If Bitterblue had had any doubt that Saf was a sailor, his language now as he carried his gasping, glass-eyed friend up the steps laid those doubts to rest. Saf lowered Teddy to the ground, whipped his own shirt over his head and ripped it in half. In one motion that caused Teddy—and Bitterblue—to cry out, he yanked the blade from Teddy's abdomen. Then he pressed a wadded piece of shirt to the wound and snarled up at Bitterblue.
"Do you know the intersection of White Horse Alley and Bow Street?"
It was a location close to the castle, by the east wall. "Yes."
"A healer named Roke lives on the second story of the building on the southeast corner. Run and wake him and bring him to Teddy's shop."
"Where is Teddy's shop?"
"On Tinker Street near the fountain. Roke knows it."
"But that's very near here. Surely there's a healer closer—"
Teddy stirred and began to whimper. "Roke," he cried. "Tilda— tell Tilda and Bren—"
Saf barked at Bitterblue, "Roke is the only healer we can trust. Stop wasting time. Go!"
Bitterblue turned and tore through the streets, hoping that Saf's Grace, whatever it was, was a kind to help him keep Teddy alive for the next thirty minutes, because that was how long this relay was going to take her. Her mind spun. Why would a hooded man in a story room attack a writer and a thief of gargoyles and things already stolen? What had Teddy done for someone to want to hurt him this badly?
And then, after a few minutes of running, the question dropped away, her head cooled, and she began to realize the true desperation of the situation. Bitterblue knew about knife wounds. Katsa had taught her how to inflict them, and Katsa's cousin Prince Raffin, the heir to the Middluns throne and a medicine maker, had explained to her the limits of what healers could do. The knife in Teddy's gut had been low. Perhaps his lungs and his liver and maybe even his stomach were safe, but still, it had probably at least cut into his intestine. This could mean death even with a healer skilled enough to patch the holes, for the contents of Teddy's intestine even now could be spilling into his abdomen, and this would lead to an infection—fever, swelling, pain—that people rarely survived. If it came to that. He could also bleed to death.
Bitterblue had never heard of the healer Roke, and was in no position to judge his abilities. But she did know of one healer who had kept alive people with knives in their bellies: her own healer, Madlen, who was Graced, and who had a reputation for marvelous medicines and impossible surgical successes.
When Bitterblue reached the intersection of White Horse Alley and Bow Street, she kept running.
THE CASTLE INFIRMARY was on the ground floor, east of the great courtyard. Not knowing her way around, Bitterblue scurried like the shadow of a rat down a hallway and took a chance, thrusting Ashen's ring into the face of a member of the Monsean Guard who was drowsing under a wall lantern.
"Madlen!" she whispered. "Where?"
Startled, the man cleared his throat and gestured. "Down that corridor. Second door on the left."
A moment later she was in a dark bedroom shaking her healer out of sleep. Madlen woke, grunting strange, incomprehensible words that Bitterblue cut through sharply. "Madlen, it's the queen. Wake up, and dress for running, and bring whatever you need for a man with a blade in his gut."
There was the noise of fumbling, then a spark as Madlen lit a candle. She exploded out of bed, glared at Bitterblue with her single amber eye, and blundered across the room to her wardrobe, where she yanked on a pair of trousers. The ends of her nightgown hanging to her knees, her face glowing as palely as the gown, she began to toss a great number of vials and packages and horrible-looking sharp metal implements into a bag. "What part of his gut?"
"Lowish, and rightish, I think. The blade long and wide."
"How old the man, how big, and how far are we going?"
"I don't know, nineteen, twenty, and he's no unusual size— neither tall nor short, neither fat nor thin. Near the silver docks. Is it bad, Madlen?"
"Yes," she said, "it's bad. Lead the way, Lady Queen. I'm ready."
She was, perhaps, not ready in the traditional court sense of the word. She hadn't bothered with the eye patch she usually wore over her