Cursor's Fury (Codex Alera #3)(140)

But that was not an option.

Isana blinked whatever exhaustion she could from her eyes. ' "Thank you, centurion."

"Ma'am," Giraldi said, with a nod, and stepped back from the bed.

Veradis looked up from where she sat beside Fade and the healing tub, holding the unconscious slave's hand. "Apologies, Steadholder," the healer murmured with a weak smile. "I have no more than an hour to give today. "

"It's all right, Veradis," Isana replied. "If you hadn't given me a chance to get some sleep, I'd never have lasted this far. May I have a moment to..."

Veradis nodded with another faint smile. "Of course."

Isana availed herself of the facilities and returned to kneel beside Veradis, slipping her own hand between hers and Fade's, and reassuming control of the steady effort of furycraft required to fight the man's infection. The first time she had handed the crafting off to Veradis, it had been a difficult, delicate maneuver-one only possible because of an unusual degree of similarity in their styles of furycraft, in fact. Repetition had made the extraordinary feat commonplace over the past twenty days.

Or was it twenty-one, Isana thought wearily. Or nineteen. The days began blurring together once the low, heavy storm clouds above the city had rolled in. Even now, they roiled restlessly above them, flickering with sullen thunder and crimson light but withholding the rain that should have come with it. The storm cast the world into continual twilight and darkness, and she had no way to measure the passing of time.

Even so, Isana had managed, barely, to hang on to the furycrafting that was Fade's only hope. Without Veradis giving her the odd hour or two to sleep, now and then, Fade would long since have died.

"How is he?" Isana asked. She settled down in the seat Veradis rose from.

The young healer once more bound Isana's hand to Fade's with soft rope. "The rot has lost some ground," Veradis said quietly. "But he's been in the tub too long, and he hasn't kept enough food down. His skin is developing a number of sores, which..." She shook her head, took a breath and began again. "You know what happens then."

Isana nodded. "Other sicknesses are pressing in."

"He's getting weaker, Steadholder," Veradis said. "If he doesn't rally soon-"

They were interrupted as the room's door banged opened. "Lady Veradis," said an armed legionare in a strained, urgent voice. "You must hurry. He's dying."

Veradis grimaced, her eyes sunken and weary. Then she rose, and said to Isana, "I don't know if I shall be able to return again," she said quietly.

Isana nodded once. Veradis turned and walked from the room, her steps swift, calm, and certain. "Describe the injury," she said. The legionare's description of the blow of a heavy mallet faded as the pair walked down the hall.

Giraldi watched them go, then rumbled, "Steadholder? You should eat. I'll bring you some broth."

"Thank you, Giraldi," Isana said quietly. The old soldier left the room, and she turned her attention to the crafting within Fade.

The pain of exposing herself to the substances within Fade had not lessened in the least. It had, however, become something familiar, something she knew and could account for-and as she had grown more weary, day by day, as she grew less able to distinguish it as a separate entity from her body's exhaustion, it had become increasingly unimportant.

She settled herself comfortably in the seat, her eyes open but unfocused. The infection now existed as a solid image in her mind that represented its presence within Fade. She pictured it as a mound of rounded stones, each solid and heavy, but also eminently moveable. She waited for a moment, until the beating of her heart and the slow cadences of her breath matched those of the wounded man. Then, in her mind's eye, she picked up the nearest stone and lifted it, carrying it aside and tossing it into a featureless imaginary stream. Then she repeated the action, deliberate, resolute, one stone after another.