20. 19
Davian groaned as Fella helped him from the carriage.
She shot me a look. “Do you know anything about treating wounds?”
I hesitated. All Ekrissians had to learn how to treat a wound.
Our patrons were lonely men, and on rare occasions they held a proclivity towards violence.
The men were arrested by the sunners the moment a blow fell, but we learnt in any case.
Ekris could usually see a violent intent at the altar, but sometimes it crept over the men like a fungus, polluting their minds.
Instead, I said, “The basics.”
Fella read through my pause. “Great. You can be my assistant.”
I followed the pair of them as she took him around to the back door, and then down a small corridor and through a second door I hadn’t entered before. Inside, there were two beds, and enough pots and weeds to bring an apothecary to shame.
This was an infirmary, of sorts. Fella moved around it without blinking, depositing Davian on the bed and finding items more by feel than vision. This was her domain. I tried not to think why the House needed such a well-trained medicine woman.
Fella commanded him to remove his trousers, and he did so without complaint or pause.
He hissed as he pushed the black fabric over his left thigh.
I gasped in as I realised how much the dark fabric had been covering.
There was a wound cut into his thigh, the blood blooming from its entry point on his pale linen breeches and covering most of his leg.
Fella ripped the linen of the breeches around the existing hole. I stepped forwards. The puncture was relatively small, only an inch across, but it looked deep, and the blood swelled from it.
She shook her head. “What happened?”
Davian had paled in the act of removing his trousers, and a sheen of sweat shined on his brow. “A sunner took the instruction to keep me in the chair too seriously.”
“A dagger?”
He nodded. “Think so.”
“It’s not bone deep,” she said. “But you’re losing blood. We need to bind it tight.”
Davian groaned and tried to protest that it would be fine.
Fella shushed him in enviable fashion, and flicked her head to me. “Annie, hold his shoulders down.”
I did as she asked, tucking my hair into the back of my cloak so it didn’t fall over Davian’s face, then I leaned over him and pushed my weight onto his shoulders.
He tried to waggle his eyebrows at me, but any thought of levity was cut short. He spasmed, and I looked down to see Fella pouring some dark liquid over the wound as she held his knee firmly with the other hand. I forced my weight down, keeping Davian’s flailing to a minimum with gritted teeth.
“Sorry,” Fella said. She didn’t sound too sorry.
I kept my weight over Davian, the heat of him spilling through his tunic and into me. His breath, always too warm and too near, fell over my face in shallow pants. Fella stitched the wound as he gritted his teeth, and I kept pushing him down until the final stitch was sewn.
Then, Fella fetched a clean bandage, and wrapped the wound with it.
Davian struggled as she pulled the bandage firmly against the skin above the cut, helping to stem the blood flow.
He didn’t thrash hard, he knew it was necessary.
But I hated to hear each hiss. I found myself whispering to him.
“Not long now. That’s it. You’ll be fine. ”
He didn’t react, and I was certain it was more for my benefit than his.
“There we go.” Fella leaned back, and swept her hair from her brow.
I stood back up, looking down at Davian’s face as if on instinct. He stared at me, and I couldn’t help the blush.
“Annie, make sure he doesn’t stand up or do anything stupid,” she said. “I’m going to get him some poppy tea.”
“Thank you,” I said. I wasn’t sure why I said it, and the words felt sticky in the air. She hadn’t healed him for me. This was his House. His people.
Fella only quirked her eyebrow, and left the room.
I sat on the other bed, across from Davian. I looked anywhere but his face, staring at his bound wound. The blood had not yet seeped through. I could still feel his warmth and taste his breath in the air.
I felt the need to break the brief silence. “I promise not to stab you to keep you from moving.”
He snorted. “Very reassuring."
The pause stretched again, and I knew he was watching me.
“They shouldn’t have hurt you. You admitted to no crime,” I said.
I felt his eyes shift, and I finally could look upon him.
Davian stared up at the ceiling. “Aseem was there. I stole his daughter from him. That much I have admitted to.”
The room had no windows, lit only by candles.
It felt eerie more than comforting, but that could be due to the horrors of the day and the context of Davian’s injury, more than the choice of decor.
A drop of melted wax slid down the side of one of the beeswax candles, and I watched it slide down its holder like a tear.
I blinked, and Jusia haunted me again. I forced my eyes open, folding and unfolding my hands.
Davian sighed. “You should be on this bed. You’re in more pain than I am.”
I shook my head. “I can’t believe that is true.”
“Mine is physical,” he said simply. “Samiscus helps us with that. It hurts, of course. But he heals us faster than lay people. And our physical pain becomes emotional relief. That is the trade, that is his gift in return for our servitude.”
He had intimated something close to this before, but I hadn’t realised he healed faster than most. That his physical suffering was so directly tied to his relief.
He shrugged, and slid his eyes back to me. The skin around his unmasked eye was still swelling. “I feel better today than I do most days.”
I smiled softly, in disbelief. I could not fully believe him. His emotional pain must be great indeed, if this was preferable.
He flicked his head. “Lie down, Annie. I’m not going anywhere.”
It was a kind offer, and spoken kindly.
But I couldn’t take it. “If I close my eyes I see her body.”
Davian flinched, and I knew immediately that he understood.
We lingered there in the silence. It wasn’t uncomfortable, however. It was a shared moment of grief, as he stared at the ceiling and I stared at the folds in the bedding beneath his torso, forming a crumpled frown as my eyes glazed over.
“Will there be a funeral?” he asked, eventually.
“Yes,” I confirmed. “I won’t be permitted to attend.”
He clucked his tongue. “Talia?”
I didn’t say anything, but that was a confirmation in itself. He slid his eyes over to me, the candlelight catching on his brown skin and the metal he always wore. It was a look of sympathy, and regret on my behalf.
But in truth, I wasn’t sure I wanted to attend.
I swallowed. “Ekrissian funerals are different. It is not uncommon for Ekris’ servants to die young,” I said.
Davian didn’t look surprised. He knew enough of our ways to know our eagerness to join the afterlife.
I bit my lip. “Talia will say the words of celebration, sending Jusia’s body to the eternal harem of Ekris. ”
Davian read my consternation. “What’s wrong?”
“She went missing before she was found in the water. Did she run off with Robar, like I tried to?” I asked, voicing my deepest fear ever since Talia had said who had died. “If she was… impure. If she had lain with Robar. Ekris will not take her. She will be lost in the darkness forever.”
I spoke it into the room, and a small weight came off me.
Death wasn’t supposed to be such a scandalous and mournful occasion in the House of Love.
We were taught to temper our grief, to treat each passing as a new blessing for the Gods.
A sacrifice made nobly, and not something we had lost. Ekrissians were there for Ekris, not for one another.
Friendships were encouraged, certainly, since no one else truly understood the path we walked.
But then, when someone was found dead in their room, we were expected to smile. It had always sat badly with me.
But this. Jusia. To have lived her whole life as an Ekrissian, to then lose his affection at the end, and be stuck forever in that place in between the worlds.
It was the worst fate, an unblessed death.
Those not fortunate enough to be devotees at the time of their passing would have a Wisdom devotee of Knessus come for the final taking and to bless their journey.
Or, they would ask for a token from another devotee or House to ferry them to the Garden. Who would Jusia have had, at the end?
Davian’s eyes had not left me, even as I stared into nothing and gnawed at my fingernail, the relief of expressing the fear now giving rise to the urge to cry.
“We can have another funeral,” he said, soft as a feather.
I squeezed my hands onto the linen on either side of me and blinked the tears back.
“One for Death, not for Love,” he continued. “We can ask for her body to pass peacefully. If Ekris has not claimed her, we can try to ease her passage to the other side.”
I gulped past the thickening in my throat and bit my lip. After a few seconds, I nodded, and let a tear fall. “Thank you.”
He nodded, and looked away.
I took a few deep breaths, and when Fella returned with two steaming mugs, she instantly caught onto the sombre mood.
She glanced between us, preparing the poppy seed into one of the cups.
Then she pulled another plant from the hanging dryer, and ground its flowers with a pestle. She stirred them into the other cup.
She passed the poppy tea to Davian, who took it gratefully. Then she offered the other to me. “Camomile,” she said. “To give you some peace.”
I took the tea with a smile, another tear tracking down my cheek.
I drank it cupped between hands that were colder than they should have been.
I watched Fella take a swig from the same cup she had poured over Davian’s wound.
She fell into a chair across the room, and stared at the man between us.
I realised then, that he had fallen asleep. Fella, too, yawned.
I leaned back against the wall, leaning the empty cup against my side. My eyes drifted shut—just for a moment—but this time, there was only darkness. I let them stay closed, and fell into an exhausted sleep.