Blackveil

She gingerly extended her hand to him and he examined her wrist with gentle touches. “This needs a true healing,” he said, “in order for it to work properly again.”

“Damn,” Karigan muttered. That did not portend well for wielding her sword or anything else.

“In the meantime it must be set. How did it break?”

“A Sleeper. Crushed it with his hand.”

Ealdaen nodded, unsurprised. “Lynx, could you assist?”

Lynx moved around to Karigan’s side, and before she could say another word or ask another question, Ealdaen, holding her elbow, yanked on her hand and she fell screaming into unconsciousness.

When Karigan came to, she was lying on her back with one blanket rolled beneath her head and another spread over her. The winged statues filled her vision. She groaned as each individual pain flared to life; her wrist hurt worse than everything else. It felt heavy and she saw it was bound and splinted with white arrow shafts. There was something ironic about Eletian arrows being used to help heal her wrist. As much as she hurt, she was relieved to have accomplished her task. She’d helped Laurelyn’s Sleepers escape to Eletia, preventing them from becoming a dark, dangerous force in her own time.

She heard a scritch-scritch beside her and turned her head to find Yates working in his journal, the wound in his arm neatly bound.

“What ...” she began. She licked her dry, cracked lips. “What are you writing?”

“Drawing,” he corrected. He smiled. “Since my sight is much better, I’m drawing details of this room, the moondial, that sort of thing. I did a nythling, too, after Ealdaen took care of the ones that were left.”

They’d been feeding on Grant, she remembered. Yates flipped a page and then showed her the picture of the nythling, sketched in realistic detail. Too realistic.

“Ealdaen has no idea how the eggs got in Grant’s arm,” Yates said. “He’d never seen nythlings before. How do you feel?”

“Pretty bad.”

Yates nodded. “Ealdaen said your leg was all ripped up again. He was surprised you could walk. You should really learn to take better care of yourself.”

If Karigan had felt up to it, she would have swatted him.

“Ealdaen wanted me to make sure you had this when you woke up,” he said, showing her Graelalea’s flask, the one that had contained the cordial. “And this.” He then showed her something that took her aback, for it had no context in this place.

“Is that what I think it is?” she asked.

“If you’re thinking it’s a Dragon Dropping, you’d be right. It’s from the gift King Zachary had us give Graelalea the morning we crossed the breach.”

Karigan remembered.

“Ealdaen says the chocolate is very restorative to Eletians, which is why they prize it so much. He figures it means it’s restorative to non-Eletians, too, so he passed one out to everyone. Who’s to say if it helps us or not? Lynx and I didn’t argue the point. You should appreciate my restraint, by the way. You don’t know how tempting it was to eat yours and not tell you. I mean, how would you know?”

“I’d smell it on your breath.” She swiped her Dragon Dropping from him and bit into it. She rolled her eyes in pleasure, chewing slowly to savor the experience of the dark chocolate for as long as possible. After so long a diet of thin stews, gruel, hardtack, and dried meat, it did prove restorative after a fashion. And it made her dream of another favorite luxury, of a hot, languorous bubble bath. Maybe one day, if they ever made it back to Sacor City.

Yates chuckled. “I ate mine in one gulp.”

When she was ready, he unstoppered the flask. “Ealdaen says that this is all that remains of Graelalea’s cordial and that you are to drink all of it. The dew of Avrath, he calls it.”

There were three good mouthfuls left, and Karigan savored these, too, remembering Graelalea with sorrow. She touched the feather still in her braid. The cordial dulled her hurts and made her feel strong enough to sit up. When she did so, she observed the corpses had been removed.

“Where is everyone?” she asked.

“Dealing with the bodies, I guess,” Yates replied. “And keeping watch to make sure no more Sleepers get in. Ealdaen wanted to properly honor the dead.”

“All of them?”

Yates nodded. “Even Ard and the Sleepers. He said Ard had been a good member of the company until he tried to murder you, and that it was no fault of the Sleepers that they became what they’ve become. They were once untainted Eletians.”

“Poets, artists, and heroes of a distant age,” Karigan murmured, recalling Laurelyn’s words.

“Yes, Ealdaen said something very like that. I think he knew many of the individuals who were asleep in the grove.” Yates paused, then said, “As for Ard, the others were curious as to why he’d want to kill you.”

Karigan froze, heart thudding. “And?”

“Ealdaen told us what he overheard, that you were a threat to the marriage of Lady Estora and the king.”

“And?”

“I think the Eletians just shrugged it off as one of those things our kind engages in. Lynx, however, gave you a long, surprised look, but said nothing.”

Karigan groaned. Must everyone know? She thought she’d been so discreet, hiding away her feelings. “What do you think about it?” she asked Yates.

“I was not quite as surprised as Lynx,” he replied.