231st day from Etherhorde
She swayed, and he steadied them both. When he kissed her, Pazel realized how hard she was laboring simply to breathe. Her embrace began as something hungry and sorrowful, and in seconds was reduced to an effort not to collapse upon the deck.
“Let’s go, Thasha,” he said.
She shook her head. Tears were crowding out the fury. He told her he understood what she’d been doing, using Fulbreech to get to Arunis, shielding her thoughts to keep everyone safe. He said he loved her for it, that she hadn’t done anything to him that she could have avoided. The words just made her weep. So in desperation he lifted her chin and kissed her once more, fiercely.
“You care what I think?”
Thasha nodded through her tears.
“Then don’t fight me, for Rin’s sake. You’re bleeding into your boots.”
In the surgery, they found Captain Rose kneeling before one of the heavy slate tables, head tipped back, drinking deeply from a flask. His left arm was strapped down firmly on the table’s surface, the hand swaddled tightly in bandages. Chadfallow was laying out instruments behind him.
“The fiend returns,” said Rose, looking at Pazel.
“I’m sorry, Captain,” said Pazel. “I was trying to help. I didn’t know about Oggosk’s spell.”
“Go rot in the Pits,” said Rose, and drank again. Smacking his lips, he added, “I’ll find a way to collect on what you owe me, Pathkendle. At a time and place of my choosing. Better keep one eye peeled, lad. The Rose family always settles accounts.”
Chadfallow ordered Pazel to wash Thasha’s wound, and to hold clean cotton gauze over the incision. Pazel did as he was told, thinking of his dream about her wooden heart. Thasha did not speak or even look at him.
The door opened, and Swift rushed in with a small, smoking cauldron. “Hot coals from the galley, sir,” he piped, “just as you wanted.”
“Our new surgeon’s mate,” said Chadfallow, nestling an odd tool like a blunt iron spike into the cauldron. “A waste of my efforts, training Fulbreech. Is he in custody, then?”
“Excellent custody,” said Rose, and laughed. Despite himself, Pazel shuddered. He could guess who had taken charge of the Simjan youth.
“I am glad to hear it,” said Chadfallow, bustling over to Thasha in turn. “I will have some words for that boy myself. He very nearly cost Tarsel the use of his thumb.”
He moved Pazel aside, began to scissor away part of Thasha’s bloodied shirt.
“Was my mother barren?” asked Thasha suddenly.
Chadfallow’s hand stopped cutting, but only briefly. “A nonsensical question,” he replied. “She could not very well have been your mother if she was, now could she?”
“Are you going to tell me, Doctor?”
Chadfallow frowned and fixed his eyes on the wound, as though her head were an unwelcome intruder on the scene. Watching him stitch up Thasha’s skin with deft, swift draws of his needle, Pazel could almost forgive him the evasiveness. But as he tied off the stitches, Chadfallow said, “This is most inappropriate, Thasha Isiq. I have a difficult operation to perform on the captain. And not even for Magad the Fifth would I disregard the privacy of my patients.”
“She was my mother,” said Thasha.
“Well, ain’t that the question?” put in Rose, and cackled.
Chadfallow looked at him with loathing. He walked to the cauldron, donned a padded glove and lifted the spike. The last inch glowed cherry-red.
“Fresh cotton over the wound, Pazel,” he said, “then a wide wrap about her torso, to secure it. Come here, Swift, and restrain his other arm.”
Pazel did as he was told. He tried to resist the weird temptation to steal a glance at Rose and Chadfallow, but eventually succumbed: just as the doctor was applying the tip of the red-hot spike to the captain’s mutilated hand. Rose’s screams were like nothing Pazel had ever heard. He looked away, hoping Thasha would show better sense than he had. The reek of cauterized flesh made him think of a pig roast he’d attended as a boy.
Rose became hysterical. “Dog! Hatchet-man! Mutilator! I’ll cut out your stomach, Chadfallow! Do you hear me, you pitch-forker, you barb-wielding devil? I’ll have your stomach, your stomach and your license too!”
“Keep him still, Mr. Swift!”
“He’s too strong, sir! He’s pulled the blary screws from the floor!”
“Pazel,” said Thasha, “you look awful. You had better lie down.”
“I’m fine,” he said.
“Stop looking at Rose. Was it your head that struck the ceiling?”
A moment later they had traded places: Thasha was on her feet, making him sit on the table, raising his legs. When he lay flat on his back Pazel felt the chamber start to spin. Rose had begun to rave about his father, and Lady Oggosk, and her cat. Thasha told him to close his eyes, and when he hesitated, bent down to kiss them shut.
“You should have done as Ignus wanted,” she said.
“About your bandages?”
“About jumping ship back in Etherhorde. You poor dear fool.”
He really had taken some blows. Thasha pressed a cool wet cloth to his forehead, and his eyes. The noises in the chamber began to recede.
When her hand touched him again he caught it, drew it to his lips. There was a grunt of surprise. From under the cloth Pazel saw that the hand was black, and webbed to the first knuckle. He pulled the cloth away and looked into the startled eyes of Counselor Vadu. The pale dlomu’s head bobbed up and down.
“Jathod, I thought he was a corpse! What were you doing, boy, trying to kiss my ring?”
The surgery was full of armed dlomu. Thasha, Swift and Chadfallow were surrounded; Captain Rose stood gagged with surgical gauze, spears pointed at his neck. The hand with the missing fingers was in a bucket of water; the other still held his open flask. Pazel tried to spring to his feet, but Vadu’s hand clamped roughly on his shoulder.
“Calm yourself. No one is going to do you harm. We heard screaming from this deck, but it was only a veterinary-That is, a medical procedure. Are you Undrabust?”
“Pathkendle,” said Pazel. “What’s happening, why are you here?”
Vadu turned his perpetually amazed face in Thasha’s direction. “And that is the girl called Thashiziq. Very good, very good.”
“See here, Counselor,” said Chadfallow, “you may have good intentions, though gagging the captain is an outrage. But whatever you’re about, this is a surgery, and these are my patients.”
“I was hoping you would admit as much,” said Vadu, his head bobbing faster. “Do you consider yourself qualified to describe their condition? And would you be willing to do so in the presence of witnesses?”
“Of course I’m qualified,” said Chadfallow, “but medical knowledge is private, sir, at least in our culture-”
“His culture, did you hear?” laughed one of the dlomic troops.
“-but you must all leave the surgery at once, Counselor. You’re disturbing the wounded.”
“They are already disturbed,” said Vadu. “And so are you… Doctor. That is the verdict of the best minds of Masalym, who have watched you from shore these many days.”
Chadfallow was incensed. He pushed forward through the crowd until stopped firmly by Vadu’s guards. “Counselor Vadu, I am Imperial Surgeon to His Supremacy Magad the Fifth of Arqual. You have nothing to teach me about derangement.”
“No,” said Vadu, almost with regret, “it did not occur to me that you could be taught.” He made an abrupt little wave. “All of them but the captain. You know what to do with him.”
“We’re not insane,” said Thasha. “Your people have simply made a mistake.”
Vadu turned to her, impatience showing in his staring eyes. “When I came into this room, your captain looked up at me and screamed, ‘My mother is a cat.’ ”
Rose snarled.
“Damn it, man, I just cauterized the stumps of his fingers!” cried Chadfallow. “I dare say you might rave a bit
