Shrike seemed to hear him regardless, for he murmured, “She is chirurgeon and bone-setter to Lady Aethelthryth.”
Wren didn’t know much of Lady Aethelthryth beyond that she had numbered amongst their allies in the midsummer duel at the Court of the Silver Wheel. He supposed that would suffice for trust.
“No pain?” Everilda cut in.
Wren caught his tongue before it let slip another polite lie. “Bit of a stitch in my side, but you don’t have to…”
He trailed off as he realised, given how naked his body felt beneath the furs aside from something snug wrapped ‘round his middle, that she likely already had.
Everilda went on, nothing daunted. “Is it a sharp stabbing pain or more of a dull ache?”
“Burning ache,” Wren decided after he’d taken a moment to focus on it—which he’d rather not have done, frankly. He hesitated before adding, “Gets sharp if I breathe in too deep.”
Shrike’s grip on his hand tightened.
Everilda nodded. “All rather to be expected, I’m afraid. But,” she continued, withdrawing a curiously familiar bottle from her leather case, “an elixir of poppies ought to blunt its edge.”
Shrike let go of Wren’s hand for just a moment to turn again to the hearth and pour a cup of tea. The scent of chamomile and lavender wafted up alongside the steam. Everilda passed him the laudanum bottle. Shrike dispensed a few drops into the tea and gave it a dollop of honey for good measure. Then he slipped his strong arm beneath Wren’s shoulders and raised him up to drink.
Wren had to reach for the cup twice before his clumsy fingertips met the handle. He couldn’t support its weight—couldn’t even tip it on his own—but still he could do enough to signal to Shrike his readiness to drink and when to draw it away again. The hot tea slipping down his throat became a warm balm spreading through his chest. For a moment he felt almost himself again. Then the warmth faded and the shivers resumed. Intermittent ones, chasing each other across his skin like summer zephyrs rustling through oak branches, rather than the bone-shattering convulsions he recalled on the lake-shore. But shivers nonetheless.
Shrike set the empty cup aside and laid Wren down as gently as an autumn leaf’s descent. Wren had half a notion to coax Shrike down alongside him into a sweet embrace. Yet the presence of Everilda still unnerved him. He’d already disrobed thrice-over in front of fae ladies. That was more than enough to blush for. The prospect of doing anything of the kind before a mortal woman, however, mortified him.
Everilda didn’t seem in the least bit mortified. She had, at last, got what she wanted out of her kit and now approached the bed. From the leather case she withdrew an instrument which appeared very much like a brass ear-trumpet affixed to a rubber tube, with a brass bodkin at the other end. Brass wires spiralled up the tube-like vines and, indeed, had little brass ivy leaves sprouting from them. Wren watched as Everilda briskly rubbed the mouth of the ear-trumpet—which he now saw wasn’t hollow,but instead solid brass—against her palm. Then, with a glance seeking his permission, she drew back the bed-clothes just far enough to expose his bare chest. She laid the ear-trumpet firm against his ribs over his heart, stuck the brass bodkin in her ear, and turned her gaze towards the rafters whilst she listened.
Wren could only imagine how fast his heart beat with the panic of having a mortal woman see his naked form. He forced his attention away from her face and towards her instrument. As his eyes traced the brass vines, he realised the ivy leaves seemed to furl and unfurl in time with his own pulse. Though he supposed that could just be delirium.
Whatever Everilda gleaned from this experiment seemed to please her. She removed the brass bell from his chest and, with another enquiring glance at him and Shrike both, pulled the bedclothes still further down to expose a wide sash of ivory linen wrapping Wren from ribs to hips.
Wren gave silent thanks she halted there—though he knew she must have already seen what he had below the water-mark of his hip-bones. It was his first time seeing what had become of his wound since he lay on the icy lake-shore. The crisp linen contrasted against his memories of Shrike cutting his own shirt to pieces. He supposed it’d been re-dressed after surgery. The strips of Shrike’s shirt were likely cast away. He felt a guilty pang at that and all the other trouble his foolishness had caused.
Everilda laid the brass bell against the ivory bandage. Its weight gave Wren a twinge but nothing worse. She listened intently, moving it now and again over the breadth of his stomach, though she never ventured near even the perimeter of his wound. As before, whatever she heard she seemed to take as a good sign, and when she withdrew her instrument, she did so with a smile. She tucked it away into her leather case and brought out something else—a glass tube, about as long andslender as a pencil, rounded off on both ends, with a minuscule blue fish embedded in the middle.
“Hold this under your tongue,” she said.
Wren shot an enquiring glance at Shrike. Seeing he seemed to find nothing about this out of the ordinary, Wren supposed this was just routine fae medicine and opened his mouth for the chirurgeon.
She tucked one end of the glass under his tongue and bid him close his mouth to hold it.
To Wren’s astonishment, the fish began to move. It wriggled and swam away from him, up towards the end of the tube, and as it went it changed colour from blue to green to yellow and, finally, an orange like flame. It halted about a half-inch shy of the rounded end and began to swim figure-eights in place.
Everilda plucked the tube from Wren’s mouth and peered at the fish with an approving air.
“Can you stand?” she asked him.
“What?” Wren blurted.
Everilda appeared unperturbed. “Just a quick turn ‘round the cottage. Then straight back to bed.”
Wren stared at her, then turned his confusion on Shrike. He felt he could hardly sit up, much less walk.
Yet the small smile that graced Shrike’s lips looked so gentle, so hopeful, and so encouraging, that Wren couldn’t bring himself to deny him an attempt, at least.
“All right,” Wren said, his voice sounding weak even to his own ears.
Once again, Shrike’s strong arm slipped beneath his shoulders and helped him sit up. His wound twinged, but already the laudanum had begun to do its work, and the pain ebbed.
He had a moment’s hesitation when it came time to withdraw the bedclothes altogether and swing his legs out. But just then,Everilda held out his own night-shirt, and then turned her back to him whilst Shrike drew it over his head. Wren supposed the mortification of having a strange woman touch his intimate garments was the lesser evil compared to her seeing, again, what lay beneath them.
