The wand spilled out of her hand before she hit the ground hard. The masked man ran for the window and leapt out as I reached Shara. Her wounds were near each other, both deep. She pressed her hands against them, blood flowing freely around her palms…a lot of blood.
“I shot him in the right arm!”
“Shara, you need help right away!”
Shock doubled the size of her eyes. “Oh my gods.”
Suddenly, we were both painfully aware that she could die. I pressed my hands over hers. “Help!” I yelled over my shoulder out my open door.
Why was no one coming in? “Someone help!” I screamed as loudly as I could.
Shara was too scared to speak. The blood kept coming.
“Lift your hands,” I told her. “I’m going to put a ring of py around you.”
She did.
Men I didn’t recognize hovered around my doorway. “What’s wrong?”
“She’s been stabbed,” I said as I gathered py. I stretched it out and pushed it hard against her wounds. She groaned with her teeth clenched as I apologized. I sat her up and wrapped the py around her. The energy reddened around the deep gashes in the side of her abdomen, but it seemed to contain the blood well. “Where do I take you?” I got my arms beneath her, my mind holding the py around her torso.
“Nurse Mayla. Her room is—” She heaved as if about to vomit, then screamed like a woman in labor. Her arms started to shake, then her whole body.
I cursed as I hoisted her off the ground. “Where is Mayla’s room?” I screamed.
The men looked pale and frightened. “Last door at the other end of the hall.” One pointed as he moved out of the way.
I ran, Shara convulsing in my arms. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Was the py too tight? No, that couldn’t be it.
“Shara, can you hear me?”
Her eyes stayed open as her body trembled, but her mind seemed to be somewhere else. People came out of their rooms as I ran by. Soon the whole castle would hear of her stabbing. Good. She needed all the help she could get.
Mayla’s door wouldn’t open. I kicked hard. “Shara’s been stabbed! She’s convulsing.”
Mayla pulled open the door. She’d taken in Laney to help her adapt, and sure enough the one-armed pyforial mage was there in bed, sitting up with the covers pulled to her chin. I wouldn’t have recognized her even if I’d known she’d be here. Her dark brown hair was now light, after washing the dirt out, I supposed. Straight and trimmed, it stayed clear of a face that didn’t appear as gaunt as before.
“Put her there.” Mayla pointed to a bed that must’ve been hers. The sheets were peeled back, the pillow rumpled. I set Shara down and Mayla ripped the sheets from their hold beneath the bed to examine Shara’s body.
“What…?” Mayla muttered, feeling the belt of py.
“Pyforial energy,” I explained, “to keep the blood in.”
“Let it go.”
I trusted her. Shara continued to shake, the sight unbearable, yet I couldn’t look away.
Mayla peered closely into the wounds. “The dagger must’ve been coated with poison.” She spoke calmly, looking languid as she glanced about her room. I managed to refrain from slapping some hurry into her, screaming instead.
“What do we need to do!”
“I don’t have what I need here. Put that ring of py back around her and carry her. We’re going to the medical room.”
Not expecting Laney behind me, I accidentally bowled her over with a still shaking Shara like a battering ram.
I expected the gossamer young woman to burst into tears, but she jumped up instead. “I want to help Shara.”
Laney stayed with me as I followed Mayla out of her room. The plump woman was slow but at least she seemed to be in a hurry now, huffing and nearly tripping around turns.
I heard someone’s door open behind us. “What’s wrong?” the man shouted.
Laney turned and yelled back, “She’s dying! It’s poison.”
“Shut up!” I screamed with rage. “She’s not dying.”
But she was. Her eyes had closed, her shaking now sporadic as if her life force was ebbing away. We got her into the medical room and onto an examination bed. Open cabinets filled by colorful potions in glass bottles lined the walls. Mayla went for none of them, examining Shara’s wounds instead.
“Remove the energy,” Mayla ordered. “I need another look.”
I did and she lifted Shara’s shirt nearly to her chest. The sight of her exposed stomach, which I’d held many nights, prompted a visceral need to touch her. I grabbed her hand, hoping to feel movement in her fingers. There was none.
“Put the energy back over the wounds.”
After I’d done it, Mayla instructed, “Feed the hearth and get it lit.”
I acquiesced, putting in wood and then grabbing a torch from the sconce outside to light it.
Mayla put her ear over Shara’s mouth. “She’s still breathing, but I need to stop the bleeding.”
“What about the poison?”
“I’m working on that.” She examined Shara from her face down to her feet. She even held the tips of Shara’s fingers up to her eyes.
Laney cried. “Is she dead?”
Anger nearly made me lose control over the py covering Shara’s wounds. “Laney!”
“No,” Mayla answered. “Go back to our room, dear.”
“I want to stay till she recovers or dies.”
“Will you shut up!” I yelled.
Laney gasped.
“Both of you keep quiet. Neeko, put the rod into the fire. Get the tip red.”
It then occurred to me how Mayla would close Shara’s wounds.
“I can’t figure out which poison it is,” Mayla said. “There are no markings on her body, and her wounds look normal.” She hurried over to a cabinet. “I’ll need to use innocuous substances to help her body fight against it. Let’s hope that’s enough.”
The hour that followed was possibly the most difficult of my life. Mayla tried a number of mixtures; a few she poured into the wounds, but most Shara had to drink. The fact that she had enough energy to cough and gag gave me hope. But I fell back into despair soon after Mayla finished cauterizing Shara’s wounds.
She screamed during the process and passed out, unable to wake up. Laney wailed. I yelled at her. She cried. Mayla castigated me, then fell into a chair, sweat darkening her shirt.
Shara worsened. She wheezed with each breath and grew pale. Sometimes she shook, a spasm here and there.
Then she made no noise at all. Mayla jumped up and lowered her ear over Shara’s mouth.
“Is she dead?” Laney asked meekly.
“No. The wheezing has stopped.”
Why did the nurse sound sad? “Isn’t that good?”
“I don’t know yet, but I’ve done everything I can. We’ll let her rest. You should as well, both of you.”
“I’m not leaving her,” I said.
“You can’t stay here. There’s nowhere for you to sleep.”
I noticed two stools along the wall. I grabbed one and pulled it to the side of Shara’s bed and took her hand. Laney mimicked me, moving her stool to Shara’s other side and taking her other hand.
It was well into the night when exhaustion started to win over, nearly causing me to fall off my stool. Shara was wheezing again, louder than before.
Mayla stirred and rose from her chair to examine Shara. “Her body’s not winning the fight,” she muttered. “She’s dying.”
“Then try other antidotes,” I said.
“I can’t give her antidotes to every poison imaginable. They’ll kill her faster than the poison.”
“Then guess which one it is based on what you know. She’s dying anyway!”
“I’m not trained in counteracting illegal poisons! There’s no way to guess!”
“Don’t yell,” Laney complained.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“We need a clue of some kind. If I knew the poison, I might have a better chance of getting the antidote right.”
I thought about searching my room where the attack took place, but what could I possibly find? A better idea came to mind. I stood over Shara. Her strained breaths sounded painful.
“Shara, I’m not sure if you can hear me but you’ve been poisoned, we’re not sure with what. We need your help. Is there anything you can tell us?”
I lowered my ear right over her mouth. I thought I heard something between her weak breaths.
“Lofe…lofe…lofe.”
Love…her words pulled at my heart. I felt my throat start to close as a powerful sadness took hold of me.
“Is she speaking?” Laney asked.
“She’s just saying love.” I moved my hand down her cheek.
“Move, you fool!” Mayla threw me out of the way and leaned over Shara. “That’s not love, it’s lofe!” She spun, frantically glancing at the cabinets. “Gods, that’s more than a clue. Neeko, take this.” She snapped off a key from a ring of them and slapped it into my hand. “The library. Go through the back door. Look for a book by Yailee Haygrin. Any book by her about poisons.”
“I don’t understand what I’m doing.”
Laney jumped. “I don’t understand, either!”
“Lofe is a poison. I don’t know the antidote but it’ll be in any of Yailee’s books. You can run faster than I can, so go. Go!”
I ran, my torn shirt sliding off my shoulder, my shoes threatening to slip and send me flying.
“Neeko, wait!”
What?
I gave a quick look over my shoulder. Laney was sprinting after me in her nightgown and bare feet, slow as an old mule.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The doors to the library were closed and locked. Laney was somewhere far behind me, probably lost and crying. She’d understand later when I had a chance to explain that I didn’t have time to wait for her.
I tried the key Mayla gave me. It worked. A lamp glowed from somewhere between the rows of bookshelves. I wasn’t alone.
I ran as someone walked out toward the empty library chamber. To my dismay, Storell Ampart appeared, his shoulders hunched over a crossbow aimed straight at me.
“You!” he croaked.
I stopped and put out my hands. “Someone has been poisoned. I’m just here for—”
“I distinctly said you cannot enter my library!”
What kind of old man kept a crossbow nearby while browsing through books? I figured it had to be someone willing to use it.
“A woman is going to die unless I get a book.”
“There is no sense in that, you liar. I will shoot you if you don’t leave.”
I prepared to disarm the old man, hoping his finger wasn’t twitchy enough to hit the trigger the moment he felt movement. But as I gathered energy, the crossbow was plucked out of his hands.
“What,” Storell grunted, the weapon hovering past me. Laney’s one arm reached out and caught it.
“These are very dangerous things!” She released the arrow into the wall. Panting, she threw the crossbow into an aisle and ran to me.
We sprinted together to the back of the great library. I saw no signs of anyone else and readied my key for the back door.
“He’s going to retrieve the crossbow by the time we return,” I realized.
“So I’ll take it again,” Laney said.
It wouldn’t be as easy as she made it seem.
As I inserted the key into the back door with clumsy haste, I heard a scramble of some sort from within, people speaking and scattering in panic. I opened the door. A glass bowl wide enough to fit a baby slammed against the ground, water splashing out of it. Swenn and his squire stood bumbling by one of four wooden tables surrounded by benches. Cases of books lined the walls except in back, where a path descended into darkness.
Swenn stepped backward in shock, cursing as he stumbled over his squire slipping on the water. I raised my arm, thinking only one thing. He was responsible for the attack on Shara.
Anger fueled my focus as I wrapped the ring of py around Swenn’s neck. His surprise was gone, replaced by fury as he pried at my invisible noose, his expression like a bull held by a leash. As spit spewed out from behind his clenched teeth, his face became crimson.
The red color of his skin darkened, nearing blue as I squeezed harder.
For Eizle. For Shara. For my mother.
His squire charged at me, his right arm limp and badly burned, his left hand awkwardly gripping his sword.
He was the one who stabbed her.
I threw him back with py. He would be next to die, after Swenn.
“You can’t kill people, Neeko!” Laney wailed.
“Don’t interfere.”
It felt like someone threw a mattress into my back with the strength of a catapult. I crashed into a wall shelved with books, shaking it hard enough for half of them to topple down onto my head and shoulders, a barrage of heavy blows that sent me to the ground.
By the time I regained my footing, Swenn and his squire were barreling into tables to get away. I tried to grab Swenn, but my py didn’t seem to attach around his waist. He slowed, brushing it off, and disappeared into the darkness.
I chased him.
No…Shara
. I stopped. Rage had twisted my mind and still flowed through me. With nowhere to direct it, I rounded on Laney. She should pay for what she’d done. I made a fist, forgetting the woman was more delicate than cobweb. She cowered behind her one arm, shrieking. I grabbed her shoulders and shook.
“You don’t know what you just did!”
She cried. I let go as she fell.
I’d done the same thing to Eizle as Laney had to me, yet Eizle had died for it. All the rage fell out of me as my heart sank.
Eizle, I’m so sorry.
No time. Shara.
I needed that damn book.
“Help me look!” I lifted Laney up. She quickly dried her eyes.
We scoured the walls, soon realizing the names of the books were ordered alphabetically. I made my way toward the middle, looking for “P.”
“Don’t say anything about what you saw here,” I ordered. “I’ll explain it all later. We found no one back here, all right?”
“I am a terrible keeper of secrets.”
I’ll deal with her after this is over.
The first book I found with “poison” in its title was by Yailee Haygrin. I grabbed it and jumped over the pile of books I’d made when Laney had thrown me into the wall.
She’s strong with py.
Coming to the open door, we slowed. I peered around it, hoping not to find Storell with the crossbow aimed at us.