; the other Numetodo-the one named Mika-had left them, going another way through the city. Nico had seen a squadron of Garde Kralji hurrying down the Avi toward Nortegate, splashing through the puddles on the cobbled roadway; the Regent made them pause in the shadow of a building-rain dripping hard on them from clogged gutters above-until the gardai had vanished around the curve of the Avi, then he led them at a run into the warren of houses on the north side of the Avi. There, they quickly abandoned the main streets for side streets and alleys, staying away from the few people out in the weather and occasionally sliding into alleyways as they heard others approaching. Once, a trio of utilino passed them, and they pressed their backs to the cold, damp stones of the nearest building, holding their breaths as the utilino, obviously searching the faces of the passersby, moved on. They kept moving north: as the houses were farther apart, now separated by fields and pastures; as the lights of the city became only a glow on the clouds above them; as the cobbled streets gave way to muddy, rutted roadways and finally to a narrow, sloppy lane. By the time they stopped, Nico felt as if he’d been running all night. His feet and legs hurt, and he was panting from the effort of keeping up with the adults. Varina collapsed to the ground as soon as they stopped.
“We’ll rest here for a few minutes,” the Regent said. “If anyone’s coming, we should see them long before they’ll notice us.” They were well away from any of the farmhouses, and the rain had subsided to an erratic drizzle. Nico stood next to Varina as she leaned again the stone wall bordering the lane and closed her eyes, clutching her injured arm with her good one.
“The forest is a mile or so up the road; we should reach it in half a turn of the glass,” the Regent continued. “We should probably get off the road; if I were the commandant, I’d be sending riders out along toward all the villages, looking for us.”
“Then where?” Karl asked.
The Regent shook water from his graying hair; droplets beaded on his silver nose. “Firenzcia,” he grunted.
Karl gave a laugh that seemed more cough. “You’re joking, Sergei. That’s going from the chopping block into the pot. Firenzcia? Archigos ca’Cellibrecca is nothing more than a younger image of his marriage-vatarh; they’d love to have the Ambassador of the Numetodo to torture and hang in a gibbet for everyone to see. Firenzcia? That might be fine for you, but Varina and I have a better chance of survival trying to swim the Strettosei to Paeti. We might as well just surrender to the Garde Kralji now.”
Varina’s eyes had opened, and Nico saw that she was watching the discussion. The Regent sniffed. “Firenzcia is the Kralji’s enemy. Now, so are we. I know Allesandra from her time here; so do you. With Fynn assassinated, she’ll be the Hirzg; she’ll take us in.”
“Unless the Numetodo are being conveniently blamed for Hirzg Fynn’s murder,” the Ambassador said, and Varina nodded vigorously.
“Where else would you go?” the Regent asked them.
“To one of the northern countries, where they’re more sympathetic to the Numetodo. Maybe Il Trebbio.”
“That’s still in the Holdings, and Audric will have sent word to them to capture us if we’re seen.”
“And Firenzcia won’t do the same?” Varina interjected.
“We could take ship from Chivasso to Paeti, or keep going north out of the Holdings into Boail,” the Ambassador said.
“And what are our chances of making that long trek without being noticed?” The Regent sniffed again.
Nico listened to them argue, pulling his cloak tightly around him. He didn’t want to go to Firenczia or Il Trebbio or Paeti or any of those places. He liked Varina and he was sorry that she was hurt, but he wanted to be with his matarh or Talis. The adults weren’t paying attention to him; they were too intent on their discussion.
Slowly, Nico pulled himself up until he was sitting on the stone wall. He turned, his legs dangling over the far side. No one noticed him; no one said anything to him. He let himself drop into the high, tall grass of the field. He could still hear them arguing, and he began scurrying quickly away on the far side of the stone wall-back toward Nessantico. Back toward the only home he knew.