Pain was the first sensation I became aware of. An ache pounded in my head, and agony shot up and down my leg. My mouth tasted of something bitter and thick. I heard myself groan and tried to open my eyes.
“Rasheed? I need your help.” Aban’s voice, but everything was fuzzy and dark.
I blinked repeatedly, and my vision returned, though it remained blurry on the edges. A few more blinks, and it cleared. I was in a room of stone. Gil lay to one side of me with his eyes closed. His chest moved, so he was alive. Aban was on the other side of me, kneeling over Sebastie. The side of Aban’s face was swollen and bloody. Sebastie, like Gil, had his eyes closed, squeezed shut, but the tension in his face showed pain, not sleep.
I pushed myself up. “What happened?”
“Bertaldo’s men attacked us.” Aban’s chin quivered, and he swallowed hard. “We just had our practice swords. Sebastie still managed to knock two of them out, but one of them cut him. They had steel instead of wood.”
“Where?” Little light made it through the cell’s single barred window.
“Here.”Aban had one hand over the injury, holding a blood-soaked cloth to Sebastie’s lower abdomen.
I pulled the cloth back a little to see how bad the bleeding was. Warm, sticky fluid continued to leak, but the flow wasn’t strong. Its depth, however, made my breath catch. All the way through the muscle and into the intestines. I put the cloth back over the wound. “Keep the pressure on it,” I told Aban.
I moved closer to Sebastie’s head. “Can you hear me, Sebastie?”
His eyes opened, and he forced a smile. “Rasheed.”
“How do you feel?”
“Tell me what you saw.” Each word was measured and distinct. “Did it go through to the gut?”
I wanted to lie, but I’d known Sebastie for a long time, and lying wouldn’t change facts. “Yes.”
“We both know what that means.”
I swallowed. It meant death—either quickly or slowly. “How can I make you more comfortable?” The room had no furniture, just a bucket to one side and a bit of dirty straw.
“I’m cold.”
I took my cloak off and laid it on top of him. Aban did the same with his kaftan. I fought dizziness and shooting pain as I stood. The dizziness I blamed on whatever had been in the sleeping draught Bertaldo had given me. The pain in the leg probably meant Bertaldo’s men hadn’t been gentle. I hadn’t been so gentle with it either over the last week. I limped around the room to see if the walls were perhaps less formidable than they looked, but the mortar was solid, as were the stones, and the door was thick and bolted shut.
Gil groaned and put a hand to his head. Long moments went by as he went from groggy to mostly lucid. “Do the Catalans have us or the Venetians?”
“The Catalans.” Aban was barely visible in the darkness of the cell. “Bertaldo’s men tied me up, and then they brought you two out and tossed you in a cart. The Catalans came after that and drove us to a different villa.”
“Where’s Sebastie?” Gil pushed himself from the cell floor.
“I’m here.” His voice was a husky whisper infused with pain and weariness.
Gil’s face fell as he went closer. “Wounded?”
“Yes.”
“How bad is it?”
“Deep enough that I’ll die.”
Gil put a hand on Sebastie’s forehead. “You’re feverish already. How long was I out?”
“All afternoon,” Aban said.
I sat beside Aban and held Sebastie’s hand. Those hands—the most skilled I’d ever seen when it came to using a sword. But skill alone couldn’t achieve victory when the enemy had superior weapons and superior numbers. Or when someone like me was stupid enough to drink what a man like Bertaldo put in front of him.
“Do you think he always meant to betray us?” I asked.
Gil sat back on his heels. “I think he received an offer from the Catalans and felt getting Querini back was more important than keeping his word.”
“I might have made it worse.” I swallowed. “He solved two problems by betraying us: rescuing Querini and getting me away from his niece.”
“He would have betrayed us anyway.” I wasn’t sure if Gil’s words were true or not. I didn’t know Bertaldo well enough, but I suspected he would do what was best for Venice, even if it meant lies and betrayal. Even if it meant former allies who had saved his life in Thebes ended up in their enemy’s dungeon.
Gil pushed Sebastie’s damp hair back from his forehead. “What can we do? Shall we pray with you?”
Sebastie’s voice was only a whisper. “Yes.”
I said the Paternoster, and Gil said the Ave Maria. Even Aban prayed in his way. I went to the bars in the door’s window and asked for a priest, but I could see no guards, and no one answered my calls.
“Will you sing?” Sebastie asked Gil. “I want to hear Euskara again before I die.”
If Sebastie had asked me, I wouldn’t have been able to do it—I could sing but not when grief was so heavy and hope so distant. Gil could sing no matter what emotions were weighing him down, could use music to change how everyone around him felt.
The lyrics were in the Basque language Gil and Sebastie had learned from birth. I knew only a few words, but I recognized the tune. I’d heard Gil sing it before. The haunting melody was like the final trumpet in a city about to fall to siege or the last call of a bird newly pierced with an arrow.
Aban wiped at his eyes. I pretended not to notice. I held one of Sebastie’s hands, and Gil held the other. Gil sang one song and then a second, and by the time that one was finished, Sebastie exhaled for the last time with a breath that sounded like a sigh.