Ichtracia tutted loudly, stopping Forgula midstride. “Michel, my little mongrel foxhead, what are you doing on this street? And in your condition? You should be smart enough to stay on the next street over.”
Michel looked down at the blood now dripping openly from the hand he held over his chest. He used the last of his strength to force a smile onto his face, giving a small bow and grasping for the first thing that came to mind. “I was looking for you, ma’am.”
“Oh? Whatever for?”
“To ask you to dinner.” Michel had just long enough to see the look of fascinated horror on Forgula’s face before he teetered and collapsed, facedown, onto the cobbles beneath Ichtracia’s carriage.
“That is the third time this week I have passed out,” Michel breathed. He lay in a pile on the floor of a carriage, looking up at Ichtracia as she stared dispassionately out the window. One of her footmen crouched beside him, holding his jacket tightly against Michel’s chest. “It’s really unpleasant.”
Ichtracia remained silent, her eyes on something in the street, a troubled look on her face. Michel tried to read something from her posture and expression—why she had saved him, what her plans were, if she was going to help him—but came up with nothing. He couldn’t focus through the pain coming from his wound, nor the great loss of blood. Instead, he found himself considering her striking features. A man could do worse than stare at her face as he died.
The carriage was moving, but Michel had no way of knowing in what direction. “Thank you,” he said.
“Hmm?” Ichtracia looked down at him, her eyes cold, her thoughts obviously far away. “Oh, that.” She snorted a laugh. “Having the chance to annoy Forgula is thanks enough.”
Michel thought of the laugh when he’d punched Forgula back at the war game. Was there some kind of old rivalry between the two? Past hatreds? Shouldn’t they be on the same side? “I have to go to Yaret’s Household,” he said.
Ichtracia ignored him. “Tculu, will he survive long enough to reach the house?”
“He’s still talking, ma’am,” the footman replied. “I think that’s a good sign.”
“Saen,” Michel said, trying to inject some force. “I have to get to Yaret’s Household, please. I have to warn them.”
Ichtracia’s attention snapped toward him with a startling suddenness. “About what? The bomb?”
Michel’s throat went dry. Ichtracia knew. She knew because she was Ka-Sedial’s granddaughter, and Ka-Sedial had arranged the assassination. He had just stepped out of one fire and into a much, much hotter one.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” Ichtracia said. “I didn’t put the damned thing there. You’ve been unconscious for about a half hour. Fifteen minutes ago, a bomb exploded, destroying Yaret’s house. We heard the explosion, and word just reached us by courier.”
Michel stared at her, trying to come up with a reply. Maybe she wasn’t involved, but … had he been too late? Had that girl gotten his note to Yaret in time? “We have to go help,” he whispered.
“Do we? Yaret isn’t a friend of mine, and I’ve been given no orders to return and aid them.”
Michel had no strength to feel grief, or outrage, or anything but the pain coming from his chest. He sagged, doing everything he could to keep his eyes open as the carriage finally came to a stop. The door opened, and at Ichtracia’s order he was carried, none too gently, down the drive of a small estate and in through the front door. A candelabra was swept unceremoniously off a large dining room table and Michel was laid down in the middle, with Ichtracia standing over him like she was about to quarter a deer.
“Fetch me my tools,” she told a footman before looking at Michel. “I’m going to do what I can for you,” she said. “You’ve lost a lot of blood, but it looks like you’ve already been patched up once. If we can keep you conscious, you should make a full recovery.”
“Are … are you a healing Privileged?”
“I am not.” Ichtracia took a satchel from one of the footmen, set it next to Michel’s head, and began to lay out tools. “My great-grandfather was a Privileged,” she explained. “He pioneered a combination of sorcery and surgery that greatly increases a patient’s chances of surviving. It is not nearly as effective—and much more painful—than healing sorcery. But it works.” She pulled on her Privileged’s gloves, the sight of which caused Michel to involuntarily attempt to get up and run. One of Ichtracia’s fingers twitched, and Michel was pressed against the table by unseen forces. “Tculu,” she said, “fetch Michel some whiskey from the cabinet. Give him a healthy swig, then put your belt between his teeth.”
Michel could barely keep up. Ichtracia moved quickly, clinically, like Emerald but with a more refined sense of businesslike purpose. “Why are you helping me?” he asked.
Ichtracia looked down at him as if the answer were obvious. She put a hand on his forehead, her gloves soft to the touch, and wiped the sweat from his brow in an almost gentle manner. “I’ll go to a lot of effort for a man who can make me laugh,” she said softly. “Besides, you asked me to dinner. I may be a Privileged, but I’m not a monster. I’ll never turn down a meal with an interesting person.”
Any further questions were cut off by the footman pressing a bottle to Michel’s mouth and pouring whiskey straight between his lips. He coughed, sputtered, trying to swallow as much as he could. The glass rim of the bottle was quickly replaced by the sour taste of the footman’s belt being forced between his teeth.
Michel went bug-eyed as he felt sorcery hold him so tightly he could barely breathe. Ichtracia lifted a scalpel, examined it carefully, and then went to work.
What, Michel wondered as the cutting began, had he done to deserve this?
CHAPTER 40
Where are you going?”
Styke looked up from packing Amrec’s saddlebags and saw Ibana watching him from a few paces away, hands on her hips, eyes narrowed. He checked to make sure a bottle of whiskey was safely wrapped in the rearmost saddlebag, then tightened the lashings to his bedroll. “I’ve got an errand to run,” he said.
Ibana came around Amrec to stand beside him, looking concerned. For three days they had followed in the shadow of the Third Army, drilling in the mornings and evenings and tending to the wounded. They planned on heading back out on their own, first thing in the morning.
“What’s this errand?”
Styke hesitated. “It’s personal.”
“It can’t wait?”
“No. I’m just going a few miles. I’ll be back before you’re ready to ride out in the morning.”
Ibana didn’t seem to buy it. “You’re not doing something stupid, are you? You have more people to kill?”
“Nope, nothing like that.”
She gazed at him suspiciously.
“I swear,” he added.
“Those dragonmen are still out there. Our scouts saw them the other day. If you go off on your own, they’re going to kill you.”
“That,” Styke said, “is why Celine and Ka-poel are staying with you.”
“Neither of them will stand for it. Pit, I won’t stand for it. What are you up to, Ben? Why can’t you tell me?”
Styke finished checking the saddle, then ran his hand along Amrec’s flank, up his neck, and over his nose. Amrec nuzzled him gently. “Like I said, it’s personal.”
“Take an escort, at least.”
“Not a chance. ‘Personal’ means not having fifty men with me. Besides, I’m more likely to lose those blasted dragonmen with just me and Amrec.” He turned and fixed Ibana with a steady stare, waiting for her to continue the argument. He wasn’t much for arguments and was satisfied to let her win most of them. But this … this was important. “If Ka-poel tries to follow me, you truss her up and throw her over the back of a horse.”
“Do it yourself,” Ibana snorted. “I’m not touching a blood sorcerer.”
“Coward.”
“Fool.”