E
milie’s concern about Mahkas Damaran’s condition proved well founded. The Regent of Krakandar appeared to be suffering from blood poisoning, a direct result of the infected and ulcerated sore on his right forearm. It was the physician’s opinion that the scar Mahkas fiddled with so obsessively in times of stress harboured a tiny fragment of metal, a leftover from some longforgotten skirmish, and it had worked its way to the surface, exacerbated by Mahkas’s relentless worrying at it. Since his discovery of Leila and Starros and his descent into undisguised madness, he’d barely left the scar alone and it had eventually become infected. Unless the wound was lanced and cleaned of the poison, it was likely to kill him.
The palace physician, Darian Coe, who’d come to Krakandar some fifteen years ago when Damin’s stepsister, Rielle Tirstone, was presented with her first
court’esa
, explained the situation to Luciena, Xanda, Bylinda and Emilie, after he’d tried unsuccessfully—yet again—to treat Mahkas’s injury. The regent would have none of his ministrations, convinced Darian Coe was an assassin sent by his nephew, Damin Wolfblade, to have him killed.
“Is he really going to die, Mama?” Emilie asked with concern. Luciena wasn’t happy about Emilie being included in this meeting, but she’d been keeping Bylinda company when Darian arrived to inform Xanda and Luciena of the situation and they’d come to the Lady of Krakandar’s room, not realising their daughter was here. Given the child’s affection for Mahkas (misplaced though Luciena believed it was) and the fact Emilie was so worried about him, she decided to let the child stay.
“He should be all right if I can clean the wound, my lady,” Darian assured the little girl. “But he won’t even let me get a close look at it.”
“Suppose we just do it by force?” Xanda suggested. “If I get enough men in there, we can hold him down while you cut this infection out.”
The handsome former
court’esa
shook his head. “Given Lord Damaran’s current state of mind, that would probably just make things worse.”
“I agree with Darian,” Luciena said. “He’s likely to go crazy if he sees you marching into his room with a troop of burly Raiders, all there for the sole purpose of restraining him.”
“We can’t let him die from an infected arm, Luciena,” Xanda reminded her.
“He has to keep his oath,” Bylinda added. Nobody was really sure what she meant, but she talked a lot about keeping oaths these days. Suddenly she gripped Emilie by the hand. “Don’t you listen to their lies, child. They swear they’ll do it, but they don’t. I’m still waiting for him to keep his oath.”
With a grimace, Emilie extracted her hand from Bylinda’s grasp. “I’ll not listen to anybody’s lies,” she promised, clearly with no more idea than the adults what Bylinda was talking about. She frowned uncertainly and looked to her parents for help, but Bylinda’s words meant nothing to them, either.
“Could
you
talk to him, Aunt Bylinda?” Xanda asked. “Perhaps he’ll listen to you. You must press on him the importance of allowing a physician to treat him.”
“I’m still waiting for him to keep his oath,” she replied with such a vague expression on her face, Luciena wondered if she’d heard a word anybody had said.
“I could talk to him, Papa,” Emilie volunteered.
“Out of the question!” Luciena declared.
“Now, now, Luci … let’s not be hasty,” Xanda cautioned, looking at their daughter curiously. “Why do you think Mahkas would listen to you, Em?”
“Because he likes me.” She shrugged, as if the reason were self-evident. “I remind him of Leila.”
Darian Coe seemed to be on Emilie’s side. “The child speaks the truth, my lord. He often mistakes your daughter for his own.”
“I hope your intention of telling us that, Darian Coe, wasn’t to reassure us our child is in no danger from him,” Luciena remarked with a worried expression.
“Of course not, my lady,” the physician replied with an apologetic bow. “I merely make note of the fact in passing. But you have nothing to fear in any case. Mahkas Damaran is in no condition to hurt anybody but himself at the moment.”
“So why don’t we just wait until he falls unconscious and treat him then?” Xanda asked.
“By then it will probably be too late to save him, my lord.”
“I’m still waiting for him to keep his oath,” Bylinda said, as if she was taking part in another conversation none of the others was privy to.
“Please, Papa,” Emilie begged. “Let me help. I can talk to Uncle Mahkas. I’ll make him let Darian fix his arm.”
With some reluctance, Xanda nodded in agreement. “Perhaps you should talk to him, sweetheart. Do you know what to say to him?”
Emilie nodded solemnly. She was a bright child, even if she did have a blind spot where Mahkas was concerned. But perhaps that was Luciena and Xanda’s fault. They’d gone to great pains to keep what had happened in this place from their children. “I have to tell him what Darian just said. That his arm is making him sick and if the wound isn’t cleaned and treated, he’ll die from it.”
“Do you think you can make him understand how important this is?”
“Yes, Papa.”
“Xanda, you can’t be serious about letting her …”
“We don’t have a choice, Luciena. We can’t let Mahkas die.”
It was only the presence of Bylinda and Emilie that prevented Luciena from replying, “
Why the hell not
?”
Far from being repulsed by Mahkas’s infected arm, Emilie Taranger was morbidly fascinated by it, a fact that left Luciena shaking her head in despair. It took the child less than an hour to convince Mahkas he should let Darian Coe treat his arm, although he did insist Emilie stay with him throughout the entire procedure, to keep him company.
Luciena wondered if Mahkas made Emilie’s presence a condition of the treatment simply to bolster his own courage. Although she had no sympathy for him, she knew he was in unbearable pain. Perhaps, with Emilie there to be brave for, he’d have the nerve to suffer through Darian Coe slicing into his badly swollen and infected arm and digging around for the tiny shard causing him all this trouble.
Darian was still setting up when Luciena arrived. Emilie was sitting on Mahkas’s bed, chatting to him as the physician arranged his tools. Mahkas was propped up on a mountain of pillows, his arm resting on another pillow. His face was strained and he was sweating profusely, clearly in agony.
A moment after Luciena arrived, Xanda appeared behind her with two large Raiders. Mahkas said something to Emilie they couldn’t hear and then glared at his nephew, obviously displeased about something.
“Uncle Mahkas wants to know why the soldiers are here, Papa,” Emilie asked from the bed. With his throat so damaged that he couldn’t speak louder than a whisper, he needed Emilie to relay his messages.
“They’re here in case you need help, Uncle,” Xanda explained. “This is liable to be very painful, and—”
Mahkas’s gesticulating cut Xanda off. He whispered something to Emilie and then pointed angrily toward the door.
“He says he doesn’t need anybody to hold him down.”
Xanda shrugged. “As you wish.” He turned and ordered the guards to wait outside and then looked at Luciena helplessly.
“If we had any sense at all,” she told him in a low voice, “we’d start the evacuation tonight. While he’s too sick to notice what’s happening.”
“The thought had crossed my mind.”
“But?”
“We’re not ready yet … and if he doesn’t …” Xanda hesitated, unwilling to finish the sentence. “Well … there may not be a need.”
She knew what her husband really meant was that if Mahkas died, there would be no need to evacuate the city. And much as she might hope for it, that outcome was a double-edged sword. Mahkas’s death would relieve the immediate problems in Krakandar, but they would just make things worse in greater Hythria. Another province under the control of Alija Eaglespike was something Luciena was prepared to do almost anything to prevent. Even keeping Mahkas Damaran alive.
“Uncle Mahkas wants to know what you’re whispering about,” Emilie called.
Luciena turned toward the bed, smiling. “We were discussing your quite remarkable ability to avoid your lessons, young lady. Once this is over, I expect Uncle Mahkas will be sending you back to the nursery where you belong.”
Emilie grinned at her mother and turned to Mahkas. “You’re not going to send me back to the nursery, are you, Uncle Mahkas? It’s full of horrible little boys.”
Mahkas smiled, patting her arm reassuringly with a shake of his head.
“See! Uncle Mahkas says I’m not missing anything. Besides, I read better than Aleesha. She can’t teach me anything.”
Sadly, Emilie was probably correct. And in a way, Luciena didn’t blame her daughter for constantly trying to escape the nursery. With her two brothers and the four young Lionsclaw children down there, it really was full of horrible little boys at the moment.
“I’m ready to start as soon as you are, my lady,” Darian advised, finally happy with the arrangement of his scalpels.
Xanda leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “I’ll see you when you’re done then. I’m heading into the city to check on a few things.” What Xanda neglected to mention was that he was taking this opportunity to meet with Starros and his friends to work on some last-minute details of their evacuation plan. He looked at Mahkas and smiled encouragingly. “I suppose this will all be over and you’ll be fighting fit again by the time I get back, Uncle Mahkas.”
His uncle nodded wanly and whispered something to Emilie.
“He says if you open the city gates while he’s sick, he’ll have you castrated. What does castrated mean, Papa?”
“Nothing you need bother yourself with, sweetheart,” her father replied. He frowned at his uncle but said nothing further, leaving Luciena alone with Darian, Emilie and Mahkas.
After that, Darian Coe took over. He explained what he intended to do to both his patient and to Luciena, who had volunteered to assist him mostly so she could stay and keep an eye on Emilie. It sounded straightforward enough. Darian intended to slice into the centre of the infected area, clean it, and then hopefully find the metal fragment causing all this woe, remove it, debride the lesion of all the dead and dying tissue, flush the wound and then let the maggots do the rest, eating the diseased flesh and leaving a clean area he could stitch closed at a later time.
Once he finished his explanation, the former
court’esa
glanced down at his patient. “Are you sure you don’t want anything to bite on, my lord? The draught I gave you will take the edge off the pain, but it’s still going to hurt like hell.”
“Just do it!” Mahkas rasped. With his left hand he took Emilie’s hand in his and smiled at the child. “Leila is here. She’ll help me bear it.”
“My name is Emilie, Uncle Mahkas.”
“Yes … I know … Emilie …”
“What do you want me to do?” Luciena asked the slave.
“Pass me the instruments as I ask for them. And try to keep the wound clear of blood so I can see what I’m doing. That jug there is full of boiled water. I’ll need you to wash the wound thoroughly before I release the maggots.”
Darian picked up one of his scalpels laid out on the tray beside the bed and then turned to Mahkas. “Are you sure you’re ready for this, my lord?”
“Do it,” he croaked. His face sheened with sweat, Mahkas turned his face away, fixing his gaze on Emilie. A moment later, with infinite care and a sudden burst of foul air as the pus in the wound was released, Darian Coe sliced his way into Mahkas’s infected arm.
Mahkas never uttered a sound as Darian worked, a fact that astonished Luciena. Just watching the physician at work was making her ill, but Mahkas bore the agony with stoic acceptance.
Perhaps it was something to do with his madness. Perhaps, along with his inability to comprehend emotional pain, the ability to feel physical pain had been affected, too. Luciena wasn’t sure, but in a way she was glad. Emilie was watching with intense interest as her mother swabbed at the wound so Darian could find the tiny shard. She didn’t seem to notice the foul smell, or be bothered by the blood and pus seeping from the dead and dying flesh of her uncle’s forearm. Had Mahkas been thrashing around, screaming in agony, Luciena guessed, her daughter might not be nearly so enchanted with the whole disgusting spectacle.
“There it is!” Darian exclaimed.
Luciena and Emilie both leaned forward as Darian gently lifted a bloodied lump from the wound with a thin pair of tongs. To Luciena, the strange object looked too small to have caused so much trouble. In fact it looked like a bright blue thorn.
“What is it?”
“I have no idea,” the
court’esa
shrugged. “I doubt it’s metal, though. It shows no sign of rust or decay.”
“So it’s not the tip of an arrow or a spear, then?” Emilie asked. “Can I see it?”