Questions
Everything hurts.
It’s a sure sign that Berend is alive. He’s never heard of Ondir’s realm being a painful one, though he’d have to ask the Sentinel to be certain. A high, shaky note rings in both ears. Beyond it, muffled voices and footsteps move in and out of his awareness. There is light, also, pressing against the lid of his good eye.
What a beautiful day it will be, he thinks, but when he opens his eye, pain shoots through his skull. The ringing in his ears reaches an agonizing crescendo. He closes both the eye and the empty socket, squeezing them shut, and the pain subsides to a dull throb.
All he can remember is Arden Geray—serial murderer, mad sorcerer, and destroyer of souls—and how Berend shot him in the chest and cut him down. After that, something had slammed into Berend’s body, and he must have lost consciousness. The brightness tells him that it must be broad daylight now, so he’s been out for several hours, at least.
He still has the one eye. Though he can’t recall it, he assumes there was an explosion. The last time something blew up so close to him was Braeden Hill—an explosive shell, he was told later, had detonated a dozen paces from his position. He still carries a fragment or two of ceramic shrapnel somewhere in his body.
Berend flexes his fingers on both hands. They seem to still all be present. A tightly-wound bandage restricts his movement, but he can bend his right elbow with a little effort and put his hand to his head. He finds a bandage, and panic darts down his spine, but further investigation reveals only a superficial wound at the place where his head meets a starched linen pillowcase. He’s made it to a hospital, and somewhere nearby are doctors. He can be grateful for that.
More bandages cross his chest and arms. Underneath, the flesh is tender and hugely swollen, as though he has frostbite everywhere but the ends of his fingers. These are where the ghosts touched me, he remembers, and the memory comes with a feeling of ice in his belly. He shivers despite the two thick, woolen blankets tucked around him.
I hate ghosts, and I hate magic, and I want all this to be over and done with. Gods have mercy.
Geray is dead. There’s no magic in the world that can make a person immune to a musket ball at close range. Lucian Warder, his erstwhile research partner, had been bleeding out the last time Berend saw him.
If Warder is dead, then Berend has little hope of fixing whatever happened to his brother in arms. He stuffed as many of Warder’s notes as he could pick up into his coat, but both coat and papers are somewhere else, and Berend is no scientist. He tries opening his eye again, willing the pain away, but the white bedding and whitewashed walls surrounding him turn the warm sunlight into a spear point driving into the back of his head, and he gives up.
Maybe he can just stay here for a few days. With Geray dead, it’s not as though things will get any worse without Berend’s efforts. He’s not a doctor, so he can’t help Lucian, and he’s neither a Sentinel nor a scientist, so he can’t help Mikhail. Maybe he can rest for a bit and no one will try to kill him while he does.
Wait.
Not two days ago, Lord Edwan Belisia sent a hired thug to kill him—not an expensive hired thug, but one skilled enough to prove himself a threat. Berend disarmed him and sent him on his way, but word would get back to Lord Edwan sooner or later, and he would spend the money for a better assassin.
And Berend would be here, lying in bed with nothing but a white curtain and a pair of wool blankets to protect him.
He guesses this is the university’s hospital. The Temple of Isra has gentler lighting. In either case, there are only a few places in the city Berend could be, and he’ll be found before long. He can’t stay.
The room tilts and spins around him as he tries to push himself up. His head injury is worse on the inside than the wound on his scalp suggests. Berend clenches his jaw, willing the pain away and feeling dust and grit between his teeth.
“Doctor?”
His voice scrapes out from a throat as dry as sand. It sounds far away. If not for the discomfort, he would think it was someone else’s.
Footsteps come near his bed. The hand that takes his wrist and feels for his pulse is soft and feminine. The nurse’s head leans in and blocks a little of the light, and Berend tries for a third time to open his eye.
She’s young, and pretty in a girlish way, with auburn brows knit together in concentration under her white cap. Her uniform confirms Berend’s location; a priestess at the temple would have her hair covered in Isra’s green. A pen scratches on paper behind Berend’s head as she makes a note.
Berend attempts a smile. It hurts. “Tell it to me straight, love,” he says. “How bad is the face now?”
The nurse pats his hand and gives him an indulgent smile.
Berend can’t help but chuckle, though doing so hurts the most out of anything he’s done today. “Some water?” he manages with a groan. If nothing else, it will at least help the inside of his mouth feel better. He has to start somewhere if he’s going to be out of here before the Belisias can find him.
The nurse gets up, and Berend closes his eye against the daylight. Her hard-soled shoes tap a receding rhythm against the stone floor. When she returns, she places a cool metal cup in his bandaged hand before leaving again.
Drinking is an effort that takes several minutes and all of Berend’s strength. He leaves the empty cup on the bed beside him and gingerly drops his head to the pillow.
He doesn’t intend to fall asleep, but the light has changed when he opens his eye again, and the angle of the sun through the university’s austere, high windows is kinder to his aching head.
“You have a visitor, sir,” a different nurse says.
Berend looks up to see an older woman, drying strong hands on a clean apron. Beside her stands a constable, his hat tucked under one arm and a small book, smudged with charcoal and roughly stitched up the spine, in his other hand. His rumpled uniform is streaked with dirt, and he’s in need of a shave. The patch on his vest marks him as a West Gate officer—a sergeant, by Berend’s best guess.
“Good morning, officer,” Berend says, before his headache forces his eye to close again.
The constable snorts. “It’s two o’clock in the afternoon.”
Of course it is. “Can I help you? As you can probably tell, I’m not exactly in tip-top shape today.”
A chair scrapes against the hospital’s stone floor, and the constable sits down with a heavy thump. “Sergeant Simons,” the constable says. “I need to ask you some questions about the explosion that took place last night. I take it you were caught in the blast?”
“A lucky guess,” says Berend. “I’ll answer as best I can, but it was of a magical nature. I’m afraid I can’t make much sense of it.”
Simons’ charcoal pencil scratches across his notebook. “Can you identify yourself, sir?”
“Berend Horst. Formerly of the Sons of Galaser, now a free sword. Some of your superiors will know me.”
Another pencil scratch. “And why were you in that house last night?”
“I was looking for the murderer of a former comrade of mine.”
“I see.” The scratching stops, a page turns, and Simons shifts in his seat. “So it was in the pursuit of this person that you went to the house?”
Berend opens his eye a fraction of an inch. If only the walls and the sheets hung around him weren’t so bright. “Yes. It’s a long story, though. How long do you have?”
Simons pulls a watch from his pocket and clicks it open. He grimaces at the face. “About twenty-three minutes.”
“I’ll do my best,” Berend begins. “I learned that Mikhail Ranseberg had been killed and his body cut to pieces. I summoned a Sentinel from the next town to talk to his ghost. Something—something magical—had been done to him that made the ritual go wrong. I found out about Lucian Warder, a researcher from the university, and his device that could get rid of spirits. Though Mr. Warder had an alibi for the murders, I believed the device might have been connected. I arranged a demonstration of his device with a contact of mine in the city. He brought his research assistant, Arden Geray. With the assistance of the Sentinel, I tracked Geray to the house in the West Gate, where he took Warder hostage. The Sentinel entered the house, believing it to be the lair of a necromancer, and I offered my services as a bodyguard.”
Simons rubs at his forehead, leaving a charcoal smear. He takes a few more notes. “Right. The Sentinel. Then what happened?”
“We were attacked by several spirits,” Berend says. He lifts an arm, showing the bandaged lacerations. “Then we found Geray in his basement. He cut Warder’s throat, and I shot him. Then…something happened. Some sort of magical explosion. I lost consciousness. You’re the first person other than the nurse whom I’ve spoken to since then. Did the Sentinel survive?”
“Yes. She was conscious and more or less unharmed. We returned her to her lodgings at the chapel on the blue field.”
That’s the first bit of good news Berend has had all day. “Good. And Warder? Is he alive?”
Simons shrugs. “Last I heard, he was still breathing, but barely. The surgeons are working on him upstairs.”
He might still live, and that means he might still fix Mikhail. Berend breathes a sigh heavy enough to make his ribs ache under the bandages. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Officer?”
“Not at the moment.” Simons gets to his feet. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t leave Mondirra for the next several days, though.”
“I don’t think there’s much risk of that,” says Berend.
“Good, good.” Simons sounds exhausted. He must have been up since the blast, if not sooner. “I wish you a speedy recovery, Mr. Horst. Do contact the West Gate constabulary if you have any more information.” He pulls the sheet aside and walks out with slow, dragging steps.
Talking has taken what little remains of Berend’s strength. He wants to sleep again, but wasn’t there something important he was going to do? Something he had to remember? He must have hit his head harder than he thought.
It’s no use. Darkness envelops him, and he sleeps again.
He wakes to the sensation of the nurse’s fingers on his wrist. Her round face emerges into view as he opens his good eye. She watches until his vision focuses, then moves away.
“Can’t let you sleep too long,” she says, “not with the head injury. Besides, you have another guest.”
Another one? The room is much darker now, and a burning lantern sits on the table beside his bed. Maybe Isabel has finally decided to check on him. Or, even better, maybe Lady Breckenridge will let him convalesce in her feather bed. He’d have to be careful, though. He can’t have the Belisias knowing where he is.
“It’s a Mr. Belisia here to see you, sir,” the nurse says.
Thanks for reading! I hope you’re enjoying this story’s return. I’ve been doing a challenge on Instagram featuring The Book of the New Moon Door. Check it out if you want to see some cool graphics and learn some trivia.
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