New Blood (6 page)

“If Costel is not dead, it will be a miracle,” the revolutionary chief growled. “Your insistence on living in that cottage wastes too much valuable time. You should be here, where you belong.”

Then he noticed Jax. “Who is this? What do you
think you're doing, bringing strangers into my camp?” His voice built to a powerful roar.

Amanusa refused to cower. “He is my servant and he is simple-minded. I have already had this argument with Teo. I do not intend to have it with you. Now will someone show me where you put Costel, or do you intend to delay me further and let him die?” She propped her fists on her hips and gave Szabo glower for glower.

Finally the burly man took a step back and pointed. “There.”

“Thank you.” She started down the path of well-trod grass toward the indicated arbor.

“But if he dies,” Szabo snarled, “we will renegotiate this
bargain,
you and I.”

Amanusa paused and half turned. “If you keep me here,” she said, her voice just loud enough to carry to the chief, “I will kill you. Then where will your revolution be?”

“Go.”
Szabo threw his hand toward the hospital shelter. “Just go. Keep Costel alive and maybe you can live to see another day.”

“Your threats are empty, old man.” Amanusa walked backward down the path. “If you kill me, who will heal your hurts next time?”

Amanusa ducked into the shelter, her hands shaking with equal parts anger, hate, and fear. Only when Jax swung the medicine box onto the small trunk beside the sickbed did Amanusa recall his presence. She had been so focused on the confrontation with Szabo, and Jax had done such a good job of making himself seem small and harmless, she had forgotten him.

The girl bathing Costel's forehead with a rag was new. She couldn't be much older than fifteen. She looked up, her eyes filled with fear—though whether with fear for Costel or herself, Amanusa didn't know. Some of the silly girls hereabouts thought the revolutionaries romantic and ran off with them willingly. Others had better sense, but wound up here anyway. Amanusa had.

“What is your name, child?” Amanusa opened Costel's shirt and grimaced. Belly bandage. A gut wound. That was rarely survivable, even had she been here the moment he was brought in.

“Miruna.” The girl didn't sound any too willing to give up that information. “And I'm a woman, not a child.”

“Of course you are,” Amanusa murmured, her mind on the bandage she untied. Jax handed her a pair of scissors before she asked for them.

“You should have been here,” Miruna accused. “His death is your fault.”

Amanusa shot her a sharp look. One of those then, who fancied herself in love. “He's not dead yet,” she snapped. “Now make yourself useful and fetch me some hot water.”

Instead, the girl hovered as Amanusa lifted away the bloody bandage, exposing a small black-edged hole still seeping blood. Miruna moaned and began weeping loudly.

“Jax, get her out of here. And get me that hot water.”

With a brisk nod, Jax picked the girl up by the arms, carried her outside the shelter, and set her down on her feet with a thump, hard enough that she stumbled. He crossed to the fire and used a corner of
the blanket he wore to pick up the entire pot of steaming water and carry it back to Amanusa. She beckoned him closer.

“Help me turn him. I need to see if the bullet came out.”

Jax nodded. He took hold of the injured man's shoulder and hip and rolled him onto his side. Costel groaned. Amanusa's breath sighed out in an almost-whistle. The bullet was out, but it had left a big, ugly hole in his lower back. Fear tried to freeze her. Better that the bullet was out, but what had it damaged on its way through?

“I don't know if I can save him,” Amanusa whispered to Jax in English. “He's been shot in the gut. The damage—Even if I
had
been here . . .”

Jax placed a clean rag over the small wound on the injured man's stomach and turned him over to fully expose the exit wound. “Blood magic.”

He met her gaze, the blue-green of his eyes fading until they were fully brown. Amanusa's spine prickled even before he spoke in that other voice.

“To heal wounds requires either blood or saliva. While blood is more efficacious, especially in the case of life-threatening injuries, it is also more risky, both to the patient and the sorceress. Saliva does not heal quickly, nor will it bring someone back from too near death. But it is effective in most cases and it prevents the putrefaction and fevers which often arise from wounds.”

Jax paused, as if to ask what more she wished to know. It made Amanusa feel crawly inside. The old sorceress, Yvaine, had turned Jax into a living reference volume.

Did she want this magic? Nothing kept her from wanting to heal Costel. He had joined the outlaw band after she left them so he'd had no part in what had been done. And he seemed more the idealistic revolutionary sort than the opportunistic outlaw type. Miruna apparently liked him well enough. That in itself disposed Amanusa more kindly to him.

But the idea of
blood
magic still made her feel a bit crawly. And Jax—or Yvaine—said healing with blood could be risky. Not something she wanted to attempt on her first try.

“How do I heal wounds with saliva?” Amanusa asked.

“First, expose the injury . . .”

Step by step, Jax's voice led her through the process. There was a great deal more to it than simply spitting on the wound, which seemed somehow more
wrong
than bleeding on it. She mixed the saliva with alcohol spirits—the potent home distillation of the area—and used that to clean the wound. She had words to say over it and somehow
felt
the medicine, or the magic or whatever it was, penetrate deep into the hole through Costel's gut.

It didn't seem quite sufficient, so she added a prayer for healing of unseen injuries. Then she got out her needle and thread and began stitching Costel's back together again. Three stitches in, Jax, who had been serving as candelabra in the shelter's gloom as well as textbook, crumpled slowly to the ground.

Shouting for Miruna or someone to come help, Amanusa abandoned her sewing. She scurried around the cot to grab up the candle and stamp out the
smoldering grass and pine needles that floored the shelter.

“Is he dead?” Miruna whimpered, hovering at the door.

“No, he's not dead. He just fainted.” Amanusa thrust the candle at her. “Take this. Relight it and bring it back. I need the light.”

“I meant Costel. Is he dead?” Miruna took the candle, but didn't move.

“He's just fainted too. Now bring me my light.” Amanusa dragged Jax to the edge of the shelter to get him out of the way and straightened him into a more comfortable position. Blood poured from his nose—had he hit it? He seemed all right otherwise, so she turned him onto his side so he wouldn't choke. Was it such a strain to be possessed by the magic? She would have to be more careful. Learn the magic some other way.

“What's wrong with him?” Miruna returned, shielding the candle flame with a hand, her eyes on Jax.

“He gets these falling fits.” Amanusa positioned Miruna where she wanted her and picked up the needle again. “He was possessed by a powerful magician, and it cost him his wits. The power still rides him, and sometimes it does that. Sometimes, he says strange things, strange words too.” That might help, if he slipped and spoke English where someone could hear.

On the other hand, these outlaws were a superstitious bunch. They might fear Jax rather than pity him. However, they were already half afraid of her . . .

“I have some magic myself.” Amanusa took careful stitches in Costel's skin, piecing the ragged opening together as she made up her lie. She wasn't much good at lying, but this wasn't much of a lie. She did have magic. “The others may have told you. I have enough magic to control him, but if something should happen to me . . .” She shrugged. “Well, he's always been peaceful enough with me. I shouldn't worry about what else the magician might have left behind. Your camp conjurer might be able to handle him. Perhaps.”

Szabo's pet conjurer—the only other person with any magical talent in the camp—had only a few spells, could call up only the newest, weakest of spirits. Even Szabo held him in contempt, while he indulged the man's vices to keep him conjuring for the rebel band. The man feared Amanusa and her herbs. They avoided each other for the most part.

After a time, Amanusa took the last stitch and cut the thread. She spread her wound ointment over the stitched injury and bandaged it. With Miruna's help, Amanusa got Costel turned again. She poured some of the magic-boosted spirits in the entry wound, murmuring the spell-words under her breath, in English as Jax had told them to her. This one took only a few stitches to close. Amanusa left Miruna to finish the cleaning and bandaging.

Walking out of the hospital shelter, Amanusa twisted from side to side, trying to ease some of the ache in her back.

“So?” Szabo popped out of nowhere, intending to startle, like he always did. It was his favorite game, sneaking up on people and making them jump. All the outlaws loved the game. For men with such violence
and brutality in them, sometimes they behaved more like cruel children. She hated it, as she did everything else about this place.

This time, Amanusa won the game. She didn't jump. She shrugged. “He's still alive. Time will tell.”

“If he dies—”

She dared to interrupt him. “He was likely dead the minute that bullet hit him in the belly, even if I had been here waiting for you. If he lives, it's
my
doing. But if he dies, Szabo, it's
your
fault. Yours for taking him out to get shot.”

Szabo lifted his hand to strike. Amanusa didn't flinch. The outlaw chief wasn't as brutal as he liked to pretend. He never participated in his men's drunken revels and once—
once,
he had apologized to her. But he'd never stopped them either. She blamed him as much as she did the others.

“Do you want me to look at that arm?” She met his gaze evenly, and after a moment he dropped his raised fist.

“The leg bothers me more.” He limped to a stump in front of the fire pit and sat heavily.

“What did you do to it?” Amanusa knelt and waited for him to pull his trouser leg up and his stocking down. She wouldn't touch any of the men more than necessary.

“I did nothing to it. It was that God-be-cursed—” He broke off to shout. “Gavril! Get that monster thing from the city. Maybe our witch will know what it is. God knows, our conjurer has no idea.”

Amanusa wasn't anyone's witch. But she could be a sorceress if she wanted. She frowned at Szabo's leg. “Are you saying a
monster
bit you?”

“Bit? No. It
stabbed
me,” he growled.

The calf was swollen and red, inflamed around an evil-looking wound. One entry, more like a puncture than a bite. Amanusa sighed. “And what did you do for it? Did you even use the ointment I left you?”

“I'm not an infant,” the man growled, looking away.

“No. You're a man and therefore an idiot.” Amanusa pressed hard on the wound, expelling the corruption the fool had let develop. She didn't at all mind hurting him.

Szabo grunted and jerked against the pain. He never bellowed, like some of his so-manly followers did. “Speaking of idiots, where is yours?”

She tipped her head toward the hospital shelter. “In there. He's—he has falling fits. He's sleeping one off.” She wiped her hands on her bloody apron and stood. “I'm going to have to open this to get all that nastiness out. And you are going to use the ointment and stay off it for a few days.”

“All right, all right,” Szabo grumbled. “Damned nuisance.”

“If you'd done what I told you when you got it, I wouldn't have to do this.”

“
You
should have been here to tend it.”

Amanusa gave him a hard look. “If I'd been here—if you made me stay here—I'd have taken it off at the knee, no one the wiser. You should know better than to threaten me, old man.”

“How can a woman be so hard?” He shook his head. “I don't understand why you are so stubborn about this.”

Amanusa stared at him until he looked up, met her gaze. “Yes,” she said. “You do.”

He flushed and looked away. “The others don't mind it. Not so much.”

“Did you ever ask them?” Amanusa waited, but got no response. “I didn't think so.”

A harsh clanking sound of metal on metal fractured the moment and Szabo turned away, seeming grateful for the interruption. Gavril, another one of Szabo's old comrades, Amanusa's old enemies, carried a strange object in his hands.

Made of a dark metal with a dull charcoal-gray sheen, it consisted of a melon-sized sphere suspended between two six-spoked stars, rather like rimless wheels. A pair of jointed telescoping arms dangled awkwardly from the center ball. The pointed one—sharp and edged, like a knife—still had rust-brown flakes of dried blood clinging to it.

“That thing stabbed you?” Amanusa quelled the horror whispering down her spine. “What is it?”

“You don't know?”

She could feel Szabo's suspicious gaze on her, but couldn't tear her attention from the—the thing in Gavril's hands. The shudder escaped her control. Even dead—inanimate, broken—it oozed
wrong
from every surface, contained
wrong
beneath that smooth-sheened skin. “I've never seen anything like it. Never imagined something like this could exist. Is it a windup toy?”

“We haven't found a key for winding, or a place to put a key. And if it is a toy, someone has a twisted sense of fun. It stabbed me.”

How was that different from the cruel games his outlaws played?

Amanusa shook off her bitterness to focus on
the machine. “What did it do? Tell me what happened.”