“Turn around this way,” I said.
He looked over his shoulder at me and snorted, then tried to look sober. But he couldn’t, and he burst out laughing. No one laughed in Zhev’Na.
“What’s so damned funny?”
“Just… well… one as dignified as yourself… in such a wicked, magical place as this… coming so close to killing me not five breaths ago… and then getting knocked over by hay and a horse turd. It just don’t seem all that fearsome.”
I stared at him in disbelief. He scratched his head and squirmed and tried to stop laughing, but then he would burst out again. “I’m sorry, my lord,” he said, once he was able to talk again. “I’m truly sorry you’re hurt. Should I get someone to help?”
I didn’t want anyone else seeing me in such a state. It was dangerous in many ways. “I don’t need anyone.”
“No. I can see surely not,” he said.
I hauled myself up on the gate hinges, and tried to swing the gate open and get away, but the fall had made my knee worse, and I could scarcely take a step. The boy put his hand on Zigget, and said, “Stay. Settle.” Then he opened the gate and disappeared into the gloomy stable, coming back with a broken wooden pole that I could use for a cane.
As soon as I was up and out of the stall, he went back to Zigget and closed the gate behind him, leaving me to hobble my way across the yard and through the fortress. I was halfway back to the Gray House before I realized that the boy and I had been speaking Leiran. It was too far to go back, and I was too tired. I wanted a river of hot water and ten hours in my bed, and I knew the Lords would be waiting to teach me more lessons. But I told myself that I would find that insolent boy again and have him explain a few things.
I couldn’t do any training the next day. My knee was purple and black and had swelled up almost as large as my head. When my swordmaster came to see why I wasn’t in the fencing yard, he looked at it and frowned. “You need a surgeon. You should have said something last night.”
“I told Lord Parven about it,” I said. I had to work hard not to yell when he touched it.
Half an hour later a bearded Zhid came into my apartments, followed by a young slave, carrying a leather case. I was sitting in a chair with my leg propped up on a footstool. The surgeon, named Mellador, commanded the slave to place a towel under my arm that rested on the chair, and then to kneel close beside my chair. The slave had the tight, edgy look to him that meant that he was acting under compulsion. It was easy to recognize.
“A nasty injury, Your Grace, but we should have no difficulty,” said the surgeon, clucking and fussing over my knee. “There will be only a slight burning as I make the incision.”
I couldn’t imagine what he was doing when he spread a yellow ointment on my forearm, and most likely my mouth dropped open like an idiot when he pulled a knife from his case and made a neat, finger-length incision in the same spot. My arm was mostly numb, only stinging, as he’d said. I tried to pull away, but he gripped my wrist.
“Surely you’ve seen a healing, Your Grace. If not… my utmost apologies for not explaining. Your injury is too severe for ordinary means, and the Lords wish no delay in your training. We shall have it improved quite swiftly. Hold still.”
Before I could come out with a single question, Mellador commanded the slave to hold out his arm. The youth obeyed, but as he did so, he looked at me with such an intense, solemn expression that I found myself shifting away from him uneasily. Mellador then cut a gash in the slave’s arm just above his metal wrist band. The cut was much deeper than my own, almost to the bone, and it began bleeding profusely. The slave did not cry out, but sucked in a deep, shaking breath. The surgeon bound the slave’s arm to mine with a strip of linen, then laid his hands on the slave’s head. A brilliant, burning flash filled my head-incredible power, boiling red-and-black fire that coursed through my veins, so sharp and vivid that it almost lifted me off the chair.
Now to work… The surgeon’s voice had ridden the wave of power into my mind… mmm… a touch here… and here… I felt the torn pieces in my knee stretch and knit themselves together again, and what felt like chips of bone that were floating loose make their way back where they belonged. Soon, the discolor of my knee began to fade and the swelling to shrink. Instead of painful throbbing, only a pulsing warmth remained in the joint. I touched my knee with my free hand and was amazed.
I heard a gasping moan at my elbow. The slave was pale and trembling, the bones of his face outlined with pain, his eyes hot with anger. The surgeon’s fingers were wrapped about his head like the legs of a huge, pale spider. Even as I watched, the slave’s eyes went dead, his mouth dropped open, and spit dripped out of the side of it.
While we have a bit left, we’ll take care of your other aches and pains. You have quite a healthy young body, but it appears you’ve taken quite a pounding this week. Mellador was still chattering inside my head, and the burning wave coursed through my veins like Papa’s brandy I had stolen to taste when I was small. And as all my bruises and soreness were eased, the slave slumped heavily against my chair.
“What have you done?” I said, finding my voice far too late.
“Quite finished now. Looks like we’d have to bring in another slave if you had one more scrape.”
He untied the flaccid arm from my own, and pushed the lifeless slave onto the floor, thrusting a wad of towels under him to prevent any blood from staining the tile. There was no sign of my incision, and no remnant of my injury, only a vile taste in my mouth and the boiling darkness in my blood.
“He’s dead.”
“Who… the slave? Of course. I’m glad I brought one with a considerable amount of vigor left in him, else we might not have been able to take care of all your ills.”
“Get out!”
“My lord?”
“Get out!” I jumped up from the chair and backed away from the surgeon and the results of his work. “Take him with you. If I see you again, I’ll kill you.”
Notole spoke in my mind. Are you not healed properly, my young Prince? Has Mellador displeased you in some way? We’ve not had time to discuss the process of healing.
“I didn’t know he was going to kill the slave. My knee would have gotten better on its own.”
But what better use for a slave than to put his master in good health? Mellador has prescribed a day’s rest, and…
… you will be able to go back to your proper business. It was Ziddari. Why are you unsettled, young Lord? You plan to kill these Dar’Nethi pigs in war. You have killed three in your sparring already. They live only at your pleasure and that of the Lords of Zhev’Na.
But there was a difference. Killing a soldier in battle was honorable. Killing a sparring partner-this was the first time they had told me that any of them had died-but that was almost the same. The practice slaves were trying to kill me, too. I had heard that slaves sometimes killed warriors in training, and they weren’t even punished for it. But to take his life for power… to cure bruises and scrapes such as any boy might get…
It is just. Remember it, said Ziddari. There is no difference in that slave and the rat you killed last week with your spear. Any Dar’Nethi would kill you in an instant if he was freed. We didn’t expect that you would have difficulty with this.