Book One – Chapter 18

Between Bubs and Deltington stood two trolleys of instruments. Deltington was in the midst of trading one for another: setting aside clamps slick with red, laying out finer ones with hooked ends, which Bubs picked up moments after. To trained eyes, the more intricate devices would stand out as screw-bar frames to bind bone fragments in place, and slender rods with tightening rings to hold alignment. To Yu, they looked like torture devices. Beside them, the simpler things sat waiting in neat order; rolls of bandage, layered compresses, stoppered vials, and a pot of tar-like salve.

Deltington’s hands moved with practiced care as he took up and aligned a bracing frame against the leg. He placed it just above where Bubs still worked to prise away the last strip of splint and then began to tighten individual screws. It looked to Yu like a first attempt to hold the bone edges steady and slow the bleeding without blocking Bubs’ work. Deltington appeared focused on precision, yet his right wing slowly curved outward and down, folding around Bubs’ stool from behind. Bubs was closer to the door, which meant that Deltington’s wing was between him and the borman, now covering the mianid up to his legs. Gradually, the dark tones on the membrane gained brighter hues. They flared with restless colour, deep blue giving way to streaks of biting yellow and orange. And then Yu heard him talk to Estingar.

“I watch,” the borman rumbled.

“I want my workspace clean. You are not,” Bubs replied, still bent over the human’s leg, never looking up. Even standing on the stool, he barely reached the giant’s hip. “You leave now.”

“No.” The voice was deep, immovable. “I stay here. Not in the workspace. I watch in the door.”

“No. That is enough.” Bubs pulled back. He withdrew his hands and instruments from the human’s leg. He held them out in front, bloody fingers dripping in the orblight. The girl whimpered.

Deltington, too, halted. For a moment, the brace sagged loose between his claws, then he shifted his hold. One hand still gripped the leg, the other the frame. It was the only thing keeping the human from thrashing and tearing it right off. But the pressure slackened, and with it the wound gaped wide. Blood ran freely now, crawling across the stone and staining the gray suface in vivid smears of dying.

Yet Bubs and Deltington did nothing. They only stood and stared at the borman, while the girl withered in her straps, spilling blood and breath by the moment.