“A monster? Is it a darkling?”
Avena couldn’t find the words to speak what she’d seen. Not to her friend. “Just . . . ask her to consider it.”
“Avena, child, we must depart. It is well past sunset. It will be approaching midnight by the time we return. I have sick to care for and need my lab.”
“I’ll be safe,” Avena promised and broke away from her friend. She hurried across the loading yard. Miguil, sitting in the driver’s bench, glanced at her. She ignored his concerned, inquiring look and climbed into the back of the carriage.
A diamond lamp lit it with a steady light. Dualayn had his medical bag open and plunked out clean bandages and a bottle of wood alcohol. She sat down across from him as he poured the antiseptic liquid into the cloth and then brought it to her forehead.
It stung. The sharp scent of the wood alcohol filled her nose. He dabbed at her wound. Her fingers clenched into the torn skirts of her dress. He frowned and leaned closer as he inspected her wound.
“It wasn’t a clean claw that scratched you,” he said. “And such a long furrow. What manner of bird did this?”
“A large one,” she said. “A dead one.”
“Mmm, large, yes,” he said. Sometimes, he didn’t hear everything she said when he focused on a problem. “I’ll need you to strip to your waist so I can attend to the rest.”
Her cheeks flamed. She nodded. Normally, she wouldn’t strip for any man—well, not unless they were promised and he was handsome and she had the delight of strawberry currant warming her veins—but Dualayn had that detached look in his eyes. Clinical.
I’m just his patient.
She unlaced her bodice and shrugged out of the dress, wincing as she twisted the scratches across her shoulders and back with her movement. She turned around, kneeling on the floor before she pulled off her chemise, drawing it out from beneath her skirt. She hugged the cloth to her breasts before sweeping her braid out of the way.
“Oh, dear, child, these are deep,” he said. “A large bird did this? And trained to attack?”
“It was a dead bird,” she said again. She looked over her shoulder as he washed a long scratch across her back. “Dje’awsa animated it with a jewel.”
Dualayn froze. “Dje’awsa? The White Lady’s associate? He’s here?”
“And wanted to kill Ōbhin and myself,” she said. “He’s with Ust.”
“Who?”
“The bandit leader. They are in Kash. They’re not happy with us.”
“Us? I have an agreement with Grey.”
“I don’t think they care. Ōbhin embarrassed Ust, and as far as Dje’awsa...” She shuddered, remembering the cold fear he’d inspired back at the farm. “Ōbhin and I stood up to him. We kept him from making Carstin into a walking corpse.”
“My, oh, my.” Dualayn rubbed a fresh cloth across a scratch on her upper arm. “Walking corpses. Dead birds. What sort of jewelchine lets you do that?”
“They were strangely cut gems, Father. No wires wrapped about them, but they kept the corpses moving. Even a severed head kept snapping at my feet.”
“Fascinating.”
She stiffened. “Fascinating?” She whirled around, clutching her chemise tight to her breasts. “He controlled them with obsidian! He brought them to life and tried to murder Ōbhin and me with them!”
He leaned back. “Obsidian, you say. Yes, yes, that makes sense. Dark applications. You are certain there were no wires?”
“Very certain,” she hissed. “It was magic!”
“That is a myth, child. I’ll get word to Grey and sort this out. Now turn around, child, I am not done cleaning the wounds.”
“How long will it take to get word to him?” she asked, turning away.
“Oh, a few days, I imagine.”
Would that be fast enough?
*
Ōbhin sat in the back of the wagon beside the two sick Dualayn was taking back to his lab to cure. They were wrapped in blankets. One coughed, his face a mass of blisters caused by facerot fever. The other shivered, his cheeks and temple flushed red and looking unnaturally dry. He muttered, his eyes closed. He smelled of rotten cheese.
Infection.
Even though Ōbhin’s back wasn’t healed all the way, he felt much improved. His rib throbbed, but it didn’t hurt as much to move. The bleeding had stopped, and he felt renewed, reinvigorated, by the topaz healer.
Shame gems that big are rare.
Tomorrow, he’d be healed the rest of the way. It took a jewelchine a day to recharge the power they held. It didn’t seem to matter on their size; that just affected how long they could operate or what they could do. They all took the same amount of time to refill their reserves. Why?
“I want us all on watch when we get back,” Ōbhin said.
Fingers nodded. He sat on the wagon’s edge across from Ōbhin while Smiles drove. Cerdyn rode with the carriage.
“I won’t let those bastards hurt Avena or anyone else,” Ōbhin muttered. Dje’awsa’s presence chilled his blood. If those corpses attacked the manor house . . . “If you smell anything like death, sound the alarm.”
“Death?” Smiles asked, throwing a look over his shoulder.
Ōbhin nodded. He didn’t know if they’d believe him. “The men Ust’s hooked up with, well, they smell like a charnel house. Like they rolled around in the dead.”
Five knuckles popped from Fingers clenching his fist. “Sounds like men of elegant and refined backgrounds.”
Smiles snorted in laughter. “Yes. They must belong to the peerage, and all the nobles are just too polite to inform them of the rank smell ‘bout their bodies.”
Fingers’s laughter boomed in the foggy night as they approached the city gates. Ōbhin wanted to laugh, but the memory of those dead stumbling after him churned nausea through his stomach. He glanced back at the city, watching the fog drift around the
