Chapter 51
In Which I Find that I Have No Particular Aversion to Severed Limbs, Likely because of All the Time I Spent as a Knight in Battles and Such. In Which, to Be Truthful, I Typically Arranged It so that I Would Arrive after the Battles, Meaning That I Mostly Saw the Shed Limbs and Not the Shedding.
As it turns out, severed legs weigh rather a lot.
And Merulo’s leg was far lighter than it should have been, consisting as it did of the thinnest possible layer of muscle over bone.
“Completely hairless,” I said to myself in wonder, as I lifted the leg from the icebox.
Thinking about it, I’d never seen him shave, or show the faintest hint of stubble. Must be a dragon thing.
His eye I found under a layer of stacked livers, in the iciest corner of the box. A coating of frost dulled its iris. This brought a tightness to my throat, and I told myself to better appreciate the rich black of Merulo’s remaining eye when I next saw him.
After some thought, I dropped the eye down the neck of my shirt, so that I could carry his leg two-handed.
The eye rolled against my skin like a lost grape, caught in the fold where my shirt tucked into my pants.
A terrible thought occurred, as I jogged from the building: if I tripped, I would feel the eyeball squelch flat against my abs.
I’d made it halfway back (trying very hard not to trip) when the water above the dome vanished.
I might not have noticed, if not for the change in light. I’d grown accustomed to the white ribbons that danced in faint patterns across the resort, the product of sunlight refracting through water. Between one footfall and the next, they disappeared.
Without them, the resort looked harsh and flat. I stared in wild alarm to see nothing above me, not a single puddle. Only far off, on the edges of the dome, could I still make out the distant swirl of water. She hadn’t removed the entire ocean, then.
I was panting hard, almost hyperventilating. Merulo might be drained, but he was still a dragon. I only had to reach him, and he was close, incredibly, frustratingly close. It so thoroughly consumed my focus that I nearly ran right into Domitia.
A gently rounded woman, muscle evident in the breadth of her arms and legs, stood on the resort road ahead of me.
Her hair hung like spun starlight, picked through with delicate braids in an elven style.
She looked like she might be fun to dance with, on a less serious occasion.
Trying not to whimper audibly, I shoved the frozen leg beneath my arm and withdrew the wand.
“Sir Cameron,” said Domitia. “I’ve heard a lot about you.” Somehow, she infused even those blunt words with melody, like the opening verse to a song.
“All good things, I assume?”
“Unfortunately not.” She cast me a sympathetic look. “Though, given the people in question, I’d have taken praise as more damning.”
I choked out a laugh. Of course, she’d been with Glenda.
“Sir Cameron,” she said, with a gentleness that made me want to weep. She took a careful step forward. “Do you know what will happen to the sorcerer if he succeeds?”
“Uh,” I said. “I believe he’ll turn into a computer?”
“What he seeks will destroy him.”
“You know, it’s nice to have someone acknowledge that. It really is.” I tried to hold the wand out straight, but it vibrated with the shaking of my arm.
“And yet you still assist him.” She approached at a leisurely pace, her hands held up in the universal gesture of peace.
Thick ropes of scar tissue descended from her inner arms, marring her blue skin.
In one hand, she gripped a crudely stitched dog, which bore a striking resemblance to my childhood toy, Waggy.
“I’m a healer by trade, not a warrior. Let me help the both of you.
It’s never too late, Sir Cameron, to do the right thing. ”
I jabbed the wand at her and she froze. “They called me scum, right? Everyone you talked to? It’s alright, I know. I know they hate me. See, the thing is”—and my arm steadied, as some new emotion took over—“if I help you now, I’ll be exactly the scum they think I am.”
The witch began to shout a spell, but somehow, miraculously, I was faster. As the words of command left my lips, the wand bucked in my hand like something alive, and up shot Domitia, levitating with a force intended for a stone cathedral.