4. Chapter 4
Chapter four
Jessica
The physician is waiting at the bottom of the track with a lamp and an open medical case.
Everybody calls her Doc. She's about sixty, with reading glasses pushed up into gray hair and the first thing she says isn't to me.
"Put her in the back of the second vehicle with the lights on and the doors open. I'm not working by torchlight on frozen mud."
The second thing is to me.
"Can you tell me what happened, in order?"
So I tell her, in order, while she cuts my sleeve away and Jon holds the lamp at the angle she tells him to hold it.
The road that morning. Four darts. The wound in my flank, torn open twice since.
The strap that took the skin off my thumb.
The shift I chose, and the shot that went across the top of my shoulder while I was in it.
"Good," she says, when I've finished. "That was the assessment. You were making sense the whole way through and I wanted to see if you could do that."
"Sneaky."
"Extremely." She irrigates the shoulder and I stop thinking.
It takes about twenty minutes. Doc works quickly, warning me before everything she does.
“This is going to be cold.”
It is.
“This will sting.”
It does considerably more than sting.
“I’m closing the worst of the torn edges. The bullet channel stays open, cleaned, and covered until they’ve imaged it. You’ll feel pressure here, but you shouldn’t feel the needle. Tell me if you do.”
When she finishes, she checks my pulse at the wrist, makes me move my fingers, and watches the color return beneath each fingernail.
“The bullet went in here and came out here,” she says. “Your pulse is strong, your hand is warm, and nothing I can see or feel suggests it struck the joint or a major vessel. I don’t think it hit bone, but I don’t have an X-ray machine in my pocket, so somebody needs to confirm that.”
“And if they agree with you?”
“You’ll have an ugly scar, a miserable few weeks, and less movement in that shoulder until the muscle heals.”
“And if they don’t?”
“Then you’ll be very glad I sent you for the X-ray.”
"And the rest?"
"The flank's held better than it deserves to, given what you've done to it. Two of the dart sites are angry. Wrists like you've been in a trap. You're cold, you're dehydrated, and you haven't had enough to eat or drink today." She sits back on her heels. "Am I telling you anything you can't feel?"
"No."
"Then here's what happens next. I want a proper assessment and imaging, and I have neither in this valley. Your academy has both. Your professor tells me their infirmary is expecting you, and my notes go with you, including exactly what those people gave you and how much."
"Am I still drugged?"
"There'll be traces in you for a day or two.
That isn't the same as impaired — your pupils are even, your speech is clean, and you've just given me a timeline in order with no gaps.
" She holds up a small vial. "I'd like to give you something for the pain that won't put you under.
It'll take the edge off and you'll stay awake and able to argue with people. Do you want it?"
I think about it longer than I need to.
"Yes."
"Sensible." She does it into my good arm. "No shifting. Not for anything, not until somebody qualified says otherwise, and I'd like that to be at least two weeks."
"Ok."
Jon hasn't moved from the end of the vehicle, and he's asked her the same question three times in different words.
"You've already asked me that.” Doc doesn't look up. "Professor, you can hold the lamp or you can hold her hand. Either is useful. Pick one."
Jon picks the hand.
They set me up half in and half out of the back of the vehicle with a blanket round me and my legs hanging out, because Doc wants me upright and warm for twenty minutes before she'll sign me off for the drive.
Luke has been moving between calls since Doc started treating me. I watch him arrange the route, a bed, an X-ray tech willing to come in overnight, and somebody at the Luftis gate who can be trusted to open it without asking questions.
"Luke."
"One second—"
"Luke. Come and sit down."
He looks up. Then he says something short into the phone, puts it in his pocket, and comes and sits on the vehicle beside me, and takes my right hand in both of his, and turns it over like there might be something on the palm he's missed.
His hands aren't steady.
"Every time it went quiet," he says, "I thought you'd died."
I don't ask what he means and he doesn't explain it. I get my hand behind his neck and pull him down and kiss him, carefully, and Luke Draeven finally forgets about the phone in his pocket.
"There was a point," he says against my mouth, "on the north road—"
"I know."
"You don't.” His forehead comes down against mine.
Torres hasn't let go of me since Doc finished. He's got two fingers on the inside of my right wrist, eyes somewhere else, counting.
"That's the fourth time."
"Yeah." He does it again immediately, entirely unashamed. "Going to do it again in a minute, too."
"Torres."
"I know I'm doing it." He looks up, and his eyes are red.
"I could feel you all day and I couldn't get to you.
You went out in that field and there was nothing, and I stood in the grass with a dead guy's shirt in my hands.
So if I want to check your heart's going, I'm checking.
Yell at me tomorrow if I am still doing it. "
"I was just going to ask how you are doing."
"Good. Hang on." He leans in and kisses me, and it isn't careful at all, one hand hot at the side of my throat and the other still flat on my wrist, and my brain goes off line. "Right. That. I've been wanting to do that since about nine o'clock this morning and it has been a really long day."
"Do it again."
He does it again.
Then he sits back and says, at the frozen mud, "I'm going to be angry about today for about a year."
"That's allowed."
"Not at you."
"I know."
Soren is standing four feet away with his hands open at his sides, and he has been standing there for a while.
I hold out my good hand.
He takes it immediately, like he's been waiting to be asked and sits, and puts my palm flat against his sternum and holds it there with both of his.
“I am so glad you could shift when you needed to, however you shouldn't have had to do that alone." He presses my hand against his chest. "But I'm proud of you."
Ander is at the edge of the light with his coat over his arm, close enough to be useful and far enough to be nobody's problem.
"You're hovering," I tell him.
"I'm remaining available."
"You can come here."
He doesn't move. "I'm good right here."
"Ander." I turn my left wrist over on the blanket, and the fourth arc catches the lamp. "You can stay. That doesn't settle everything."
His shoulders relax. He comes and sits on my right, but doesn't touch me, just stays.
"Your professor hasn't stopped watching you," he says.
"I know."
Jon is a few feet away with Doc's folder under his arm. He's been looking at me and he hasn't stopped.
I want more than this. I want a door shut, all five of them on the other side of it, and about nine uninterrupted hours. My body has extremely firm views, but my shoulder has veto power and exhaustion is starting to win.
"What?" Torres says.
"Nothing."
"You've gone a weird color."
"I've been shot, Mateo."
"Yeah," he says, "but that's not it."
Frances comes down the track before we leave, with Benny a little behind him and Elise beside him.
“Klaus is going to blame them for letting me out,” I say.
“He already does.”
“You better make sure they are protected. No retaliation for helping me.”
“No one will punish Benny or Elise. I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again in the morning with the whole valley listening.”
I look at Benny. He gives me a small nod.
“And the man with the pistol?”
“Alive. Under guard.”
“Keep him that way.”
Frances’s eyebrows lift slightly.
“He knew where that service door was,” I say. “He had a gun, and he pointed it at your children. I want to hear what he says when somebody asks him why.”
“So do I.”
“Then don’t let Klaus get to him first.”
“He has two guards with him. Neither is Klaus.”
That will have to be enough until I can stay upright without help.
Frances glances toward the vehicles. “We’ve closed the service door and posted guards, but no one has touched the weapon or the room where he was held. We will question him and examine the evidence.”
“Good.”
Elise steps forward with a briefcase, a backpack over her shoulder and a ledger tucked beneath her arm.
“I’m coming with you,” she says.
I look at everything. “What’s all this?”
“The records Frances promised you. My family’s account of what happened to Victoria, the household ledgers, and the letters that survived with them.”
“The originals?”
“Yes. Every item is listed in this ledger, and I’m not letting any of them out of my sight.”
I look at Frances. “You agreed to this?”
“They were preserved for you,” he says.
“All right,” I tell Elise. “You’re coming.”
Frances looks older than he did in the bedroom.
“Will you come back?” he asks.
“I’m not moving into this valley, and I’m not promising anything about your House.” I adjust the blanket around my shoulders. “But I have about nine hundred questions, and you haven’t answered ten of them.”
“No,” Frances says. “I haven’t.”
“So this isn’t finished.”
“No,” he agrees. “It isn’t.”
Then Luke hands me his phone with it already connected.
Sophia's face fills the screen and immediately dissolves.
"JESSICA—"
"Hi."
"Don't you hi me." She's crying so hard the picture is shaking. "Turn it — no, turn it — I want to see your face and your arms and — is that blood? Whose blood is that?"
"Mine. It's dealt with."
"Move the camera down."
"Soph—"
“Move the camera down, I swear on my mother—”
Renzo crowds into the frame beside her, gray and unshaven and looking extremely happy to see me.
“Quick academic question,” he says. “Does getting kidnapped excuse you from Faris’s reading, or are you still expected to ruin the curve?”
“Renzo,” Declan says from off-screen.
“I’m asking for the rest of us.”
Then he actually looks at me—the strapping, the dressing, whatever my face is doing—and the grin disappears.
“Okay,” he says quietly. “Okay, bella. Okay.”
Declan takes the phone from both of them.
"Have you been treated?"
"Yes. Their doctor. She's good, Declan."
"Properly treated, or told to walk it off?"
"Wounds cleaned, bandaged, something for the pain, and she's sending her notes with me."
He breathes out. "When are you coming back?"
"Tonight. We leave in about twenty minutes."
There's a noise in the background that I think is Sophia sitting down very suddenly.
Then Freya's face appears at the edge of the frame. She doesn't say hello.
"You're alive."
"I'm alive."
She nods once, but her chin trembles, and she covers the bottom half of her face and doesn't take her hand away for a few seconds.
"Right," she says. “Can I do anything for you before you get back? Anything at all."
"I am bringing someone with me. Her name's Elise. And she has records from before Fourth House was destroyed.” Can you get a place ready for her?"
"Yes." She's already writing. I can hear the pen.
"We are going straight to the infirmary," Declan says. "We'll be there. Sophia's making a list of food and I've stopped trying to stop her."
"It's not just a list," Sophia says from off-screen, "it's an itinerary—"
I hang up smiling, which I did not expect to be doing tonight.
Jon drives us, and he has Doc's folder and Doc's instructions and no intention of handing either to anybody.
I'm in the second row with the seat let back and pillows wedged between my left arm and the door, and Doc checks the arrangement herself before she'll shut it.
Torres is beside me with my legs over his lap. Ander takes the front.
Soren drives the car behind with Elise and the records and Luke, who is going to be on the phone to Luftis for the next two hours and has been told he isn't touching a steering wheel while he does it.
We go over the stone bridge, and I hear the boards under the tires, and my hands close on the blanket.
"I heard the stone when they drove me in," I say.
"Yeah?" Torres says.
"Just saying it out loud so it stops being a thing in my head."
He reaches over and drops the window an inch on his side. Cold pours in over my socks. He doesn't ask if I'm all right, and puts his arm along the seat beside me.
Further down the valley Jon hits the central locking out of habit, and my fingers are on the handle before I've decided anything.
Ander reaches back without turning round and unlocks them.
"Would anybody object," he says, "if they stayed off?"
"Nobody objects," Jon says.
Somewhere on the long descent, I surface out of a doze to hear Torres and Ander arguing about how long I’m allowed to stay in bed.
“A week,” Torres says. “Minimum.”
“A week of bed rest will make her weaker.”
“She was shot.”
“In the shoulder. Her legs remain functional.”
“Thank you, Dr. Ardent.”
“I’m not claiming to be a physician. I’m saying that once the infirmary clears her, short walks will improve circulation and prevent unnecessary loss of strength.”
There’s a pause.
“You looked that up,” Torres says.
“I already knew it.”
“That’s so much worse.”
Jon glances at them in the mirror. “Neither of you is prescribing anything.”
“I’m protecting her,” Torres says.
“You’re trying to put her in bed for a week.”
“Exactly.”
I laugh, which pulls at my shoulder, which makes me swear, which makes all three of them ask if I’m all right at once.
“I’m fine. Stop it. Keep arguing.”
They do. I lie there listening to them negotiate my recovery like I’m not in the car, and the ordinary sound of their voices does more for me than anything Doc put in my arm.
The Luftis gate comes up out of the dark a little after one — the lamps along the drive, the black shape of the gate tower against the sky — and I sit up as far as the belt lets me.
"There it is," Jon says.
My room is here. My friends are waiting. Pickles is back at Jon's cottage, probably ignoring everyone who's been feeding him.
The infirmary entrance has its lights on and its door propped, and there are four people standing in the cold outside it, still awake and waiting for me.
Jon has barely stopped the car.
"She's still in the—" somebody starts.
Sophia comes through the middle of all of it.
She gets to my door as it opens and then stops dead, both hands out, and says the most useful thing anybody has said to me all day.
"Which side can I have?"
"Right. Left's the bad one."
Then she's very carefully on my right with both arms around me and her face in my neck, holding on as if she's been holding her breath since this morning.
Behind her Renzo is saying something with his voice breaking in the middle of it, and Declan has a bag of food in one hand and my room key in the other, and Freya has hold of my sleeve and hasn't said a word.
Over Sophia's shoulder the medical team comes out with a chair.
"One minute," I tell them.
They give me one minute.