Thornbear (Book 1) (6 page)

“I don’t have a bond,” repeated Gram.

“Show me the arm.”

Gram stared at the knight, uncertain. Cyhan’s face was calm, and he exuded an aura of implacability, the kind of certainty that made him difficult to argue with. His once dark hair was now a mixture of dark and grey, which only served to reinforce the iron in his dark brown eyes. Gram carefully began to roll up his sleeve.

He expected a hiss or an intake of breath, even a whistle of amazement, but Cyhan just studied the swollen limb without a word. Gram’s forearm was an ugly black and blue, and the swelling had doubled its size, making the skin look shiny in the early dawn light.

“Fingers work? Make a fist,” ordered the knight.

Gram did as he was told, doing his best to ignore the pain.

“Turn your hand at the wrist,” commanded the older man, demonstrating by twisting his own fist back and forth.

That hurt even more, but Gram managed it anyway.

Cyhan’s eyes narrowed, “The bones are whole, but you broke it not long ago, didn’t you? Who fixed it, the same one who gave you the bond?”

Gram closed his mouth.

Cyhan almost smiled at that. The look of silent determination on Gram’s face reminded him so much of Dorian just then.
Stubborn, just like his father.
“You need to get someone who knows what they’re doing to look at that arm. As it is now, it will take weeks for you to recover proper use of it, assuming you don’t wind up with some permanent damage. I’d recommend Elaine or the Count.”

The younger man grew more stone-faced.

Cyhan was well-versed in the silent language of stubborn men. Some had accused him of inventing it. “If you didn’t want them to know, then you shouldn’t have fucked up your arm. Come see me after you get one of them to look at it.”

Gram’s face flickered with uncertainty.

“I’d recommend the Count. He might not tell your mother, if you ask him nicely. Elaine might offer the same, assuming you feel like riding to Arundel, but she could talk the horns off a goat. Either way, if I don’t see you this afternoon, looking much improved, I’ll take the matter to the Count myself. Understood?”

“Yes sir.” Gram took a step back toward the keep.

“Gram,” said the knight.

“Yes sir?”

“Don’t forget, right now the world is made of glass, and that includes your body. Anything other than the most gentle of touches will break something,” reminded Cyhan.

“Yes sir.”

“Find me after lunch—or I’ll find you.” The words carried a not-so-subtle hint.

Gram could feel the warrior’s eyes following him until he had reached the main door to the keep. His first impression as he replayed the encounter was one of unease, but as he thought it over he came to realize that he felt relieved on some level. The older man’s confident competence had settled his nerves, and while he didn’t look forward to seeing him later the solidity of the command gave him a reassuring feeling of certainty.

He didn’t press me about the details either.
Cyhan’s behavior was a stark contrast to his mother’s. She only stopped asking questions when she had extracted every bit of information from him.

For perhaps the millionth time, he wondered silently what things might have been like if his father had lived.

Chapter 5

Ascending the stairs that led to the living quarters within the keep, Gram’s head was trying to work out his best option. He wanted to talk to Matthew before going to the Count, but that was unlikely to happen. He knew his friend well enough to know that he had probably stayed up until the wee hours of the morning working on his project. Matthew was unlikely to rise before the sun stood high in the sky.

He stopped in the hall that led to the Count’s apartments. There was a guard stationed outside the door that led to the foyer, but that didn’t worry him. Being a frequent visitor, he was unlikely to even be questioned. What caught his attention was a small stuffed bear coming in the opposite direction.

“Good morning, my champion,” Grace said to him as she approached. In a smaller voice she added, “You don’t want to go in there right now,” as she passed by.

Gram turned and followed the bear until they had gone around the corner and left the view of the day guard. “What’s going on?” he asked her.

“Your mother is visiting the Countess and she looked to be in as foul a mood as I’ve ever seen,” said Grace. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“Well…” he drew the word out with an embarrassed expression.

“I thought so,” said the small bear reproachfully. “What did you do?”

“She thinks I’ve been fighting with the chief huntsman,” he began, unsure what to tell her. He felt trapped. It would be impossible for him to see the Count without encountering his mother again, and if she saw his arm…

Grace looked at him doubtfully, somehow conveying her disbelief despite the limitations of her features.

“… and I lost my temper when she questioned me. I may have said some things I shouldn’t have,” he admitted.

“Oooh,” Grace said in a pained voice, then she asked “
Did
you get in a fight with the master huntsman?” It was a good question. Rose Thornbear had a reputation for being uncomfortably discerning.

Gram shrugged, “Well, yeah, but that isn’t how I got this.” He gestured at his swollen arm.

The bear put one stuffed paw in front of her yarn mouth. “Oh my,” she said worriedly.

Shit,
thought Gram,
I didn’t mean to show her that. Why do I keep talking to her?
“It was an accident. I was hoping to see the Count. I thought maybe he could fix it before Mother gets a look at it.”

“You should see him anyway,” advised the bear. “I don’t know a lot about wounds, but if that is as bad as it looks, I think it’s more important than upsetting Lady Rose.”

“I’ll figure something else out,” said Gram, moving to go down the stairs. He was pretty sure he’d rather lose the arm than face his mother again.

“No!” protested Grace. “This is serious. I’ll go tell him myself if you don’t come back here!”

Reaching down with one long arm, Gram plucked her up from the ground. “Then I suppose you’ll have to come with me.”

“Kidnapping? You are no true knight to treat a lady so! Villain! Cad! Unhand me,” she declaimed as loudly as her voice would allow.

“Shhh!” said Gram desperately as he descended the stairs. “You’re going to attract attention.”

“I have no other recourse, since you have taken me captive,” responded the bear in a dramatic voice. “You have left me no other weapon with which to defend my virtue!”

The young man stopped on the stairs, cocking his head to one side, bemused. “Your virtue? Seriously? Where do you get this stuff, Grace?”

Grace became uncertain, “Well, that’s what they say in the stories.”

Gram laughed, “You’ve been reading Moira’s romance novels?” He and Matthew had both teased her about the books she had been reading recently, though neither of them thought to consider the fact that she had gotten the books from the Count’s own collection.

“Perhaps…”

“Well I am neither a knight nor a villain, and I have neither a horse to carry you away nor a dungeon vile to keep you in, so you’ll just have to accompany me for a while until I sort this out,” he told her frankly.

The little bear stared at him for a moment, “There might be another way, if you’ll trust me.”

“You have an idea?”

“Let me go back. I’ll fetch Moira to you, and she can look at your arm. She’s almost as good a healer as Elaine or even Mordecai himself,” suggested Grace, ending on a proud note.

Gram thought about it, “You won’t tell anyone?”

“Just my mistress.”

“Don’t tell her ‘til she’s almost here. She might blow it otherwise,” said Gram.

The bear nodded, “I will have to tell her something, though, or she won’t come.”

“Just tell her it’s a private emergency. Tell her I’ll be grateful if she will help, but that you don’t know what’s wrong,” Gram told her.

“That’s a lie,” said Grace disapprovingly.

“Well, reword it however you have to, you know what I mean,” he answered, frustrated.

“I can do that,” she agreed.

“I’ll wait at Matthew’s workshop, in the courtyard,” added Gram as she began to leave. “Someone might think it odd if they see me hiding in the stairwell.”

Grace nodded, and then she was gone.

***

“What’s all the mystery about?” asked Moira as she stepped into the workshop, glancing around curiously.

The old courtyard workshop technically belonged to Mordecai, but it had become Matthew’s private domain over the years. It had become so by mutual accord between the twins and was now an accomplished fact. She had no real interest in crafting or enchanting, and he had no desire to have his sister clutter up the place. It was a sign of the distance that had grown between the two siblings as they drew closer to adulthood.

Still, Moira couldn’t help but look around with a certain amount of interest, both from a barely hidden desire to irk her brother, as well as simple interest. She was surprised to find that Gram was waiting there alone. Somehow that fact made her slightly apprehensive.

“This,” said Gram, sliding up his sleeve to draw her attention.

The arm was badly swollen, a fact she might have noticed despite his sleeve, but she had long ago made a habit of keeping her mental focus away from the areas hidden by clothing, particularly with regard to boys. It wasn’t something that her father or any other wizard had drilled into her, just a simple result of her natural unobtrusiveness.

She gave an involuntary gasp at the sight of it, and then again as her magesight explored the wound in more detail. Moira was empathic in the entirely normal way that many people are, and just seeing such a painful injury evoked a complementary pain within her. “How did you do that?” she asked after regaining her internal composure.

“I accidentally broke the ceiling beam,” said Gram nonchalantly, pointing to indicate the damaged area.

Her eyes went wide, “Huh?” After a moment they narrowed as her mind grew suspicious.

Gram shrugged, “I didn’t know my own strength.”

“Sure,” she answered in a tone that gave no doubt about her lack of credulity. “Is that why your mother is so mad?”

“Not exactly,” said Gram. “She hasn’t seen most of it. I’d kind of rather she didn’t see the rest.”

She looked at him with eyes that were growing wider, “You want me to try and fix that?”

He nodded.

She shook her head, “You should really let my dad look at that, or Elaine, but she’s in Arundel right now. I wouldn’t know where to start…”

Moira had learned to heal simple cuts and scrapes from her father, and he had even had her help with some of the farmers’ injured livestock, to give her a feel for more serious problems, but she had never dealt with anything so serious on a fellow human being. The idea scared her. She took a step back.

“Please!” begged Gram. “If my mother sees this, she’ll kill me.”

“My father…”

“…would have to tell my mother,” interrupted Gram.

“She’s already madder than anything I’ve ever seen,” said Moira. “I don’t think it would be any worse.”

“Believe me, it could be worse.”

“Who did that to you?” she asked.

“The ceiling beam,” said Gram. “I wasn’t lying.”

“Matthew has something to do with it then,” she postulated.

Gram was no good at deception, but he didn’t intend to expose his friend’s part. “Maybe—look, I don’t want to tell anyone about this, or drag anyone else into it. Will you just do what you can? Please?”

“Only if you tell me what you two are plotting,” she insisted, crossing her arms stubbornly.

“Will you promise not to tell anyone?”

Moira hesitated; while she had always been something of a free-spirit, she still had a good measure of caution in her. In the end, her curiosity took precedence over prudence. “Alright, I promise.”

Gram slowly filled her in. He barely mentioned his fight with Chad Grayson, spending most of his time discussing Matthew’s idea to steal his father’s sword and remake it. That was what really interested him, so much so that he explained the manner in which he received his injury almost incidentally. He finished by relating his encounter with Cyhan so that she would understand his reason for urgency.

“That’s why your aythar is so bright,” commented Moira. “You’re still holding onto what Matt gave you; that might help.”

“Why?”

“You will probably heal faster while you have some extra aythar,” she explained, “unless I make it worse.”

The two of them exchanged worried glances, and then Gram tried to reassure her, “You can do it.”

She could read his uncertainty as well as her own, but she pushed her fears aside and focused on the swollen arm, letting her focus tighten and descend, drawing her awareness into the bruised and damaged flesh.

The bones are strong and whole, but I can see where they were joined,
she thought.
He did that right, but some of these vessels were just sealed, without even attempting to pair them up with their matching severed halves.
She could also see a lot of blood had infiltrated the tissues and been left there.

Eventually the body would reabsorb it, but it would take time. The unrepaired blood vessels would be a bigger problem. They were the real cause for the excessive swelling; the circulation in his arm was inadequate. Over time his body would probably replace the vessels, growing new ones to compensate, but it might take a year or more to fully recover.

Most of her knowledge was purely theoretical, the result of lectures from her father. The fact that he had been able to
show
her the inner workings of the body without actually needing to cut anyone open had also been a great advantage. Still, she had never done more than fix very minor wounds in people and a broken leg or two in local sheep.

She had also never worked on a wound that had been undisturbed for a day or so.

Quietly, she formulated a plan, though her stomach began to flutter with uneasiness as she considered it.
Make a cut and coax the old blood out first…
There were other things that needed to be connected, other channels that carried fluids besides blood. Her father had had a name for them, but her mind failed to present it when requested.
No matter, I don’t need to know their name to stitch them together.