Ash and Quill(41)

"I'll be fine," Morgan said quietly. Her fingers brushed his, very lightly. "I've survived the Iron Tower. Willinger Beck doesn't frighten me."

"Still. Don't assume you're safe at any time." Wolfe's smile looked thin, and grim. "I don't assume we're safe here, either."

"He hasn't given you reason to think . . ."

"The doctor's done his best," Wolfe said, and swept a dismissive hand at best. "It isn't much. Without Morgan, we'd have lost Nic. Infection carries away many burned with Greek fire, even with modern Medica help. But whatever the doctor's intentions, he can't protect us from Beck."

And Santi had never been as vulnerable as he was right now, Jess thought. Wolfe referred to us, but he meant Santi, really. He meant that he would not be separated from him as long as Santi couldn't defend himself.

Morgan had been studying Santi closely, and now she said, quietly, "His fever's still high. I can concentrate the medications in his bloodstream a little more." With that, her fingers moved down a little, to brush the tattoo inked high on Santi's biceps: a lion that snarled in startlingly lifelike blue ink, as if it might leap out of the skin to defend the man. Tattoos were a High Garda tradition. Glain already had three. Jess's first was of a closed book on his chest, over his heart. He felt it described him best.

He felt sick now that he was watching Morgan expend more energy, but he knew he couldn't stop her if he tried.

"The captain will be all right," Jess said, which was an empty promise, and he knew it was a mistake the moment he said it.

Wolfe's gaze snapped to him with a blazing fury, and he said through gritted teeth, "Don't feed me platitudes. I know how bad it is. He protected me. He didn't hesitate, the second he knew we'd been hit with Greek fire. He pushed me down and took the burns for me."

That, Jess thought, was pure Santi. And here was Wolfe, with that knowledge shimmering like dull flames in his eyes. Hating himself for the sacrifice.

"He always protects you," Jess said. "He always will. You know that."

Wolfe blinked and looked away, toward his lover's sleeping face. He reached out and put a gentle hand on Santi's sweating brow. "I know. But I'm perfectly free to give him his Christian hell for it, too."

Morgan's face had drawn tense with effort and worry, and Jess could see a faint shimmer at the tips of her fingers where she touched Santi's shoulder. She breathed deep and closed her eyes and stood motionless-gone, in a sense. Lost to the rest of them until she came back of her own will.

"Leave her with us," Wolfe said. He was watching Jess now, as if he knew exactly what Jess was thinking. "I'll make sure she doesn't do too much, and she can have my bed there in the corner. I won't sleep anyway."

"Do you want us to stay?" Khalila asked him. "Would it help?"

He shook his head. "Go," he said. "I need you all alert and strong. We're not even beginning our struggles yet."

"Come on," Dario said quietly-Dario, of all of them, suddenly the sensible one. He tapped Thomas on the arm. "Scholar? Is there anything else we can do?"


      ///
       
         
       
        

"Pray," Wolfe said. "You can pray."

Jess was on his way to join the others when his steps slowed. The comfort of these cluttered shelves in the hallway . . . he couldn't quite understand it, but he couldn't deny it. He needed comfort just now, and he stopped to take in a deep breath of the smell of old paper, leather, books. A talisman against that fearful sickroom smell.

A volume caught his eye, and he pulled it out to look. The dull red leather was stamped Rose Red, Sea Blue. It was, he gathered from skimming the book, a novel . . . one about lovers separated by distance, each pining for the other but thinking the other had abandoned them. The man had been abducted out to sea, to serve on a pirate ship. The woman, thinking herself betrayed, had married another and regretted it. A needlessly dramatic story, no doubt overwritten and dripping with breathless prose, but there was something about it that offered an escape.

"Take it," a sleepy voice said. Jess nearly dropped the book, but his respect for the written word kept his grip firm as he spun around to find the tall, thin doctor standing there, yawning. His hair was out of the braid, spreading in a fine black silk sheet over his shoulders. He was wearing a loose shirt ghosted with old stains, and a pair of trousers that had seen far better decades. Feet thrust into rough leather sandals that looked painful.