Chapter 4
In the morning, the man wasn’t dead. He wasn’t awake either, but it looked like sleep and not like unconsciousness. Unconscious people didn’t snore, did they?
The Dervish’s eyes felt gritty. He boiled more water.
There were several pouches of something that looked vaguely like tea, but they smelled odd.
Did they drink a different kind of tea here?
For all the Dervish knew, the stuff was to keep moths out of clothes and would prove instantly fatal.
He didn’t particularly want to risk it. Even if he was immortal, he could still get spectacular diarrhea, as he had once learned to his sorrow.
And he couldn’t even retreat to the sword to cure himself, since there was no one to draw the blade again, and what if the young man died while he was still inside the sword?
He’d be bound to the next person who drew the sword, which might be a bandit.
Or a priest. Possibly even a priest of that god.
The Dervish shuddered, tracing the line of silver on his forearm with a fingertip. That would be irony for you.
He paced restlessly, then flung himself down again. Was he still tired? Sleepy? It had been so long that it was hard to remember the difference.
He gave up and boiled a pouch of leaves. They looked like tea, and stained the water like tea. He sniffed the resulting liquid and grimaced.
“Are you still dying?” he asked the man, and did the voice in reply.
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“If you could hurry up and decide, that would be lovely.”
“When I do, you’ll be the first to know.”
The Dervish glared at the man, annoyed, then burst out laughing at himself. I talk for the fellow and now I’m mad at him for words I put in his mouth. Ancestors, I don’t know how anyone puts up with me.
The mule lifted her head and gave him a long look.
“Stop that. I haven’t lost my mind.”
The mule’s look indicated continued skepticism on that point.
“Look, if you’d been trapped in a sword as long as I have, you’d be like this too.”
The mule dropped her head, clearly of the opinion that if she had been trapped in a sword, she would have handled it much better than any human.
She was probably right. That blacksmith should have put pack animals into the swords instead.
They’d probably be a damn sight more useful than I would be, and they wouldn’t care nearly as much.
The Dervish tilted his head back and stared at the sky, which was bright and clear and promised even more cold.
At last he fell into a kind of half doze, not quite awake, his thoughts slowly unspooling, one to the next.
He thought of wolves in the woods, and that led to the protector dogs who used to guard the sheep flocks and that led to other dogs and to the wretched little lapdogs that his father’s wife had kept …
It was good in a way, to sit like this. The longer he did, the more space there seemed to be between himself and his last death.
So often he died and went into the sword and then when he came out again, the world was different and half the time people were coming at him with weapons right now.
It was as if his life was one long battle, interrupted by nearly dreamless sleep.
Occasionally a wielder would use him as a more traditional guard, standing duty for hours, and that was fine at first, but eventually he would grow restless, longing to be moving, to run, to be free.
He would grow restless soon enough, but for now, he dozed and remembered other days and riding through the cracked golden land of his childhood, and Father’s Brother telling him about mules and setting his hands to the hilts of daggers and the smell of dust on the wind …
In that state that was not quite sleep, he heard the fire crackling. And a sound that he had been only partly aware of began to change. The man’s breathing? Had that changed?
The Dervish dragged himself awake, blinked a few times, and looked down.
His patient’s eyes were open, and he was looking back.
Edmund’s throat was incredibly dry. He swallowed and felt his tongue rasp against the roof of his mouth like sandpaper.
He was looking up at the angel.
The angel looked tired. That was unexpected. Were angels supposed to have dark circles under their silver eyes? And a shadow of beard growing in along their jaw?
He was still spectacularly beautiful, but he looked less like a being who would thunder, “Be not afraid, mortals!” and more like someone who needed to spend a few days in bed recuperating.
“How do you feel?” asked the angel.
“Fine, thank you,” Edmund croaked, because that was what you said when people asked that question.
The angel snorted. “Right, that was a stupid question. You probably feel like baked rat shit.”
That was a remarkably specific turn of phrase. Edmund tried to smile and felt his lips crack. “Thirsty. Head hurts. Everything else hurts.”
“Right. I have tea. I think it’s tea. It was in your bag, anyway, and it looked like tea.”
Did angels have to brew tea like mortals?
Couldn’t they just manifest it somehow? Apparently this one couldn’t, because he held a cup of terribly oversteeped tea to Edmund’s lips.
It tasted bitter but it was wet and that was all that Edmund cared about.
He gulped thirstily, feeling the sting of liquid against his cracked lips. “Thank you,” he gasped.
The angel grunted. “You took a knock to the head, but your skull’s not broken. Any spots in your vision?”
Edmund blinked a few times. “No?”
“Good. That’s about the extent of what I know about head injuries. Do you think you can sit up?”
Angels would know about head injuries, wouldn’t they? No, maybe not. They’re angels, not doctors. Although you’d think one could just touch a human and heal them, and not be so put out by mortal frailty …
The possibly-not-an-angel put his arm under Edmund’s shoulders and helped him sit up. Despite his slim build, he seemed extremely strong. Edmund hissed with pain as a dozen bruises made themselves known, but he didn’t feel nauseated, so his skull must not be in too bad of shape. He hoped.
Edmund was upright and had managed to bring the tea to his lips by himself when he spotted movement behind the angel. Before he could utter a warning, Sweetness the mule had slapped her tail across the angel’s head.
“Gah!” The angel dove and rolled, narrowly missing the fire, and came up with both daggers in hand, held across the backs of his forearms. “What— Oh, it’s you.
” He stomped forward. The daggers disappeared somewhere and he grabbed Sweetness’s halter.
“Thought you were going to kick me, did you? You little hooved shit, I’m going to make myself a muleskin coat! ”
“No!” Edmund cried, trying to get to his feet. His skull and his ribs shrieked in pain, but he ignored them. “She’s not going to kick! She just wants attention!”
The angel turned and stared at him. Edmund had made it to one knee and was pretty sure he was swaying badly. He tried the other knee and failed miserably.
“Stay down, man,” said the angel, dropping the mule’s halter and hurrying to him. “You’re going to fall down and crack your head open even further.”
“Sweetness,” gasped Edmund as the angel’s arms went around him.
Silver eyes went wide. One eyebrow shot up. “That’s a bit forward,” the angel murmured. “Even if I have undressed you already.”
That sealed it. Edmund would accept that angels did not know how human injuries worked.
He would accept that they could look tired, and maybe even that they swore.
But no angel was ever going to flirt with him.
He closed his eyes. Was he blushing? Dammit, he was blushing.
His only consolation was that his bruises probably made it impossible to tell.
“Not you,” he mumbled. “The mule. Her name is Sweetness. Please don’t hurt her. ”
The not-an-angel’s chest was against his side and Edmund felt the man’s sigh clear through his bruised ribs.
“I am a terrible person,” the silver-eyed man said. “I am a killer and a traitor and all-around bastard. But I have not yet sunk so low as hurting a mule. Even a demanding flea-bitten nag of a beast like yours.”
“Oh thank god,” mumbled Edmund, and sagged back into unconsciousness.
“You’re not an angel, are you?”
“Oh good,” said the Dervish, sitting back.
“You’re awake again.” It had been about two hours, which had been time enough to catch the accursed mule and finally tie her to a tree and to boil more water for tea.
He had to be making the tea wrong. Tea should not taste like this, even in this strange cold country with its dreadful abundance of trees.
His patient put his hand to his forehead. He sounded more alert this time, and his eyes were less glazed with pain. “Did I pass out?”
“Not exactly. Somewhere between fainting and falling asleep, I’d say. You started snoring as soon as I laid you down.”
The young man flushed. Combined with the black eye, it made him impressively colorful.
“As to your first question,” the Dervish continued, “I’ve been accused of many things, but this is the first time anyone’s called me an angel.”
His patient closed his eyes, his flush deepening. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I find it refreshing.” There were so many worse things to be called. Murderer. Traitor. Subject.
“It was just … you seemed to appear in a beam of light. And then you were so beautiful … and your eyes…” His patient trailed off. He was quite scarlet now.
“Flattery will get you everywhere,” said the Dervish lightly, although he felt a strange relief.
He had no mirror and no way to tell how badly he was scarred.
It’s good to know that I am not completely hideous now.
I wonder what my eyes look like. Even though the priest’s worst work had been done along his back, there had been at least one incident where the man had carved out his eyes.
Are they solid silver now? That will make it difficult for me to go about without being noticed.