Week 17

  “Doc,” Theron croaked, “you’re a sight.”

  His voice was thinned by thirst, but not by pain. He tried to push himself up, but even the attempt left him trembling. Callie placed a palm on his shoulder and gently pressed him back onto the cot.

  “Save your energy,” she said. She put a cup of water to his lips.

  She glanced down at the stump, then at the brown crust on the sheets. “How long have you been like this?”

  Theron managed a half-shrug. “Day and a half. Maybe more. Some lady came by, but she said you’d be better.”

  “Not much of a nurse if she left it like this,” Callie muttered.

  She supported his head, coaxing him to sip. He drank greedily, then let his head fall back onto the cot.

  Briar’s voice drifted in from beyond the curtain, something about “runners on the east wall,” but Callie tuned it out. She had a patient, and the world could wait.

  She cleaned his brow with a wet scrap of linen, taking in his symptoms with clinical detachment: fever, poor perfusion, rapid pulse, likely systemic infection with risk of sepsis. “You’ve got a fever running through you,” she said. “Probably started from the amputation site. I can try to fix it.”

  Theron chuckled, the sound ragged. “You always make it sound so easy.”

  Callie grinned, but her hands kept working. She peeled back the bandages to examine the stump. The wound was angry red, the edges macerated, and the tissue already beginning to slough. It was going to require surgical debridement and she didn’t have the time or resources.

  Callie’s expression didn’t change. She dabbed and flushed the wound with purified water and herbal antiseptics. “I met Thistledown,” she said, as if they were sharing lunch. “At the Petalorian Archive.”

  Theron’s face stiffened, the lines around his mouth deepening. “She made it?”

  Callie took her time with the next step, using the pause to construct a lie. “Not for long. The Archive consumed her, but she was lucid at the end. She… she didn’t blame you.”

  A long silence stretched between them. In that silence, Callie remembered the horror on his face when Thistledown had fallen; the way he’d run, and the way guilt had etched itself into him ever since.

  Theron licked his lips. “She should’ve. I left her.”

  “There was nothing you could do,” Callie said. “She said that. It was her choice to stay behind.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut, as if to blot out the words. “I was supposed to bring her home. Instead, I brought this.” He gestured at the stump with a twisted smile.

  Callie sat back on her heels and let out a slow exhale. “I can help, if you want,” she said. “I’ve picked up some new tricks since the last time we met.”

  Theron’s eyes flickered open, searching her face. “You mean like…” he struggled for the term, “ …magic healing?”

  “Something like that,” Callie said. “It’s not a full restoration, but it’ll stop the infection. You’ll walk again, with time.” She hesitated, then added, “You might even be able to get back to adventuring, if that’s still your goal.”

  Theron’s hand balled into a fist on the blanket. “I’m no use to anyone now.”

  “That’s the fever talking. Let me fix you up, and then we’ll see.”

  She reached into her satchel for a vial of blue-black gel Briar had mixed earlier—a Verdant Crucible concoction to anaesthetize wounds. Together with [Soothe Pain], it might just be enough for her to open up the wound and clean it out. It was Theron’s only chance of surviving this.

  “No. Stop.” he rasped, voice cracking. “I don’t want it. Get away from me…”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Callie recoiled, shocked. “Theron, you’re not making sense.”

  “Don’t you understand?” His eyes were wild now, pupils blown wide. “If you patch me up, I’ll just fail again. I’ll just make it worse for everyone. Leave me alone!”

  He clawed at the blanket, pulling it over his face. His whole body trembled.

  Callie reached for his arm, but he flinched away. “Theron, let me help,” she said, keeping her voice gentle. “The fever’s been eating your brain for days, and you’ve lost too much blood. You’re not yourself right now.”

  He mumbled something into the pillow, a spiral of self-loathing and defeat, then went limp. He wasn’t unconscious, just lost somewhere inside himself.

  Callie sat on the edge of the cot for a minute, her hand hovering just above his shoulder. There was nothing especially unusual about this in her previous life. If the patient was deemed to be of unsound mind, he could still be treated under the law. It was sometimes called involuntary treatment or sectioning.

  She tucked the blanket around him and whispered, “Is there anything I can say to make you change your mind?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Theron… please…”

  Callie wiped her hands on the hem of her tunic and stood.

  Briar’s head appeared around the edge of the curtain, hair wild and cheeks flushed from whatever commotion was brewing outside.

  “Stubborn as a stone ox,” Briar whispered, glancing at Theron’s slumped form. “You going to leave him like that?”

  Callie hesitated. “He doesn’t want help.”

  “He doesn’t want to die, either. He’s just scared of owing you more than he already does.” She leaned close, lips brushing Callie’s ear. “He won’t notice anything. And he’s not thinking rationally. He’ll thank you later.”

  Callie looked down at her own hands. They were shaking. She could try using [Soul Stitch] to repair his mental state but that would be like giving a patient anti-depressants he already refused.

  Callie steadied herself, then turned back to Theron. “It’s not about the debt,” she said softly, “And it’s not my decision to make.”

  “Sometimes you have to do the right thing, even if no one asks for it,” Briar said gently.

  Callie said nothing. She stared at Theron’s back, then at her own green-stained fingers, and wondered if that was ever true.

  ***

  The decision was still clawing at Callie’s mind when the curtain ripped back, flooding the cubicle with hot, metallic light.

  “We’re moving the walking wounded and children to the oasis!” someone bellowed from the far end of the hall. “We have ten barges ready, and we launch in twenty minutes. Let’s move!”

  The voice cut through the air like a scythe. It belonged to a man with the shoulders of a brawler and the wardrobe of a professional scrapper. He was familiar in a way that made Callie’s jaw tense before her memory caught up.

  She slipped out from behind the curtain, squinting into the glare. The man was standing at the entrance, hands on hips, glaring at a line of cots as if they had personally offended him. Behind him, the old caravanserai was in full chaos. Children wrapped in dusty blankets, mothers clutching infants, men with splinted arms hobbling toward the exit.

  It was Tel—formerly Tel the bandit, now Tel the evacuation marshal [*]. He barked orders at anyone who wasn’t moving fast enough, his presence somehow more compelling than the threat of imminent siege.

  Callie stepped into his line of sight. “Wasn’t expecting to see you here,” she said.

  He blinked, caught off guard for a moment. “You…” he said.

  “So are you going to apologize for punching me?”

  “Nah, I’ll pass on that,” Tel said. “Someone needed to wipe that smug look off your face.”

  Callie looked around. Where was Ember when you needed him? Giving Tel a paw smack right now would be worth the lost XP for dishonorable behavior.

  Briar caught up, winded but alert, and dropped a bundle of medical supplies at Callie’s feet. “The barges are real,” she said. “They’ve got them lined up on the north bank, and they’re loading in everyone who can walk.”

  Tel jerked his thumb toward the exit. “Anyone with a pulse and half a foot under them is going. If they can’t keep up, they stay.”

  Briar frowned. “That’s not much of an option.”

  He met her gaze, hard. “If you want to carry them yourself, be my guest. We don’t have the hands or the time.”

  Briar set her jaw, ready to argue, but Callie cut her off with a look. “We’ll do what we can.”

  Tel nodded, then pointed at Theron’s cubicle. “That one; he’s not making it?”

  Callie hesitated. “If I had another hour, maybe.”

  “Then he’s not going. The barges are for the living, not the dead,” Tel said, and stalked off, bellowing new orders.

  A bell began to toll from somewhere in the city; a deep, somber sound that vibrated through the bones.

  Outside, the city was shedding its population in waves. Callie saw Gornath and his crew, battered but relentless, dragging barrels of resin and mesh to reinforce the wall’s weak points. Everywhere, people were rushing toward the water’s edge, some carrying bundles, others nothing at all.

  Ember stood at the gate, watching the chaos with the stoicism of a thousand-year-old tree.

  Briar hovered behind Callie, eyes darting from the walls to Theron’s cubicle and back. “I’m headed to the walls with Ember. What are you going to do?” she whispered.

  “What I always do,” she said, though she wasn’t sure what that meant anymore.

  She ducked back inside the cubicle.

  Theron hadn’t moved. He lay on his side, shivering under the blanket. His breathing was steadier now, but he was still miles away.

  Callie knelt by the cot and placed a hand on his shoulder. “They’re evacuating the city. If you want to make it, you need to wake up.”

  He didn’t answer.

  If she waited, he would miss his only chance to leave Sarapis alive. If she acted now, against his wishes…

  (Cont’d in Book 2 Chapter 17)

  _______

  [*] See Book 1 Chapter 3