Gerard set Brand down in a prone position and tore away his filthy shirt.
“Get me clean water to bathe him,” he said. “And towels. Get me saline solution and glucose and something to hang them from. Get me a whole medical kit.”
Deirdre and Flora moved toward the door.
“My quarters are closest,” said Random. “One of you will find a medical kit there. But the only IV stuff is in the lab on the third floor. I'd better come and help.” They departed together.
We all had had medical training somewhere along the line, both here and abroad. That which we learned in Shadow, though, had to be modified in Amber. Most antibiotics from the shadow worlds, for example, were ineffectual here. On the other hand, our personal immunological processes appear to behave differently from those of any other peoples we have studied, so that it is much more difficult for us to become infected-and if infected we deal with it more expeditiously. Then, too, we possess profound regenerative abilities.
All of which is as it must be, of course, the ideal necessarily being superior to its shadows. And Amberites that we are, and aware of these facts from an early age, all of us obtained medical training relatively early in life. Basically, despite what is often said about being your own physician, it goes back to our not unjustified distrust of virtually everyone, and most particularly of those who might hold our lives in their hands. All of which partly explains why I did not rush to shoulder Gerard aside to undertake Brand's treatment myself, despite the fact that I had been through a med school on the shadow Earth within the past couple of generations. The other part of the explanation is that Gerard was not letting anyone else near Brand. Julian and Fiona had both moved forward, apparently with the same thing in mind, only to encounter Gerard's left arm like a gate at a railway crossing.
“No,” he had said. “I know that I did not do it, and that is all that I know. There will be no second chance for anyone else.”
With any one of us sustaining that sort of wound while in an otherwise sound condition, I would say that if he made it through the first half hour he would make it. Brand, though... The shape he was in... There was no telling.
When the others returned with the materials and equipment, Gerard cleaned Brand, sutured the wound, and dressed it. He hooked up the IV, broke off the manacles with a hammer and chisel Random had located, covered Brand with a sheet and a blanket, and took his pulse again.
“How is it?” I asked.
“Weak,” he said, and he drew up a chair and seated himself beside the couch. “Someone fetch me my blade-and a glass of wine. I didn't have any. Also, if there is any food left over there, I'm hungry.”
Llewella headed for the sideboard and Random got him his blade from the rack behind the door.
“Are you just going to camp there?” Random asked, passing him the weapon.
“I am.”
“What about moving Brand to a better bed?”
“He is all right where he is. I will decide when he can be moved. In the meantime, someone get a fire going. Then put out a few of those candles.”
Random nodded.
“I'll do it,” he said. Then he picked up the knife Gerard had drawn from Brand's side, a thin stiletto, its blade about seven inches in length. He held it across the palm of his hand.
“Does anyone recognize this?” he asked.
“Not I,” said Benedict.
“Nor I.” said Julian.
“No,” I said.
The girls shook their heads.
Random studied it.
“Easily concealed-up a sleeve, in a boot or bodice. It took real nerve to use it that way...”
“Desperation,” I said.
“...And a very accurate anticipation of our mob scene. Inspired, almost.”
“Could one of the guards have done it?” Julian asked. “Back in the cell?”
“No,” Gerard said. “None of them came near enough.”
“It looks to be decently balanced for throwing,” Deirdre said.
“It is,” said Random, shifting it about his fingertips. “Only none of them had a clear shot or the opportunity. I'm positive.
Llewella returned, bearing a tray containing slabs of meat, half a loaf of bread, a bottle of wine, and a goblet. I cleared a small table and set it beside Gerard's chair.
As Llewella deposited the tray, she asked, “But why? That only leaves us. Why would one of us want to do it?”
I sighed.
“Whose prisoner do you think he might have been?” I asked.
“One of us?”
“If he possessed knowledge which someone was willing to go to this length to suppress, what do you think? The same reason also served to put him where he was and keep him there.”
Her brows tightened.
“That does not make sense either. Why didn't they just kill him and be done with it?”
I shrugged.
“Must have had some use for him,” I said. “But there is really only one person who can answer that question adequately. When you find him, ask him.”
“Or her,” Julian said. “Sister, you seem possessed of a superabundance of naivete, suddenly.”
Her gaze locked with Julian's own, a pair of icebergs reflecting frigid infinities.
“As I recall,” she said, “you rose from your seat when they came through, turned to the left, rounded the desk, and stood slightly to Gerard's right. You leaned pretty far forward. I believe your hands were out of sight, below.”
“And as I recall,” he said, “you were within striking distance yourself, off to Gerard's left-and leaning forward.”
“I would have had to do it with my left hand-and I am right-handed.”
“Perhaps he owes what life he still possesses to that fact.”
“You seem awfully anxious, Julian, to find that it was someone else.”
“All right,” I said. “All right! You know this is self defeating. Only one of us did it, and this is not the way to smoke him out.”
“Or her,” Julian added.
Gerard rose, glowered, glared.
“I will not have you disturbing my patient,” he said. “And, Random, you said you were going to see to the fire.”
“Right away,” Random said, and moved to do it.
“Let us adjourn to the sitting room off the main hall,” I said, “downstairs. Gerard, I will post a couple of guards outside the door here.”
“No,” Gerard said. “I would rather that anyone who wishes to try it get this far. I will hand you his head in the morning.”
I nodded.
“Well, you can ring for anything you need-or call one of us on the Trumps. We will fill you in in the morning on anything that we learn.”
Gerard seated himself, grunted, and began eating. Random got the fire going and extinguished some lights. Brand's blanket rose and fell, slowly but regularly. We filed quietly from the room and headed for the stairway, leaving them there together with the flare and the crackle, the tubes and the bottles.
CHAPTER 7
Many are the times I have awakened, sometimes shaking, always afraid, from the dream that I occupied my old cell, blind once more, in the dungeons beneath Amber. It is not as if I were unfamiliar with the condition of imprisonment. I have been locked away on a number of occasions, for various periods of time. But solitary, plus blindness with small hope of recovery, made for a big charge at the sensory-deprivation counter in the department store of the mind. That, with the sense of finality to it all, had left its marks. I generally keep these memories safely tucked away during waking hours, but at night, sometimes, they come loose, dance down the aisles and frolic round the notions counter, one, two, three. Seeing Brand there in his cell had brought them out again, along with an unseasonal chill; and that final thrust served to establish a more or less permanent residence for them. Now, among my kin in the shield-hung sitting room, I could not avoid the thought that one or more of them had done unto Brand as Eric had done unto me. While this capacity was in itself hardly a surprising discovery, the matter of occupying the same room with the culprit and having no idea as to his identity was more than a little disturbing. My only consolation was that each of the others, according to his means, must be disturbed also. Including the guilty, now that the existence theorem had shown a positive. I knew then that I had been hoping all along that outsiders were entirely to blame. Now, though... On the one hand I felt even more restricted than usual in what I could say. On the other, it seemed a good time to press for information, with everyone in an abnormal state of mind. The desire to cooperate for purposes of dealing with the threat could prove helpful. And even the guilty party would want to behave the same as everyone else. Who knew but that he might slip up while making the effort?