Jonas’s hollering had Llew on her feet before she knew why.

The blanket tented as his stump rose, both his hands reaching to clasp at it. They overshot, clutched air and blanket where only a day before his knee would have been. He bellowed again, the grunt of pain joined by a wail of surprise and anguish, and he turned horrified eyes on her. Or was that plain, unbridled fear?

‘It hurts,’ he said, his voice pitched high. ‘It’s not there and it hurts!’

Llew didn’t know what to say. All she could do was grasp the bottle Rhaena had given her.

‘Maybe this will help.’

The laudanum had certainly helped Llew after Aris’s attack that left her severely wounded and her unborn children dead. The drug had also provided a distance between the event and her having to deal with the emotional scars. The least she could do was offer Jonas the same. She squeezed the rubber top, filling the glass tube.

After thumping his stump down on the bed repeatedly, Jonas managed to hold himself steady to accept the measure of laudanum, his hands gripping the sides of the bed, his breathing rapid and ragged. Growling through gritted teeth he continued to writhe restlessly, slapping his stump down, or drawing it up and reaching to clasp hands over a knee that wasn’t there anymore. Every time that happened, he flailed and looked to Llew, distressed. ‘How does it hurt so much when it’s not even there?’

‘I don’t know.’ Llew wished she could offer more, but she had nothing. She wished she could do more. Why couldn’t she heal him with a touch? She wished more than anything she could’ve done so before his leg became septic. They could’ve been most of the way to Quaver by now. If only . . .

After some time, Jonas ceased thrashing and lay back seemingly calm. His breathing was shallow and slow and his head lolled back on the bed.

Llew sat back down, heart still pounding, wishing things were different.

Footsteps on the stairs raised her heart rate further. Who in the house wouldn’t have heard Jonas’s wailing? Their vulnerability in this home settled heavily.

The hallway floorboards creaked. The door handle squeaked, the latch clicked, and Rhaena stepped through carrying a tray with a rack of toast, a bowl of eggs, and grapefruit halves. From the crook of her other arm hung her bag.

‘He woke?’ she asked as she crossed to the table by the window and placed the food tray on a clear corner.

Llew nodded. ‘He said it hurt. The bit that’s not there.’

‘Yes. That happens. Eat.’ Rhaena indicated the food and Llew didn’t hesitate – she was starving. ‘We’ll try to get food into him, too, but going by his reaction to the ether, he may not be able to keep much down for a day or two. I’ll send Elka up with some water, soon. And we will have a bath drawn for you in the room across the hall, allow you a few minutes to relax.’ Rhaena fit herself between the wall and Jonas’s bed so she still faced Llew and pulled a stethoscope from her bag, fitting it to her ears and warming the chestpiece by rubbing it in the palm of one hand.

Llew balanced one of the eggs in an egg cup and tapped around its crown with a teaspoon, scooped the top off the egg and filled her mouth with the liquid gold that held far more value that any metal in that moment. Rhaena listened to Jonas’s heart for a few seconds, folded and put away the stethoscope, placed the back of a hand to Jonas’s forehead, ran the back of her knuckles down his face. He was still coated in his feverish sheen. Rhaena pulled a cloth from her bag and brushed it across his skin. ‘I’ll send Elka up with water for that. No doubt he would appreciate being cleaned up, too.’ She stood from her ministrations watching Llew. Llew paused in her indulgence, looking back.

‘I would say this to him, but, well . . .’ she glanced at Jonas, who slept soundly, and turned back to Llew. ‘Thank you for landing on our doorstep. You have no idea how lucky we feel to have been able to offer our help to him.’ She pressed her lips together in some regret. ‘I am sorry for the type of intervention required. It can’t be easy for a man used to being so physically gifted.’

‘It’s all right—’ Llew began.

‘But we can offer some help, yet.’ Rhaena’s demeanor lightened. ‘My son, Rowan. He’s a cobbler by trade. He’s good with his hands, and his mind, well . . .’ Rhaena glanced around the walls of the room. ‘We should brighten up these walls with some of his artworks, shouldn’t we?’ She smiled again, though Llew wasn’t sure if she truly sought a response.

Llew focused on her egg. She had no intention of staying long enough for art on the walls to matter.

‘He built the frame for Elka’s leg that allows her to get around short distances without a crutch, and he’s made some basic prosthetics for some of my patients over the years. He adores his sister and has never been anything but supportive of her love for the Jonas stories. I believe he will be safe to bring in to help if you agree.’

Again, Llew wasn’t sure what to say. They’d had no choice but to stop here for help, but the fact they remained in the heart of Turhmos couldn’t be ignored. Still, this woman had performed surgery on Jonas, and he still lived, and while she had rendered him physically handicapped, she was now discussing helping him regain some of what he’d lost. Surely, Turhmos was home to more trustworthy people than just Merrid and Ard.

‘Of course, your friend is going to need several weeks to heal before he can make use of a prosthetic, but Rowan could start working on it now so it will be ready when Jonas is. I’m sure he will be keen to get back on his . . . foot as soon as possible.’

Llew watched Rhaena closely as she talked and found she had no reason not to take the woman at her word. Besides, surely, if she wished Jonas harm that would’ve happened by now. She glanced through the narrow gap between the curtains where the building across the street was visible. This home could never compare to the freedom offered by Merrid and Ard’s farm, but at least they were safe here for now, that much was clear. She turned back to Rhaena.

‘Thank you. Your son’s help would be appreciated. You’ll understand the danger Jonas is in while he’s incapacitated and remains in Turhmos.’

‘We do.’ Rhaena nodded, her expression sorrowful.

Llew took a deep breath. ‘I can help him heal faster, but we need to be careful. I can’t leave dead vegetation everywhere. That’s like painting a big sign saying ‘come find me’ everywhere I go.’

Rhaena froze with her mouth partly open, her eyes flicking over Llew. ‘Aenuk?’ She cocked her head, confused.

‘Yes.’

Rhaena took a few moments more to process that. ‘How did you—? And him—? This is—’

Llew shrugged. Gods – whether a singular Almighty, or a different one for every need – hadn’t been much of a feature in Cheer. Luck, or lack thereof, was dictated by one’s determination to keep digging for gold in a place already stripped. Or simply one’s definition of luck. Being able to feed herself and generally enjoy her place in life, Llew had considered herself pretty lucky, right up until Kynas had betrayed her. Since that moment, whether she was lucky or not seemed to change from one moment to the next. But she couldn’t deny she’d been lucky the day she’d met Jonas.

‘Wait. But he is Karan. Syakaran, even. Isn’t there something that stops Aenuks from healing Kara?’

‘The Aenuk-Karan barrier.’ Llew nodded. ‘But we’ve learned it’s possible for Kara to use Aenuk blood to heal themselves. We just need to get it into him, with syringes. But then I become a danger to anyone I touch until I’ve replaced the blood.’

Rhaena listened. ‘Which is a natural process, but how much does he need?’

Everything I have, possibly more. To Rhaena, Llew shrugged again and said, ‘I don’t think very much to close a surface wound, but . . .’ She glanced at Jonas and his newly shortened leg visible only by the soft folds of his blanket rounding off and lying flat on the bed where they should have rested over knee and shin.

‘That’s about all it is now,’ Rhaena said. ‘And the sooner you did so, the less likely it is he would acquire an infection. But there’s not much vegetation around here . . .’ She nodded to herself, biting her lip, then looked up at Llew again. ‘How much damage would it do, really, for a person to carry that injury? I mean, it is a nasty wound that anyone can heal from given time. I’ve seen them heal from vegetation. What kind of damage does the Aenuk touch do to flesh?’

‘It burns.’ Llew wasn’t sure how she felt about where this conversation was going. She wanted to heal Jonas, of course, and part of her was elated to be so close to doing so, but wounding someone else on purpose? ‘You saw the ones from the fight.’

‘Yes.’ Rhaena glanced at Jonas again. ‘So, if you were to accelerate his healing, we could just pick a place on my body for you to place your hand and you two would be free to continue on in your journey?’

Llew didn’t know what to say.

‘I can manage a minor burn. You could put it on my upper arm, or thigh. That might be better. Easy enough to keep covered under a dress, and unlikely to get rubbed raw in my line of work. And it would be gone in a matter of weeks, by which time you could be safely at home.’ Rhaena gripped Llew’s arm. ‘Let us help you.’

A sincere request Llew wanted to accept. But her mind filled with an image of the girl she’d never seen, playing in the grass south of Osurno, the life drained from her as she played, when Llew healed Cassidy; her father’s face in rictus, arm reaching, his hand still curved to fit Llew’s arm. If it really had been just a surface wound, Llew wouldn’t object, but there was bone damage, and the microorganism ravaging his body. She couldn’t guess what that would do to Rhaena.

‘I’m sorry, I can’t let you.’ She continued before Rhaena could protest. ‘There’s no way to guess how bad your injury might be. I’m not willing to risk it, and Jonas won’t be, either.’

Rhaena looked disappointed. ‘Well, the offer is there for you to consider.’

‘Thank you.’

‘No. Thank you for this opportunity.’ Rhaena brushed her hands down the front of her. ‘Elka and I have discussed the virtues of Aenuks her entire life. Both of us hoped, but neither dared dream we would meet one. And you . . . With him . . . We are honored, to say the least.’

‘It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,’ Llew murmured.

‘Our gifts are not always pleasant, but we mustn’t dwell on that side of them to the exclusion of the good we do.’

‘But you save lives, you don’t take them.’

‘Ah, but I have made my share of mistakes, and the cost has been dear,’ Rhaena said. ‘But the number of lives I have saved or improved far outweighs my failures. Tell me, how many lives have you saved?’

Llew shrugged. She couldn’t count Cassidy because she had failed to save him the second time, and she’d unknowingly killed the little girl. There had been Emylia, and Jonas, of course – a couple of times. And Ard, though she didn’t know if Ard couldn’t have healed on his own. And she supposed she could count her own, for what it was worth.

‘About as many as I’ve taken, if you only count human lives, I guess.’ She didn’t want to linger on the death she’d left behind on her first escape from Duffirk – including her own father. What if she’d killed these good people back then? ‘That’s just the way it works,’ she finished. There’s a reason few places outside Turhmos tolerate your kind, Aris’s words floated through Llew’s mind.

Rhaena’s smile was tight-lipped, understanding. She glanced at Jonas again and gathered her bag. ‘We will see you clean, fed, and well before we part ways.’ She rested a hand on Llew’s arm. ‘What you and he represent. We won’t let that die here. Not on our watch.’