castle, and anyway – it would cause problems. My mother trained me as a healer, I know how to deal with this.”
There was enough competence and authority in her manner to encourage Jay to believe her. Instead of helping her to lift Mareil he scooped the girl up in his arms – she was twice as heavy as he had expected, a sagging weight – and, leaving Paril where he was to look after himself, followed Dazil as she led the way from the hall.
She took him up two flights of stairs and along into the upper corridor where the sickrooms were, a part of the castle relatively unfamiliar to Jay. He had twice help others bring an injured man here for attention and rest, but had not lingered. There was a treatment room at the far end of the passage, and small bedrooms leading off. Dazil opened the nearest door and Jay was thankful to deposit Mareil, as carefully as he could, onto the bed. Dazil arranged Mareil’s limbs in what Jay recognised as a recovery position, then pressed the call panel by the bed.
“Nan was probably asleep,” she said, “but she’s the most experienced of the healer servants. She’ll make sure no harm comes to her.”
They had not spoken since leaving the hall. After the clamour of the feast, the silence up here was profound and her voice, in contrast, startling. He turned to look at her properly, and found her gazing at him steadily with something like determination in her eyes.
His mind weighed the circumstance of the soon to be arriving servant against the ripeness of the moment, and then took the extra step that moved him into to danger. If it were ever to go wrong, it would be in that second he came close enough to smell a woman’s skin.
She was still, her eyes open wide.
Slowly, with the greatest care, he pressed his mouth against her cheek. The skin was smooth and cool. His fingers found a soft point at the back of her neck just where hair met skin, and stroked there gently. She shivered and now she closed her eyes, and he felt a warm rush of breath which he covered with a kiss.
There was no resistance at all, not even the hesitation of inexperience. What had been stone and crystal flowed around his arms like water. He tasted her mouth, he found what softness he could under the hard leather, then he let go all at once. Subliminally, he had registered the approaching footsteps. When an elderly servant stumped into the room, dressed in a nightshift with a shawl thrown round it, they were three feet apart and outwardly composed.
“This lady is not used to glyn juice and needs to rest,” said Dazil. “You will watch over her and let me know immediately if there is any problem.”
The servant bowed deeply and took her place at the head of the bed. There was a chair there but Jay had the feeling that she was not going to sit down until they had left. Dazil had already turned to go, so he said, “Sorry about waking you up.”
She bowed even lower and looked terrified. Realising that he was disconcerting her, Jay followed Dazil back out into the quiet coolness of the hospital wing corridor.
They walked distinctly apart, slowly, in silence.
“You’re sure she’ll be all right?” said Jay eventually.
“She will feel extremely ill tomorrow, but as long as the servant watches her carefully, she won’t suffer any lasting damage. The one great danger is choking. The poison acts as an irritant on the stomach, often causes vomiting, and in someone who is unconscious – as you probably know – that can be fatal.”
“Not a particularly glorious death. Perhaps I should stay with her instead.”
“No. Nan knows what to do.” She paused and then said, “You’re curious.”
“Am I?”
“Talking to the servant like that, as if it mattered that we had woken her, as if it wasn’t her duty and privilege to be there.”
“I’m sure it is her duty and privilege, but courtesy and respect never go amiss. The serving castes are sentient beings, they have feelings like we do.”
“Did your mother teach you that?”
“Yes. She did.” He stopped and turned to face her, searching for another signal.
“We have to go back to the hall,” she said, her tone suddenly low and direct. “Someone will remember us leaving together, if we don’t return. Later…”
“Yes?”
“Carral will sleep soundly tonight.”
Jay was hesitating deliciously on the point of risking another kiss – out here in the corridor where anyone might theoretically come along – when distant shouts with an urgent tone, and one piercing women’s scream, made him draw back sharply. He hurried down the stairs towards the hall and burst into a scene of chaos.
Saghat was standing on a table, his sword drawn, stabbing viciously at anyone who tried to approach him. Carral was roaring at him to disarm and come down, but keeping well back. As Jay came closer, he saw one of the servants face down and unmoving on the floor with a puddle of blood spreading from under his arm.
He heard Dazil’s intake of breath as she arrived behind him and saw the injured servant. She started to hurry towards him, but Saghat swung his sword wildly in her direction. “Keep back! All of you!”
“Get away from her!” yelled Carral, and there was another scream as a white bolt of light seared a groove in table top, far wide of its target.
Swiftly, Jay made his way round to Carral and wrestled the gun from his hand. “Sorry, sir. You’ll kill someone. Leave him to me.”
Carral tottered backwards.
Jay turned the gun directly on Saghat and said, “Come on now. Drop the sword.”
“Is that an order, Commander?”
“If you like. Drop the sword in front of you.”
“Where do you get your courage from, Commander – a gun? Is that a swordbearer’s weapon?”
“In that it’s effective, yes. Drop the sword, Saghat. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing? The brave, the great, the handsome Commander Jhaval knows what he’s doing, though. Do you think I don’t see into your soul, Jhaval? You say one thing, you mean another, you say one thing, you do another – you’re no true swordbearer.”
Jay could feel a tight coldness closing round his chest, the closest sensation to fear he ever experienced. It was vitally important that he stopped this fool talking right now – in the name of the Empress, he could even be a latent prophet - but he could not risk firing the gun and killing him. Decisive and ostentatious action was needed to distract Saghat and keep him quiet. He flung aside the gun, drew his own sword, and leapt onto the table.
Saghat took an immediate and remarkably co-ordinated swing at him. Jay countered the move by striking the sword away, intending primarily to disarm him as quickly as possible without either of them losing their balance on the table. Saghat’s grip on his weapon appeared firm, however, and he took another lightening plunge forward. The ferocity of the attack, which really meant to wound or kill, was unlike anything Jay had encountered before. He had been so sure of his advantage – sober against drunk – that he failed to defend himself by the split second that mattered, and he felt a clean slice of pain as the edge of Saghat’s sword caught his body. Suddenly less concerned about keeping him intact, Jay slammed his fist into Saghat’s mouth, kicked his shin from under him, and sent his sword clattering onto the floor.
He pinned him to the table top with one foot on his chest, pressing the point of the sword to his throat. Saghat’s head had lolled sideways, his eyes half-closed.
Carefully, just in case Saghat was feigning unconsciousness, Jay took his sword away and used it to gesture to the nearest group of swordbearers who were standing upright. “You men. Help me to secure him. Take him to the cells, and make sure he’s guarded all night.”
Saghat was hauled off the table and stumbled away by four men, his arms secured behind his back. Jay retrieved Carral’s gun from where he had tossed it, and returned it to its owner with a deep bow.
“Good work, Commander,” said Carral, gruffly. He was uncoordinated, but still mentally perceptive. “You’re bleeding. Get it seen to. Dazil, patch him
up.”
Jay glanced down at where Saghat’s sword had cut a neat slash in the fabric of his tunic, just below his arm where the leather shielding did not protect him. He could feel blood trickling down underneath the breastplate.
“You had better accompany us to the sickrooms, Commander,” said Dazil quietly. She was kneeling by the injured servant, who was stirring.
It was good to be acting under orders.
Alone in the curiously bright artificial light of the treatment room once the servant had been treated for what had fortunately turned out to be a superficial slash on the upper arm – it was a blow to the head which had knocked him out - Dazil would not allow him to remove his own breastplate or tunic. With her eyes downcast and modest, she unfastened the catches. “You mustn’t move your arm unnecessarily in case there’s muscle damage.”
“It’s just a nick.”
“Which one of us is healer?”
“You, apparently. This isn’t how I’d imagined it would be.”
“Keep still.” She had opened up the tunic now, and was cleaning the blood away with a pad of something extraordinarily cold. “It’s just a shallow flesh wound. A bandage should knit it together in twenty-four hours. Hold still while I put on some of this.”
Some of this was a vicious antiseptic which made him wince, followed by a bandage tape which imparted an immediate buzzing, burning sensation as whatever it had in it started work on bonding the flesh together. Her fingers were