The Bonemender's Choice Part 15

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 Feolan'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 Feolan's windpipe. She put her lips around the cut end and blew.

She heard Derkh's excited exclamation as Feolan'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. Onetwothree. 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 Feolan 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 Feolan's side, relief and grat.i.tude bringing more tears. She sat on the floor, rocking with the ship as the freshening dawn breeze gusted at the sails, and wept.

SHE 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 Feolan, 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 gla.s.s 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. Feolan 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.

FeOLAN 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.

DOMINIC 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 Feolan and his sister, but his daughter lived, and he could not stay his gladness.

Derkh watched Feolan and Gabrielle with equal watchfulness. Feolan 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. Feolan'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 DesChenes 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.' Feolan 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 Feolan 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.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE.

FeOLAN 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. Feolan did not know how much time had pa.s.sed, 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 Feolan tried to bear them patiently.

Feolan 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 h.o.r.n.y 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. Feolan 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 Feolan 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?"

Feolan 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.

"Feolan, 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.

GABRIELLE GAVE THE tube a sharp twist, murmuring an apology at Feolan'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 Feolan'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 a.n.a.logy. "Like trying to make a stone grow.

"Scarring is a good way to heal skin, but it's stiff and it's going to keep your vocal cords from working properly. Your voice is going to be-I'm not really sure. You'll be able to speak all right, but you might sound hoa.r.s.e and raspy."

Like a Human, he joked, speaking directly to her mind. It won only a fleeting smile.

"Maybe eventually, after I've worked to stretch out the scar to give it more flexibility, and you have learned to work with just the undamaged part of your voice. At first, maybe more like a cross between a man and a raven."

No more singing.

"Probably not in public," she acknowledged. She waited while he digested this information before offering an alternative. It was not the course she would recommend, but it was his decision to make.

"The only way to undo the damage would be to cut away the scar tissue and control the healing over the next few days. I'll do it if you want me to, but I have to tell you it will be painful, and difficult to do properly."

He was already shaking his head. I'm alive. It's enough.

Thank the G.o.ds, Gabrielle thought, and her smile shone down at him, full of love and admiration. It would be hard for an Elf, she knew, to be unable to sing. But it would have been hard for her to cut into him again for any but the most pressing need.

"You're sure?" she asked, needing to know she had not pressed her wishes upon him. He nodded.

"I'll just put a patch over this incision then, so you can breathe easier and learn to speak again while it heals."

She was proud of the ingenuity of the patch she had designed. She had boiled clean a length of sausage casing from the galley stores and cut out a double thickness for strength. Stuck on with a generous layer of gum mastic, it made a smooth, thin, flexible seal.

She took a moment to admire her handiwork and another moment to look over her patient. The eyes that gazed back at her were no longer those of an invalid. They were once again the deep dancing eyes of her true love, and what lay in their brilliant depths brought the blood up to her cheeks.

"Your eyes are feeling better, I see," she said tartly. Her smile betrayed her, though-she could not keep the corners severely straight no matter how hard she thought serious thoughts.

"Much." The word was a breathy whisper, his first awkward and uncomfortable attempt at speech.

"Shhhhh." Gabrielle put her finger to his lips to emphasize her command. "Let your poor neck relax for a while before hurting it with sounds." And to ensure he obeyed, she took her finger out of the way and kissed him.

MATTHIEU WAS SO restless he felt he might crawl out of his own skin. There was nothing to do on the ship but get in the way and no one to do it with. His dad spent hours every day in the sick room, attending to Maddy. Matthieu didn't begrudge it, and he just about lived for the little time every afternoon that Madeleine was allowed to come out on deck, but it made for a long lonely day.

He was allowed to visit the sick room now, and he did, but it was stuffy and crowded, full of grown-ups, and without a chiggers board or set of counters, there was nothing to do there either but sit on a chair beside Madeleine and try to think of something to say.

She had thanked him for looking after her when she was first sick, but neither of them was ready to talk about their time as captives. Luc's death waited there. Yet what else was there to talk about? The weather? The food? Grandma Solange's birthday party? It all seemed silly and forced.

Too bad you couldn't lay out renenas tiles on bedclothes. Yolenka, seeing Matthieu's boredom, had pulled him aside about a week ago and taught him to play. Matthieu had enjoyed the game immensely, and Yolenka had laughed and called him a "born gambler." She had played with him a couple of times since, but he didn't feel he could pester her for more.

Matthieu wandered to the bow of the ship and wedged himself into the lookout. The narrow triangular s.p.a.ce at the very end of the outthrust prow was used by the Tarzines in uncertain waters, but was vacant now. Matthieu lay on his stomach and pushed his head under the safety ropes, so that he was looking straight down into green ocean. The rushing of the ship against the waves was loud in his ears, while above his head the little sail that stretched out to the tip of the long bowsprit snapped in the brisk wind. The ship rose and fell on the swell, each new surge soaking his face with salt spray. It was hypnotic and slightly scary all at once, and for the first time in days Matthieu was utterly absorbed. He wiggled forward a little more, trying to look back under the bow to the spot where the keel sank into the sea.

Three whistle blasts interrupted him-that meant it was almost dinnertime, for the pa.s.sengers and whatever crew members were off duty. Dinner wasn't much to look forward to after two weeks at sea. Surely they must be close to home by now. He raised his head to scan the horizon. Maybe he would be the first to spot land.

No land, but...he craned his neck to the left, trying to hold the place where something had caught his eye just as the ship dipped into a trough. The ship rose and- It was sails. Ochre-yellow sails, lit up in the rays of the late afternoon sun.

Blood pounded in his ears, his heart became a fist battering at the cage of his ribs.

"Pirates!" he yelled. His voice was caught in the wind and spray and swallowed up. He tried to scramble to his feet, clipped the back of his head on the safety rope and wiggled backward, clothes and hair dripping onto the deck. Standing, he shaded his face and squinted into the sun. Where were they?

Matthieu climbed onto the second rope rail, steadying himself on the st.u.r.dy lines that anch.o.r.ed the forward sail to the deck. His eyes scanned feverishly.

Yes, there-it ran before the wind, bearing toward them like a great malevolent falcon.

No one heard him, or even paid him any mind. He would have to grab the nearest sailor and make him see.

Matthieu lifted his foot to step down to the deck. The ship yawed in a sudden side-swell. The rope in his hand went slack as the sail swung. He fell forward over the rail with nothing to counterbalance against.

With a lurch, the ship righted itself, and the sail rope snapped tight. But Matthieu could not hang on. Like the last child in a whip-snap game, he was flung off into the sea.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX.

THE CAPTAIN OF THE TARZINE SHIP pa.s.sed the spygla.s.s over to his lord. The prince widened his stance, bracing himself against the roll of the ship, and squinted through the narrow eyepiece.

"That's him! We have them. Captain, are we on course to intercept?"

"Nearly. Just a slight adjustment."

"Good. Go ahead and adjust our course."

The captain turned away to convey these orders, but a startled cry from the prince pulled him back.

"He's fallen overboard! Devils of the deep! I don't think anyone has seen him."

The prince lowered the spygla.s.s and shouted at the captain. "What are you standing here for? Get over there, with all speed you can make, before he drowns in plain sight!" He clapped the gla.s.s back to his eye and stared over the waves.

THE OCEAN WAS shockingly cold and far rougher than it seemed from high above on deck. Matthieu was tossed and tumbled as he plunged into the water, the wake from the ship pushing him one way and the oncoming waves another. He managed to hold his breath, though, and when he finally surfaced he was glad that the turbulence had at least tossed him clear of the ship-he had feared being crushed or suffocated beneath the great hull.

But it was such a long way up to the deck, and the crew were distracted by the change of shift and the dinner whistle.

Matthieu tried his best to yell for help, using the moments when the waves receded and he was in least danger of swallowing a faceful of seawater. He yelled and screamed, trying with growing despair to make his voice carry over the wind and cut through the racket of the ship itself. Yet she pulled steadily away, and the merciless sea widened between them. He was lost.