Once Wrench had passed out, his copaq wound slathered in hyliha paste, and as much water as he could safely drink in his stomach, Jaid had sighed and slumped back against the wall. The woman, stubborn as she was, having been dealing with Adveni-made wounds for a decade, refused to thank Jacob for his input.
“We’ll see how he’s doing in the morning,” she insisted. “Better not to get our hopes up too high.”
It wasn’t long before Jaid left to go back to her husband, currently being watched over by a guard she’d dragged from duty. Georgianna had grinned in amusement, not only wondering what Beck would think about one of his guards being pulled off duty, but also what the guard themselves had thought about being used as a glorified babysitter. She decided it was best not to comment though. If Jaid hadn’t been there, who knew what would have happened. Georgianna also doubted that any Belsa would comment on it so soon after Jaid had partially lost her husband to the madness of the heat thanks to a Belsa mission nobody knew the details of.
With Wrench passed out on the bed, Georgianna cleared away the bucket and cloth. She closed the wooden box of hyliha powder and tucked it into the top of her bag. She would ask Lacie to make another batch, knowing now how useful it could be. She’d probably test a few other things, but as hyliha was so readily available throughout most of the year, it seemed an incredibly useful trick to know.
Taking a seat on one of the beds, Georgianna pulled out a journal from her bag, its horse-hide cover no longer crinkling in protest the way it used to, worn and supple with years of use. Her brother had given it to her as a present when she chose to take her training as a medic, a place for her to record all she had learned. The inside paper had been changed out three times since she had received the gift. Once when Georgianna was fifteen and the book had been so full of notes that she couldn’t fit any more into it, not even around the edges where she scribbled tiny things to remember. Georgianna had spent an entire freeze down in Nyvalau organising and rewriting the notes in order.
The next time had been when she completed her training and now, once again the book was full. Georgianna had separated the journal into different sections, one for procedures, one for supplies and their uses, a section for things Georgianna wanted to learn how to do, and one for everything else. Flicking through to the supplies section, she noted down hyliha’s use for copaq wounds before she found the section on copaq wounds and added hyliha, circling it a couple of times.
Georgianna looked up, her gaze landing on Jacob who was swirling his finger around in the hyliha paste, leaning against the wall. Moving herself to the end of the bed, Georgianna smiled at Jacob and nodded to the space next to her. He considered for a moment before he walked slowly over, perching himself delicately on the edge.
“How did you know about the hyliha, Jake?” she asked, closing her journal and replacing it into her bag. “Have you…”
“Not with a copaq,” Jacob answered, cutting her off, though he didn’t look up from the paste. “The cinystalq has the same sort of charge as a copaq.”
Georgianna glanced at the burn on Jacob’s neck, a white scar running down from beneath his ear until it disappeared under his shirt.
“Will his be like that?” Georgianna asked, nodding towards his neck.
Jacob rested the bowl in his lap and reached up, covering the wound protectively.
“No,” he answered. “This wasn’t nearly as bad before they removed the collar.”
“It wasn’t made by them removing it?”
“That made it worse,” he explained. “But I already uh… I had a number of burns there from… from Uyinagh.”
YOU ARE READING
Dead and Buryd
Научная фантастика"You are an inmate, not a medic. You should get used to that." On the planet Os-Veruh, the native Veniche have endured a decade under the oppressive rule of a race of invaders, the Adveni. When Georgianna Lennox, a Veniche medic, discovers her child...
