“Not here. They can come at us four ways. We need a hiding place with an escape route.”
It took another half hour of creeping and crawling before they found somewhere safe, a vault excavated from the bedrock. It must have dated back to ancient times, judging by the stonework and the crumbling wall carvings. A second stone door stood half open on the other side, its hinges frozen with rust. To the left, water seeped from a crack into a basin carved into the wall, its overflow leaving orange streaks down the stone.
“I don’t like this place,” said Benn, huddling on a dusty stone bench, one of two.
“Shh,” said Glynnie.
In the far right corner a pile of ash was scattered with wood charcoal and pieces of burnt bone, as if someone had cooked meat there and tossed the bones on the fire afterwards.
Rix perched on the other bench and extended his wrist to Glynnie. “Do you know how to treat wounds?”
“I can do everything.” It was a statement, not a boast.
“But you’re just — you’re a maidservant. How do you know healing?”
She pursed her lips. “I watch. I listen. I learn. Benn, bring the glowstone. Rix, hold this.”
Gingerly, as though she would have preferred not to touch it, she pressed Maloch’s hilt into Rix’s left hand.
“Why?” he said.
“It’s supposed to protect you.”
“Only against magery.”
She knelt in the dust before him, then took a bottle of priceless brandy from her pack, Rix’s last surviving bottle, and rinsed her hands with it. She laid a little bundle containing rags, needle and thread and scissors on her pack, poured a slug of brandy onto a piece of linen and began to clean his stump.
Rix tried not to groan. Blood began to drip. By the time she finished, Glynnie was red to the elbows.
He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes, for once content to do as he was told.
“Hold his wrist steady, Benn,” said Glynnie.
A pair of smaller, colder hands took hold of Rix’s lower arm. He heard Glynnie moving about but did not open his eyes. She began to tear linen into strips. Liquid gurgled and he caught a whiff of the brandy, then a chink as she set down a metal cup.
“I could do with a drop of that,” he murmured.
Glynnie gave a disapproving sniff. She was washing her hands again.
“Steady now,” she said. “Hold the sword. This could hurt.”
She began to spread something over his stump, an unguent that stung worse than the brandy. Rix’s fingers clenched around Maloch’s hilt.
“Ready, Benn?” said Glynnie.
“Yes,” he whispered.
Her hand steadied his wrist. There came a gentle, painful pressure on the stump. Where his fingers touched the hilt, they tingled like a nettle sting. Then Rix felt a burning pain as though she had poured brandy over his stump and set it alight. His eyes sprang open.
Glynnie had pressed his severed hand against the stump, and now the pain was running up his arm and down into his fingers. Cold blue flames flickered around the amputation site then, with the most shocking pain Rix had ever experienced, the bones of his severed hand ground against his wrist bones — and seemed to fuse.
He had the good sense not to move, though he could not hold back the agony. It burst out in a bellow that sifted dust down from the roof onto them, like a million tiny drops falling through a sunbeam.
“What are you doing to me?”
CHAPTER 2
Benn let go and scrambled backwards into the dark, out of harm’s way.
Glynnie went so pale that the freckles stood out down her nose. She swayed backwards as though afraid Rix was going to strike her, but her bloody hands were rock-steady, one on his wrist, the other on his partly rejoined hand.
“Don’t move!” she said.
Hope and fear went to war in Rix. The foolish, foolish hope that Glynnie knew what she was doing and could give him his right hand back. And the gut-crawling fear that it would go desperately wrong and would be worse than having a stump on the end of his arm. He clutched the hilt of Maloch so hard that it hurt — and prayed.
It was impossible to keep still. The pain was a dog mauling his wrist, splintering the bones. Then, out of nowhere, he felt his amputated hand as an ice-cold, dangling extremity. He felt the blood oozing sluggishly through each of the collapsed veins, dilating them one by one.
His hand was no longer cold, no longer grey-blue. A warm pinkness was spreading through it. Red scabs formed in three places across his wrist and slowly extended along the amputation line until they ran most of the way around, though a spot near his wrist bone, and another underneath, still ebbed blood.
His little finger twitched; pins and needles pricked all over his hand. And then — Rix flexed his index finger, and it moved. Tears sprang to his eyes.
“How did you do that?” he said hoarsely. “Who are you?”
Glynnie shook her head, slumped onto the other bench and wiped her brow with her forearm, leaving a streak of blood there. “I’m not a healer, nor a magian — just a maidservant.”
“I don’t understand…”
Glynnie tilted the metal cup towards him. The bottom was covered with a smear of blood.
“What’s that for?” said Rix.
“It’s the cup Tali used to try and heal Tobry. With her healing blood.”
“But she didn’t heal him. He’s dead.”
“Maybe shifters can’t be healed,” said Glynnie. “But Tali’s blood can heal ordinary wounds. That’s all I did.”
“Go on.”
“I covered both edges of your wrist with the blood left in the cup. It was frozen; I had to warm it in my hands. I pushed your hand and wrist together and held them. That’s all.”
Rix’s other hand was still clenched tightly around Maloch’s hilt. He let go. “You also used the protective magery of my sword.”
“I didn’t use it,” said Glynnie. “I only put it where it could do you some good.”
“You gave me back my hand. I can never thank you — ”
“It could get infected,” said Glynnie. “I’ll have to look after it.”
She stood up, swaying with exhaustion, and Rix realised how much he had taken her for granted. Why should the great Lord Rixium notice a little, freckled maidservant? Palace Ricinus had employed a hundred maids, each as replaceable as every other.
“Sit down,” he said, reaching up to her. “Rest. Let me wait on you.”
Her eyes widened; a blotchy flush spread across her cheeks. “You can’t wait on me.”
Glynnie washed the blood off her hands and forearms in the basin niche, then took a rag from her pack and scrubbed Benn’s grubby face and hands. He was half asleep and made no protest. She cleaned her blood-spotted garments as best she could, took stale bread and hard cheese from her pack, cut a portion for Rix and another for her brother, then a little for herself. She resumed her seat, nibbled at a crust, leaned back and closed her eyes. The flush slowly faded.
Her eyes sprang open. “Lord, we got to fly. They could be creeping after us right now.”
“Maloch will warn me. Rest. You’ve been up all night.”
“So have you.”
“I couldn’t sleep even if I wanted to. Hush now. I need to think.”
It was a lie. So much was whirling through his mind that he was incapable of coherent thought. Rix clenched his right fist, for the pleasure of being able to do so. It did not feel as natural as his left hand, and the scabbed seam around his wrist would leave a raised scar, but he had his hand back, and it worked. He could ask for nothing more.
“How did you know it would rejoin, Glynnie?”
“Didn’t. But the captain cut your hand off with that sword…”