He stood up, flexing and bending. “As good as new.”
“You mustn’t tell anyone,” Ezaara warned. “I’m only supposed to use piaua in dire circumstances.”
“Those gashes were dire enough.” Adelina flung her arms around Ezaara. “Thank you. I won’t breathe a word.” She headed for the door. “I’ll catch up with you two later. Benji wants me in the kitchens to help prepare food for our hungry warriors. Come and grab something to eat when you’re done.” She shut the door behind her.
Ezaara passed Roberto an open tub of pungent ointment. “I used some of this healing ointment on the cut on your arm.” She gestured at a bandage on his left forearm.
This yellow stuff didn’t look like any healing salve he’d ever seen.
“Use it sparingly,” Ezaara corked the tub. “Fleur said the ingredients are expensive, only brought in by the green guards.”
Green guards? They patrolled Naobia, yet Roberto had never seen such a strange salve in use in his homelands. “This is from Fleur? I told you I didn’t want to be healed by her.”
“She told me it was better than anything I had. I thought—”
“Well, next time don’t. That family’s worse than a scorpion’s nest. They—” A knock at the door silenced him.
Shooting him a scathing glance, Ezaara strode to the door. “Why, Simeon,” she said. “Come in.”
That shrotty leech was here.
Simeon stepped over the threshold, his gaze sweeping over Roberto’s naked torso and the bloodstained clothes on the floor. His eyebrows rose. “Oh? Am I interrupting something?”
“Not at all,” said Ezaara, folding her arms. “Roberto was just leaving.”
“No, no, don’t leave on my account,” that sycophantic leech said. “I was only wondering where Adelina is. Wounded riders have arrived, and I need her help in the infirmary.”
“She’s in the kitchens, on duty,” Roberto snapped, tugging his clean shirt and jerkin on. “You’ll have to find someone else.”
“No problem.” Throwing a greasy smile at Ezaara, Simeon left.
Ezaara shot Roberto daggers. “You didn’t have to be so rude to my guest.”
Perhaps he should tell her. “I’ve warned you about Simeon.”
She folded her arms, fuming.
“Look, Ezaara, the council let you fight today because you promised not to get off Zaarusha.”
Her jaw tensed. “So, you expected me to let that girl and her littling brother die?”
This was not a battle he was going to win. “No, you did the right thing. We had to help them, and you fought well, but if the council hears about this, we’ll be flamed. Get changed so no one sees the blood all over you. Although it might be too late, because Simeon already has.”
The look she shot him could have curdled blood. Even covered in tharuk gore and angry at him, she was stunning. She must never, ever get an inkling of how he felt. Roberto tamped his feelings down tight. “It’s your job to heed the rules, Ezaara, not break them.” He strode out the door.
§
Roberto was so sharding stubborn, so pigheaded. Ezaara scrubbed her face and arms and changed into clean clothes. They’d fought so well together. She’d saved a girl and her brother, but all he could do was lecture her. No kind word of praise. Not even a smile.
She flexed her torso, aching all over where the monster had pinned her. No doubt there were others more badly wounded. She’d forgotten to go to the infirmary when Sofia was injured, but she wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. A Queen’s Rider needed to serve her people. Making her way as quickly as possible down the tunnels, Ezaara came to the infirmary.
Fleur was back. She, Simeon, and two assistants were tending wounded riders and sword fighters whose moans echoed off the stone walls.
Ezaara went straight to Fleur. “Who should I first attend?”
“Oh, um … him.” She pointed. “He’s loudest.”
She frowned. Her mother had always triaged patients, knowing the loudest often wasn’t in the worst condition. Ezaara hesitated. She really should obey Fleur—it was her infirmary. She went to the man Fleur had indicated, and sure enough, his injuries didn’t appear as bad as the lad next to his, who was lying silently on a spreading stain of red.
“How were you hurt?” she asked the boy.
“Arrow in my back,” he answered through gritted teeth, staring at her with pain-filled eyes.
The man’s moaning in the next bed was driving her to distraction, so Ezaara gave the man a stick to bite on and rolled the boy from his back onto his front. The arrow had gone deep, but from what she could see, the wound had been enlarged by whoever had removed it so clumsily, ripping the flesh further. Her blood boiled. This poor boy couldn’t be more than thirteen. “Who removed this arrow?” she muttered.
Suddenly standing at her shoulder, Simeon smiled. “I did,” he said.
Simeon was the son of a healer. He should know better. She bit back a scathing comment, only saying, “Please, fetch me warm water.”
When Simeon returned, she was about to ask for clean herb, but remembered it was hidden in the alcove, so she muttered, “Thank you,” and waited until he was gone to slip clean herb out of her healer’s pouch and crumble it into the water. She cleansed the boy’s wound, threaded her needle with rabbit gut twine from Lush Valley and stitched the ragged edges of his flesh together. The boy’s body was tight with tension. Even when she gave him a stick to bite on, he whimpered.
“Simeon, do you have anything to numb the wound?” she called.
Tending a man nearby, Simeon shook his head. “Supplies were dreadfully low when my mother took over here. Sorry.”
