Chương 320: Surviving

Quarl once mentioned to me that from a certain perspective, the quality of an assassin could be considered a sort of compliment. After all, you don't send an extremely good assassin after an enemy you don't respect. Some compliments I don't need. I can't feel my legs, I am staring at the well-lit ceiling and chandeliers, and everything is getting very far away very quickly. I'm not dead yet but I cannot afford to lose consciousness here.

The sounds around me are going stale and pale and quiet, I can tell I am just about to pass out. I've got time for only a couple of good decisions. Sorcery grabs at fabric, and yards of rayon cloth wrap my abdomen, stuff the wound, soak through with blood instantly. The sodden cloth keeps pressure on the ruptured vessels in my ruined abdomen, and I wrap heavy wool around myself with a grip that should have crushed me. I'm still channeling corundum, my ruby-red innards are also ruby-hard.

The only thing that kept me from being fully bisected. There is a big hole in me, but not nearly as bad as it was supposed to be; that explosion had been deafening and savage. The cottony stillness in my ears gives way to a tinnitus ring, sharp-pitched non-sound from my tormented eardrums. I can hear a lot of noise, like an amusement park. Wait, no, I'm hearing screaming wind and screaming voices. Not a rollercoaster, not an amusement park.

I rolled my head to the side, glanced around me, and I was sitting in the middle of a clearing a dozen yards across, with walls of howling gale winds surrounding me on all sides. On the other side of those walls, a chaos of fallen bodies and toppled chairs. It would seem that either the explosion that almost eviscerated me also tossed everyone else far away, or when I got hit I used my winds to get everyone away from me.

I dropped the walls, and now all I can hear is screaming, shouting, clattering, running, tumbling, and cursing, all under a thick layer of ringing. My legs won't move. I'm losing blood still, slowly leaking out of the tightly-bound dress that is wrapped around the gaping wound that goes completely through my body. And both Larianne and Rabert are definitely going to bring a shit-ton of "I told you so" if we all live through this.

A severed spine is less debilitating, because I can fly, so I start gingerly lifting myself off the ground. I had been laying in a pool of blood that spread out across the marble tile, and I stared down at it dumbly. I can see my silhouette in the blood- the position I had been laying in, clean tile now showing a Natalie-print inside the wide red oblong. My first thought is to take refuge with Licard, but it's a Sevenday and he's not on campus. No idea where to find him.

There's only one healer I know the home address for that would start mending me first before asking a hundred stupid questions. Good news: she's only several hundred miles away. The portal opens and I tumble through it. On the other side I leave the portal open because it's pitch dark out here and I'm too muzzy to concentrate on supernatural senses. I fling an arm and a barrage of oak-hard wind slams into the front door of Fwatta's cottage, slamming it back off its hinges.

I am not gentle or patient, I barge in like a stampede. All my manners just go away entirely if I only have half of my vital organs left. I have superhuman resilience, and I am on my last legs - correction, I don't even really have any legs at all right now, they are dead and hanging. I have to support them from beneath, or they start pulling my wounds open and more blood spills out. I saw how much was left on that floor. I don't think there's much left in me.

I'll look it up later but it really looked like most of a gallon was on that floor and frankly seeing that much of my crimson on the ground was truly terrifying. My biggest priority right now is getting to medical treatment before I pass out because as soon as I lose consciousness, all pressure comes off this wound and whatever blood I have left in me is all going to breach confinement at the same time.

Fortunately, my first choice for lifesaving procedures is moving really fast as soon as she hears someone bash open her front door. She's got a huge spiked morning-star mace brandished overhead and ready to murder as soon as she comes around the corner, and she's got a glint in her eye that is unique to women living alone in isolated areas who keep a morning-star mace within reach of their bedside at night.

Fortunately, there is nothing that spiked cudgel can do that is going to lower my chances of survival, so I am completely unintimidated by all those cruel-looking spikes.

"Sorry to bust your door, I'll fix it later," I said.

"I think I'm about to pass out." Perfect timing to fall unconscious right there and swoon elegantly onto the floor and wake up after being extensively cared for. But because not everything in my life is dictated by the convenience of romantasy tropes, I have too much blood in my body to pass out right at the most fitting moment.

"Oh no you don't you dummy," Fwatta the healer said, and grabbed me by the arm with a surprisingly strong grip. Her off-hand still held the morning-star as if she might decide to change her mind. I am confident that there have been people who have come to her for healing but have wound up buried shallowly under her flower garden. But I'm confident that she chose to put them there and it wasn't incompetence.

My insides started itching badly as the knitting flesh started to fill in the gaping wound, and the fresh new flesh pushed against the wadded cloth I had shoved in to stopper the blood.

"I'm gonna take this out now," I said, ready to make room for the healing process.

"Not yet," she said, gritting her teeth.

"I just barely closed most of the blood vessels. If you pull now, it's gonna be bad. Why is it always the middle of the night with you?"

"It's barely second candle!" I protested.

"Sun set was six hours ago! Sun rise is six hours from now! That's the middle!" she snapped, and set the morning-star down on a side table. I do not take for granted that she has decided I'm going to live through the night. She pulled her robe around her and tied the sash tight, glaring at me.

"First of all, how the fuck did you do this to yourself?" she said, gesturing at the wreckage that is my torso right now.

"And how are you still talking to me? This is just barely the second-worst injury you've come to me with." I looked down at the blood-red wadding that was strapped into my abdomen.

"Someone stabbed me with a weapon that then exploded. I seem to have badly underestimated exactly how much I have pissed off the royal family, and I already knew the answer was 'a lot'. I'm missing a lot of organs right now."

"And you're conscious? Talking? Sarcastic?" she demanded.

"I'm in shock, and it's not going to last long," I said.

"This happened just like two minutes ago. I promise you, I do not have an incredible pain threshold, as soon as my nerves untangle enough to start sending pain trains up to the station I am gonna cry like a baby." She started working on me, and I was exactly right. The shakes started first, and then I started feeling cold, and then finally the whole middle of my body all started tearing me apart.

I couldn't get a breath to scream properly because there wasn't enough pressure underneath my diaphragm, but I sure did try. The next several hours were terrible for her and incandescently agonizing for me. Every other time I've been hurt this badly I either passed out immediately, or I got my essence free of my body and was able to shut out the pain.

This time, I had to sit through the whole thing, I was still firmly in my body when the pain shot through like lightning, and I could not concentrate enough to get free. I wept, and I screamed, and I beat my fists against he table, and I bit down on my fingers just to have some other sensation so that the pain in my middle was not the only thing I was aware of.

Fwatta did not bother restraining me, just kept pushing that restorative energy into me and forcing my body to grow tissues, replace blood, mend ruptures, restore fractures, and so much more. The stabbing was bad enough, but a compressed explosion like that causes crush injuries, and I've mentioned before how horrible crush injuries from explosions are. They're the reason I am so careful with my voids in enclosed spaces. But the assassin that came after me did not have that same consideration.

Later I would be deeply concerned by the fact that my enemies do not have the same limits and scruples about overpressure injuries that I have. But for the rest of that night, I had other issues on my mind, like a truly life-altering amount of pain. Even with Fwatta rebuilding my body and keeping me alive, I was sure that just feeling this much pain was going to fundamentally change who I am as a person.

She was cranky from being woken up in the middle of the night, on top of being cranky as a general rule, and she was most displeased that I had come to her so grievously injured that it would take literally hours to repair me. I remember once hearing that if a healer needed more than twenty minutes to fix you, this is probably necromancy. Meaning that if it takes that long you have to already be dead. This is the second time for me, but the first event needed two weeks of restoration.

Compared to that, a few hours is easy. But only by that unique comparison. Hours later, she was slumped in a chair, quite wrung out and exhausted beyond measure. And I was laying on her dining table, quite wrung out and exhausted beyond measure. Most of the area was covered in drifts of bloody rags, some furniture was overturned, and there was debris from a hasty snack to restore her energy halfway through the process.

"Still don't understand how you were alive at all," she repeated.

"You had a hole right through you, big enough for me to put my fist through. People don't live through that."

"Sorcerers are durable," I said, my voice dull as I stared up at her rafters.

"And I got to you really quickly. And I had a pretty good idea what to do, pressure on the wound is ninety-percent of wound control. Most of the organs I was missing are the ones you can't survive without for more than a couple of hours, I still had heart and lungs and brain."

"Maybe there's just a higher power that wants you kept alive," she said, glaring at me. Her hair was stringy with sweat.

"Probably out of spite."

"Surely no benevolent reason," I agreed.

"If I were to sit up, would that hypothetically be all right? I'm not sure I can, but my curiosity is roused."

"Right now you're basically all just a single continuous bruise between your ribs and your hips, but you won't fall apart if you try," she said.

"I'm mostly sure."

"I'll test the theory later," I said, and instead of using my arms or abs to raise myself, I just applied some vertical lift and drifted upwards.

"Ow. Why do my shoulders hurt?"

"You kept scratching them with your nails," Fwatta said.

"Not the dumbest thing I've seen you do when you're in pain." I looked around us.

"Is all this my dress?"

"Most of it. You had the skirts and half a jacket filling your abdominal cavity when you arrived. I had to make cuts as I went."

"Fuck. That was a new jacket." I used small careful movements and the various fabrics lifted themselves from the floor. The dining-room table in her cottage was adjacent the kitchen, so I moved the blood-sodden rags to the sink and drew out cold water to start them washing. With just a bit of concentration the fabric refused to adhere to anything else, and the blood was left behind in the water.

"Your brother never puts me through anything like this," Fwatta pointed out.

"My brother is better at seeing things like this in advance," I sighed.

"I am rather more prone to finding out that I'm in danger five seconds late when I needed to be five minutes early."

"Have you considered just not making enemies?" she asked me.

"It works for most people. Hardly anyone ever gets injured as badly as this, so clearly this is something that you're doing wrong but everyone else is getting right." God that sounded so good. Just lay low and take it easy for a while. Take my time building alliances so that I don't have to take shortcuts and take chances. Find a way to accomplish my goals without dragging myself out into public perception.

"Unfortunately, my timeline is short and the work I need to do is vast," I said. The regret in my voice felt like granite in my chest.

"With so much to do, I need strong measures, fast results. Subtlety is a luxury I can't afford, and blatancy always incurs enemies." The clothes were dried, and started fitting themselves back together. The skirts and bodice were in shreds that took a long time to reassemble, I floated in my various undergarments.

"By the way," Fwatta said, pointing at my petticoats, "what exactly is all of that?"

"Tuille."

"Smartass," she snapped. She pointed again, at the lines of stitching that bounded the hem of my petticoats. The stitches were small and complicated, forming bent lines and careful angles, the thread soaked in various inks and dyes and sealed in a resin to keep it safe from the dangers of laundry.

"Those. What do they do?"

"They keep me safe, but only if they can be kept secret," I retorted.

"Anyway, I know my father does not pay you retaining fees any more, so I probably owe you whatever you charge for emergency house-calls."

"I believe you'll find my 'barging in and breaking my door in the middle of the night and keeping me up until dawn' rates are much higher than my usual emergency house-call rates." I gestured and fixed her door, and kept rebuilding my outfit.

"That certainly sounds fair," I said, still resigned, still exhausted.

"You know I'm good for it."

"Damn right you are," she snapped.

"Now, I want you to write down the location and details of every bloodbath and disaster you know of, as well as a safe refuge nearby. Everything you're certain of." I was too tired for this.

"What? Why?" There are many occasions I have irritated Fwatta. She is eminently irritable, and I am imminently irritating. The whole world rubs her the wrong way and I'm difficult even for people that have plenty of patience. I've made her annoyed, impatient, peevish, frustrated, testy, disgusted, and conflicted. But this was when I saw her angry.

"Because you know!" she half-shouted.

"Because you already can tell! Because the healers aren't like you piss-ant sorcerers, we have a guild and a newsletter! If I run a message back to the home office with my next payment of my dues, then they can arrange to have squads of healers on-site for whatever disasters you've already seen, you dumb bitch! Do you think I've somehow forgiven you for letting that house get burned down without telling me so I could have backup ready? I had to triage that whole massacre as the only healer present!

Took me two weeks to put you together, and I could have saved three other people if I had let you go, but all I could think about was all the people you might be able to save! You made me choose between people I could definitely save and people I might save, and you will never put me in that position again!" She was heated, slamming her fist onto the table. I swirled my clothes around me and onto me, and then I drifted downwards.

A chair slid across the floor to tuck itself underneath me, and I laid my hands on the tabletop.

"I did not know when that would happen. I was unable to help you on that night. But I truly do understand the pain you are in. You've made it your life's work to save lives, and you could not serve that purpose. Fine," I said.

"We'll make that list. But nothing I tell you goes to any other source. We are saving lives, and none of this gets leaked to anyone for any reason." The heat that boiled in her eyes was met by a deep, dull, endless chill in mine. I looked at her without hiding the things I have seen, and the burning anger she felt staggered against the permafrost that lives in me. She was mad about the people she could have saved. Welcome to my world, Fwatta. She's mad about a score of people from one night.

I have already failed to save a thousand times that number, and inevitably I will fail many more times. For the next three hours, I wrote down every detail about mass-casualty event I can guarantee is going to happen, and give my best suggestions for refuges that healers could shelter in, or convert into emergency clinics. As the list continued, as she started to see the numbers adding up, she started to understand the depth of regret that lives inside of me.

And the horror of knowing how precious every life is, when you understand how many you will be unable to save. I am paying back her favor by giving her an entire world to feel responsible for. I should not wish that onto anyone, but dammit, I really do need the help.