Chapter 6
Reule was wary as they entered the parlor just outside of Chayne’s private room.
Mystique was right. Though he’d yet to figure out how she’d known, Delano was faster than he was.
The Assassin was far lighter on his feet, for starters, and he’d achieved a mastery with the dagger that even Reule couldn’t match.
Regardless, he wouldn’t let Delano come close enough to Mystique to put her throat or any other part of her in jeopardy.
He knew his Prime Assassin far too well, and he knew that Delano would never let go of an opportunity to rid Reule’s realm of a perceived threat.
Since he’d seen Mystique as a threat even before this business with Chayne, Delano would risk his life and his Prime’s wrath if he believed he was protecting Reule and Jeth in the long run.
Mystique was bold and fearless as she strode ahead of them and grasped the door handles to Chayne’s private chamber.
She hesitated, and he understood why. Any sensitive who approached that room would have.
Beyond those doors was a maw of raw emotion and agony.
Even in sleep Chayne fought, striving for some kind of survival.
Or release. Reule couldn’t forget the words she’d spoken on the Prime Tracker’s behalf.
He watched her push open the doors as he moved in behind her protectively, placing himself squarely between her and Delano.
The stench was the first thing to hit the entire gathering, making them all stop in shock. Mystique was the first to recover, however, pushing on into the room as the men struggled to overcome the innate dread they felt at seeing a friend suffer this kind of death.
The room was nearly pitch-black and Mystique paused to allow her eyes time to adjust. There was a single tallow candle sputtering on the nightstand beside the bed.
The air in the room was stagnant and reeking of rotting flesh.
Mystique realized immediately that it was a smell she was familiar with, to the point that it almost didn’t bother her.
She didn’t question the understanding. She was already on automatic pilot and was allowing her body and instincts to do whatever they wanted to do.
Apparently they both had a memory that had outlasted that of her conscious mind.
Next she focused on the bed and the man not within it, but sitting beside it.
It was clear by the start he gave and the way he struggled to his feet that he’d been dozing.
She knew what his purpose was instantly, just as she knew that sleeping wasn’t a part of that purpose.
A rush of fury injected itself into her when she thought of how the injured man in the bed was suffering day in and day out, yet this healthy creature couldn’t find the strength and concern to watch over his patient with more attentiveness.
“Charlatan!” she spat out, pointing a nasty, accusatory finger at the apothecary.
“How dare you call yourself Healer! Where are your herbs? Where is your common sense? I see no disinfectants, no sponges freshly made to soothe his fever. Or do you have magic that will heal this sufferer while you sleep beside him?”
She felt the stunned eyes of the Pack on her as she stormed to the nearest window and threw it open. Cold, fresh air swirled in, sweeping up the smell of gangrene.
“W-who…? How dare you!” spluttered the apothecary. “The cold will kill him in his fever! My Prime! You bring another apothecary? You usurp me because I cannot help a hopeless situation?”
“Speak to me!” Mystique’s, command might have come from a small body, but it reverberated with astounding power around the rafters of the room.
“Answer my charges and seek no solace from those you know are ignorant of the ways of medicine! Answer my questions, charlatan. Herbs? Sponges? Clean air? Lighting? Disinfectants?”
One of the Pack, she knew not which, hit a switch and light flooded the room, blinding everyone. Mystique recovered quickly and finally looked at the man in the bed.
“By the Lord and the Lady,” she breathed.
“To hell,” Delano gasped when he saw his brother.
Chayne was lying in sheets drenched with putrefaction, yellow and brown fluid-soaked bandages at all four points of injury. The mattress was ruined. Chayne was wet and flushed with fever, blessedly insensate from Reule’s sleep command of earlier.
“It was always dark. The room was always dark,” Reule heard himself saying, shocked to understand that Chayne’s condition had been deteriorating right under his eyes all this time.
Mystique also knew that even if he’d read the physic’s thoughts, he’d have found no hint of deception because the apothecary no doubt believed he was doing what any medic would do.
Dark sickrooms, closing in the ill, waiting out fevers or death, these were common practices in many cultures.
But he could have done more, even in his ignorance.
He could have changed dressings and bedding.
He could have soothed the fever. Herbs might have fought off the putrefaction in its early stages.
“Dismiss him, Reule. He. is useless to you,” Mystique said bitterly. “I’m surprised he didn’t insist on those barbaric vises in order to set the bones … as if that would help anything so shattered.”
Reule faced the apothecary even as Mystique turned her back on them, no longer interested in the useless medic.
By the time Reule’s snarl curled back his lip to give the physic a glimpse of fang, his eyes were gleaming the green-yellow glass of threat.
The apothecary didn’t need to be told twice.
He didn’t even make any attempt at apology, protest, or even explanation.
He still had a gauntlet of severely riled Packmates to run before he could consider himself safe, so he concentrated on that until he was out of the door.
“What do you need?”
The question was punctuated by the sound of a sheathing dagger.
Mystique looked up at Delano and cocked a brow, but she didn’t crow or gloat.
She merely answered. “A fresh bed. Fresh sheets. Bandages. Gather dried herbs from the kitchen. I’ll need desert spice, Jakal root, gloaming goat, white Singer, and kettle greed.
He will need a good hot broth when we are done changing this mess.
I need disinfectants. Barley fluid and … what do you use for your soap base?”
“I can find out,” Darcio promised as he headed out with Delano to split the tasks she’d set.
“Reule, Rye, you are the strongest here. I’ll need you to lift him. Anyone who doesn’t have the stomach for this should leave now. When we remove these bandages it’ll be an unbearable stench.”
“Eh, if I lose my dinner I’ll have cook whip me up some more breadcakes,” Amando quipped, giving her a grin that reflected the determination of the entire Pack.
“Moving him might wake him, Reule,” she said, biting her lip apprehensively.
“Believe me, kébé, nothing will wake him.”
“Good,” she whispered. “Then let’s clean him up.”
In a half an hour Chayne’s broken body was lying on a sheet in the middle of the floor of his private parlor while the men worked on switching a fresh mattress onto his bed.
Reule and Delano stuck close to her side while she finished washing his broken body clean of every touch of infection.
Both legs were rotted nearly to the bone already, the arms only slightly better.
The clean bandages awaited, but Reule and Delano exchanged a look over her head.
“I don’t know what she thinks she can do. We’ve both seen this before. There’s no cure for such extensive rot.”
Reule nodded shortly in agreement. “But she can hardly do worse than an idiot willing to hack him apart or just let him die.”
“Can either of you dress a wound?” Mystique asked quietly, drawing their attention from the thought exchange.
“We’ve both field dressed wounds before,” Reule informed her.
“Very well. But this will be more complex. Listen carefully. Crush the desert spice and Jakal root in the mortar and pestle until it makes a paste. It will smell nasty and be yellow, but that is normal. Cut up the gloaming goat, white Singer, and kettle greed into very thin slices no bigger than a coin, and drop them in the broth you will feed to him when we’re done.
It isn’t important he eat the herbs, only that they are in the broth he does eat.
The heated liquid will absorb the medicinals.
Once I’ve done what I can, drench each wound on both sides with the barley fluid, spread the salve on afterward, again on both sides, and then dress the bandages snug but not too tight. ”
“I don’t understand …”
“Shh.” She hushed Reule before he could ask something she wasn’t sure she had the answer to.
Nor did she think he’d like the answer even if she did have it.
There was something inside her, in her mind and in her body, that was guiding her to something she knew was critical to the survival of this man.
He was too important to Reule and his Pack for her to listen to anything that would discourage her or make her think it was acceptable to be afraid.
Her last instructions given, she knew there was nothing left to do but give herself over to intuition.
Her heart was pounding out a terrible rhythm, and she hoped Reule wouldn’t take note of her fear until afterward.
She took a deep breath and laid a hand on Chayne’s pale, sweating face.
She looked down on him for a moment, then closed her eyes and pictured his face in her mind.
They’d been closed, but she knew his eyes were a pretty light tan with little specks of black around the edges.
She saw them and the startling contrast that they made to his rich chestnut-colored hair.
His complexion, she realized, was supposed to be tan.
The paleness of his fever was a death pallor.
This Sánge Packmate was on the cusp of death.