demons from the woods, though, faster than the archers could pick them off.
Gared, an axe in each hand and blood streaming down his arm, hacked his way to them. He dropped the weapons and lifted Kendall like a feather. With the archers and Cutters providing cover, he ran her to the hospit.
“I need a blood donor!” Leesha cried as Gared kicked in the hospit door. They laid Kendall on a bed, and apprentices ran for Leesha’s instruments.
“I’ll do it,” Rojer said, rolling up his sleeve.
“Check if he’s a match,” Leesha told Vika as she moved to scrub her hands and arms. Vika quickly lanced a sample from Rojer as Darsy tried to have a look at Gared’s arm.
“Worry about those that are hurt worse,” Gared said, pulling away. He pointed to the door, where other injured Cutters were being carried in.
There was a whirlwind of bloodied activity as the Herb Gatherers worked. Leesha cut and clamped and sewed Kendall for two hours as Rojer looked on, dizzy from the blood transfusion.
At last, Leesha paused to drag the back of a bloodied hand over her sweating brow. “Will she be all right?” Rojer asked.
Leesha sighed. “She’ll live. Gared, I’ll have a look at that arm now.”
“It’s just a scratch,” Gared said.
Leesha bit back a scowl, reminding herself how brave Gared had just been, but try as she might, she could not forget how his lies had almost ruined her life, and how he had brutally beaten any man caught speaking to her after she broke off their betrothal.
“You were bit by a demon, Gar,” she said. “You let the wound fester, and I’ll be cutting that arm off before you know it. Get over here.”
Gared grunted and complied. “It’s not so bad,” Leesha said, after she had washed the wound out with hogroot tincture. Charged by the magic he had absorbed, the clean cuts from the demon’s sharp teeth were already closing. She wrapped the arm in a clean bandage, and then took Rojer aside.
“I told you Kendall wasn’t ready for a solo,” she whispered angrily.
“I thought…” Rojer began.
“You didn’t think,” Leesha said. “You were showing off, and it almost cost that girl her life! This isn’t a game, Rojer!”
“I know it isn’t a game!” Rojer snapped.
“Then act like it,” Leesha said.
Rojer scowled. “We’re not all as perfect as you, Leesha.” His eyes were seething, but Leesha saw right through to the pain they hid.
“Come to my office,” she said, taking him by the arm. Rojer yanked his arm away, but followed Leesha to her office, where she poured him a glass of hard alcohol more suited to antiseptics than consumption.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was out of the light.”
Rojer seemed to deflate, falling into a chair and downing the glass in one gulp. “No, you weren’t,” he said. “I’m a fraud.”
“Nonsense,” Leesha replied. “We all make mistakes.”
“I didn’t make a mistake,” Rojer said. “I lied. I lied and said I could teach people how to charm corelings when in truth, I don’t even understand how I do it myself. Just like I lied last year and told you I could see you safely here from Angiers. It’s how I made my way in the hamlets after Arrick died, and how I got into the Jongleurs’ Guild. Seems lying is all I ever do.”
“But why?” Leesha asked.
Rojer shrugged. “Keep telling myself pretending to be something’s the same as being it. Like if I just pretend to be great like you and the Painted Man, it will be so.”
Leesha looked at him in surprise. “There’s nothing so great about me, Rojer. You know that better than anyone.”
But Rojer laughed out loud. “You don’t even see it!” he cried. “An endless line of weapons and wards comes from your hut, the sick and injured cured with a wave of your hand. All I can do is play my fiddle, and I can’t even save a life when I do. You and the Painted Man have become giants while I spend months teaching my apprentices, and all they’re good for is getting folk to dance.”
“Don’t belittle the joy you and your apprentices have brought to a town fraught with hardship,” Leesha said.
Rojer shrugged. “I do nothing a keg of ale can’t do on its own.”
Leesha took his hands in hers. “That’s ridiculous. Your magic is as strong as Arlen’s or mine. The fact that you have such trouble teaching it is just proof of how special you are.”
She laughed mirthlessly. “Besides, however big I grow, I’ll always have my mum to cut me back down.”
It was a moonless night, and where Leesha and Rojer walked, far from the glow of the greatward, the darkness was near complete. Leesha walked with a tall staff, the end of which held a flask of chemics that glowed fiercely, casting light for them to make their way by. The flask and staff were etched with wards of unsight; corelings could see the light, but they could no more find the source than they could find the two of them in their warded cloaks.
“Don’t see why he couldn’t meet us in town,” Rojer muttered. “Hemight not feel the cold, but I do.”
“Some things are best said in private,” Leesha said, “and he tends to draw a crowd.”
The Painted Man was waiting for them on the warded path leading to Leesha’s cottage. Twilight Dancer, his enormous black stallion, was in full barding and horns, nearly invisible in the darkness. The Painted Man himself wore only a loincloth, his tattooed skin bare to the cold.
“You’re late,” the Painted Man said.
“Had some problems at the hospit,” Leesha said. “An accident while we were charging glass. Why aren’t you wearing your cloak?” She tried to make the question seem casual, but it hurt her that for all the hours she spent on it, Leesha had never seen him wear the garment apart from the one time she threw it across his shoulders to check the fit.
“It’s in my saddlebag,” the Painted Man said. “Not looking to hide from corelings. They want to come at me, let them. World could do with a few less.”
They tied Twilight Dancer to a hitching post in the yard and went inside. Leesha took a match from her apron and lit the fire, filling a kettle and hanging it over the blaze.
“How are the fiddle wizards coming along?” the Painted Man asked Rojer.
“More fiddle than wizard, I’m afraid,” Rojer said. “They’re not ready.”
The Painted Man frowned. “Cutter patrols would be stronger with a fiddler who can manipulate the demons’ emotions.”
“I can patrol with them,” Rojer said. “I have my cloak to keep me safe.”
The Painted Man shook his head. “Need you teaching.”
Rojer, blew out a breath, glancing at Leesha. “I’ll do what I can.”
“And the Hollow?” the Painted Man asked when Leesha joined them at the table.
“Expanding quickly,” Leesha said. “Already we have twice as many people as we had before the flux last year, and more come in daily. We planned the new town to accommodate growth, but not at this rate.”
The Painted Man nodded. “We can have the Cutters clear more land and plot another greatward.”
“We need the lumber, anyway,” Leesha agreed. “We haven’t sent a shipment to Duke Rhinebeck in over a year.”
“Had to rebuild the entire village,” the Painted Man said.
Leesha shrugged. “Perhaps you’d like to explain that to the duke. He sent another Messenger, requesting an audience. They fear you, and your plans for the Hollow.”
The Painted Man shook his head. “Ent got any plans, beyond making the Hollow secure from corelings. When that’s done, I’ll be on my way.”
“But what about the Great War on demonkind?” Rojer asked. “You have to lead the people to it.”
“Corespawn it, boy, I’m not the ripping Deliverer!” the Painted Man growled. “This isn’t some fantasy from a Tender’s Canon, and I wasn’t sent from Heaven to unite mankind. I’m just Arlen Bales of Tibbet’s Brook, a stupid boy with more luck than he deserved, most of it bad.”
