23. Saige
Saige
“At least we know who was following us now.” I’m digging through my satchel for my tool wrap to stop my hands from shaking.
I don’t regret killing that man who attacked us first, but my body doesn’t seem to understand that as we find flat ground to camp for the night.
Marble statues in flowing robes are dotted throughout this part of the enchanted woodland, their faces softened by centuries of weather, their plinths grown over with dark vines and star jasmine.
“Shit,” I mutter, fumbling with my tool wrap.
A large, warm hand closes over mine, rings gleaming in the fading light. “What are you looking for?”
I stare at the long fingers holding my tremors at bay, the nails lined with dirt and blood, the skin golden.
“Grayson?” Archer doesn’t let go.
“My needle and thread.” I don’t move, savoring the steadiness of his touch, how it grounds me. “To sew up the wound on your shoulder.”
“My shoulder’s fine.”
He’s still holding my hand. “It’s been hours and it hasn’t stopped bleeding.”
“You’ve been monitoring it?” His voice is softer than I’ve ever heard it, a note of wonder lacing his words.
“Hard not to with the puddles of blood you’re leaving everywhere. Let me look at it at least.”
His hand falls away from mine, and I miss its heat instantly, but I’m steadier.
Archer takes a seat on a fallen log and reluctantly peels back the layers of blood-soaked material from his shoulder. “I’ve had much worse than this.”
“I don’t doubt it, but did you have the means to fix it?
” I grimace at the sight of the gory flap of skin.
Whether it’s from my newfound purpose or Archer’s touch, my hands don’t tremble as I pass my tool wrap to Archer and get the water and a bottle of Yevna’s gin from the saddlebags.
“Do you think their blades were poisoned?”
“Most likely,” Archer replies. “When Malevron sends mortal emissaries after Azkari, he knows to arm them with more than steel alone.”
I approach him with my supplies and set them down on the log beside him, tearing a strip of linen from my spare shirt. “What does the poison do?”
“Prevents the Azkari healing process, stops the flesh from knitting back together, makes the wound more susceptible to infection… I’m not sure he realizes that my healing abilities are already compromised.”
“Then it’s a good thing we can clean it out.” I pour gin on the folded piece of linen. “This is going to hurt—”
Archer flinches before the material makes contact with his wound.
“I’m sorry,” I stammer. “I—”
“It’s not you.” His hands are gripping his knees tightly and he draws a deep breath. “It’s been a long time since… Since I’ve been touched.”
My words get clogged in my throat as I remember holding his hand through the bars of our cells, how he squeezed my fingers. Two hundred years of feeling nothing but pain, he’d told me. “I don’t want to hurt you,” I say quietly.
He stares ahead, disassociating. “I know.”
“Here.” I crouch beside him and place the soaked fabric in his hand. “I’ll guide you, but you’re in control.”
He takes the liquor bottle and drinks several massive gulps before he turns his head, meeting my gaze with those brilliant green eyes. Then he nods.
Just as he steadied me, I try to offer him the same. Carefully, I cup the back of his hand with my own, my fingers nestled between his knuckles as I guide the gin-soaked material to his wound.
He inhales sharply, but he doesn’t flinch.
Together, we clean the wound of grime and the faint tinge of green poison I can make out at its edges.
“I don’t have to sew it up,” I say. “We can bandage it and check on it later. Hopefully with the poison gone, it will heal like the arrow wounds.”
Archer shakes his head. “Do it.”
“Are you sure?”
He merely grunts, and I figure that’s about all the reassurance I’m going to get.
I undo my tool wrap and find my curved needle and thread.
“I’ve done this before, just so you know,” I tell Archer, filling the silence.
“Leo had a few accidents with the guillotine when we first got it, I stitched him up good as new. Yevna’s always smashing glasses at the tavern and needs a stitch here and there.
Come to think of it, I’ve actually done this quite a lot, so I’ve had practice. I’m very good, it will be a neat scar.”
At that, Archer laughs, but the sound is hollow, unlike that rich belly laugh that escaped him after the ambush. “I don’t care about scars, Grayson.”
“Nor should you. I always thought they make a man more attractive.”
There’s a pause before he says, “Is that so?”
I focus on bringing the edges of his wound together with my thread. “They’re a map of survival, aren’t they?”
“I suppose so…” he murmurs.
We’re quiet for a moment as I work. I can hear the soft rise and fall of his breath, and Grim rustling in the leaves somewhere nearby. I don’t push the conversation, knowing it doesn’t come naturally to him, knowing he’s in pain and vulnerable. But just when I’ve written it off, Archer speaks.
“Cahir was the last person to sew me up like this,” he tells me softly. “One of the Azkari you spoke to in Gravereach.”
My heart lodges in my throat and I don’t know what to say. Do I ask him questions? Do I steer the conversation away from that dark time? I don’t want to force him to say anything he’s not ready to.
But as I’m scrambling to figure out how to navigate this newfound dialogue, he continues to talk on his own.
“When Malevron branded me, he didn’t anticipate that it would interfere with the curse he placed on me.
I was incorporeal yes, but only to those without the mark.
Which meant that I wasn’t permanently contained to Gravereach.
And I could still use my power against those who wore the brand, I could touch them.
I figured if I couldn’t alert the Azkari allies about Malevron, I could pick off his forces one by one.
So that’s what I did. And when the brand summoned me back to the prison, I was punished for it.
One of the last times that happened was when I learnt your mentor’s name for the first time, when I discovered what Malevron’s intentions were for the Confluence, why he needed a bookbinder. ”
I’m not sure I’m breathing. My hands have stilled, the needle and thread frozen between my fingers.
“Cahir sewed me up that day. With hardly any light. With who knows what.”
Finally, I find my voice and continue sewing the General back together. “He’s the ink master of Gravereach?”
Archer laughs, a genuine laugh this time. “That’s what Rook calls him, yes. They were my lifeline in that place. My brothers.”
“Did you know them before? Before Gravereach, I mean?” I tie off the last of the thread, but I stay where I am, standing by his shoulder. I’m not sure he’s even noticed I’ve finished the sutures.
“We fought in the same unit during the later years of the war. I didn’t know them well, but I did know them.
It wasn’t until the branding that we became close.
I was the last of the prisoners to be marked.
It was a form of humiliation and a way to control us.
Seeing the Black Flame branded by Malevron’s forces broke a lot of men then and there. ”
“But not Cahir and Rook?” I surmise.
“No, not them…” As Archer trails off, I rip another strip of material from my now ragged shirt and use it as gauze for the wound.
“I vowed to go back for them,” he tells me, throat bobbing.
“When we were escaping. That’s what I told them in my mother tongue.
That they wouldn’t be forgotten, and that I’d come back. ”
I draw in a breath, suppressing the urge to squeeze his shoulder, to comfort him with my touch. “I’m sure that meant a lot to them.”
Archer stares at his hands as I finish bandaging him as best I can. “This will have to do for now. We can check it tomorrow. Make sure it’s not festering.” I pass him the water canteen. “Drink this.”
Archer blinks at the offering for a second too long before accepting it. He brings it to his lips and drinks deeply. “Thank you.”
“Manners?” I remark in a show of shock. “It’s almost disconcerting.”
Archer stands, passing the canteen back to me and surveying the makeshift camp. From his saddlebag he takes his wire coil in hand, and strides towards the thicket. “Don’t get used to it,” he calls out over his shoulder.
“You owe me a shirt,” I shout back.
A moment later, there’s a rustle in the bushes, and blur of black comes fluttering towards me. I cross the camp to see his broad, tattooed back disappearing into the undergrowth.
And Archer’s shirt lands in a heap at my feet.
“Don’t light the fire,” I tell Archer, who is mercifully in a fresh shirt as night falls around us.
He’s scowling at me. “You’ll freeze.”
“We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves. Who knows if Malevron has sent another unit after us,” I argue. “Those men can’t have been the last of his efforts.”
Archer stares at me, seeming to war with himself. “You know what keeps me up at night?” he asks suddenly, tossing aside the kindling he had gathered.
I stare back, surprised he’s willing to share more with me so soon after what he divulged about Cahir and Rook.
“It’s not the centuries of torture, or the end of the world as we know it,” he tells me. “It’s not the fifty years of war and trauma before all of that. It’s your fucking teeth, bookbinder. Your teeth chatter. Every night. And that’s with the fire almost singeing your blankets.”
“They do not.”
“Liar.” He unravels his bedroll. “But if you want to freeze to death, fine. The snares were empty anyway.”
I don’t bother arguing. Going without a campfire is the right thing.
I don’t think we’d meet a second band of hunters with such a favorable outcome for the second time in a day, not with Archer’s wounded shoulder and my general lack of fighting skills.
Grim would help, certainly, but then he’d be in danger, and I like that thought even less than everything else.