into my channeling. What parts of me made up a trachea? What could I take to make him a new one?
He let out a wheezing gasp. Stopped breathing.
No, no, no. I was fine. I just needed a lung. I could live with one lung if I—
“No!” A pair of arms hooked under my armpits and hoisted me up. “He’s dead. Stop.”
The magic I had been channeling broke. My grip on Rainier loosened. Laurence dragged me away from the fight, and I dug my heels into the earth. He lifted me higher.
A man in gold armor atop a golden horse raised his hands and killed every Thornish soldier with a single sweep of the fighting arts, magic turning the air in their lungs to ash. My shriek tasted like funeral pyres.
“I can fix him,” I said. “No, no, Laurence, you can fix him. You have to. His trachea and his lungs and his hand. You can fix them.”
He yanked me back a final few paces and kept one arm firmly around my shoulders. “I can’t fix death. It nicked his heart, Emilie.”
“We’ll get him a new one.” I clawed at Laurence’s arm, and still he didn’t drop me. “We can make him a new one.”
“No,” Laurence said softly, “the price for that is something Rainier would not want us to pay.”
I sobbed. Laurence swung me up and carried me back to camp. It was alive with shouting and cheers, and he tucked me into a bed at the end of the infirmary. My hand was red and bloodied, the skin worn away, and an odd wound like that from an arrow in my palm. Laurence healed it and made me promise not to channel for a day. I only nodded.
A sharp, breath-stealing ache burned in my throat. Sébastien and Charles sprinted into the tent and skidded to a stop near my bed. Sébastien, eyes narrowed at me, slowed and opened his mouth. Laurence shook his head.
Rainier was the first hack to die in this new war against Kalthorne.
Sébastien sucked in a breath and turned to Charles who wrapped him in a hug. Both of them were worse for wear, hands twitching and skin raw from channeling. Laurence made them leave to recover Rainier’s body and make sure he was cared for. I stared at the Stareaters above.
“Emilie,” Laurence said, “listen to me—you cannot break your body down like that to save others. It will only leave you dead.”
“Rainier’s dead. What’s the difference?”
He sighed and rubbed his temples.
A shout went up from the beds near the opening of the infirmary tent. Henry XII was certainly as handsome as a king was meant to be, and he spoke like he expected us to watch his face and not listen to his words. His hair was a sunny gold held back loosely with a gold tie, and his expressive mouth was easy to get distracted by. Each emotion, each scowl and triumph smile, rippled across his face like river water. Ice-blue eyes flickered from face to face. He spoke to each patient in turn, largely ignoring the hacks. His gaze glided over them the same way it glanced over scalpels or potentially interesting salves. He would have ignored Rainier.
He had. It had been so easy for him to stop that attack. Why hadn’t he done so sooner? We shouldn’t even be here.
Laurence clamped a hand over my mouth. “Do not say what you are thinking to him.”
“Rainer and a lot of others are dead because of him,” I whispered into Laurence’s palm. “More will die.”
“And saying so now will help nothing but your pride.” Laurence removed his hand. “Why do you think I never talk politics?”
“Because you don’t care.”
What a privilege we nobles had to simply not deal with politics when they so rarely affected us poorly.
“Because when I did, my uncle didn’t like my politics, and I’m not fool enough to think he doesn’t have scryers listening to me now.” He set one hand on my shoulder. “If you move against the king, he will crush you, and he will crush anyone he thinks agrees with you. He will gain popularity. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
Laurence hated politics. He avoided it, driving his peers to postpone passing laws as he missed court dates and ignored summonses, and I couldn’t understand him saying this to me.
His Majesty spoke to everyone injured but me. When he looked up and saw Laurence, he threw up his arms.
“You were supposed to be healing Waleran,” said His Most Bright