The Bonemender's Choice (21 page)

One more, Féolan.
Her voice in his head, scared but firm. Commanding him.
I’m going to push it back again. Breathe deep, love, deep as you can.
Again the light rushed against the swelling, and Féolan thought, ridiculously, of a mountain ram, crashing headlong against his opponent to claim his ewe. My stubborn Human, he thought, and then cast thought aside and sucked at the glorious air like a greedy baby, as deep into his lungs as he could.

And then she was gone from him, and he was back in the desert, stumbling into the eternal night.

G
ABRIELLE RUMMAGED FRANTICALLY
in her kit. Féolan’s life was measured now in heartbeats. The Veil extended right back to his windpipe and the surrounding tissues, saturated with poison, had swelled together into a solid wall. It had taken every bit of her power to open the brief cracks that allowed Féolan to win a couple of breaths. Even fresh, she could not have held back that mass of flesh and accomplished the healing that would open his airways again. And she was far from fresh.

She chose hurriedly from among her bonemender’s blades and pulled out the glass pipette used to measure out drops of medicine. It was far too narrow, but it was all she had at hand.

“Derkh, do you see this glass tube?” she asked. She did not look at him but prepared Féolan as she spoke, rolling up a blanket and placing it under his neck so that his head tipped back and the bump known as the baby’s fist protruded. “I need something like this, only bigger around. Glass or metal, even wood at need.” At home, the delicate neck of a wine bottle, broken off at the base, would serve. But Tarzine wine was stored in jugs with short, broad mouths. She could think of nothing to suggest to Derkh.

It was Dominic, who had stuck his head in the door just moments earlier, who replied.

“I can get it.”

“Okay.” There was no time for thanks or further instructions.
“Then, Derkh, you can help me here. I need the dropper end of this pipette broken off.”

She turned to Féolan. His lips were blue, hands twitching weakly. His eyes stared unseeing. She must act now or give him up for dead.

Her fingers found the bottom ridge of his baby’s fist. She laid the tip of her knife against the indentation directly beneath it and cut in to the second mark on the blade—about from her fingertip to her first joint. She pinched the ends of the incision toward each other so that the wound gaped open and heard the fleeting sucking gasp as air found its way into Féolan’s windpipe.

“Derkh?”

The pipette he laid into her hand was not jagged shards at one end, as she had feared, but finished with a clean sharp break. She hadn’t seen him score around the end with his knife and tap it sharply over the table edge. She was just glad she had given the job to a jewelry maker.

“That’s perfect. Thank you.” Gabrielle tucked the smooth end of the pipette into the opening she had made in Féolan’s windpipe. She put her lips around the cut end and blew.

She heard Derkh’s excited exclamation as Féolan’s chest rose with her breath. It was so little, though, the stream of air she could send through the narrow pipette. There was no way it would sustain him without the extra force of a person blowing into it. She counted a slow three and blew again. One–two–three. Again. Beside her, Derkh dabbed with a towel at the blood that had spilled. There wasn’t much from this sort of incision—not to her bonemender’s eyes at least. It probably seemed a lot to Derkh.

She kept up the steady rhythm, and felt Féolan flutter back to consciousness. He would be awake when she had to widen the incision for the new tube. And he was still so sick—she had only bought him a little time, not healed anything.

Fear and exhaustion welled up, and she found her throat so choked and tight that her breath drew in with a noisy ragged gasp. She shook off the tears, furious, and bent to the tube to blow. She couldn’t. Her breath escaped in useless sobs that gasped out around the pipette. Oh, Great Mother. She would kill him if she didn’t get hold of herself.

Derkh’s hand squeezed her shoulder, coaxing her aside. “I can do this for a while.”

She let him take her place at Féolan’s side, relief and gratitude bringing more tears. She sat on the floor, rocking with the ship as the freshening dawn breeze gusted at the sails, and wept.

S
HE WAS CRYING
still, though softly, the tension that had stretched her nerves tight as
lythra
strings eased by the tears, when Dominic returned. He stopped just inside the door, confused by the scene before him: the blood, Derkh bent over Féolan, Gabrielle in tears on the floor...

“Is he...?”

Derkh shook his head. “He’s hanging on.”

“Then why...?” Dominic cut his eyes toward his sister. He had seen her work many times, always calm, in charge, unflappable.

Derkh’s reply was sharp. “She’s been up for two days straight without a break. She worked right through the night on your daughter.” He paused to blow once more into the glass tube. “It drains her. It’s like she pours her own life into her patient.” Derkh
was surprised Gabrielle’s own brother didn’t know this. He had learned it first-hand, when Gabrielle, still a complete stranger, had worked herself to the point of collapse to save his life.

“I’m not so drained I don’t hear you talking about me.” Gabrielle wiped her eyes and stood up. She stretched out her back and neck, squared her shoulders, and the weepy overwhelmed woman disappeared. She was, once more, the healer.

“Did you find anything?”

Dominic held up a copper whistle. About a hand-span long, it was used by the Tarzines to give orders that could carry from one end of the ship to the other.

Gabrielle took it in her palm and considered. Copper was soft—Derkh could probably cut off the end with the mouthpiece and holes in short order, and the remaining length was about right. But if the pipette was too narrow, this was really too wide. Féolan would be able to breathe through it freely, once he got the knack, but Gabrielle would have to cut into his vocal cords to make room. The damage from the scarring could be permanent.

It would have to do. She took over at the pipette and sent Derkh to saw off the whistle. “Clean it up as best you can too,” she added. The inside would be coated with the spit from who knew how many Tarzine sailors.

F
ÉOLAN HOVERED AT
the edge of consciousness, unable to speak, his thoughts wheeling and floating with the fever. His throat was blocked tight, yet somehow air came—though never quite enough—to his lungs. Pain ate at him. He was sickening everywhere at once: the Veil had sent tendrils twining through his body, and they fastened like leeches and sucked away his life.

Gabrielle was back. He heard her voice in his mind, tried to follow her words. She was apologizing for something. Not saving him, he supposed.
It’s all right, love.
He was ready to die. Or rather, he was tired of trying to live. Tired of the pain, tired of starving for air, tired above all of fighting the terror that made him want to scream and claw for breath.

The cut that she made seared into his neck. The Veil has made me deaf, he thought wildly, for he could not hear his own cry of pain. But the pain abated, and sweet air came flooding into him, free and ungrudging, his lungs gulping it in of their own accord without any direction from him. He was momentarily drunk with it, the air rushing to his head like strong wine. I’ll die happy now, he thought, his own voice a giddy babble in his mind, and drink air for all eternity.

D
OMINIC RETURNED WITH
breakfast, and he and Derkh each stationed themselves at a bedside while Gabrielle ate. Madeleine was awake, weak but clear-eyed and lucid, able to sip at the tea Dominic had brought and nibble at the fruit. She reached up to wipe away the tears that tracked down her father’s cheeks, and he caught up her hand and held it tight, kissing the palm. They grinned at each other foolishly, though Dominic felt a twinge of guilt at his happiness. He was worried and sorry for Féolan and his sister, but his daughter lived, and he could not stay his gladness.

Derkh watched Féolan and Gabrielle with equal watchfulness. Féolan lay with a copper pipe protruding from the middle of his neck, the pale skin streaked with blood that had run back into his dark hair. He was shockingly pale—the phrase “deathly white” came to Derkh and he shoved it angrily from his mind. The gray
luminous eyes glittered under half-open lids. Féolan’s chest heaved and fell—he was, indeed, breathing through Gabrielle’s tube—but Derkh didn’t think he would have the strength to haul air from this strange well much longer.

And Gabrielle? Her drawn face and shadowed eyes betrayed her fatigue. She ate steadily, mechanically, not tasting the food but merely taking it in. Like feeding a woodstove, he thought, remembering the great ovens in Castle DesChênes where bread and pastries were baked. He had fed those ovens on occasion, felt their roaring blind hunger.

He waited until she was done and had drained her water mug.

“Gabrielle?” She glanced at him, too weary perhaps to respond with words. But then the smudged eyes sparked with warmth, and she managed a small but genuine smile.

“Thank you for your help,” she said. “I don’t know how—”

He waved it off. “Can you rest a little now? I can wake you if—”

She shook her head. “We are already at the ‘if.’ Féolan has one chance to live, and it’s now.”

Derkh nodded soberly. “I feared as much. Can I do anything to help you?”

She was climbing into the narrow bed, burrowing in between Féolan and the wall. “I’m going to work until sleep takes me. Another blanket would be nice, over both of us. And make sure his breathing tube stays free.”

Gabrielle closed her eyes. Derkh watched for a bit, filled with the memory of the long hours Gabrielle had spent healing him. It was a wonder to him still, the mystery of her power.

F
ÉOLAN OPENED HIS EYES
and knew that he would live. Gabrielle slept beside him—for more than two days, she had done nothing but flood her light into him and sleep like a dead woman. Féolan did not know how much time had passed, knew only that she had been a constant presence in his heart and mind, that she had sent a light blasting after him more than once when he had wandered into utter darkness. Only for the last half-day or so did he have any coherent sense of time or reliable memory. That was when the illness finally loosed its grip enough that he could perceive what she was doing and rally some strength to help her.

She had dammed up the leakage of poison into his system, and when at last the seeping stopped, the reactive swelling in his throat began to diminish. Yet she left the tube in place, though the irritation of it had become a trial, and the membrane as well. Instead she was sending her light to places where the poison concentration was most dangerous. Bit by bit, she labored to clear his heart, kidneys and eyes and to undo the damage that had begun there. The tube, the thick ugly growth in his throat: these were minor discomforts by comparison, and Féolan tried to bear them patiently.

Féolan woke and slept; the stuffy cramped room grew dark and brightened; the seas rocked soothingly or slammed against
the ship. People came and went, bringing food for Gabrielle or visiting Madeleine. Often Derkh sat near him. Gabrielle sometimes slept in a hammock Dominic had scrounged and strung across the middle of the cabin.

At last the day came when Gabrielle told him she was going to remove the Veil. She helped him to his elbows and knees, so his head was lowered. “I don’t want it to fall in and choke you,” she said.

He felt her light fill his throat, felt the thick scabby growth slough away like a horny snakeskin. It filled the back of his mouth, nauseating him, and he felt a rising panic, unable with the paralysis that still slowed his tongue to move it forward.

“Cough,” commanded Gabrielle, and even as his mind protested that he could not, not with a hole gaping into his windpipe, her hand snaked around and covered the exposed end. “Now.”

It was a feeble uncoordinated effort, but enough. Féolan fished frantically in his mouth, and pulled out a tongue of mottled gray-black flesh nearly as long as the palm of his hand. It lay on the towel Gabrielle had provided like a strip of rotted boot leather, and Féolan recoiled at the putrid reek of the thing. Panting with exertion from this small adventure—through mouth and whistling copper tubing both at once—he lay back onto his side.

“Feels good, doesn’t it?”

Féolan looked across the cabin to find Madeleine sitting up in bed, watching them. She grinned, and he smiled and nodded. It did feel good. Madeleine was thin from days without food but clearly on the mend. Her smile dissolved into troubled seriousness.

“Féolan, I’m really sorry I made you sick.”

He hoisted up on one elbow and shook his head, wishing he could speak to her. Tried to think what gesture a Human girl would understand. He pointed to Madeleine, cupped his hand close to his chest as if it held a baby bird or precious gift, then laid the hand over his heart.

Madeleine’s eyes filled with tears, but her trembly smile was brilliant. She understood.

G
ABRIELLE GAVE THE
tube a sharp twist, murmuring an apology at Féolan’s grimace, and eased it out. She laid her hand flat over the gaping flap of skin.

“Try a breath?”

She felt suction on her palm, but Féolan’s breath flowed easily through his nostrils. He smiled, but she didn’t return it. She had bad news to tell him.

“Love, the incision in your skin will heal fine. You’ll have a little scar, but it won’t feel any different from before.”

He nodded, eyebrows raised questioningly.
Then why the frown?

“The problem is with your vocal cords. I had to cut into them, and they have already scarred over along the cut edges. I wasn’t able to prevent it because—well, I was kind of busy trying to keep you alive.” Another nod. “The thing is, I can’t do much with scar tissue. It’s healthy flesh, but in some ways it acts dead. It’s like—” She groped for an analogy. “Like trying to make a stone grow.