Page 55
She scrambles for the door and disappears, her bare feet slapping down the wooden stairs hard enough to rattle the boards.
“Lard,” Iscairn says, but I’m already reaching for it.
I scoop a generous amount from the pot and spread it over the raw stump, along with the fresh honey, while Iscairn holds it steady. Once the exposed flesh is covered, I wind clean linen firmly around it and tie off the final strip. There’s no fresh blood seeping through, which is something, I suppose, though Luke himself looks little better for our efforts.
Iscairn checks the binding before curling two blood-slick fingers in my direction.
I edge around the bed until my hip’s almost pressed against his side, leaning in to watch as he lowers one gloved hand to Luke’s chest. The broad brim of his hat cuts across the candlelight, making it difficult to see what he’s doing, and for several seconds I wonder if anything’s going to happen at all. Then Luke draws a deeper breath, and a tiny glimmer of blue appears beneath Iscairn’s fingertips.
“There,” I whisper, leaning closer.
The blue seeps from his fingertips in fine, wavering threads, each one disappearing into Luke’s chest before another takes its place. It’s nothing like the great stream I saw leave Alice Fletcher, nor the little flicker that entered Nell Mercer. Here, it gathers slowly beneath the flesh, spreading between Luke’s ribs until his chest begins to glow.
I’d thought it was simply light before, but up close, there are hundreds of tiny flecks moving within it, no bigger than dust caught in a shaft of sunlight. They shift with every sluggish beat of Luke’s heart, scattering beneath his ribs before gathering again, and after watching them for a little while, I realise they aren’t all quite the same colour. Luke’s own blue is terribly faint, barely holding together, while Iscairn’s is brighter, slipping steadily into it until the two become so thoroughly mingled that I can no longer tell which belongs to whom.
Oh. It’s beautiful.
Bare feet slap against the stairs below, and Iscairn lifts his head, the last little flecks fading beneath his glove. By the time Melissa reaches the landing, there’s nothing left to see but a man missing an arm who looks considerably better than he did five minutes ago. Not well, by any means, but there’s colour in his cheeks that isn’t green, and he’s breathing.
Iscairn removes his hand from Luke’s chest and reaches for the bloodied linen as though nothing remotely unusual has happened. I follow his example, turning towards Melissa as she hurries through the doorway with an armful of blankets.
“Good. Put the warm stones here.”
She moves towards the bed, and I step aside to give her room, though my thoughts are still occupied by those beautiful little flecks of blue.
I shall have to ask Iscairn to show me that again.
Preferably when we haven’t just sawn a man’s arm off.
“Does it deplete you?” I ask, picking a stubborn flake of shell from the boiled egg Melissa pressed into my hand before we left.
The egg’s gone freezing cold, but I take a bite anyway, looking up at him. The bruised slate of the afternoon sky catches across his amber lenses. He shows no sign of fatigue as his boots crunch steadily down the frozen sheep track, the gore from Luke’s arm already drying to a stiff, black crust across the front of his leather apron.
“Giving it away?” I clarify, swallowing the mouthful. “The light.”
“A cup of water drawn from a cistern does not empty the well,” he says smoothly, the words muffled between the wind and his mask. “Though I prefer not to make a habit of spilling it on every shepherd who cannot manage his shears.”
I worry another piece of shell loose with my thumbnail. “Thank you, by the way. For showing me the soulglimmer.”
His beak turns slightly towards me. “You asked me to do something.”
“Yes, and people have refused me perfectly reasonable requests before. Usually Gideon, although, in fairness, most of mine involve him abandoning the church and developing a more useful occupation.”
“I find it difficult to imagine anyone refusing you anything.”
I glance sideways at him, trying to decide whether he’s complimented or insulted me. But before I can demand clarification, the sheep track spills out beside the old mill and splits around a stand of bare alder. It was perfectly passable when we came this way earlier, the morning frost holding the ground firm beneath our boots. Somewhere in the hours since, the cold has eased just enough for the surface to soften, and a flock has been driven through after us, hundreds of little hooves churning the ground into a black, sodden mess all the way down towards the brook.
My stomach dips as I look the other way. That path is much nicer. Gravelled and blessedly flat, though nearly a mile longer.
I know perfectly well that I ought to take it, yet I remain rooted to the spot.
Because it runs right past the well.
No, you’re being stupid.
Billy Mercer is gone. The girl he shoved into that well isn’t the woman here today, and nothing waits beside it now except dead moss and whatever beetles have made their home between the cracks. I am thirty-one years old. I have spent the afternoon helping cut a man’s arm from his body. I am not endangering myself on a slushy death trap because of a hole in the ground.
Pox on it.
