‘I walked away from them all before,’ she said to him, although she knew he couldn’t hear her. ‘When I did this, before. I can’t do that again.’ Tor murmured, turning his head towards her. The bones on the burned part of his face jutted through raw flesh. ‘How are you still alive?’
When she had lived on the plains with her mother, there had been a man living with her people called Cusp. When someone had a fever, or had broken a leg falling from their horse, or had received a bite from something hidden in the long grass, Cusp would come to them with his ointments and sticks, his ghost-stones and sure fingers, and he would help them if he could. He had been a serious-faced man, not old, his black hair shorn very close to his head. Cusp would have known what to do about Tor’s terrible burns, but everything that Cusp had known had been lost along with everything else, ten years ago. In the Winnowry there had been a place where sick fell-witches had been taken, but Noon had never seen it. She knew precisely nothing about healing. Quite the opposite, really.
She straightened up, less than steady on her feet. ‘I will make you comfortable. Hot water and clean linen. I can manage that much.’
At the door she staggered and cried out. She had tried to force the cloud of voices inside her into the background, but now it swarmed around her, overwhelming her as it had inside the Behemoth wreck. Her mouth flooded with the taste of something she didn’t recognise, woody and almost tart, like old apples, and a booming voice in her head, speaking an unknown language. The voice sounded angry.
‘Stop it, stop it.’ She covered her ears with her hands, trying to block it out, and for a wonder, the sensation did retreat, although she could feel it, colouring the back of her mind like mould. ‘Whatever this is, I don’t have time for it.’
In the kitchens she didn’t dare to use the winnowfire, not with the violence of the parasite spirit’s energy still simmering inside, so she lit a fire the traditional way, as she’d once been taught by an unsuspecting Mother Fast a lifetime ago. When the water boiled, she tempered it with cold water from a jug, picked up a stack of dusty tablecloths from the side and went back to the room where Tor lay. She had just pushed the door open with her foot when that sense of an alien presence overcame her again and she dropped the pot of water, half soaking herself and the rug, before falling to her knees in a pile of linen.
The voice came again, although now it sounded joyful, exultant. The servants’ quarters with the chest of drawers and brown curtains faded away, as though it were a particularly unconvincing dream, and she was flying, flying high above Sarn. Lakes like sapphires caught the sun and shattered it into gold, and the low slopes of a mountain revealed a pack of animals, running. The voice roared then, and, far below, the animals howled back; a shiver of recognition trickled down Noon’s back even though she knew that the feelings were not her own. To her that lonely noise meant a night of extra fires around the tents and more warriors on watch through the dark hours, but to this other being it was . . . freedom? That wasn’t the right word. Abruptly, the sense of flying was gone, and instead she was in a great plaza of white stone, dotted here and there with trees covered in pink blossom. Here there were tall men and women, beautiful in silk and silver plate, and then a child, running towards her. A small boy, his shining auburn hair pulled into a neat little bun atop his head, laughing as he came, his crimson eyes bright, and then he fell, chubby limbs crashing onto the smooth white stone. Noon winced, knowing the tantrum that would come, yet the child got back up onto his feet, still laughing, and continued running towards her. The palms of his hands were scraped and bleeding and she felt a moment’s discomfort at that – it will stain the feathers, she thought, disjointedly – and then the child was wrapping his arms around her. Noon had a sense of knowing, of knowing she was much larger than the boy, much larger, and then she was lying on her back in a dowdy room, gasping for air. Her trousers and shirt were wet, and the empty pot lay beneath the chest of drawers.
‘What is it?’ she breathed. She held her own hands up in front of her, and for a second they looked the wrong shape. She squeezed her eyes shut, opened them again. ‘What is happening to me?’
The only reply was Tor’s ragged breathing. Cautiously, half sure that moving would bring the strange thoughts and sensations back, she got to her feet. Her heart was hammering in her chest as though she had been fighting, but as she looked down at Tor, something clicked into place. She thought of the little boy’s bloodied hands.
‘There is something I can do for you,’ she said.
The knives in the kitchens were all well maintained, their edges keen. Noon selected three, cleaned them in a basin of hot water, and took them back to Tor’s room. Trying not to notice the ruin of his face and neck, she carefully cut and peeled away the collar of his shirt. Instantly, he roared into consciousness, his eyes wild.
‘What are you doing?’ he demanded, in a tone so like his usual attitude that she was briefly too stunned to do anything. ‘Do you know how much this shirt cost? I doubt—’
Noon saw the moment the pain hit him. He screamed, a high, broken sound, and then he passed out again, his head lolling against the pillow.
‘You shouldn’t have taken me with you,’ she whispered, still gripping the knife. ‘You should have left me. I told you to.’
She put the knife on a small bedside table and picked up another, smaller blade. Without thinking about it too closely, she pressed its edge to the palm of her hand until a bright necklace of red beads grew there. It stung, and as she winced she thought she heard muttering from the tide of strange thoughts in her head, but she forced it away.
Taking hold of his jaw with her other hand so that his mouth was open, she squeezed her injured hand shut and a few drops of blood spattered onto his tongue. She squeezed again, a few more drops, and Tor swallowed hard, gasping as though he were drowning.