Apollo cursed.
The doctor stepped back.“Gonna need stitches.”
“I could have told you that,” Apollo snarled.
The doctor narrowed his eyes.“I’ll send you right out of here if you don’t behave, young man.”He turned a kinder expression on Sybil.“I’ll fix you up.Please tell your husband to sit, or lie, or shake, or whatever his particular trick is.”He began to rummage through cabinets at the side of the room.
Sybil’s skin was cold and clammy, her grip weak.
“What did I step on?”she asked.
“The damn tankard, I think.The one I was reshaping in the fire.”
“Why wasn’t the tankard set?”
“No idea.The stuff is cheap.”
The doctor chuckled, rummaging inside a cabinet.“You staying at the Blue Anvil?The innkeeper, Grinkle, keeps the tankards unset so he can manipulate them.He expands the insides of ’em so it looks like you’re getting a full pint, but you’re only getting about half that.”
“How deceptively clever,” Sybil said.
“Usually, I’d agree with you, but perhaps we can focus, Doctor, on Sybil’s foot?”
The doctor returned, scowling, with a small wooden box and a bottle.He handed the bottle to Apollo.“Pour some on the cut then into her mouth.Got it?”
“Hold tight, Sybil.”Apollo tipped the bottle over the arch of her foot.
She mangled his hand with her grip, hissing.He took the pain, deserved it.
“Might be best if you pass out now.”He held the bottle to her lips.
“No.”She grabbed the bottle and helped herself to a very large gulp.Then another before handing it back.
Apollo drank generously, too, before asking the doctor, “Do you have anything to put her to sleep?”
“This ain’t a potion shop,” the doctor said.“But you can look through the plants.”
The plants were healthy but sparse.“No lavender or valerian.”
“All right, miss,” the doctor said, “It’s going to hurt.Bite down on this.”He handed Sybil a rolled piece of leather.
She eyed it dubiously but took it.Before she placed it between her teeth, she squeezed Apollo’s hand.“Talk to me.About anything.Just keep my mind off it.Please?”
“Of course.”Anything.
With the leather between her teeth, she must have seen the panic in his eyes.She removed it to say, “What is valerian?”Back in went the leather, and he finally had something to bite on, too.
“It’s a plant.”
“A weed.”The doctor was moving by her foot.Something small glinted in his hand.
“Aplant, a good one too.Can put a fellow right to sleep if prepared correctly.With lavender preferably.If I had some”—a cutting look for the doctor—“I’d make a tea that would put you right out.Lady Guinevere surely has some drying in her still room.”
The doctor laced a needle through Sybil’s foot and her entire body clenched.
Apollo stroked her hair back.“It’ll be over soon.”
She nodded.
