“What are you doing with my horse, slave?” For some reason the scene infuriated me near bursting.
The boy jumped up. He was not a slave, but one of the uncollared servants, a Drudge. I sometimes forgot they could talk, they were all so stupid.
“Well?”
He shrugged his shoulders and looked vague, as if he didn’t know what I was talking about. A snort and a thump from behind him distracted my attention. Zigget had kicked another hole in the wall.
I pulled out my knife. “I’ll take care of you, you cursed bag of bones. You’ll not live to throw me again.”
“If you’d treat him right, he wouldn’t go loony at the sight of you,” said the boy, stepping between me and the horse.
“Get out of my way.” I waved the knife at him.
“It’s not his fault.”
“He’s wild and wicked and deserves to die.” I pushed the boy aside, my knife ready to strike as soon as Zigget stopped bucking.
“I guess it’s all you know how to do any more-kill what doesn’t suit.” The boy wasn’t really talking to me, but I heard him clearly. Such anger rose up in me that before I knew it, I had him pinned to the floor, ready to put my knife in his throat instead of Zigget’s. Though he was bigger than me, he was easy. He knew nothing of true hand combat.
“Go ahead, if you want,” he said. “I’m nobody. That’s clear enough. But you’ll not master Firebreather without killing him. Then it’ll be nothing but killing forever.”
I held the knife over the boy for a long time, waiting for him to look scared, but he never did. My aching head was filled with darkness, and Parven stirred. So angry you are… What problem is there, young Lord?
“Nothing,” I gritted my teeth and stood up, pushing the boy away with my feet. I was too tired for the Lords. They always wanted to pick everything apart-use every bruise and every breath for a lesson. I wanted no more schooling today. This was an insolent, powerless boy and a stupid horse. “There’s nothing wrong. Fengara worked me hard, and I hate her, just as you wish. I’m hot and thirsty, and I have a knee the size of a melon. But since I’m not to be comfortable, it will take me a while to get back to the house, so leave me alone.”
Parven chuckled in my head, and it made me angry again.
“Leave me alone!” I let darkness roll over him, until I couldn’t hear him any more, and I felt like I was alone inside my head. It was oddly pleasing to know I could do such a thing.
Of course, the boy couldn’t have heard Parven. He looked at me strangely and laid his hand on Zigget’s neck. The demon horse nosed his hair like an old granny.
“How do you do that?” A suspicion came over me, and I laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder. No, he was not Dar’Nethi.
“I call his name and tell him about grass. He likes it.”
“Grass?” When I spoke, Zigget flared his nostrils. I backed away in a hurry, out of range of a flying hoof. But to my everlasting annoyance, my foot slipped, and I ended up on the floor of the stall, my knife flying somewhere out of reach, and a hay bundle toppling off a stack right onto my head. The boy turned his face away quickly and made a choking noise. His shoulders started shaking. It seemed odd that he would be afraid, after being so calm when I was about to slit his throat.
“Turn around this way,” I said.
He looked over his shoulder at me and snorted, then tried to look sober. But he couldn’t, and he burst out laughing. No one laughed in Zhev’Na.
“What’s so damned funny?”
“Just… well… one as dignified as yourself… in such a wicked, magical place as this… coming so close to killing me not five breaths ago… and then getting knocked over by hay and a horse turd. It just don’t seem all that fearsome.”
I stared at him in disbelief. He scratched his head and squirmed and tried to stop laughing, but then he would burst out again. “I’m sorry, my lord,” he said, once he was able to talk again. “I’m truly sorry you’re hurt. Should I get someone to help?”
I didn’t want anyone else seeing me in such a state. It was dangerous in many ways. “I don’t need anyone.”
“No. I can see surely not,” he said.
I hauled myself up on the gate hinges, and tried to swing the gate open and get away, but the fall had made my knee worse, and I could scarcely take a step. The boy put his hand on Zigget, and said, “Stay. Settle.” Then he opened the gate and disappeared into the gloomy stable, coming back with a broken wooden pole that I could use for a cane.
As soon as I was up and out of the stall, he went back to Zigget and closed the gate behind him, leaving me to hobble my way across the yard and through the fortress. I was halfway back to the Gray House before I realized that the boy and I had been speaking Leiran. It was too far to go back, and I was too tired. I wanted a river of hot water and ten hours in my bed, and I knew the Lords would be waiting to teach me more lessons. But I told myself that I would find that insolent boy again and have him explain a few things.
I couldn’t do any training the next day. My knee was purple and black and had swelled up almost as large as my head. When my swordmaster came to see why I wasn’t in the fencing yard, he looked at it and frowned. “You need a surgeon. You should have said something last night.”
“I told Lord Parven about it,” I said. I had to work hard not to yell when he touched it.
Half an hour later a bearded Zhid came into my apartments, followed by a young slave, carrying a leather case. I was sitting in a chair with my leg propped up on a footstool. The surgeon, named Mellador, commanded the slave to place a towel under my arm that rested on the chair, and then to kneel close beside my chair. The slave had the tight, edgy look to him that meant that he was acting under compulsion. It was easy to recognize.
“A nasty injury, Your Grace, but we should have no difficulty,” said the surgeon, clucking and fussing over my knee. “There will be only a slight burning as I make the incision.”
I couldn’t imagine what he was doing when he spread a yellow ointment on my forearm, and most likely my mouth dropped open like an idiot when he pulled a knife from his case and made a neat, finger-length incision in the same spot. My arm was mostly numb, only stinging, as he’d said. I tried to pull away, but he gripped my wrist.
“Surely you’ve seen a healing, Your Grace. If not… my utmost apologies for not explaining. Your injury is too severe for ordinary means, and the Lords wish no delay in your training. We shall have it improved quite swiftly. Hold still.”
Before I could come out with a single question, Mellador commanded the slave to hold out his arm. The youth obeyed, but as he did so, he looked at me with such an intense, solemn expression that I found myself shifting away from him uneasily. Mellador then cut a gash in the slave’s arm just above his metal wrist band. The cut was much deeper than my own, almost to the bone, and it began bleeding profusely. The slave did not cry out, but sucked in a deep, shaking breath. The surgeon bound the slave’s arm to mine with a strip of linen, then laid his hands on the slave’s head. A brilliant, burning flash filled my head-incredible power, boiling red-and-black fire that coursed through my veins, so sharp and vivid that it almost lifted me off the chair.
Now to work… The surgeon’s voice had ridden the wave of power into my mind… mmm… a touch here… and here… I felt the torn pieces in my knee stretch and knit themselves together again, and what felt like chips of bone that were floating loose make their way back where they belonged. Soon, the discolor of my knee began to fade and the swelling to shrink. Instead of painful throbbing, only a pulsing warmth remained in the joint. I touched my knee with my free hand and was amazed.
I heard a gasping moan at my elbow. The slave was pale and trembling, the bones of his face outlined with pain, his eyes hot with anger. The surgeon’s fingers were wrapped about his head like the legs of a huge, pale spider. Even as I watched, the slave’s eyes went dead, his mouth dropped open, and spit dripped out of the side of it.