Heaven is Other Roko INA part 8

"He's here, he's here!" A shadow passed along the ground as the avia flew overhead, calling.

As Shari's legs burned in pain, he ran. As his wounds seared, he ran. After he expended every last ounce of energy, he ran, and he ran, and he ran.

"He's here, he's here," the voice echoed between the massive structures, giving the reverb of the high-pitched squawking a sharp metallic ring.

Shari ran until there was nothing left but a cold sensation that demanded he move, but it was impossible for his body to respond. He looked, seeing blurry shadows of the collapsed walls around the ruins. He collapsed, wedged between a pile of rubble and the wall. He tried to pull his cloak over himself, but even with the will, neither of his arms moved any longer, nor his legs, nor his head, nor even his eyes.

I am going to die here.

Time passed. Shari was aware of its continual creep, but without grounding only knew that it passed, not how much nor how little. The continual timelessness seemed like a point after life where no time existed at all, but it was a mere shadow of the former material existence.

Large hands seized Shari's cloak. Startled, he made a feeble attempt at resistance, which amounted to him continuing to not move. His arms fell to the side, and he coughed, dust billowing from his mouth like fog on a cold day. His eyes were open only because they had never fully closed, but he saw nothing but a blurry, bluish expanse, and the shadow of a figure standing over him.

"It's the same kind of cloak, but I can't tell how black it is anymore."

"Check his back."

The hands shifted Shari to one side and lifted the cloak up. It hurt immensely, and in protest he continued to do nothing.

"That's the mark."

"Why in the first king's name can't you just kill me?" Shari said.

"He's trying to say something. Get him some water, now."

Wetness drenched Shari's lips. He coughed, and suddenly violent pain shot through him as he made the sudden motion. He turned his head away from the lip of the cup.

"Make him drink it!" the other one said. Shari recognized the voice: Captain Osoka.

Something primal awakened, and Shari suddenly had motion in his limbs again. He at once regretted this primal instinct, because it did not save him from any of the pain which now wracked his body. The farthest he got was a back motion that appeared more like an epileptic fit than an intentional movement. The one arm which was still good swiped at the canteen helplessly.

A robust hand seized Shari by the muzzle and held open his throat, and the lip of the canteen pried open his slack mouth the rest of the way. Shari sputtered, and coughed. Most of the water came out onto his chest, to prevent him from drowning, but enough of it ran past his cracked throat to cause the passages to swell with life again, and also radiate pain.

The one who was tending to him was the half-familiar face of the raku he had knocked unconscious during his escape. Behind him stood Captain Osoka, looking down with a peering judgmental glare, and beside him . . .

"I say we dunk his head in a bucket," the deeper-voiced female said, who Shari could not see

"Well don't; we don't need him going into shock," another female said. "He has heatstroke, fever, who knows what else."

"I'm not delirious," Shari said, and then yowled in pain as the full force of his broken arm came back to him.

Eventually, two soldiers in full armor came to the spot with a stretcher between them. Shari could make out nothing else, as everything his eyes were too dry to move. They took him to a building nearby; he could tell because the painful light above him turned dark, and though he wasn't even near relaxation it was a relief, like someone stamping out a noisy cricket.

"I have my own physician with me," Osoka said, "he can make sure the longears doesn't die before we get back."

"I'd rather there be a chance for his survival," said the strangely familiar, accented voice. "We must wait until we're certain he won't have any fatal complications! Or do you think waiting a few days will ruin your record for peacekeeping?"

"We have business to attend to back at New Haven," Osoka said, "if we chased down every ruffian who was in a hurry to impale himself on a stick--"

"You'd what? Lament that you have a job to do?"

"And my job is to enforce order, not play nursemaid!"

Shari didn't catch the rest of the argument.

Sometime later as lights outside dimmed, the muscles in his arm all twisted at once and he awoke. Firm but gentle hands were examining his left arm, which unlike the rest of his body was not shaved in patches and bandaged. Shari peeked at the female reynar from underneath a wet bladder full of ice. He knew her. Though the only details Shari caught at first were the obvious ones, the orange fur and the muzzle-mark, he started seeing the clean and even lines and the color of her eyes--

Shari blinked. "Princess?"

"Oh, you survived," Zure said. "I was almost certain you were going to fall into a coma."

"What the flea-ridden mongrel are you doing--"

Shari's body protested. Not to mention, as his blood was flowing again, a new wave of harsh memories flooded his mind and he saw with glaring vividness, as his arm cracked in half all over again, the body of the young panth splitting in two. Shari cried out, wrenching against his restraints and shouting, "Oh rot me!"

Instantly Zure jammed a thick wad of cloth into his mouth and held him up by his throat so he stopped sputtering, but also so his air passage would open up. "Lock your teeth together! If you need to cry, then cry, stop all this wailing."

"Mmph," Shari said.

Zure released the pressure, then took the cloth out of Shari's mouth. "I'd prefer it stay in there but you'd dehydrate even further."

Shari, though his eyes were weak and unfocused, took a better look at Zure as she worked; she was cleaning old wounds and bandages with methodical efficiency. She was not wearing the clean kimono he had seen her in at dinner, but something entirely practical, which was fairly close to what Shari had worn for his own travels, but made of heavier canvas rather than cotton, and all green and white rather than black. The same material covered her chest in a tight wrap.

"Ticks, longears, you'd have blood poisoning except by some miracle," she said.

"I-I didn't know you were a doctor, your highness," Shari said hoarsely.

Zure scoffed. "Not full-fledged. I only know some field medicine. In the name of the first king! You reopened this wound!"

"Where's your bedside manner?" Shari said. "I thought nobles were supposed to be elegant, at least when they're not drunk."

"You don't get bedside manner, you get honesty. You got your own fool self into this and you ought to have learned your mange-rotting lesson without becoming even more ungrateful in the process."

"I don't see how I'm being--OW!" Shari jumped as Zure ripped all the stitches out of his side.

"Ugh, there's pus everywhere. I think this wound needs to be drained."

"You mean you didn't know!? Why the rotting mange didn't you clean it out before--"

Zure then rolled Shari onto his side and liberally poured in an amount of antiseptic from a bottle. Shari wrenched from the sudden searing pain.

"OW YOU CRAZY--"

Zure jammed the wad of cloth back into his mouth. She then rolled him back into his back and twisted his head so that he looked at her directly.

"Look, you stupid longears. I don't like you. If I had my way you'd still be in that ditch by the inner wall, because you've said a lot of foolhardy, insulting things about me and my family, if not directly, then indirectly. I am only here because that idiot--"

She turned Shari's head so that he saw, in the dark corner of the room, prince Oda sleeping with his mouth hanging open, sitting in a chair that was leaned all the way back against a wall so far that it ought to have fallen over. He had a book on his chest which had fallen over on its open pages. He snored, the seat wobbled in its stance briefly, and his tail flickered about.

She turned Shari's head back. "--refused to let matters fall as they may. And if it wasn't for him, you'd be in the hands of Captain Bonecrown. I have agreed with my brother that you need to medical help before Bonecrown brings you back to New Haven, but I don't have to be gentle. Do you understand?"

The motion that Shari needed to perform to signal 'yes' was touch his finger to the tip of his muzzle, but since his hands were simultaneously bound and mostly useless, he simply twitched his nose. Zure removed the rag.

She removed form her pack a needle and thread, and began binding the wound all over again. The first jab of the needle made Shari jump again.

"I thought you said you'd be gentle!"

"That was gentle. Shut up."

After she applied another six stitches to the mostly shaved area, Zure went back to the task of reaffirming that all the other stitches and bandages were intact. After tapping her teeth at the sight of some of the wounds, she sighed. "Now to finally get back to this rotting arm . . . I don't mean it's literally rotting, you can wipe that look off your face. Then maybe we can work on actually getting some food in you."

"I'm . . . not really hungry," Shari said.

"You're going to have to eat. Besides, you know how a healing charm works, don't you?"

"A little. I've only had it applied for minor cuts and abrasions."

"If you don't know how they work, you'll waste your body's energy."

"What do you mean?" Shari asked.

"That energy has to come from somewhere, and biological energy can't be pulled straight from the Echo like fire or electricity; it's too subtle and complex. Healing pulls the energy it needs to function straight out of your own body. Have you ever broken a bone before?" Zure asked as she checked Shari's mostly useless left arm.

"No. At least not that I'm aware of."

"Even with magic, bones have to be set. If you use a healing rune and they're not set properly, they'll fuse in place. I am fairly certain that's what happened to your arm."

Shari winced. "Is it bad?"

"I don't believe it's recalcified. You can thank for that your poor diet of late, otherwise you'd need surgery. I will need to reset this as soon as possible, and I am warning you, it will hurt like wrenching a toenail off with a pair of pliers."

"Don't you have any anesthetic?!" Shari said quite desperately, though he was still completely exhausted and unable to protest any further.

"Yes, one. I'll give it to you on the condition that you don't vomit up a single thing I'm about to feed you, because you will need to eat before I can apply it."

To Shari, this seemed a simple enough proposition, so he agreed to it. Though when Zure brought out the bowl of simple lukewarm stew, the smell hit his nose, and his stomach turned.

"I wouldn't mind shoving a few of my fermented soybeans down your gullet, but that's technically too rich for you right now; this is about as simple as it gets. Rabbit stew."

"Tick and fleas . . . " Shari sighed.

He took a few breaths before they began. Though he ate it as obediently as he could, after closing his mouth around the wood spoon, his stomach protested. He had to force himself to swallow. While he didn't technically dislike the taste of rabbit, there was something about it that made the whole process feel unnatural. He just didn't like the idea of eating something with such similar properties to himself, but since he could say as much about all meat, he couldn't place what the exact objection was.

Still, he was able to swallow it. The first few bites went down as though he were overfeeding a full stomach, after the fourth his stomach went sour. He felt more than once his gag reflex trying to flood his throat with bile, but he wasn't even in a position to sit up; it would go nowhere. He turned his head away from the spoon that brought in the sixth bite in order to take several breaths until the queasy feeling stopped. He took a bite, and it started all over again.

Fortunately the bowl was not large, he'd only had to endure eleven bites, and there was even some potato which strangely helped the last leg of the trial. Zure let him lay there for nearly five minutes while she refilled the bladder full of ice again. He forced himself not to think about how much he wanted to vomit and how it'd feel really, really nice if he didn't vomit, because he didn't want his toenails ripped off.

"You're cruel, you know that?" Shari said dryly, looking up at her again.

"This is what the situation dictates," Zure said as she rummaged through her bag, "You might think me unkind, but sabotaging my own efforts to heal you wouldn't help either of us. Now hold still, if you're feeling even remotely neutral, I'm going to put you under."

Zure laid him firmly against the pillow, and placed the skin full of ice back over his head. Then she produced a small silver charm that looked quite familiar to Shari.