Two men were keeping watch on the warehouse.
The blond one had been there since before the woman had been taken inside with the rough-looking gang. He had seen her encounter them in the alley earlier. And before that, he had watched her move through the city beyond the capital, asking questions, searching for something. That was his assignment.
The other one asked:
“What do we do?”
“Lord Petaora’s orders were to observe. We don’t intervene.”
The blond answered firmly. The other man nodded.
After some time, two people emerged from the warehouse. A black-haired woman and a tall silver-haired man. The woman was supporting the man as they walked.
The two watchers kept their distance and followed.
These people are such a nuisance.
Hyderlin was aware of the tail but gave no sign of it and kept walking.
She briefly considered dealing with them — but there was nothing to be gained by it. It would only flag her as dangerous.
She decided to think of the shadows behind her as no more troublesome than gnats.
Hyderlin deposited Sarg in the bed at the house, then rummaged through the sparse collection of belongings until she located some medicinal herbs and a small wooden bowl.
“Where’s the princess?”
Hyderlin asked, pressing the herbs against Sarg’s bruised cheek. Sarg, enduring the treatment with considerable suffering evident in his expression, answered:
“I left her with someone trustworthy before I came looking for you.”
“Who.”
“You wouldn’t know them.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“The priest who used to tend the church nearby. Retired now. Lives close by.”
“Ah.”
Hyderlin glanced at the cemetery and the abandoned chapel visible through the window. A ruin now, but once it had been in someone’s care.
“You have wide connections. Even a priest out here in the middle of nowhere.”
Sarg answered with a different question.
“How’s your neck.”
There was a pause before she replied.
“…Fine.”
She answered absently and finished turning Sarg’s face into an herbal poultice.
“Take your shirt off. I’ll put some on your body too.”
Sarg removed his shirt. When she held out the bowl, he spread the herbs across his chest and abdomen. Then he turned his back toward her.
“I can’t reach. Would you?”
She had resolved to be generous today, at least. Hyderlin pressed the herbal paste methodically across his back.
Sarg’s back was the color of the sea — not in expanse, but in hue. Blue-black and deep grey. The color of dead fish. She found herself staring at the well-trained muscle pulled tight across his back and thinking not of physical beauty but of fish laid out on a market slab, which told her something about the depths of her mood.
Toward his back, she said:
“I’m sorry.”
His back answered.
“I would appreciate it if you would spare a thought for how I feel, having to say it’s fine three times.”
The back hadn’t spoken, of course — Sarg had. But she decided to count it as the back speaking. The back had no eyes and no expression, which made it very easy to address.
She squeezed out more words toward the back.
“I was foolish. I put you in a position to get hurt because of me.”
She pressed the herbs pointlessly onto a perfectly uninjured shoulder blade. The back was quiet for a moment.
“That part’s not injured.”
“That’s all right, shoulder blade. You stay strong even if the ribs can’t.”
“Do as you like…”
The back sighed. The muscles shifted as though breathing.
“It wasn’t your fault. Don’t be so hard on yourself. You had a knife to your throat — how many people could have moved? Neither of us should have moved. Taking a few hits from people like that isn’t asking too much of me.”
“Even so. People die easily. You could have been killed if they’d kept going.”
“But I wasn’t. So it’s fine.”
“That’s a reckless way of thinking.”
“I was fairly certain I wouldn’t die. I survived an avalanche in the northern mountains.”
Hyderlin went quiet. If he meant the avalanche in the year Margarite married Chesa — that had been partly her doing.
I really am a terrible person.
While Hyderlin turned over her own failings, Sarg was worrying about her.
“Are there any cuts on your neck.”
“There aren’t.”
“I’d like to check. I can’t be sure.”
Sarg settled her on the edge of the bed and gently folded down her collar.
“This is…”
The knife had left a thin, shallow line against her skin — already clotted, already settling, not serious-looking at all. That wasn’t what stopped him.
What stopped him was the lightning-bolt scar that encircled her throat.
The trace of a severed neck that had been reattached.
Hyderlin registered the scar’s existence as though noticing it again for the first time. She couldn’t see it — she had forgotten it was there.
She smoothed her collar back into place and said:
“It’s nothing to worry about.”
“How can you call that nothing? This is — your neck was completely—”
“I have no desire to speak about the years in that cell. It’s over and behind me. Let’s leave it there.”
Hyderlin exhaled and redirected.
“There was a tail on me, by the way. Someone following me all the way back from the city next door. That’s why I didn’t deal with that gang when they cornered me in the alley.”
She had been conscious of the watchers’ eyes. She had waited for the gang to move somewhere enclosed before she was willing to act.
Sarg drew a conclusion aloud.
“Now that you mention it — there’s been an unfamiliar face circling the area for a few days now. The king must have sent someone.”
“He’s worried we might run with the princess. Our delightful little brother — how tiresome he is.”
“You raised him badly.”
“He had something of a difficult adolescence.”
Hyderlin turned up the corner of her mouth in the barest ghost of a smile.
“Lift your arm. I’ll wrap the bandage.”
She stopped applying herbs and wound a bandage around his torso. Sarg watched her quick hands and asked:
“But this business about Leone Colozzo — what was that about? Why do you want to find his grave?”
“…Oh. Just. We were acquainted, once. I thought I might leave some flowers.”
Sarg’s expression did something complicated. She finished the final loop of the bandage and knotted it, then straightened with a sigh.
“This sort of patching-up really won’t be enough. We should get a physician.”
“No physician.”
“You said your ribs are cracked. Leave that alone and you’ll be suffering for a long time.”
Sarg put his shirt back on, gathered himself, and knelt carefully on the floor. He made the sign of the cross above his face and folded his hands together.
He murmured a short prayer beneath his breath — and the bruising across his face and body began, visibly, to fade. Not disappearing entirely, but softening. Lightening.
By the time the prayer ended, the marks were pale shadows of what they’d been.
Hyderlin stared at him with the expression of someone who had temporarily forgotten how faces work.
“…What was that?”
Sarg settled back into a more comfortable position with considerably more ease.
“I suppose you’d forgotten — a sacred knight is an ordained member of the clergy. It stands to reason that a sacred knight can draw on holy power.”
That was true. Leaving the order did not mean losing one’s swordsmanship — and leaving a sacred order did not mean losing one’s holy gifts.
Holy power couldn’t cure illness, but it was remarkably effective on physical injury.
Sarg said, quite matter-of-factly:
“I didn’t let myself fall apart completely. Don’t torment yourself.”
“…But if you could just heal yourself all along, you could have done it from the start—”
Something moved in the corner of Sarg’s mouth. A smile.
“The look on your face when you were worried was rather entertaining. I thought I’d let it go a little longer.”
Hyderlin’s eyebrow twitched.
Sarg laced his hands behind his head and stretched out at full length.
“Using holy power after so long has made me hollow. If it’s not too much trouble, perhaps you could go to the kitchen and bring — ugh! Hyderlin! What are you doing?!”
Without a word, Hyderlin had brought her palm down squarely against the bandaged portion of Sarg’s abdomen. Sarg practically flew upright, and what came out of him was somewhere between a gasp and a yelp.
Hyderlin dropped the bowl of herbs and stood.
“What a fool I was for worrying about you…”
