“Liar,” Ezra said. He shook his head like an agitated horse, his eyes briefly fluttering closed. “I know you.”
Pain crossed Julian’s features as he tried to get Ezra to move his hand away from the wound. “Not right now, Josephine.” He swallowed. “Please.”
I couldn’t argue with the aching in his voice. If all three of us were lucky, I’d have time to sort them out later. Watching Julian roll Ezra’s wet shirt up, I asked, “Are you sure we can cauterize his wound right here? It’s hardly sanitary.”
“Shall we walk to town first?” Julian asked in a mild tone.
Ezra made a sound somewhere between a groan and a growl. The steep riverbank behind him, which I was certain had been dusty with dry roots, sprouted a soft bed of grass. He made no notice of it, instead saying quietly, “I told you to put that fire out.”
Julian rolled his sleeves up and wiped his palms on his thighs. “You will both die if you don’t get warm.”
“I’m not going to die,” I argued. How dare he make such an evaluation of my current state? I wasn’t dying. I was only miserably cold and vaguely considering lying down beside the fire for a week or two.
Julian’s voice became quieter. “He will die if I cannot see what I’m doing.”
A twisty sensation made itself known alongside my heart. While I was not sure what I felt about Ezra, I knew for certain I did not want to watch him die beside this cold river in the dark. “Show me,” I urged.
Ignoring the way Ezra mumbled a slurred protest, Julian lifted his shirt to expose the wound above Ezra’s hip.
I gasped. “Are there important things there? Organs and such?”
Ezra looked down. His arms had gone still, and his hands rested at his sides, only twitching. “No,” he said simply.
I clenched my jaw briefly. “Is that your professional assessment?”
“Yes.”
“He’s right, I believe,” Julian said, gingerly pressing his fingers around the small dark puncture that steadily bled a dark rivulet.
“Of course I’m right.” Ezra wagged his finger absurdly. “I’m the healer. Not you.”
“Apprentice,” I reminded him.
Ezra glared and dropped his hand. “You’re right. I’m an apprentice healer. And I know better than to do a medical procedure on a riverbank.”
“Present an alternative,” Julian said. “I’m willing to entertain suggestions.”
Silence stretched between them long enough that I blurted out, “Hurry up and fix him!”
A flash of amusement crossed Ezra’s face, endearing and infuriating all at once. He watched Julian with fondness. “You let your apprentice talk to you like that?”
“By all means,” Julian was saying, his attention on a filament of radiance as thin as a thread of silk. It stretched slowly between his thumb and pointer finger. “Continue to recklessly distract me from the delicate task at hand.”
Ezra’s eyes closed with a soft wince. “This is going to hurt,” he said with bald sincerity that caused another little twist in my chest.
Julian huffed a breath. “I told you. The alternative would feel worse.”
“Not for particularly long.”
“Stop wiggling,” I said in a hissed sort of whisper. “Let him work.”
“Hold him down,” Julian said.
I thought I’d misheard Julian, but sure enough, as soon as the radiance pulsed into the wound at Ezra’s hip, he bucked forward with a ragged sob. I had no choice but to shove his shoulders back into the bluff. He struggled for only a moment before his head lolled to one shoulder and his body went limp.
“He passed out,” I whispered.
“Good.” Julian’s voice was strained despite the relative simplicity of the work. He took a moment to steady his breathing. “Now watch. This is careful work. You must feel for the margins of the wound and stop the bleeding.”
