Chapter 26 The Victor
Araine's family has rooms across from the infirmary, so that Hamish is always nearby in case of an emergency, he tells me. They don't get many fatal accidents around here, because it takes a lot to injure one of the kin. But the arena supplies no shortage of patients for the healer.
I support Araine on one side as we make our winding way up the halls of the Trove in the direction of the infirmary, and Hamish is on her other side.
The common areas of the Trove are still thick with revelers celebrating the night's entertainment, and most of them don't seem to have heard about the challenge between Araine and Besana yet.
They are drinking and chatting, dancing to music produced by several fiddlers and pipers playing from atop elevated boulders at the back of the room.
Laughing loudly as they discuss the manticore's plight or their own private jokes.
Only a few of them notice us as we slip through the edges of the crowd, and they look confused more than anything else.
I am glad when we leave the busy areas behind and enter the quieter halls and sleepy residential areas.
With every step, Araine grimaces as if in agony.
Her wings are absent in this form, but the pain is not.
The injury still exists, temporarily shut away by magic, but when she shifts back, it will return.
That's why we're in a hurry.
Coming up the hall behind us, two dragons carry Vakhrin's stretcher with Cherry close beside.
Jeksu supports his brother, while Perilya has taken charge of Marton.
With so many injured, we are a grim procession.
When we reach the infirmary, I hardly have the chance to see that it is a long, wide passage of smooth stone with a row of surprisingly large beds down one wall and cabinets and tables cluttered with supplies along the other, before Hamish is bustling into action.
He has all of his patients arranged to his satisfaction, with Marton in a bed by the door, and Vakhrin and Raku spaced out down the line in their own beds—in case anybody accidentally shifts in their sleep, Perilya tells me.
She pulls up the corner of the sheet hanging off one bed to show me that the base is a solid slab of stone.
That also explains why the beds are so large.
Hamish has Araine shift into dragon form in the middle of the floor at the end of the room, and despite the fact that Marton is human and actively bleeding, Hamish sees to his wife's wounds first. I feel like spitting, but I pace the floor instead, wincing every time I get a look at Araine's injuries.
The membrane of one wing looks almost completely shredded.
In the corner of my eye, I see Cherry and Perilya fretting over Marton, holding clean clothes to his wound and asking him if he needs anything.
I'm surprised to see Cherry being so caring and attentive, but perhaps this is a role that she has assumed of necessity lately, with Vakhrin so often injured.
I wish I could have a moment to speak with her alone, to make sure she is alright in more ways than the physical, but there's no chance for that kind of catching up yet.
Jeksu leans against the wall nearby, frowning at everyone—especially his brother, who is still occasionally babbling nonsense but has subsided into an uneasy sleep.
Jeksu also spends a fair amount of time frowning at Perilya, and I guess that he isn't happy seeing her fussing over another man, even if—or maybe especially since—that man is a human.
I'm not entirely sure about the nature of Jeksu and Perilya's relationship, but it seems slightly closer than allyship.
Marton seems alright. He's leaning up against the pillows and talking, and though I don't dare to fully look at him, I think that the bleeding has stopped.
The smell is weaker.
Hamish's face is taut as he works on Araine, sponging up the blood and applying pressure to slow the flow of it.
When he has the bleeding all but stopped, he pulls back, studying the wound.
With some of the gore out of the way, I see the injury is not as bad as I initially thought.
There are four or five long gashes down the wing, causing the fragile membrane to hang down in strips.
But the wounds are neat, and Hamish nods to himself in satisfaction at the sight.
He gives orders to one of the dragons who helped carry Vakh's stretcher, and she jumps into action, rooting through the cabinets for suturing supplies.
Then Hamish gets to work stitching the wing back together.
I don't watch this part. Instead, I go over to check on Vakhrin.
I feel the need to do something, to help someone, and in his unconsciousness, Vakh seems the safest option.
His face is still a mass of bruises, but a lot of the swelling has already gone down, enough that I think he could probably open his eyes if he were to wake.
His breathing is even, if a little shallow. Hamish said he had two broken ribs on his right side. And something about a fracture...
I twitch up one end of the grimy robe he has been given, and I see that one of his shins is bruised black and blue like his face, a little swollen.
This, I know, is my fault too.
I drug him into all of this. Befriended him, because my greedy heart wanted more. More people, more connections, more things that could be mine.
I knew what we were doing was dangerous, and I still asked him to help defend us. And he did. He fought twice as hard as I did, in the valley, fought until he had nothing left. And this is what he got for it. Locked up, tortured, beaten, mocked.
While I, who cowered instead of fighting to my last—I was fine. Flitting through Philostia with Marton. Having laughs and snuggling and worrying about petty, selfish things. While my friends suffered.
The more I think about it, the more it feels as if my head will burst into flames.
Suddenly, I feel eyes on me from across the room.
I glance up, over Vakhrin's bruised, unconscious body, to find Marton looking at me.
Perilya is now working to wipe the greenish dye from his skin with a sharp smelling cloth, while Cherry fetches him a glass of water.
But Marton's eyes are on me, ignoring them both.
I cannot read his expression. His brows are slightly pulled together, his mouth pursed. Like he's thinking very hard or has tasted something sour.
Is he in pain? Is he deciding how to get away from me as soon as possible? How to break it to me gently that he's leaving?
I'll make it easy for him. I won't try to convince him to stay. To convince him that I'm worth staying for.
Deciding it's best to start putting distance between us right now—and deciding that there's nothing I can do in this room besides get in the way—I leave Vakh's side and slip out the door, feeling eyes on my back all the way.
We have our own celebration that night, once Hamish has finished doing what he can for all his patients.
It feels strange to me, to be celebrating, but I remember this night is not so grim for all of them as it seems to me.
Araine and all her people have won a great victory, and Cherry and Vakhrin are free.
Everyone is in a celebrating mood.
We gather in the common area of Araine and Hamish's family rooms, which are large and furnished with all manner of plush cushions and decorative tapestries to give it a comfortable, homy feel.
I'm surprised to think of my revolutionary sister living in a soft space like this, though I don't know why.
I suppose I imagined her in a drab concrete room with a single bed and a chalkboard where she writes up her revolutionary plans.
I think the décor must be mostly Hamish's doing.
As the large room fills up with people, most of whom I have never met before, I find a secluded spot off to one side—a bench of stone carved into the wall where I can sit by myself and think dreary thoughts.
Someone begins passing out drinks that steam in their bone cups and smell of old fruit and spices, and then the casual—if excited—talk becomes more like the revelry downstairs.
Araine sits in a seat of honor by the hearth, holding her own steaming cup and smiling tiredly as people come up to congratulate her.
Hamish has gone to a back room to check on their son, and has just returned with said son wide awake and in tow, when Raku blocks my view of the rest of the room by standing directly in front of me.
He has two cups in his hand, and a grin on his face.
Whatever Hamish did for his head injury seems to have affected a remarkable recovery.
Or it's possible Raku just slept it off.
The kin heal quickly, after all.
"No one's allowed to be sulking tonight," Raku tells me, stealing a seat on the bench beside me and offering me one of the steaming cups.
I take it carefully, frowning down into the dark, reddish contents.
The smell alone makes me feel dizzy.
"Hotwine," Raku informs me, taking a hearty gulp from his own cup.
"Strongest drink in the Trove. Perilya brews it herself.
"
"Should you really be drinking after a head injury?
"
Raku looks confused.
"I don't see what the one thing has to do with the other.
"
"I..." Guess I don't exactly know, either.
Marton would know. He would say something about inhibiting cognitive processes or some such nonsense.
I have a vague notion I've heard him say something like that before.
But thinking about what Marton would say just makes my mood worse.
I won't get to hear him say anything much longer.
Maybe it's time to be inhibiting my own cognitive processes.
With that in mind, I take a big gulp of the wine.
And it feels like I have a mouthful of fire—coming from the wrong direction.
I almost choke, and have to swallow hastily to prevent it, which doesn't help with the flaming hot feeling.
The wine is in fact hot in every way.
The temperature is scalding, the burn of fermentation in the alcohol overpowering, and the spices themselves, tangy and sharp, add considerable potency to the feeling.
And if it seems that way to me, I can't imagine what this drink must be like for a human.
Raku chuckles at whatever my expression is.
"I'd take it easy," he warns. "It's heady stuff if you're a newbie.
" He drinks from his own cup with a complete lack of reserve.
I don't appreciate being cautioned, so I take another large swallow to prove I can.
It burns just as much the second time, but I'm expecting it now, and now the feeling is accompanied by a warm glow of wellbeing in my head and chest. I rather like that.
I've never been drunk before, but my mother let me have watered wine with my dinner sometimes on village feast days.
This isn't anything like that. The more I drink of it, the more the flavor seems like an impossible mixture of spices and heat.
"What is this?
" I ask Raku.
"Hotwine," he says once more, leaning back against the wall of the alcove with wide-legged ease.
He sighs comfortably, gazing out at the party.
"Perilya makes it, and no one rightly knows what goes into it.
The woman is a wizard." Raku swirls his cup, eyeing the contents.
"But people say all kinds of things about it.
There's grapes and dragon fire, berries and snake venom, pine needles and poison toadstools, unicorn tears and—"
"I've met a unicorn," I say offhandedly.
The thought strikes me as funny, and I laugh.
I've met a unicorn.
"Yeah," says Raku easily, not attending to me at all.
He drinks more of his drink and chuckles too.
"I punched a Chimera in the face one time.
"
That makes me frown.
"Not my Chimera, I hope." I scan the party, but Vakhrin isn't here.
Still resting in the infirmary. I don't see Cherry or Marton, either, but I'm sort of glad for it.
No good has ever come to anyone for being around me.
I gulp some more wine, because it's supposed to be warding off those kinds of thoughts.
"No," laughs Raku. "It was some damned griffin with a smart mouth, outside of Noghra in Olio.
He called my brother a-a— Well, I don't remember what.
But I said, 'You can't talk to my brother like that.
' And the griffin said—"
I stop listening right around then, the wine making my head feel pleasantly fuzzy.
I don't really care about Raku's fight with a griffin, no matter what that griffin called his brother.
I go to drink more wine, but I find that my cup is empty.
That won't do at all.
Getting up, a little unsteadily, I leave Raku chatting affably to a potted plant while I go in search of more hotwine.
There's a steaming cauldron of it over on a stone table by the hearth, and I ladle some into my cup.
"Hey," says a low female voice over my shoulder.
I turn, and find myself eye to eye with someone as short as I am, for once.
There seem to be two of her for a moment, but the sight resolves itself into a faintly smiling Araine a second later.
"Hey." Experimentally, I smile back at her.
It feels pretty good.
"Your teeth are purple," notes Araine with amusement.
"Raku's been introducing me to the hotwine.
"
"I can see that." Araine looks like she wants to laugh, but she touches my shoulder and her eyes go serious.
"I just wanted to say, about what happened with Inobar—"
"I'm sorry," I say, clutching my drink tightly.
"If I've made trouble for you—"
Araine shakes her head, eyes bright.
"You haven't. Enough people saw Inobar attack your human—a human who was already the subject of an ongoing challenge, and whom he had no right to touch—that there's no question you were within your rights to do what you did.
And with Inobar out of the way..." She shakes her head, grimacing lightly at such a bald admission.
"He was the last piece of the puzzle. With Besana gone, he could have still caused problems for us—probably more than ever.
But without him... One of my people just reported that Edythe and Besana's remaining followers were spotted fleeing the Trove not an hour ago.
I don't think they'll be coming back any time soon.
"
"So it's over?" I almost don't know how to believe it.
"My friends are safe? They're free?"
"They're free," Araine agrees.
"And you're all free to stay as long as you like, or to go whenever you wish.
With Besana gone...I lead the largest faction in the Trove.
We don't have formal leaders, born or elected, but the majority here.
..well, they're mine now." Araine doesn't seem boastful of giddy about this, but there's a quiet contentment and a shining hope for the future in her eyes. I envy her that.