“First One, help me,” I breathed. Strips of flesh hung off wing-bone. If I sewed them together, they’d form a morbid, striped quilt of flesh. There were so many strips… Nausea welled in my stomach as I realized what needed to be done.
I knelt in front of an eye filled with agony. “I can’t mend your wings like Shamino can. I can stitch them together, but it’d take so long you’d bleed out. I think I can save your life, however, if I take the wings entirely.”
The dragon closed his eyes. A small, quick nod. He rolled with a muffled scream so I could reach a wing.
“Get help to hold him,” I told the unknown dragon pinning my patient. An eye-blink later, Mettalise rushed over—she’d finished carrying off the screaming mage. I gave her a nod and steeled myself for what needed to be done.
The wing connected to the dragon’s back in a muscular, powerful joint as thick as my waist. Hacking through the protective scales would be near impossible; getting a dragon to hack it off with teeth or claws would leave a jagged, bloody mess.
Magic was the answer. Magic and fire. During harvest, sometimes people’s scythes missed. The blacksmith used hot metal to seal the wound, and his patients lived… most of the time. I didn’t have a forge, but I had a Gift.
“Lower your barrier,” I told the green. He nodded. I took a long, deep breath.
I need a line of Incineration, hot as I can make it. I shifted, so that if I were holding a sword, the angle would hit only the wing joint and not the back. I raised my hand, pretending to hold that sword. Anything to help the visualization.
The thinnest beam of blue fire, hot as—you sheep-brain. He’s fireproof.
I looked at Mettalise. “I need the scales removed.”
She grimaced but flexed her claws. One scale after another plinked on the ground, revealing knobbly green skin that resembled a reptile’s. Each tear must have stung, but the dragon didn’t flinch. In fact, he stared into space… I didn’t have much time. The moment the last scale fell, I formed my blade of blue fire and sliced.
It took two chops. Charred meat overwhelmed the sulfuric scent of dragon blood. The severed wing plopped wetly on the floor. I swallowed against the urge to vomit, because I didn’t have time. I needed to get the other wing off, now.
The spell sliced through the second wing on the first try. Though neither stump bled, I instructed Orrik to smear them with healing ointment and bandage them. I told Mettalise to dispose of the wings.
Before I moved on, I took one last look. The dragon had long passed out. Without his wings, he seemed… small. Less. Tears fell from Mettalise’s eyes as the remains of the wings pooled in her claws. The other dragon excused himself to a corner.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to the unconscious dragon. I kissed his forehead.
Byron’s patient, one with a hole blown in its chest, had died as I worked. Sylvia poured antivenom down the throat of another dragon with spears in its belly. I went to the next unattended dragon, another pin-cushioned one, and went to work.
That dragon died as I removed the second spear.
Even with Shamino, these are too badly wounded to save them all, I told myself as I moved to the next patient. But Shamino could have saved more.
We finished by midnight. My heart and muscles ached with exhaustion; my Gift was somewhat depleted but still so strong. I hated it. Our third dragon had died, and I still had magic to spare.
“The rest will live, I think,” Sylvia said. We washed in a supply room adjoining the Infirmary. Her body shook with exhaustion. “I hope.”
I struggled not to cry. “I can’t believe the Kyer functioned before Shamino.”
“We haven’t had a war in a century, love.” Sylvia eyed a pile of bandages as if she might sleep on them. “Raiders don’t often injure dragon patrols. The world has changed.”
I kept scrubbing, but I couldn’t get the death off my hands. I pumped more water to start over, and each thrust of the handle grew more frantic.
I have a Gift, but I’m still useless. I still don’t belong.
Each downward thrust, I saw the blade of blue sinking into dragon flesh, tendrils of smoke curling upward. Healing, so to speak, through destruction.
So much destruction.
I plunged my hands into icy water. “If I ever see Thorkel, I’ll kill him.”
“I hope you never see him, because that means you won’t be here.” Sylvia offered me a towel. “You saved that dragon’s life, amputating his wings.”
My skin grew raw and red, but I ignored the towel. “Some life. If I killed Thorkel, we wouldn’t have flightless dragons. If I—”
I could track him down. I had the directions in my boot, and an amplifier dangled from my neck. Bonding was soon, but I could get a horse now, ride there and—
Die. Thorkel and his followers had killed groups of dragons. With their mages. On my own, I had no prayer. I’d only been hurling fireballs for a few weeks.
Sylvia swayed.
I grabbed her with my wet hands. “We’ll both sleep here. I’ll make a bed.”
Giant bandages folded up into uncomfortable beds, but they were better than the rock floor. Sylvia fell asleep on one immediately, as if it were made of feathers. I stayed awake. The groans from the Infirmary drifted through the doorway. A human—the mage bonded to the wingless dragon—sobbed.
There is nothing Thorkel can tell me about my mother to make me spare him. Nothing.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The courier dragons flew as fast as they could. Shamino arrived, rumpled and sore, in less than two days. By then we’d lost another dragon—we suspected internal bleeding. That brought the death toll to four.
“Good job, staying alive,” Shamino murmured to a dragon whose spear had just been removed. Sylvia and I thought it had pierced the fire chamber—and we’d been right. “You should be
