The Traitor Queen (The Traitor Spy Trilogy #3)(11)

Sonea nodded and felt a belated relief. Her task to meet the Traitors on behalf of the Guild had become more complicated when it became clear King Amakira wouldn’t let Lorkin leave Sachaka until he had learned all he could from him. The Guild had decided to send her to Arvice as well to negotiate her son’s release. This worsening of Lorkin’s circumstances could have made them change their minds.

Because the Higher Magicians had decided that only a black magician would receive the respect needed to negotiate with the Sachakan king, that meant choosing between her and Kallen – Lilia being too young and still a novice. They had good reasons not to choose either of them. While the Sachakans regarded women as having less status than men, and being Lorkin’s mother might leave her open to blackmail, Kallen’s addiction to roet made him potentially unreliable and just as vulnerable to coercion.

And perhaps knowing that I have killed Sachakans before, and would be prepared to do so to save my son, may also nudge Amakira towards releasing him.

Of course, the Sachakan king might threaten to harm Lorkin in order to gain something from her, but there wasn’t much he could gain from that. She did not know what they wanted to find out, and could not order him to speak. All she could do was promise to try to persuade him to, if they let him go.

Unless, of course, he gives in to torture first. But she didn’t want to think about that. She turned to Osen.

“So when do I leave?”

*

Faint light spilling out of a doorway ahead told Lilia that she and Anyi were nearly at their destination. Dodging rubble in the corridor, she followed her friend to the opening and into the room beyond.

Cery was sitting on one of the old wooden boxes Anyi had found to use as seats. Under his hands, lying on some of the threadbare pillows from the pile Lilia and Anyi had so often lounged upon, was Gol. Even in the dim candlelight she could see he was pale. She brought her globe light closer and brightened it. His brow was slick with sweat and his stare was feverish with pain.

Lilia stared down at him, paralysed with doubt. Do I know enough of Healing yet to save him?

“Just … try,” Anyi urged.

Glancing at her friend, Lilia nodded. She made herself kneel down beside Gol. Cery’s hands were pressed against Gol’s abdomen, stained with blood.

“Should I take the pressure off?” Cery asked.

“I … I’m not sure yet,” Lilia admitted. “I’ll just … look.”

She pulled away more of Gol’s shirt, placed a palm on his bare skin, then closed her eyes and sent her senses outward and into his body.

At first all was chaos, but she drew upon what she had been told or read, and on exercises designed to make sense of all the signals. The first thing that was obvious was the pain. She nearly gasped aloud as she picked that up, and was proud that she did not lose focus. Pain was easy to stop. It was one of the early lessons taught to Healers. Once she’d tackled that, she looked for other information. Her mind was drawn toward the damaged part, where essential liquids were being lost, and others that were dangerously poisonous were trickling into healthy systems.

His guts have been nicked by the blade that stabbed him. He’d have died already if the leak had been much larger. Clearly that’s what I have to fix first …

Drawing magic, she fed it into the rupture so that the edges of the wound knit together, healing faster than they could ever have done without intervention.

Now I have to stop the blood leaking out. But before I do, there’s this poison from the guts and the blood pooling inside him to deal with. Use one to help wash out the other. She hoped Cery and Anyi weren’t panicking as she used magic to force the liquids out of the wound. There was a little more resistance to this than she’d expected. Then she remembered that Cery was still pressing on the wound. She concentrated on her own body enough to gain control of her vocal chords.

“You can stop now,” she made herself say.

She saw the blood begin to flow again, and was forced to concentrate hard to align and Heal the separated flesh and skin. Remembering warnings from her teachers, she checked within to make sure there were no internal rents causing bleeding to continue within. A few tubes needed fixing. Easily done.

After a final check, she drew her senses back to herself, took a deep breath and opened her eyes. Gol’s face was no longer rigid with pain. He looked up at her and smiled.

“Better?” she asked.

He nodded. “Yes. But … tired. Very tired.” He frowned. “Thirsty.”

“You will be. You’ve lost blood and there might be some inflammation from the poison.”

“The blade was poisoned?” Cery asked, alarmed.

“No, but his gut was sliced into. What’s inside acts like a poison if it gets into the rest of the body.”

Cery regarded the big man thoughtfully. “You’re not going to be any good for fighting practice for a while.” He looked at Lilia. “How long until he fully recovers?”

She shrugged. “I’m not sure, but faster if he can get good food and clean water.” She looked at Anyi. “If you come with me I’ll see if Jonna left anything back in the room. There’ll be water, at least.”

“You’re already late for classes,” Anyi pointed out. “You should go straight to the University.”

“In these?” Lilia looked down at her novice robes. They were scuffed and dirty from climbing down the narrow gap within the Magicians’ Quarters walls that allowed her to slip out of Sonea’s rooms and into the underground passages. Normally Anyi brought some old clothes for her to change into, but this time she’d arrived empty-handed. They couldn’t keep them in Sonea’s rooms in case Jonna, Sonea’s servant, found them. Lilia hadn’t wanted to risk that Gol might die while she tried to find something else to change into.