A Place To Bloom

Man Enough

Faren and I ran downstairs as fast as we could. Geraln was somewhere behind us. We came to the ground level, and he was doubled over the rail above us panting for breath. He pointed out the front door. "The constable... is outside!"

We raced beneath the ornate, stained-glass rosette, its colors dulled by candlelight and darkness outside.

A loud squawk.

Another one of those lizard-riding girls with the blue silk armbands found us. The lizard creature was upon us as we emerged from the doorway. My heart jumped at the sight of those teeth, but the girl on its back spoke to us before I could think. "Friend of Thisisweird?"

Faren and I nodded.

Her Herali had a thick accent, but we understood her. "He at medical place. This way."

She carried some kind of light on a stick, but it wasn't a torch; paper panes glowed brilliant white and didn't flicker even with the lizard carrying her at blistering speed through the darkness. Faren and I had no hope of keeping up. She stopped, looking back at us, only to move ahead as we caught up.

We sprinted past stacks of mud huts like dark domes on the right, with stone buildings like giant shadow monsters on the left. We raced through blurs of people towards the light, only for her to turn down another corner and race ahead.

And still we ran.

She stopped outside a long line of arches that sufficed for the ground floor of a building with a low amber coming from inside. I was winded, but Faren looked like he could keep running.

"He inside," the constable pointed. The lizard turned its head to point inside as well. There was no door, so we stepped through an arch.

We passed between two beds. On our left was a man with bandages wrapped around his head, with a large bundle of gauze secured to one side. On the right was a man who was naked but for a mass of bedsheets over his privates. His whole body was covered like one contiguous bruise from his head to his toes, and his skin sagged over his bones.

"Don't wake them!" a girl whispered from the side. She was one of the natives with the same dark-green skin and white hair, tall and lanky, and she couldn't have been more than thirteen.

Faren spoke first. "Is he—"

"Shh!" she snapped.

Davod, Kelint, and Rock crowded around a bed on the far corner of the medical ward, and they parted for us when we came close.

Ales was wrapped in white sheets with his back supported by several pillows. His head lay still to one side, his eyes were closed, and his chest lifted slowly up and down.

"What the hell happened?" Faren sat on the floor beside him.

Kelint answered. "Some kid was trying to take his coinpurse. Ales catches him, and some other kid knifes him in the back. This fucking place, man."

"Watch your mouth!" the girl shouted from halfway across the room.

Kelint shook his head and yawned. "I'm off to bed."

I looked Ales over. "Where did he get stabbed?"

Davod stood and reached over to show me. "That side."

He watched me in earnest while I knelt to study the wound.

I found a nearby candle and brought it close. To the left side behind his arm and around the area of his kidney was a line of scar with four sutures surrounded by round leech marks. My heart sank.

Davod looked intently at me. "What do you think?"

Crickets outside accompanied my thoughts. I felt the side of his neck, and he was hot. This was bad. "That's not a good place to get stabbed."