“I see the fracas is over,” Dualayn said. “Who’s the worst wounded?”
“Bran,” Ōbhin said without hesitation. From above, Bran’s mother gasped. She broke from the other women and rushed down the stairs, her motherly face a mask of pale fear. Joayne reached him, eyes beseeching. “Out on the lawn,” he told her. “Follow Dajouth’s screaming. He broke his leg.”
“Right,” said Dualayn. “Come with me, Madam Joayne, and let’s attend to your son.”
“Cerdyn might be alive, too,” Ōbhin grunted. “Aduan’s dead.”
Smiles’s face fell. His wife hugged him tight, her face pressing into his mailed chest. Ōbhin frowned as he studied his friend, his unease sinking into his stomach.
Why aren’t you hurt? He remembered that flash of white flesh rippling across Smiles’s head. Was it a trick of his mind? He’d been dazed at the time. Ust hit you in the head, right? And if not, why aren’t your ribs broken from that second blow?
*
Avena fiddled with the knot of her bandage wrapped around her forehead with an absent hand. Through the fog, the golden light of dawn appeared, illuminating the lawn. Exhaustion pressed down on her, her back bowing beneath the weight, her eyes struggling to stay open.
When she closed them, she saw Ust naked and hard coming for her, then Pharon slamming into the door frame. She heard Dje’awsa’s voice promising Ōbhin he couldn’t hide in there forever. She swallowed and found her eyes falling on the dead.
They were covered by blankets and lying on the lawn. Pharon and Aduan were side by side. Nearby lay the bandits who’d been killed: Hook, Stone, Naston, Janis, and Laynet. The two that were bound, Creg and Anbrian, had gotten away. Handsome Baill had never even shown up.
Only Ust was missing. He was in Dualayn’s lab. Later, after all the sick were tended, Dualayn wanted to understand what had been done to the bandit leader. Avena shuddered. It was dark knowledge, beyond jewelchines into a realm of the impossible.
Into sorcery.
He spoke through those obsidian plates. She formed the prism before her.
She shook her head then remembered why she’d come out here. Smiles stood to watch over the dead. She called to him and he looked up. He had a somber expression on his face as he moved away from his friend, Aduan.
“Yes?” he asked. He still wore his chainmail, perhaps in case Dje’awsa sent his animated corpses.
“I need to examine your head,” she said. “You took a nasty blow.”
“I’m fine,” he said and rapped knuckles against the side of his head. “See? Solid as a rock.”
“Maybe your brain is, but I need to look at your head. You’re the last one.” Bran and Cerdyn were stabilized. Both would live long enough for the topaz healers to recharge. Dajouth’s legs were set, Ōbhin’s broken ribs bound, and her forehead bandaged. “Kneel.”
“Fine, fine,” Smiles said. “Jilly put you up to this?”
“Of course,” she said. “Plus, I’m your friend. It turns out I want to make sure your head’s intact, too.”
She could see that hard impact Smiles had taken when he’d hit the wall in her mind and the smear of blood left behind. He should not have woken up so easily. A queasy writhe rippled across her stomach as she remembered how his skin had appeared to go white and featureless, smooth like sculptor’s clay.
She ran her fingers through his fine, light brown hair. She felt around his scalp, searching for any hidden wounds or sticky blood. Her brow furrowed.
“What?” he asked. “Did you find somethin’?”
“No,” she said. “Not even a knot. You didn’t wince once.”
“Told you, my head is as hard as a rock. It’s like what I told my ma when she would catch me playin’ in the barn rafters. ‘Ma, my head’s too hard to break, you got nothin’ to worry about.’ ‘Course, it turned out my legs weren’t quite as strong. Snapped my left clean in half. But my head was fine.”
A giggle burst from her mouth, her exhausted mind surrendering to it. She pushed his head back. “Well, it appears true. I could have sworn you cracked your head open. And your ribs? He hit your chest hard.”
“A little bruised.” Smiles shrugged. “Things get confusin’ in battle. Memories get hazy. Unreliable. You can’t really trust what you saw.”
“So Ust’s skull didn’t talk to us?”
Smiles shuddered, a look of horror rippling across his face. “What was that thing we fought? That weren’t no man.”
“Black sorcery,” she said.
“Well, I’m gonna relieve Fingers at the main gate,” he said. “Don’t know how he got through it without gettin’ punched.”
“Not stupid enough to let Ust land one,” suggested Avena.
Smiles grinned at her and winked. He swaggered off, his chainmail clinking. She sighed, struggling to banish that strange sight of his face changing. It was unnatural. Impossible. It had to be the fear during the battle distorting her senses.
His head still hit the wall hard enough to crack the plaster.
She turned and was about to head inside when she noticed Miguil kneeling over Pharon’s body. The groom had pulled back the blanket, exposing the older man’s face. A hopeless look filled Miguil’s features. He caressed Pharon’s cheek with a gentle touch.
Welling compassion rose through her, a spring of freshwater carving through earth and rock to burst forth. She rushed to him and fell to her knees, the dew on the grass soaking through her trousers. The sun shone with golden yellow, cutting through the thick fog to warm her face. She threw her arms around him.
“I’m so sorry,” she whimpered, pulling him tight to her. “I truly am. He saved me. He was a good man.”
His arms
