Scarlett Emberheart's Arc

Chapter 8 of 14

Talon set both hands on Scarlett's side as the fourth day thinned toward evening. He had run out of small measures. He pulled the last of his magic up out of his chest and pushed it into her the way a man empties a bucket. The heat left him in one long pour. His arms shook. His mouth tasted of copper. Scarlett's breathing changed under his palms. It slowed. It steadied. The sick heat in her skin dropped a notch, then another. He felt her turn a corner. He also felt the floor tilt. He sat down hard on the stool and did not get back up. His head hung. His hands stayed open on his knees, empty. A bell rang in the corridor before he could speak. Boots came down the hall. A senior nurse stopped in the doorway with a folded order in her hand. She said every nurse assigned to the woman in this bed was pulled off the ward until further notice. She said the girl might be reacting to something in the medicine, and no one was to touch her water, her cloths, or her food. Two aides came in behind her and gathered pitchers and basins and rags into a covered basket. They took the small brown bottle off the side table. They took the pitcher on the sill. They did not look at Talon. They did not look at the hooded man against the wall. They carried the basket out and shut the door behind them. At the end of the corridor the blonde nurse in the clean apron heard the order passed from one aide to another. She did not slow. She did not turn her head. She stepped into a side hall and untied the apron as she walked. She folded it small and pushed it into a laundry bin. Amelia D'agrane walked out through the kitchen door of the great stone hospital and into the alley. She had not counted on the paladin spending himself down to nothing in one push. It did not matter. The girl in the bed would not fight at full strength again. That was enough. A cart passed. She stepped in behind it. By the time it reached the corner she was only a plain face in the street, freckles and nothing else, and no one who saw her would remember her later. Inside the room Talon lifted his head. His voice came out thin. He told Aldric the fever had broken. He told him he could not do that a second time. Scarlett slept without twisting in the sheet for the first time in four days. Her color was still wrong, but it was hers. Talon looked at his own hands and knew he had bought her the bracket and no more. She would wake. She would stand. She would walk back to the sand on legs that were not what they had been. It would have to be enough.