Anya circled the beast, trying for a better shot. But with the woman so close, Anya worried about catching the woman in the crossfire, or the bear falling onto and crushing her. Then there was the crowd behind it.
Aquila had no such compunctions. Though Anya stood in his line of fire, he fired again at the bear, hitting it this time, grazing its arm. This only enraged it further. The bear reared on its hind legs, unleashing a bone-rattling roar as it turned on Aquila and the crowd behind him.
“Damn it,” Anya hissed, lowering her gun. To get a good shot and not endanger any of the others, she would have to circle the bear and cross the clearing, get into the crowd.
But before she could, she noticed Sylas had left their camp in the trees. While the bear was focused on finding and eliminating the source of the pain in its arm, Sylas had approached the woman, pulling her away from the bear. Already, he was applying a spell to heal her bleeding arms and scalp. He must have suspected she was injured and scribed it in the dark.
He had risked his blood on a guess. And he risked his body now.
The bear was not finished with its prey. Automatically, Anya raised her gun. It spun around, aiming for what it took for another predator stealing its meal. It was on them in seconds. With another roar, and a mighty swing, the bear gashed Sylas across the back.
As it did, Anya fired. The slug penetrated the back of the bear’s skull and burst through the other side, splattering the crowd with blood and flecks of fur and blasted skull.
With a heavythump, the bear fell to its side, dead.
Anya was beside Sylas before she knew what was happening. She wasn’t thinking; she hadn’t been thinking. She had fired without thinking, and she could have hurt someone. But thebear was dead, and Sylas was still hurt, on his hands and knees. His face was creased in pain, his eyes sealed shut, his breathing labored.
Carefully, she set her gun aside. She stripped off her gifted gloves, then felt him gingerly for broken ribs. None that she could feel, but his back, in three clear, deep gashes, was weeping blood.
At her touch, he opened his eyes. “It’s over,” she said to him, and he closed them again. Cursing softly, he let her guide him onto his side in the soft grass.
The woman he’d helped had disappeared into the crowd, sobbing. Anya watched in disbelief as the crowd gathered around her, every last one of them, all of them eager to play the hero now that the danger was passed.
“Sylas is injured,” Anya shouted. Her voice gave out. She called out again. “Someone fucking help him.”
As she cut away the back of his ripped shirt, wincing at the mess of his back, a man approached, a scribe with his kit. David, the handsome one she had noticed staring at Sy at the table.
Kneeling beside them with practiced calm, he withdrew a grip of bandages from his kit and handed them to Anya. “Mop up the blood as best you can,” he instructed. She obeyed.
As she did, he withdrew a slip of parchment and a tourniquet for his arm. Once his pen was full, she watched him write a series of glyphs, less complicated than the short, scratched ones Sy had drawn to fix her mouth. The lines were less intricate, but thicker, requiring more blood. He called for a bowl, placed the parchment in the basin, and blew.
He didn’t waste time making a paste; he poured the dust directly onto Sy’s back, rubbing it in like salting a cut of pork. The wounds stopped bleeding but were nowhere near healed.
David started over. He repeated the process four times. The gashes became cuts, then scratches, then pink scars. Each time he plastered the dust on Sy’s torn skin, Sy winced and squeezed Anya’s hand with a grip belying his frail condition.
And each time, she felt equally compelled to squeeze his hand back and to draw her own away. She hadn’t realized she had been holding his. Had she taken his? Or did he take hers? Her skin did not stick to his. His hand was dry and cold.
With David’s fourth application, Sy made the choice himself, withdrawing his hand abruptly as the wounds on his back closed. No trace was left.
No trace but the dark circles under his eyes, the brittle way he sat up. The lingering feeling of his cold hand in hers.
Anya pulled her gloves back on and curled her fingers tight. As David began cleaning his pen, she frowned. Sy looked like a ghost. “Can’t you restore some of his blood?”
“There is no such spell,” said David. “His body will have to do that in its own time.” He turned to Sy. He spoke with a careful professionalism, but Anya caught the clipped concern in his tone. “You know your limits. But between this, and – and your last job, I wouldn’t risk any spells for a while.”
Sy nodded, rubbing his face wearily. “Is Sabina’s friend alright?”
“Scared out of her wits, but her wounds were shallow. You healed them.”
“She should be scared out of her wits,” Anya said harshly. “You all should. Let it scare you home.”
“It might at that,” David said, turning to the crowd as he drew more water into his pen.
“It won’t.” Anya regarded the corpse of the bear. A waste of meat, of fat, of a pelt. Of a life. But it wasn’t a life to them, or a waste. It didn’t even exist anymore.
Sy watched her. “Anya. Are you hurt?”
She turned on him, seething. “Here I was worried about the forest hurting you lot, when I should have been worried if the forest will survive the likes of you.”
