“I remember one woman. I think. There was blood everywhere. On my hands, on my apron. The leg couldn’t besaved, so I cut it off, but the bleeding wouldn’t stop. I tied the big vessel, then heated the iron until it glowed, and pressed it to the stump. The smell...” He paused, and Seraphina heard him swallow. “I thought I’d done it right. But hours later, something gave way. The bleeding started again, and I didn’t know how to stop it. The hospital only had a few Quietus Nets, which helped keep the patients sedated, but for her, I needed a Staunching Lattice, and the last one had broken weeks before.”
It took Seraphina a minute to wrap her head around what she’d just heard.
“So, you were a surgeon?”
“Maybe.”
She let out a groan. She’d asked him about the dead women, and he’d told her about a woman he’d presumably tried to save. A weaver, a poet, and a surgeon? Not possible. Not if he’d lived a sheltered life, like he’d said. And for someone who claimed he didn’t know about relics, the Sarumite Order, or the four currents, he knew an awful lot about lattices.
The Quietus Net was a class B lattice, which meant that it was fairly powerful and could be dangerous in the wrong hands. Mostly, it was used for medical purposes, as an anodyne. To a certain extent, it could blunt pain, steady respiration, and induce mild sedation while keeping the patient from losing consciousness. In hospitals, it was used for surgeries, preferred over laudanum, which often caused shallow breathing, a low pulse, and sometimes worse – stupor that led to coma. However, ill-meaning people could use it in a variety of ways: interrogation, control, and even crowd suppression if the lattice was large enough.
The Staunching Lattice did exactly what its name said – it slowed bleeding. Medical grade as well, and not as interesting to those who would’ve wanted to use it in other ways. Though Seraphina had heard rumors about the Staunching Latticebeing a favorite of the opposition when they wanted to extract information from their prisoners in less pleasant ways.
“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” she finally said. “You make no sense.”
“I know.”
She shifted in the small corner she occupied. Her back popped. It was impossible to find a comfortable position.
“If we’re going to share a cell, we need rules,” she said.
“I agree.”
“I’m glad. Here are mine, and they’re non-negotiable. The first one we’ve established already – no looking at each other’s faces. The second one – no touching. I realize at some point we’ll have to stand up, move around. I propose we always sit or stand back-to-back.”
“Yes, that works for me.”
“Good. I will move away from the wall now. I’ll face the door, but I need some space to stretch.”
“I’ll face the back wall,” he said. “I can push some straw toward you, if you want. The floor is hard.”
“All right. Slowly.”
He used his hands to sweep straw to the middle of the cell, and she reached behind her and pulled it toward her. She made herself a little nest and stretched in front of the barred door.
“Rune?”
“Yes?”
“I can’t stay awake anymore.”
“Then sleep.”
She let out a laugh or tried to. It came out as a strangled sob.
“Don’t kill me,” she said.
“Seraphina. I won’t even come near you, I swear. We have rules.”
“Do rules even mean anything to a murderer?”
He didn’t answer, which certainly didn’t make Seraphina feel better.
“Just don’t kill me.”
Chapter Five
In the cold seasons, imprisonment was often a death sentence.
