Gib’s eyes went round. “Milady! You do not plan to examine his... ?” He gestured in the vicinity of Evander’s nether limbs.
I pressed my lips together in amusement.He balks at me examining Evander’s legs.How else was I to tell what was wrong? Not even my fae vision allowed me to see through clothing.
“’Tis nothing I have not seen before.”
Gib looked anything but reassured. “Mayhap I should fetch the baron’s fine doctors after all.”
I clamped down my annoyance. “If ’twas in the calf he was struck,” I said, with forced patience, “I shall go no higher, fret ye not. But I can do nothing unless I consider the affected limb.”
“Will ye not look at his piss? ’Twas what the doctor of physic did for young Malcolm, even before he arrived at the manor.”
Aye, ’twas still how most learned doctors of physic worked. Mairi had words about this custom, too. ’Twas less she disapproved of uroscopy, more she saw it as no substitute for meeting and examining a patient face-to-face. This quality of hers was among those I admired the most.
I wrinkled my nose. “He certainly cannot give me any now. ’Tis better I consider the actual wounds.” And while the servant gaped, I cut into Evander’s hose. His right leg looked to be of normal size, and healthy, but the left was another story. Much thicker and full of lumps. “Had he complained of any symptoms before this morning?”
Gib shook his head, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “There’s some what say he’s been elf-shot.”
This meant nothing.
Mairi Grieve’s words came back to me:Elf-shot is what some call any illness which comes on quickly they haven’t a proper name for. Oft a simple soreness or swelling, a contraction or seizing of the muscle from some unknown cause. Many believe it comes from an attack by the fair ones, when their invisible arrows do pierce the flesh.
And so, whatever the true cause of Evander’s injury, I must at least entertain the possibility my people had been the cause.
Evander’s skin did look red, and the flesh bulky and swollen, but not injured.
Until it did.
What was this? One moment, he’d only a lumpy leg, red and swollen. The next, he was bleeding. The skin had been pierced and the projectile was still in there. I ran a finger across the wound; it came away red with blood that immediately dissipated from my skin. Impossible.
Mayhap not for the fae.
I touched the blood again, and held my hand up before Gib. “What do you see?”
“Your fingers?”
“But on them?”
“Mistress, nothing.” He glanced down at Evander’s now bare leg. “’Tis swollen, but there is no wound.”
Yet wound there was. I saw it with my own eyes.
My own fae eyes.
Elf-shot.
It needed a surgeon. What did I know about cutting into living flesh? Yet no mortal surgeon could even see the injury, much less the arrowhead protruding from it. I would have to remove it myself.
“An arrow puller,” I said. “Get me an arrow puller, then feverfew, red nettles, and waybread. And privacy.” I knew not what he might see when I pulled the arrow out. It might appear I harmed Evander Douglas; I could not glamour well enough to make it appear otherwise.
The servant stared at me, uncertain whether he trusted this man in my hands without further witness.
I didn’t have time for this. “Go!”
Gib fled, as if my words had come from the lady of the manor herself. And as he departed, a peculiar scent arose from the wound: forest moss, woodsmoke, deep animal musk, and the hint of something holy turned dark and profane.
Amadan.
Twenty-Three
