“I see how this is donenow.”Fen, still propping him, reached round and took the needlefrom his hand.It was slick with blood—Cai couldn’t hold on to it.He opened his mouth to protest, and the neck of a glass vialslipped between his teeth.Oslaf, still weeping but surprisinglystrong, held his mouth open and tipped the oily, bitter liquid downhis throat.
Stupid boy.You’ve given me toomuch.But thetruth was that Cai didn’t know how it was meant to feel.He’d neverused it on himself.He’d seen his patients drift off smiling in thedrug’s embrace, and he’d wondered, but the stuff was too preciousfor experimentation.Oslaf sat back, watching anxiously.Cai wantedto tell him there was nothing to worry about.He wanted to tellFen, now drawing the edges of his wound together and neatlypunching the needle through, how brave and beautiful he was.Howquick to learn…
Cai turned his head and whispered itto him, ending it with a kiss, and Fen gave a kind of sobbingchuckle Cai could feel through his spine and kissed him back,roughly, not taking his eyes off his work.“Good stuff that oldwitch brews up for you, isn’t it?Lie still.”
Cai wanted nothing better.Fen hadkissed him, here in front of everyone.Fen had come to rescue himfrom Gunnar—chosen him, and the horror attendant on that choiceslipped away from Cai, just as every bad thing was slipping away.Even the pain was becoming a sweet fire.He hid his face againstFen’s neck so no one could see that the next punch of the needlethrough his flesh was a pleasure to him, a shattering relief.Hewas in Fen’s hands.Fen was stitching him together—drawing the darkdown around him in warm, beating wings—making him whole.
Chapter Sixteen
At first there was only sky.Itbrightened and darkened, sometimes incredibly fast—the chariot ofthe sun driven westward by an insane charioteer, so maybe Fen hadpushed aside old Lugh or Phoebus Apollo and seized the reinshimself—and sometimes with an agonising slowness.There was onenight that lasted for all eternity, and not all the kindly hands onhim, not even the embrace that eventually closed round him, rockinghim and stroking his hair, could make the stars give way to dawn.Then the passage of time began again, and Cai, throat sore from allthe howling he had done but couldn’t remember, surfaced enough tofeel a little shame.To be aware of cold water trickling into hismouth, and his soiled clothing being peeled away from hisbody.
Only sky, and then a line appearedacross it.One black bar and then another and another, and finallytwo more, cutting across the first ones lengthwise.Then there wasa rich scent of dry straw and heather, and the sky began to vanish,one swathe at a time.The scents were pleasant, the sounds theworkers made as they went about their business—muted, neverthelesshushed fiercely by someone from time to time—soothing to him, andhe slept.
“You should have let Oslafboil the water for you.”
Cai consideredthis.Theredidn’t seem to be any hurry.Fen, sitting cross-legged on the floorbeside him, looked as if he had been there for hours.He was pale,Cai thought, and he hadn’t bothered to keep himself as clean-shavenas he normally liked.He had lost weight.
Cai put out a hand.His arm was weakfrom the deep axe cut, but he knew that had been the least of hisproblems.Instead of turf or hard-packed earth, he felt smoothstone.He was no longer burning in the sun, or being flecked byautumn rain.He was warm, and the draughts that had made his bonesache had stopped.He lay watching Fen, who returned his gazewithout expectation or hope.
“Have I had afever?”
Fen leaned forwards.His expressionchanged indefinably—the tiny shift of meltwater under ice.“Cai?You heard me?”
“Of course.What is it?Youlook dreadful.”
“Those are the first sanewords you’ve spoken in five days.You didn’t know who Iwas.”
“God.Five…” Cai tried topush himself up, and found that his limbs were made of overboiledmashed turnip.“Where am I?”
“Where the dormitory barnused to be.”
“Is it...Did it burndown?”
“Everything did.We’verigged up shelters from the ruins.”
“Everything…”
Cai was about to ask more when thewillow screen blocking the doorway was suddenly shifted aside.Oslaf entered cautiously, a bucket in one hand, Cai’s medical bagover his shoulder.“I’ll bathe him this time, Fen.You really oughtto rest, if…”
The bucket clattered down.Water wastoo hard to haul up from the well to be lightly regarded, and Oslafcaught it on instinct before it could spill.Then he stumbled overto Cai, knelt and planted a fervent, noisy kiss to his brow.“Mybrother.We’d given you up.”
“I seem to have causedtrouble.”Cai didn’t have the strength to push Oslaf back, andsubmitted while the boy retrieved the bucket and began to washhim.
Fen had gone to stand in the farcorner of the makeshift shelter.Oslaf glanced at him.“He’s neverleft your side,” he said quietly.“Apart from to help us build,and…other things.He hasn’t slept.”
Cai knew about theotherthings.Heknew the hawthorns would be shadowing a new row of quiet heaps ofearth.Wilf, Marcus, Demetrios… Who else?He drew breath to ask.Then he too looked at Fen.“Oslaf, I could really use somefood.”
“Well, I’m not sure youshould start eating straight away.You always make us start withthin gruel and water, after—”
“Oslaf, dear.”Cai pattedthe boy’s face.
“What?”
“Just get out.”
“Oh.”
He disappeared, tugging the willowdoor back into place behind him.Cai lay still for a few moments.He touched the floor again, then the mattress beneath him.It wasclean and dry and had been raised a little off the floor on somekind of frame to keep him clear of the cold stone.His probingfingers found the front of his cassock, also clean.Cai knew whatan effort it took to wrestle a feverish man into one of those, oreven a deadweight one.He had been scrupulously caredfor.
