Dearest Zann,

I’m not really sure where I went after that. I crawled as best I could, and sometimes tried to pull myself up to walk, but one of my legs wasn’t working right, and one of my arms was useless, and my other hand was useless, and I hurt all over, and I couldn’t really see through the tears and blood. I know I went up at least one flight of stairs. Nobody was around. Why was nobody around.

And then someone was there. “Oh,” he said. “What happened–well, never mind. Here, let me help.” It was a lauran voice, and one I had heard before. He guided me to my feet, with my better arm over his shoulders, and walked me up the corridor. “You’re… Ybel, that’s right? The new guard?”

“Ay, lord,” I said. Talking wasn’t too bad. “Thank you.”

“No, no. Here, there’s a chamber here we can use.” He opened a door and in a moment I was lying on one of the day-bed kinds of divans that the laurans favour. “What do we have… oh well. Master Ybel, pray remain at your ease here while I fetch a few things. None but I will ope the door.” And he was gone.

I wiped out my eyes with my wrist and looked around. It was a small stone room, still in the Comet Halls. There was another day bed opposite me, and a little table with two wooden chairs under the open window, where a few morning glories looked in. A painting hung over the other day bed, which showed a scene from the laur: two laurans eating grapes and snuggling near a pretty river. Who was this lauran that had come to my aid? I had met dozens of them just since coming to the palace.

My breath was coming more easily now. I tried to count my injuries. But I was shattered and bleeding, and my brains were trembling in my skull, I couldn’t count. I was going to need to see a chirurgeon or a healer, no doubt of it, and I might not have the time my body needed.

The door opened, and this time I recognized the lauran. Tall, more weatherbeaten than laurans usually are, green and blue colouring. It was Ellewen. “I know you, Lord,” I said. “Ellewen. You were a clerk at the Public Bureau when I was there.”

He pulled the table and a chair next to me. “Yes. Not exactly a clerk. Still, please, while I do this.” He had a cloth and some water and cleaned blood off of my face. He had some kind of rosemary-smelling stylus in his other hand that he used to… draw symbols on my skin?

When his attentions had moved to my arm, I said, “Lord, what is that that you’re doing?”

He glanced at me in response but didn’t answer. In a minute he said, “Do you know who it was who blooded you?”

“Yes, lord. It was a pair of my comrades in the Rosolla Guard. It looks like there are factions.”

“Ah. Don’t call me ‘lord’, please, it’s not appropriate. ‘Ellewen’ is more meet. Even when more of my kind are present.”

“Ellewen. Thank you for helping me.”

He held up a leaf that had a glowing sigil on it, and touched my lips with his finger. “Chew this leaf, please. I’m happy to help, but will you be all right in the future? Will this attack be repeated?”

I accepted the leaf, and chewed. It just tasted like a leaf. “I don’t know. I have to think about it.”

Ellewen spread a poultice on a painful part of my arm. “An unusual answer.”

“It’s just that I don’t want to make any enemies.”

He stopped what he was doing and looked deep in my eyes.

“I know,” I said. “I already have enemies, is what you’re thinking. But right now they think I’m just a new guard who’s friends with the captain. I don’t want them thinking any different from that.”

“So,” he said, after a pause. “How will you bring them to think as you wish them to?” He moved my torn pajazuse to get at my other arm. His hand brushed the coin around my neck, and jerked away abruptly.

“That’s what I have to decide. The best thing might be to do nothing. But then they can just kill me.”

“It sounds like a problem.”

He continued treating my injuries. I had never touched, or been touched by, a lauran before, and it felt surprising. Soft and gentle, as anyone would expect, but also I could feel the virtue of his superior soul shining into my flesh and nourishing my wounds. To have a man’s hands on me like that… it was the greatest surprise of the day. Brought Acea to my mind, which I try to avoid, but my wits were so scrambled I couldn’t think anyway, so I just closed my eyes and let my pain ebb away.

At length he said, “So. I’ve done what I can. I’m not myself a healer, you understand, but I have had to learn some of the most quickly useful parts of the art. And I’ve stolen a couple of periapts that are doing what I could not.”

“Thank you. I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done.”

“Silent, please, while I explain what I have done. You have many broken bones. That sphere chained at your ankle is healing them; wear it until sunset tomorrow. Your brains have been put in disorder, but that leaf you were chewing should restore them. My poultices will do for your cuts and bruises. And this ring–” he lay my left, uninjured, hand on his, and slipped an old gray ring onto my finger–“this ring will allow you to stand and walk without pain, but I charge you with taking no vigorous action until you are whole again.”

“I will. I mean I won’t.”

He sat back. “I mislike giving orders to a soldier not under my command, but I also give you this rede, that you should rest here for some hours while these magics do their work. Do you know where you will go from here?”

“Yes. I’ll catch the longcoach for home as soon as I leave the room,” I lied.

“Well. I wish you all fortune, and if it please you, visit me at the Public Bureau when your duties permit and your inclinations agree. Perhaps we can play at border-bridge.” He paused. “And I would be neither annoyed nor offended if you came to me for help in future times of danger.”

I’m a startlingly bad border-bridge player. “I will, all of those things. Thank you again, Ellewen. I don’t like to keep thanking you–“

He stood up, and quieted me with one of those fluid hand-waves that they’re all so blackpiss-good at. “Your gratitude is a measure of the straits you were in, and your entirely sensible knowledge of your plight. It cannot be unseemly.”

“Uh–“

But he was gone.

I lay back against the day bed.

Love,

Ybel