“They shot me.” He pointed to his shoulder, but he was forgetting something important. Oh, yes. “Are you going to sell me to the emperor?” Not that it really mattered. His chances of getting home now were almost nonexistent.
“No, of course not,” she said. “This may hurt.” She peeled away the blood-soaked linen over his torn flesh and bent forward to examine it, probing it gently with her finger. “The wound is clean, with no bleeding. The surgeon always says it is better to leave a bullet in place if it is not causing bleeding, since cutting it out can do more damage.”
Whatever would heal fastest. Had he said that, or only thought it?
“It must come out,” said the creaky voice, the kind one. “The iron is poisoning him. He has only a trace of fae blood, but enough that it is destroying his mind.”
“He will need a surgeon, then. I can deal with minor wounds, but cutting out a bullet? I do not even know where to begin.”
“You must do your best, Infant,” said the voice sympathetically. “He has a price on his head, so getting a surgeon would mean a death sentence, and we cannot come near that iron. He will die if the bullet remains and die if we get a surgeon.”
She drew in a sharp breath. “Then I suppose I will do my best. If you wish me to try, that is.”
He had nothing to lose. And perhaps Elizabeth and Star would come back to talk to him again. “I would be in your debt.”
She glanced towards the corner where the voice had come from. “This would be easier for me if he were asleep,” she said in a subdued voice. “Otherwise someone will have to hold him down.”
“I will make him sleep, Infant,” the voice said.
Unseen fingers brushed over his forehead, and darkness fell.
His shoulder burned when he awoke. Pain shot down his arm, which was bound tightly in a sling. The woman had been right, that removing the bullet had made his injury worse. Now he would be more helpless than before.
The woman’s hand was pressing on a bandage over the wound. “How does it feel?”
“It hurts. But I can think clearly again.” And that was an enormous blessing
“Do not try to move that arm. Give it time to recover. There will be more bleeding, I suspect. I did my best, though I made it up as I went along.”
“I thank you for your efforts, Madame.…”
“Mme. Hartung,” she said.
“Thank you, Mme. Hartung.” His lips were too cracked to smile. “I could hardly call you ‘infant.’”
She laughed. “The fae at home named me that when I was barely walking. They saw no reason to change it when I grew up.”
So she was allied with the fae. “What happens to me now?” he asked in a low voice. Somehow it was easier to ask another human, one he could see. “Will they allow me to stay here while I recover?”
“They will, because of their debt to you, but the soldiers know you were nearby. We will need to find a way to take you farther away, where they will not be hunting for you.”
Suspicion pricked at him. “Why would you help me? If I am caught, it could go very badly for you.”
She looked down at her left hand, where a gold ring circled her finger. “My husband was forced to serve in Napoleon’s army for years. When he was ordered to fire upon our own people in Prussia, he fled rather than murder our countrymen. But when he sought help from them, they turned him in rather than risk angering Napoleon, even though my husband was the kaiser’s own cousin.” Her voice shook. “I help you because no one helped my husband.”
He hardly knew what to say. “You do me great honor. I had not expected to find an opponent of Napoleon among the French.”
“There are many who wish he would give up his dreams of conquest, but I am Prussian, not French. My husband and I were sent here as hostages. I am no servant of the emperor of France.”
“I am sorry for your situation,” he said awkwardly. Even if it was fortunate for him.
“Do you have a wife waiting for you at home?”
Despite the burning pain and the hopelessness of his situation, the corners of his lips turned up at the thought of Elizabeth. He touched the pocket that held the silk handkerchief, as if it were a talisman. “I do. She is expecting our first child.”
The woman nodded. “Somehow we will find a way to get you back to her.”
Chapter 25
