Stars of Fortune (The Guardians Trilogy, #1)(47)

“Use the salve again, then once more tonight. By morning it should be well healed.”

“All right.”

“And the ankle?”

“It’s fine, Bran.”

He lifted those hooded eyes, pinned her. “And you’d tell me, would you, if it was otherwise?”

“We all have to be strong and healthy if we’re going to face off with Nerezza again. So yes, I would. What are those for?”

“These? For what you’d call medicines for the most part. It’s best to be prepared.”

He felt a burning in his side, and for a moment, his vision blurred.

“What is it? What’s wrong? Oh! You’re bleeding.”

He glanced down toward the burn, cursed when he saw the spread of blood on his shirt. “Fuck me.”

“How bad is it? Let me see.” Before he could stop her—proving he was more than a little off his game—she’d tugged his shirt up. “Oh, God! Did this happen today? Why didn’t you tell anyone? Why are you an idiot?”

“It’s better than it was. I just ran out of salve. And aren’t I about to make more? I’ll see to it.”

“And you continue to be an idiot. I still have plenty. Go in. Sit down. Take off your shirt.” She touched her fingers to the rawness around the scatter of open wounds. “It’s hot to the touch.”

“You think I can’t feel it, seeing as it’s myself?”

As fed up as she was afraid, she grabbed the plants from him, tossed them on her makeshift worktable. “Inside, and sit down. Damn it, you’re fussing over a cut on my arm when you’ve got this?”

“I know what to do for it,” he snapped, as she shoved him toward the doors.

“Good. You’ll tell me what that is, and I’ll do it. It’s no wonder it wasn’t done right when you insisted on doing it yourself. You can’t possibly reach it all well enough to do it right, and you wouldn’t have run out of salve if you’d kept enough for yourself.”

“I thought I had.” Heat rolled up through him until he feared he might drop from it. “I told you this isn’t my strength—the healing.”

But he sat on the side of her bed as the room wanted to spin on him. “I thought I’d let it run clean, but I missed something.”

“Get this off.” She dragged the shirt over his head, then used it to staunch some of the blood. “Some look like they’re healing fine—like my arm—and others are raw, a little swollen. But this one around toward your back, it’s the worst. A puncture—a pair of them.”

Fangs, she thought.

“I don’t have to be a doctor to know infection when I see it.”

He twisted, winced, then bore down until he could see. And didn’t care for the red streaks on his skin.

“That’s what I missed, though I got some of the salve on it, so now . . . I need a couple of things from my room.”

“You’re white as a sheet,” she said, easily pushing him back. “And you’re burning up, clammy. Tell me what you need and I’ll get it. I won’t touch anything else,” she said between her teeth when he hesitated.

“It’d be best if you didn’t. I need a knife—should be on the table I set up for work. And there’s a leather case—I can unlock it from here. Inside are vials and jars. I need the vial with the diamond-shaped stopper. There’s a blue liquid inside. Like your eyes. Clear and crystalline blue. And . . . Why didn’t I think of this before? A small copper bowl. Three white candles wouldn’t hurt. That’s another case, much like the first. There’s a triquetra on the top.”

“All right. I’ll be right back.”

Careless, he told himself. But his whole side had been a misery, and he couldn’t see the damn punctures on his back. Now, as she’d said, there was infection, and that was running through him hot and fast, inflaming the other wounds along the way.

He knew what to do, and some good could come out of it.

Provided he didn’t pass out first, and die while unconscious.

And he’d be damned if he would.

She came rushing back with the bowl, the candles, the vial—and three knives.

“I didn’t know which one.”

“My fault.” Focusing against the pain made his heart hammer. He couldn’t slow it. “The silver handle would be best. If you’d get a glass of water? Whiskey’s better—but that’s a matter of taste. The water will do fine. Three drops from the vial—no, make it five, considering.”

She got a glass of water from the bathroom, carefully added five drops from the vial, re-stoppered it.

“What does this do?”

“Think of it as a kind of antibiotic.” He gave the glass a scowl, then downed the contents. “Ah, God. Whiskey masks the taste of it, but beggars can’t be choosers. You should get Sawyer or Doyle for the next.”

“Why?”

“Because I can’t reach the fecking wound with the knife myself. It needs to be opened a certain way, and we’d catch the blood—and the poison in it—in the bowl. It’ll be useful.”

“Poisoned blood, useful?”

“Don’t ask if you don’t want to know. It’ll be messy, but it should do the job. So if you’ll get either Sawyer or—”