Mist-Torn Witches 02:Witches in Red (9 page)

The man was clearly unaccustomed to anyone trying to help him or his family, and he wrung his hands in indecision. Although he himself had not thought to do anything for the boy’s injury, Céline’s talk of pain and setting bones had clearly upset him. He seemed uncertain about entrusting his son to a stranger.

The man looked to Mercedes, who was standing in the doorway.

She wore the same quietly angry expression, but her head moved up and down once. “She’s one of my people, from the line of Fawe. If she says she can set the bone, she can set it.”

Amelie was startled. How would Mercedes know they were Móndyalítko, from the line of Fawe? But she bit back any questions. She didn’t want the miner to begin to doubt.

“How can I help?” the man asked.

“Get some boards,” Céline answered, “strong, but narrow and short, so I can splint his forearm.”

And so for the second time in two days, Amelie helped her sister drug someone senseless, set a bone, brace it with boards, and wrap it tightly. By the time they were done, Céline was pale and wiping her forehead with her sleeve. Since entering this wagon, she’d not stopped to rest for hours.

“Now we need something to make a proper sling,” she said, looking around.

Mercedes was still in the open doorway. “Use one of the curtains. They’re clean, and I cannot think of anything else.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

The curtains were one of the few homey touches inside the wagon, but Céline took one down and fashioned a sling, tying the boy’s arm against his chest.

“He should wake soon,” she said.

Mercedes turned to call outside somewhere, “Shaldon, you can come carry him home.” Then her voice lowered, and she spoke to someone else outside. “Mariah, go and tell Marcus not to bring any more men. The healer’s done in. But tell him that I want him to come himself.”

A few moments later, the still-sleeping boy was carried out, and Céline finally sank onto the bench.

* * *

Céline’s hands and arms were nearly numb as she allowed herself to sit still for a few breaths.

Mercedes stepped inside the wagon. “You did well. I’d forgotten . . . I’ve forgotten a lot of things.”

“How did you know she’s from the line of Fawe?” Amelie asked.

Céline looked up, as she had been wondering that herself.

“Her hair,” Mercedes answered. “Only the line of Fawe has hair that color. You see any Móndyalítko here with tan hair? And you’ve both got lavender eyes.”

“But how did you know we’re Móndyalítko?” Céline asked.

Mercedes snorted. “You think I’d let you in here, let you treat these people, if you weren’t? I know my own kind when I see one.”

Perhaps unconsciously, Amelie reached up and touched her hair. Ironically, she’d inherited her dark hair from their father, who was not Móndyalítko.

Then Céline felt rather than heard something in the doorway and turned her head. She froze. The man standing there was a taller, more muscular version of Mariah, though he was closer to Mercedes in age. His coal black hair hung down past his collar, and his eyes were locked on Céline. She would never have described him as handsome. He was . . . beautiful. Like Mariah, he had something almost feral about him, as if he didn’t belong inside any four walls. More important, even though she’d never seen him before, there was something familiar about him, as if she’d known him for years.

“This is my cousin Marcus,” Mercedes said. “I want you to look at his shoulder. He’ll be the last one today. I promise.”

“My shoulder’s fine,” Marcus answered.

“It’s not fine,” Mariah snapped at him, “and we have a proper healer. Let her see it.” She moved to the back of the wagon, to the bunk beds, to give him room to enter.

Slowly, still staring at Céline, he came inside.

“Please sit,” she managed to say, and he sank onto the bench.

Amelie went to sit with Mercedes on one of the beds.

“Take a look at the back of his right shoulder,” Mercedes instructed.

His shirt was dark brown, but when Céline moved to examine his back, she could see spots of blood soaking through.

“Please take off your shirt,” she told him.

This he did without hesitating.

“Oh, Marcus,” she breathed, as if she’d spoken his name a thousand times before. “What happened?”

Four deep gouges ran from the top of his shoulder halfway down his back. They were angry and swollen and looked as if they’d not even begun to close.

“One of those soldier-wolves slashed me. I was trying to draw it off that boy you just helped.” When he spoke the word “soldier,” the hatred in his voice was unmistakable.

“Inside the mine?” she asked.

“Yes. We managed to kill it, but it cost us.”

Céline didn’t ask what it had cost. Right now, she didn’t want to know. “These wounds are on the verge of infection. I need to do a deep cleaning . . . and it’s going to hurt.” She picked up the bottle of poppy syrup. “I want you to drink just a spoonful of this, not enough to put you to sleep, but enough to dull the pain.”

He glanced at the bottle skeptically.

“Do it,” Mercedes ordered him.

Céline poured a wooden spoonful, and he let her feed it to him.

“We need to wait a few moments,” she said, “and let that take effect.”

Mariah appeared in the doorway, looking in. The resemblance between her and her male cousin was
astonishing. Then it occurred to Céline that although these three were slender, they weren’t starving. Marcus’s bare shoulders and arms showed lean but developed muscles.

“You helped the children,” Mariah said to Céline. “That was good.”

Her words and speech were so simple that Céline wasn’t certain how to respond for a few seconds. “There wasn’t much I could do. What they need is food.”

“They won’t find much of that here,” Marcus said, “except in the soldiers’ provisions tent.”

“Why don’t you have any animals?” Amelie asked. “Chickens or a milk cow?”

“Can’t afford to buy a cow,” Mercedes answered. “And we ate the last of the chickens years ago, before we even arrived.”

“How many years have you been here?”

“Three.”

Listening to the exchange, even with what little she knew of her mother’s people, Céline couldn’t imagine a group of Móndyalítko remaining in this awful place for three years.

“Where are your horses?” she asked Marcus quietly.

“Gone.” He glanced away. “I hunt for us, and we eat whatever Captain Keegan doesn’t take.” Again, when he said Keegan’s name, the hatred in his voice was thick. “We share what we can with the others here, and Mariah does what she can for the children.”

He looked at Mariah, in the doorway, and she looked back. Something passed between them, but Céline had no idea what.

Picking up the jar of adder’s-tongue ointment and a clean rag, she said, “All right, this won’t be pleasant.”

Turning her attention to his wounds, she remembered that one of the reasons she’d come here was to examine anyone injured by the afflicted soldiers. Judging by the distance between the claw marks on Marcus’s back, whatever had done this to him must have had enormous paws.

She started at the top of his shoulder and began to work her way down. He didn’t gasp or flinch once, and she knew the poppy syrup could not be dulling all the pain. When she finished cleaning all the wounds, she put away the adder’s-tongue and switched to a mixture of ground garlic and ginger in vinegar.

“This is going to sting, but it will ward off infection,” she said, dabbing the mixture onto a clean rag and touching it to his back.

Again, he didn’t flinch.

When she’d finished with that, she wrapped his shoulder as best she could and helped him get his shirt back on. He let her.

Mercedes stood up suddenly, seeming uncomfortable. “We can’t pay you anything.”

So weary by now that she was having trouble staying on her feet, Céline leaned on the table. “We didn’t come for payment.” Then something occurred to her. “Oh . . . there is one thing, perhaps a favor you might help us with.”

Mercedes’s entire body went rigid. “A favor?”

“Yes, we had to pack light for the journey, and Amelie and I were only allowed one extra wool dress for
day wear. We nearly ruined the ones we wore on the journey here. I have blood on mine from tending to an injured soldier. How can we get them laundered here? Could you allow us to use your washtub and clothesline?”

Mercedes’s expression turned incredulous, and then she barked out a single laugh. “That’s your favor? Help with washing a few gowns?” She shook her head. “You bring them to me, and I’ll launder them myself. I can get blood out of wool.”

“Thank you.”

Still sitting on the bench, Marcus was watching Céline with his black eyes, as if trying to figure her out. She put on her cloak and gathered up the box of supplies as Amelie moved to join her.

“We’ll be back tomorrow,” Céline said, hoping she sounded businesslike. “Marcus, don’t take off those bandages, even if the wounds itch.”

Mariah made room in the doorway, and Céline headed out, nearly tripping on the stairs from exhaustion. The sun dipped low. Was it only that morning that she had waved good-bye to Corporal Bazin and the other soldiers from Sèone and then followed Jaromir into this encampment? It felt as if whole days had passed.

Jaromir was waiting for them near the path up ahead, but as Amelie walked beside her, Céline whispered, “What do you think of those three back there in the wagon?”

“I think someone in their family has a penchant for names starting with the letter
M
.”

This attempt at humor was so unexpected that Céline couldn’t help the corners of her mouth turning up. Amelie could almost always make her smile.

“In truth,” Amelie added, “I think Mercedes is angry, but she lets it out. Marcus and Mariah are holding in a lot of hatred.”

That was Céline’s assessment as well.

“Marcus and some of the Móndyalítko men must have signed contracts with Keegan,” she said. “Horses to pull the wagons or not, I can’t think of any other reason why they’d stay here . . . and Marcus hates the soldiers.”

“Yes, but how much does he hate them?”

How much indeed?

Jaromir came walking to meet them. “You look done in.”

“You’ve no idea,” Céline answered. “Can we go to our tent and rest for a while?”

“Of course.” He took the box from her and led the way down the path back toward the soldiers’ camp.

“Did you learn anything from the men?” she asked.

“Not a lot, only that there have been three attacks by these . . . wolves during the day, inside the mines themselves. The miners are refusing to work at all now, and Keegan’s soldiers won’t let them leave but also won’t enforce any work because that would mean the soldiers would have to enter to mines themselves to oversee, and they’re just as afraid of being trapped or caught down there.”

Céline absorbed this. “I think you learned quite a bit. If someone is doing this on purpose—infecting the
soldiers, I mean—it almost sounds like they are
trying
to shut down work in the mines.”

The path emptied into the Pählen encampment.

As the collection of tents came into view, Céline heard raised voices. Turning, she saw that Captain Keegan was out among his men. In fact . . . he was shouting at five of them. She recognized three of the soldiers from earlier in the day, the rotund Guardsman Saunders, the skittish young Graham, and the tall, semi-toothless Ramsey. She’d not met the other two.

“We have guests here from the court of Sèone!” Keegan shouted. “Sent at the request of our prince! And you’re all wandering around out here with no one placed at his designated post. You’re all filthy, and you look a disgrace. I won’t have it! You’ll clean yourselves up and act like soldiers or I’ll have you on night watch in that gypsy camp. Do you hear me?”

Had Jaromir ever given his men such a speech, they would have been groveling. He rarely made threats—as he rarely needed to—but a threat from Jaromir was taken seriously.

Céline expected the soldiers to bow and scrape and express a chorus of “Yes, sirs.”

They did not.

Ramsey glared at the captain in thinly veiled hostility and spoke so softly that Céline had to read his lips, but it seemed that he said, “I’ll not take orders from a man who can’t pay his own debts.”

Captain Keegan went stiff. “What did you say?”

No one answered for a moment, and then Ramsey mumbled, “Nothing.”

“Get to your posts,” Keegan ordered.

The men shuffled away, but Céline was somewhat shaken. She’d never seen anything like that. Even back in Shetâna, the chain of command was unquestioned and soldiers followed the orders of a superior officer.

Discipline was breaking down here . . . and these men would need discipline if they hoped to organize themselves and survive.

However, as she, Amelie, and Jaromir walked up, they pretended not to have witnessed the scene.

“Good evening, Captain,” she said.

He turned and saw her approaching. “My lady, I was coming in search of you.”

“Yes, we were detained in the miners’ encampment.”

He frowned. “All afternoon?” But then he offered Amelie a polite bow of his head. “I’ve had a small dinner prepared, to be served in my tent. Could you be ready in an hour?”

Céline wanted to groan. She wanted her bed. The last thing she wanted to do was put on an evening gown and sit at a table making polite conversation. But they were here for a reason, and she glanced at Jaromir. He nodded once.

“Of course,” she said. “We’d be honored.” As she started to walk away, something occurred to her, and she was uncertain of the protocol. Amelie had stressed that as the ranking commander, he was in charge of everyone here. Did she need his permission to conduct any readings? “Captain . . . per our inquiry, I would like to do a reading of a young woman named Mariah and a man called Marcus. Do I have your permission?”

His frown deepened. “Mariah? Why?”

By way of answer, she looked him up and down, as would any haughty lady of Anton’s court.

He glanced away, embarrassed. “Yes, do as you see fit.”