11. The Wastrels' Inn

15th of Uirra, Continued

A shroud of foul-smelling yellow haze hung below the crumbling ceiling, and I covered my nose with my free hand. Men and women lay on every available flat surface, some of them passed out drunk or stupid with drugs, some of them still smoking pipes that stank of burning earth or drinking White Cloud from little clay cups. None of them even looked at us, their whole attention on escaping reality. 

I held my breath and led Arramy down the length of a front parlor in what probably used to be a private residence. There were too many people in the rooms we passed, so I kept going, shuffling us on through a dining room, then a sprawling kitchen, and finally into an empty back room – empty because it was a sun-room, and all the curtains had been torn down, rendering it far too bright for bloodshot, hung-over eyes while light was still pouring through the windows. 

I sat Arramy down on an overturned liquor crate that I pushed out into a relatively clean patch in the middle of the floor. 

"What are we doing here?" he asked, surveying the piles of mess everywhere. 

"We... are hiding in the last place the Coventry will think to look for us. I hope." I bent and began undoing the buckles on his vest, intending to slide the thing off of him so I could finally get a better look at the damage. 

Arramy watched my fingers. Then he reached up and caught my hands, holding them with surprising gentleness. 

I froze, my pulse skipping a beat.

"You're nai what I expected," he murmured, brogue thick. He was still looking at my fingers, now engulfed in his. Then he closed his eyes, his jaw knotting as he exhaled through his teeth and bent to rest his elbows on his knees, touching his forehead to the knuckles of his thumbs.

My hands were still caged in his, but I didn't pull away. It was an oddly penitent gesture, almost as if he were praying. Perplexed, I looked down at him, waiting.

There was purple and red nephi-alli streaked through his hair, and smears of clay-white on his cheek. Unbidden, my gaze slid over his features, seeing details I hadn't let myself notice before. The long angles of his cheekbones that suggested his mountain heritage, the sharp indents at the corners of his mouth. The slight cleft in his chin. Even the fact that his hair wasn't actually platinum, but sun-bleached wheat-blond going prematurely silver, was somehow... perfect... 

He's also bleeding. Staring will not help him. With a start, I cleared my throat. "We need to get you cleaned up."

Nodding, he let go, his shoulders bowing slightly as he sat up, his eyes still shut.

Silence fell between us, full of some nameless, wordless current, as if we had crossed a line somehow without even knowing where the line had been. It was ridiculous, but my heart still beat too hard as I began unbuckling his vest again. 

Once I had it open, I eased the right half of it down his arm before drawing it gently away from his back and then down his left arm. The whole left side of his shirt was soaked through, the blood dried to a dark, ugly brown at the edges. I bit my lip and bent to peer at those two neat, round holes, first the one below his ribs, then the other one in the highest part of his shoulder. That one had a bigger, slightly messier exit wound just above his collarbone, and I breathed a little prayer of thanks. Both of them could easily have been fatal, but somehow there he was, alive.

Gently, I tugged the tail end of his shirt free of his pants and peeled it off of his skin, wincing when I had to pull it free of a patch of dried blood. Arramy didn't do much more than hiss out a curse and duck his head through the neckline when I brought the back of his shirt all the way up. Then I rolled it down his arms and off, in the process getting an all-too-intimate view of faded scars that crisscrossed his shoulders, and the lean muscles chiseled beneath a deep tan that didn't end at his collar.

I was glad he still had his eyes closed because I promptly blushed to the roots of my hair. Annoyed, I ground my teeth and made myself look beyond him at something – anything – else while scouring my brain for a reasonable thought. Alcohol. I needed to find alcohol. Yes. That was one of the reasons I had wanted to find a place like this. There would be something alcohol related lying around somewhere. At least, there had been in the wastrel house near the docks in Garding that some of our sailors had frequented.

I tossed Arramy's ruined shirt on the floor and marched out into the kitchen. I had seen a man sleeping against the wall by the pantry, a fifth of cheap yellow-bird clutched loosely in his hands. The drunk didn't even stir when I pulled the bottle free of his limp fingers. I took a quick sniff of it just to make sure it was actually rye, wrinkled my nose at the unmistakable scent of 90 proof, then returned to the back room, all business, determined to look at nothing but bullet holes.

Arramy opened his eyes when he heard me coming, saw the yellow-bird, and lifted an eyebrow. "You really are full of surprises," he muttered as I moved around behind him. He dragged in a breath, swearing behind his teeth as I started splashing the liquor over the clean-through on his shoulder. 

The hole below his ribs had no exit wound, which meant the bullet was still in there. That one would have to wait until we got back to the plantation. I didn't have anything to get the round out with, and I certainly was no trained surgeon. The best I could do was a bandage. I handed Arramy the bottle of rye, then hiked up the hem of the ugly orange skirt and began tearing the ruffles off the top tier of my petticoat. 

Thought of the manor house brought me to another problem. 

"NaVarre didn't get out of the Stalwart," I said quietly. "The clothbadges were asking him questions. I think they might have arrested him."

Arramy took a swig of the yellow-bird, swallowed, shuddered, then released his breath on a short "Hah!" He nodded once as he lowered the bottle to the floor. "I know."

"What if he didn't make it out?" I asked, voicing a fear that had been growing larger and larger with every step we took. "What if we get back to the plantation and he's dead?" 

Arramy was quiet. Then he shook his head. "I don't know."

I tore the ruffle in half down its length, then tore each half in two again, draping them over my arm while I folded one of the strips into a pad that could cover the hole below his ribs. I held my hand out for the rye, taking it from him and dousing the pad with alcohol before placing it gently over the bullet wound. He had to hold it in place himself while I wrapped one of the other strips around his waist and tied it off. 

Then I bandaged his shoulder with another rye-soaked pad, crisscrossing another strip of cotton over his shoulder blades, under his arm and then around the opposite shoulder. When I was done, I grabbed his leather vest, rinsed the inside off with the liquor, and helped him slide it back on. It would protect the bandages and make it so much easier for me to think.

I was about to start working on a bandage for his leg when he shook his head. "It's fine." He pushed himself up off the footstool. "I've lived with worse. We need to keep going."

I stood there, fatigue and hunger roaring at me to sit down. Right there, where I was standing. I had been on my last wind when I found the wastrel house, and now that we had stopped running, the thought of running some more was enough to make my whole body ache. "Are you sure?" I asked, hating how desperate I sounded.

He stepped around me and limped for the doorway. "There will be roadblocks set up all the way to the nearest settlement by dawn."

I sighed. He was right. I looked down at my stolen slippers and sighed, my shoulders sagging as I imagined what it was going to feel like, walking all the way back to the plantation in those things. The thin cotton uppers had come loose from the equally thin soles, and my toes were poking through. I wanted to cry. 

Wearily, I turned to find Arramy down on one knee beside a woman who had passed out just inside the kitchen. He already had one of her shoes free and was working on the other one. The woman roused and mumbled something, swatting at him with clumsy hands. He fended her off, cruelly stripping off her half-boot even though she clearly didn't want him to. Then he swore as he heaved himself upright. 

"Here," he grunted, holding the shoes out to me. 

I groaned, hating what I was about to do. I was going to steal from someone who didn't have anything at all. Again. The shoes were shabby, and the heels were worn down, but they were better than the slippers. That was all that mattered. The slippers wouldn't get me out of Nim K, but the shoes would. Reluctantly, I let Arramy place the half-boots in my hands, ashamed of how easy it was to reason myself into thieving. 

Then, like a coward, I stepped into the parlor so I wouldn't have to see the woman's drug-dazed eyes as I pulled on her shoes. 

A few minutes later, Arramy and I set off, heading south and west. I used the last of the coin in my reticule to buy a wedge of cheese and half a loaf of hard bread at a street cart, and we ate it while we walked. 

We avoided a blockade by sneaking through the back yards of a row of rundown workhouses and kept out of sight by using alleys and side streets, always working our way closer and closer to the city wall. 

Hundreds of people might have been looking for us, but Nim K was large, and it sat at the mouth of the over-lush Ulba river delta. For all the new-fangled things the city was known for, nothing could keep the frontier forest at bay. It crowded up around the edges of everything, eager to reclaim any ground that was not routinely cleared. All we had to do was find a place where the boundary between civilization and wilderness had been allowed to thin, and we were gone, slinking into the trees like shadows.