Leah’s experiences in hospitals of this era are limited to magical ones; even Wellen’s cures had been mainly magical. Valerin’s sick-ward is very different.

She can hear footsteps rushing past above them, guards shouting. No more stone-shattering explosions happen, though from fresh arrivals of people choking through burning throats she knows there are still smoke-bombs being thrown in.

Most are getting treated for the pain first; willow tea, for what little good it does, and strong alcohol for those with serious wounds. Leah wishes she knew more about the science of her world – What does penicillin look like? Where does morphine come from? Is lye soap actually enough to sterilise your hands?

“Leah?”

She turns to the source of her name, and starts a little to find Lady Valerid kneeling next to a pallet. The man on the bed writhes around his arm, which has shrapnel pieces imbedded deeply in it, and sizzling burns around the bloody edges. Lady Valerid is struggling to hold him down.

Leah steps over and kneels on the man’s other side, helping to pin him down. “My Lady,” she says, nodding.

“What are you – ”

“Don’t use water to wash away the powder; it only makes it burn more,” she says, reaching over to examine the arm. Three shards of metal stick out of it, jagged and hot to the touch. “Can we remove these?”

The Lady – Baroness, I suppose? – looks Leah over carefully, then nods. “Keep him still.”

Leah readjusts her grip, and cuts off a leather strap from the man’s armour. “Bite,” she says, and the man does, face scrunched in pain, not seeing.

So begins the first of six hours.

*

The Baroness’s yellow and blue robes are brown and red at the hems, trailing in the blood and dirt. By the end of the first hour, she has discarded her outer layer and put on a guard’s jacket, heavy dark leather over the wool of her shirt and the linen of her pants.

Leah does whatever task she can find; mopping the blood off the wood plank floors, washing out bandages and setting them to dry, holding down struggling patients, fetching more water to boil. These last two eventually become her principal use, as she is the only person in the room strong enough to hold down some of the guards who are brought in, or to carry two full cauldrons of water over her shoulders up from the river. Even when her magic protections expire, and her heart resumes its normal rate, she continues taking the heavy tasks, wincing through the burning at the back of her nose and the corners of her eyes.

The chemical attack lets up after an hour, with occasional extra bombs thrown in to keep the guards on alert. They receive word that the Devadiss ships have docked on the mainland, and are unloading barrels onto carts. Leah instructs the guards to start handing out strips of fabric to be worn over the nose and mouth, to protect against the smoke and whatever else might come after it.

“Leah,” someone calls, and she turns to help; a man has gone into convulsions, choking on his own tongue, his lips blistered and burnt. Leah holds him down while the medic tries to reopen his airway.

A tracheotomy, Leah remembers suddenly. Cut open the throat, just a tiny bit, and put a tube in. Could I do it? Not knowing how?

The man nearly wrenches free of her grip, trying to claw at his own throat. His face is turning purple. Leah remembers the dream-memory of the man with the healing potion, and feels the empty flask rattle at her hip. She holds the man down until he stops resisting, and the medic gives up with a curse and a call for the body to be removed.

So begins the second hour of six.

*

Leah grinds the mortar and pestle with shaking hands, then holds the bowl out for the medic to apply a new layer of salve to the cracked, burnt skin of a guard’s legs. He’d had to be carried in by two of his fellows, who said the man had tried to carry a missive to the fishing boats only for the water around them to erupt with flame. The fisherman was not brought in.

“Like what happened by the Shining Island,” Leah says grimly, and one of the guards casts a vicious glance at her.

“Why is she helping?” he asks.

The medic glares at him, but he doesn’t notice.

“Would you ask me to stop?” Leah says bitterly, adding another round of herbs to the mortar and grinding them. “I would, if you asked.”

The guard bites his tongue but continues to glare.

The Baroness steps in and sweeps the two guards out of the room, insisting that they not take up space unnecessarily. One of them mimes spitting at the floor by Leah’s feet, and she ignores them.

The man on the ground moans faintly, and the medic offers him a glass of clear alcohol. He drinks it and lays back, eyes closed, jaw slack.

So begins the third hour of six.

*

The sun is setting, and Leah is teetering a bit on her feet, eyes bleary.

“You need rest,” Lady Valerid says, taking her arm gently and leading her to the far end of the room, where a few of the medics have already collapsed into exhausted piles.

“It’s just a few more hours,” Leah says, blinking hard. “I can manage.”

The Baroness presses a cup of coffee into her hands – Allongé, Leah thinks as she sips, ridiculously so. There’s less caffeine in this than there is in chocolate.

“We’re low on water,” one of the other assistants says; a servant, young and red-eyed. Leah nods and stands, handing back the cup.

The path to the river is empty of soldiers. The door opens out onto a riverbank coated with ash and dead fish, the water running grimy out to a few feet distance. Leah wades out and reaches to fill the cauldrons as far from shore as she can get, trying for the cleanest water.

Archers on the bridge fire at her, but she is out of range. She lifts a middle finger towards them, then puts the two cauldrons on the wooden yoke, hefting it over her shoulders. The weight of the yoke sits uneasily over her pauldrons, but she does not want to risk taking the armour off – it is cleaner than the borrowed guards’ clothing she wore when she started her shift, at this point, and better protection against the few arrows that do make it as far as the island’s shore.

She has to walk sideways through the passages until she gets to the hospital, torso twisted. Her wound twinges, but she has grown quite good at ignoring it.

She deposits the cauldrons next to the fireplace, which is starting to run low on wood. She lingers a moment, the heat taking some of the chill out of her soaked feet.

Lady Valerid returns her cup to her, and Leah takes a sip, frowning; it is already lukewarm.

So begins the fourth hour of six.

*

Leah toys distractedly with the silver charm etched with a phi. Not long to go. I can get six hours of wakefulness, but I want to be able to use them all. I’ve got to save this for right before back-up arrives. Afram.

The cook comes up from the kitchen, carrying another load of wood. A kitchen boy trails behind her, heading to Leah with his bundles of herbs. Leah accepts them, and takes them over to the medic’s table, to be sorted through, in case any of them might be useful.

Another faint pop is heard from the courtyard; another smoke bomb going off, just to keep everyone on their toes. Leah sighs and pre-emptively starts setting up the clean padding that will go over the patients’ eyes.

A guard stumbles in, carrying someone, and Leah gestures to the nearest fresh pallet before doing a double-take. Don’t be her, don’t be her…oh fucking hell. Leah hurries over and takes Iris’s other arm, helping to lay her down on the pallet.

The familiar stylised armour is scratched and charred, the fine detailing obscured by a trail of blood. “Lime bomb,” the guard says, brushing the hair away from Iris’s face; a bit of powder has settled over her skin, but not much.

Leah grabs the dry rags and starts wiping it off, short strokes always away from any moist skin. “Anyone else hit?”

“It landed on the roof of the garrison, and she kicked it back right before it exploded. It went off in the air.”

A medic comes over to help, and starts removing the armour. They quickly find the source of the blood; a shrapnel piece, wedged between her jawbone and her neck, half-hidden by the thick wool collar of her shirt.

Leah steadies her breathing with effort, not taking her eyes off the thin metal shard. What are the odds it will just start gushing if we remove it? How close is it to the artery?

The medic calls Iris’s name a few times, but she does not respond. He checks her pulse, then pulls open a lid to look at her eye. “Blood loss,” he says, “Or she’s concussed.” He carefully grabs the shrapnel with a pair of leather gloves, and withdraws it.

Leah nearly passes out, but holds on, eyes focused on Iris’s face. Blood swells, but dribbles weakly, not in the forceful spurts she was fearing. Taking Iris’s wrist, she feels a pulse, quick but not struggling.

“Leah,” one of the other medics calls, struggling with an earlier patient who has just come to, thrashing and afraid.

The medic by Iris’s head is cleaning the wound with alcohol and squeezing it shut, a needle and thread in his other hand. Leah trembles a bit as she stands, and goes over to help the other medic.

So begins the fifth hour of six.

And it just fucking doesn’t end.