The kapikulu had charged into the side garden and across its narrow width. They stood against the roses on the far side, scimitars extended and crossed to make a bridge of blades. Or perhaps a barrier of blades, because the scimitars served to block the child from climbing higher.
It seemed uninjured, except the thorn-scratches in its palm and arm, but it had frozen wide-eyed against the rose canes and seemed to be wishing it could melt into the coarse-grained pink granite of the wall. Bijou let go a shaky breath, and clucked her tongue. “Emeraude.”
It stared at her as if it were a physical effort to drag its dilated eyes from the sun-stroked blades—stared at her as if it could stare through her, in fact. And then, face contracting in a wince, it uncurled the clenched fingers, dropped from among the rose canes, and bolted across the grass to throw itself into Bijou’s robes.
“Shh.” Bijou stroked its matted hair, and barricaded it against her with the stem of her cane. “Shh, shh.”
It didn’t weep, and it stayed silent as the grave, as always, but the weary strength with which it hugged her legs surprised her. As did the abruptness with which it pulled back, and then scampered between her and Brazen, running on all three limbs to the front door. Uncertainly, the kapikulu stationed there looked to Bijou rather than stopping it, thought it scrabbled at the bar.
“Emeraude,” Bijou said, “wait. Wait, child.”
The child was not quite frantic. It listened, or if it didn’t listen, at least it paused, though its small hand stayed clutched on the bar. Bijou was struck by that hand, by the delicacy of it, the way the skin stretched taut over bones and tendons defined as if carved in yellow ivory. Her own must have been that way once, if a darker version. Bijou shuffled faster, her robes sweeping abound her, brushing the legs of a pair of benches as she sailed between them. The floor bruised the soles of her feet, pressing retained fluid out of turgid flesh, and her cane thumped a hard staccato on the stones.
Of course Brazen overtook her. And without a glance for permission, gently pushed the child aside—it bared teeth at him, but did not slap or snap or struggle—and closed callused hands as unlike the child’s as hands could be upon the bar.
“And if it’s Kaulas’?” Bijou said.
“Do you think it is?”
Bijou looked at the child and gummed her lip, thinking of the way it had shivered under her touch. “No,” she said. She went to the child and held its shoulder to restrain it.
Brazen stepped back with the bar in his hands and let the kapikulu crack the door. The child, as Bijou had anticipated, strained toward it, and Bijou tightened her grip and crooned, “Shhh. Shh.” She turned her head and called, “Lupe! Hawti!”
The rustle of bells and the tick of bone and metal told her they were coming.
Brazen, flanked by one of the kapikulu, leaned into the gap of the just-opened door.
“What do you see?” Bijou asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “My carriage. The street.” He looked up, and side to side, maintaining cover. It would be a difficult shot, with rifle or with bow and arrow. But a difficult shot was not impossible.
“Brazen,” Bijou said, calmly, “I cannot replace you.”
“Of course,” he said, and leaned back out of the gap, flattening his back against the wall beside the door. A kapikulu rested one hand on the door-pull, and maintained a position as sentry. “What do we do?”
Bijou looked down at the child, thinner than when it had left, fine bones sharp through the fragile skin of its face.
She lifted her hand. “Let it go.”
The child jumped as if shocked at the release of pressure, and glanced up at Bijou in amazement. “You didn’t come tearing back in here just to get the door open,” Bijou said. “You want to bring in a friend who can’t get over the wall, right? Well, go get them.”
She would never know how much of that speech the child understood—none of it, if she had to guess—but it must have grasped the tone of warm encouragement. It hared forward, head ducked, eeling through the narrow crack, and vanishing in a patter of running feet just as Hawti and Lupe reached Bijou.
Bijou closed her eyes—despite all age had robbed her of, her ears were perfect still—and a moment later, heard the feet returning, slower now and heavier, as if the child were burdened. The sentry kapikulu jerked the door wider, still blocking it with his foot at a little more than the width of a body. The child staggered through, clutching something against its chest, cradled close in the undamaged arm and stabilized by the stump. A dog?
A jackal.
Bijou was reaching for it when the stench hit her, a reek as strong as when Brazen had first brought the child. “Emeraude.”
The child didn’t answer, but it turned to her, sagging to its knees in a slow-motion collapse until it lay the jackal on the floor and slid its hand out from under. Bijou crouched across from it, the animal sprawled glassy-eyed between them, and said, “Brazen, get Emeraude its arm, please?”
Silent as the child, he turned with short, thoughtful steps and went to the bed. He brought Bijou the child’s prosthesis.
Bijou extended it to the child.
There was no staring moment of doubt: the child only grabbed the arm and slid its stump gratefully into the cuff, tightening the buckles with its teeth and setting in the pin. It shook the arm, as if to seat it properly, and Bijou heard the bony fingers rattle, the stones clack against stones. And then the child reached out, right-handed, and took Bijou’s wrist and pulled her hand to the wound in the jackal’s agouti flank.
“Hold its head, Emeraude,” Bijou said. “I don’t want to get bitten.”
The child furrowed its brow, head cocked like a confused but urgently listening dog. Bijou gently shook its hand from her wrist and pointed to the jackal’s head. “Hold the head down. Brazen, get its feet, please?”
Brazen’s actions seemed to give the child the clue it needed to follow Bijou’s instructions. Gently, crooning—a sound new as the first sound in the world when it fell from the child’s throat—the child laid its artifice hand upon the jackal’s neck below the ears and pressed down with all its little weight.
Bijou sent Lucy for cloths and hot water and began to clean the wound.
Hard experience told Bijou what she would find when she parted the jackal’s pelt. The flesh was hot and inflamed, slick with the infection, and when she smoothed a wet cloth across it the fur came away in crusted tufts. The wound was ragged, scoured by maggots. “Oh, child,” Bijou said. “I don’t know what we’re going to do for your friend.”
“Sir,” said the sentry, and then waited for Brazen to acknowledge him before continuing, “there’s about six more of them in the street. With puppies.”
Bijou glanced at the child, but the child had eyes only for the jackal. “By all means,” Bijou said. “Show them in.”
The wound was nowhere Bijou could amputate, and so Bijou had Brazen lift the jackal to one of her work benches while its packmates skulked in alcoves and under tables and flitted behind lawn furniture in the back and side gardens. While the child soothed the animal and Brazen and Lucy helped restrain it, Bijou debrided the wound, placing maggots and flower petals in shallow bowls for later sorting. She hated to waste good maggots.
It was better than it could have been. Other than in the immediate vicinity of the injury, the flesh was cool, and the maggots had nibbled uninfected muscle clean in the deepest parts of the injury. Under all the rot was something she had half-expected; a silver pellet with a soldered seam around the middle, imbedded deep in the muscle tissue. She set that aside in a dish, separate from the maggots and the puss-moth threads and flower petals. She would deal with it in a moment.