Brightly (Flicker #2) (44 page)

His leg worsened. The swelling and inflammation increased, the skin stretched tight and shiny. When Nasser prodded at his leg, wincing, pus leaked from under a scab. He swore under his breath and reached for his backpack.

“What are you doing?” Lee asked, watching him pull a knife out of the pack.

“The infection needs to come out before it festers,” Nasser said grimly. “This is the fastest way.”

“Don’t,” Filo said sharply, snatching the knife from his hand. “You’re not cutting your own leg open. I’ll do it.”

“I’m not going to make you—”

“Nasser, I’m not scared of a little pus. You should take some of the powder, though. You don’t want to be awake for this. It’s going to hurt like hell.”

“It already hurts like hell,” Nasser muttered.

“I’ll be pressing really close to the bone,” Filo reminded him. “If you scream, something might hear you and come looking.”

Nasser scrubbed one hand over his face. Finally, he nodded. “Fine. Apply pressure until all you get is blood, and then stop. If there’s a lot of blood, bind it. If it’s only bleeding a little, leave it alone. Got it?”

“Got it.”

A few minutes later, Nasser was unconscious again. Lee crouched nervously beside Filo as he bent over Nasser’s leg.

Carefully, Filo cut the first wound open. Pus spurted from it. Lee gagged, but Filo just wrinkled his nose and set to work. He squeezed either side of the wound until pus was running down the side of Nasser’s leg. There was so much. Filo didn’t stop pressing until the white fluid was replaced by blood.

“Is this really helping?” she whispered.

“Only if I get all this crap out,” Filo said, moving on to the next wound. “If we keep doing this, with any luck, his body will be able to fight off the infection itself and it won’t get any worse.”

“And… without luck?”

Filo’s expression was pinched. “Then we’ll have to think of something else.”

“That won’t help the bone,” Henry said, bringing over a handful of bandages.

“What do you mean?” Lee asked.

“It’s an open fracture. The bone’s exposed. Do you know how easily something like that can get infected? Even if you can clean the infection out of the rest of his leg, if there are bacteria in the bone, he’ll still have problems.”

“I
said,
we’ll think of something,” Filo said darkly. He kept pressing.

In the morning, the wounds were just as inflamed as they’d been the night before, and Nasser’s fever was no better. Filo helped Nasser drain the wounds again. Then he and Henry left, off to look for the salt and the crystals.

While Filo and Henry were away, Lee had little to do but wrack her brain for a way to locate the salt or come up with a substitute and stare at Nasser. He’d accepted more powder so Filo could work on his leg, and now he was sleeping it off.

Lee knew he hated lying in that sleeping bag, unable to move his leg, unconscious half the time, but she almost preferred to see him like this. Even with the painkillers, when he was awake, he was uncomfortable, in some measure of pain. This way, at least he could rest. Not that rest seemed to be helping much.

She checked his temperature obsessively. His skin was always unnervingly hot to the touch. Fevers were good, she reminded herself. Heat killed infections. That was what his body was trying to do: burn away the infection. But the heat had to be controlled, or the fever would cook his brain. While he slept, she soaked a cloth in cold river water and wrapped it around his neck. It was the best she could do.

Filo and Henry returned just before dusk. They had neither the salt nor the crystals, but Filo was clutching a dead rabbit in one hand. Henry looked ill.

“We lost too much of the food,” Filo said flatly, before she could ask any questions. “It’s not going to last much longer, not with all of us eating it. Henry can eat the rest of what we brought, and we can start eating this.”

When he pulled out a knife, Henry excused himself. “I’m not going far,” he said to Lee, when she protested. His voice quavered slightly. “I just can’t be here for this.”

The dome of energy that sprang from the circle shimmered slightly when Henry passed through it, rippling like water. He disappeared into the trees. Lee hoped that he stayed close and returned soon. For a minute, she watched Filo skin and gut the rabbit in mute horror. He worked calmly, like this was a perfectly normal thing to do.

At a certain point, she had to turn away, her insides twisting. “Where’d you learn to
do
that?”

“Morgan taught me when I was a kid, with squirrels. She showed Alice, too.”

“Why?”

“She wanted us to have… certain skills. I guess she thought it was important.”

“Did she only teach you how to skin things, or did she teach you to kill them, too?”

The wet sounds of skinning stopped, and Lee could imagine him frowning. “I didn’t do it for fun, Lee.”

Suddenly, she recalled how he had looked after he killed the Bloody-Bones: weary, but resigned. She pictured him as a little boy, a knife in his hand and Morgan looking down at him with a hard, reproachful expression. In his life, he’d had to do things that had never entered Lee’s mind, things she had never had to worry about.

“I know,” she said, abashed. “I’m sorry. I’m just anxious.”

Soon enough, he was finished. Lee helped him make a spit out of some sticks, but she let him tie the rabbit and place it over the fire himself. She felt cowardly, but she still couldn’t bear to look at the creature for more than a moment.

When the rabbit was cooked, Filo cut the meat from it and divided it into piles. He filled the pot halfway with water from his own bottle and set it over the fire. Then he rummaged around in the horrific little pile of leftover rabbit parts that he hadn’t cooked. He came up with a few chunks of fat, which he tossed into the pot. He was making broth.

“Keep an eye on this, will you?” Filo asked, gathering the leftover parts in a cloth. “We’ll make Nasser drink some of it later. He should be able to keep it down.”

“Where are you going?”

“I need to bury this stuff and wash the all the crap off my hands. The river’s not far. You can go ahead and eat.”

“Okay. Be careful.”

He nodded and turned away.

“You’re kind of good at this,” Lee said, looking up at him. “Taking care of people.”

“No, I’m not,” he said plainly, and stepped through the ward, into the twilight.

At first, Lee hesitated. She had never eaten rabbit before. Somehow, she’d never really thought of rabbit as something that people normally ate. But, then, she hadn’t been a normal person for a long time, maybe ever.

She was thoughtfully chewing a piece of meat and monitoring the broth when Henry returned. She hurried to open the circle for him. They sat by the fire in silence, until Lee became aware of Henry looking at her sideways while she ate. Henry never ate meat, though he was fine with milk, eggs and the occasional fish. “Am I bothering you?”

“No,” he said, blushing. “Sorry. I just… I keep thinking about it.”

“Oh. Right.” He’d probably seen Filo kill the rabbit, and now she was eating it in front of him. “I hate to say it, but if we’re here much longer, you’re going to have to eat this stuff, too. I don’t trust any of the fruit or berries or anything else that grow around here.”

Of course, for all she knew, the animals weren’t safe to eat, either, but they needed protein, just as they needed water. It was a risk that had to be taken.

“I know,” he said, sounding miserable. “I’m not being a snob or anything. I understand that it’s necessary. It’s just different for you.”

“What do you mean?”

Henry grimaced and drew his knees up to his chest. “You can’t hear them.”

“She needs to take a break,” Henry said, watching the crystal swing back and forth, gleaming in the morning light. It always directed them the same way: forward, someplace farther than a few hours’ walk, someplace Filo was afraid to go as long as it meant leaving Nasser behind. “Get out of the ward for a few hours. She’s going to drive herself crazy.”

“That’s just Lee. She won’t want to leave him for long.” Filo sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Salt and sage, they’re a pair. Devoted to a fault.”

“Must be nice,” Henry mused quietly. “To have someone like that.”

Something rustled in the brush nearby. For the umpteenth time since yesterday, Filo thought of the rabbit and his skin crawled. He’d done it quickly. The rabbit didn’t suffer, yet guilt gnawed at him, to the point that he’d barely been able to eat. This wasn’t like him.

Filo stopped walking.

“I didn’t want to kill that rabbit,” he blurted. “I didn’t enjoy it at all. I don’t normally go around killing things. You’ve been looking at me weird ever since, but I’m not some deranged rabbit killer. I don’t want you to think I am.”

For a moment, Henry just stared. “That’s not it,” he said finally. “It’s just….”

“What?”

Henry studied the ground. “That was a part of you that I hadn’t seen before. I get why you did it. I understand. I don’t think you’re a bad person. I was just… surprised.”

“Surprised? That’s all?” Filo raised his eyebrows.

“And kind of horrified,” Henry admitted. “I’m dealing with it, though.”

Filo looked at him sidelong. “Are you?”

“Well, I’m trying to. You might give me more than a day.”

“Listen,” Filo said. “If there were another way, I would’ve taken it. But when there’s only one way…”

“You do it,” Henry finished. “And you don’t flinch.”

“I can’t afford to flinch.”

“I guess that’s the difference between us. I flinch at everything.”

“That’s not true.”

Henry shook his head. “I’m not like you. You can kill a rabbit and eat it if you have to. I would literally starve. That’s not a good thing.”

Filo opened his mouth to speak, but Henry silenced him with a kiss. At first, Filo went rigid with surprise. Then he let Henry pull him closer, and forgot what he had wanted to say. Henry was warm and solid and human, the realest thing in this strange, shimmering wood. For a moment, when his eyes were closed, Filo thought he caught the scent of the island: trees and wind and water. He floated in the darkness behind his eyes for a moment more, pretending there was nothing else.

“I don’t think you’re a deranged rabbit killer,” Henry muttered, a minute later. In the pale morning light, the green in his eyes looked hectic. “But I hate that you had to kill it. And I hate this place. And I hate that Clem—” He looked suddenly lost. “Jeezus, I just want to go home. But even if we could, we wouldn’t be able to fix anything there, either. It’s all gone to hell.”

He leaned his forehead against Filo’s shoulder. Filo hesitated for a moment, unsure of what to do. Slowly, carefully, he slid his arms around Henry, the way he thought Nasser might’ve, because that seemed to be what Henry wanted.

As he held Henry against him, though, Filo thought it might’ve been what
he
wanted, too.

Chapter Twenty-Four:

In Alice’s mind, the Guild had always been a distant shadow, far enough removed from her daily life that it never really concerned her. Just talking about the Guild made Filo anxious, but she’d always thought his worries were unwarranted. They were illegal, sure, but they were small-time. They weren’t hurting anyone. Surely, the Guild had bigger fish to fry.

And maybe it did, but that didn’t change the fact that a Guild member was standing on the porch, regarding them in an almost friendly way. She didn’t look like someone who would put out their eyes. For some reason, Alice found that unsettling.

“You really are Sighted.” Amelia raised her eyebrows as she looked them over. “Three of you, anyway. That’s what I gathered from the selkies, but I thought it was too unlikely to be true. I thought they were mistaken.”

Nobody replied. Alice thought of the way Nasser had only to look at Clementine, Henry and Davis to know that they had the Sight. He could tell based solely on the magical energy a person exerted into the air, the energy that flowed off of them all the time. He could feel it. Was this woman sensitive to energies like he was?

“I read a few reports about these islands before I came out here,” Amelia went on, peering around them and into the living room. “The apothecary called Brightly has been defunct for decades. There are no Sighted folk or practitioners on this island, only normal humans. That’s what the records say, anyway. Evidently, they need to be updated.”

Clementine bristled. She stepped to the side to block Amelia’s view of the inside of the house. “If you’re here to arrest us, then get on with it,” she said, blue fire kindling in her eyes. “See if you can.”

Amelia frowned. “I’m here to
help
you. If the Guild wanted you arrested, they would’ve sent someone else. That’s Seer work.”