Two young healers began unstrapping the brace, some examining the buckles and rods. Still they did not look him in the eye. As if he were some new toy—new lesson. Some oddity.
Yrene merely went on, “Mind you don’t jostle him too much when you—careful.”
He fought to keep his features distant, found himself missing the guards from the palace. Yrene gave the girls firm, solid directions as they tugged him down from the saddle.
He didn’t try to help the acolytes, or fight them, when they pulled at his arms, someone going to steady his waist, the world tilting as they hauled him downward. But the weight of his body was too great, and he felt himself slide farther from the saddle, the drop to the ground looming, the sun a brand on his skin.
The girls grunted, someone going to the other side to help move his leg up and over the horse—or he thought so. He only knew it because he saw her head of curls just peek over the horse’s side. She pushed, jutting his leg upward, and he hung there, three girls gritting their teeth while they tried to lower him, the others watching in observational silence—
One of the girls let out an oomph and lost her grip on his shoulder. The world plunged—
Strong, unfaltering hands caught him, his nose barely half a foot from the pale gravel as the other girls shuffled and grunted, trying to heft him up again. He’d come free of the horse, but his legs were now sprawled beneath him, as distant from him as the very top of the Torre, high above.
Roaring filled his head.
A sort of nakedness crept over him. Worse than sitting in his undershorts for hours. Worse than the bath with the servant.
Yrene, gripping his shoulder from where she’d just barely caught him in time, said to the healers, “That could have been better, girls. A great deal better, for many reasons.” A sigh. “We can discuss what went wrong later, but for now, move him to the chair.”
He could barely stand to hear her, listen to her, as he hung between those girls, most of whom were half his weight. Yrene stepped aside to let the girl who’d dropped him back into place, whistling sharply.
Wheels hissed on gravel from nearby. He didn’t bother to look at the wheeled chair that an acolyte pushed closer. Didn’t bother to speak as they settled him in it, the chair shuddering beneath his weight.
“Careful.” Yrene warned again.
The girls lingered, the rest of the courtyard still watching. Had it been seconds or minutes since this ordeal had begun? He clenched the arms of the chair as Yrene rattled off some directions and observations. Clenched the arms harder as one of the girls stooped to touch his booted feet, to arrange them for him.
Words rose up his throat, and he knew they’d burst from him, knew he could do little to stop his bellow to back off as that acolyte’s fingers neared the dusty black leather—
Withered brown hands landed on the girl’s wrist, halting her mere inches away.
Hafiza said calmly, “Let me.”
The girls peeled back as Hafiza stooped to help him instead.
“Get the ladies ready, Yrene,” Hafiza said over a slim shoulder, and Yrene obeyed, ushering them back into their lines.
The ancient woman’s hands lingered on his boots—his feet, currently pointing in opposite directions. “Shall I do it, lord, or would you like to?”
Words failed him, and he wasn’t certain he could use his hands without them shaking, so he gave the woman a nod of approval.
Hafiza straightened one foot, waiting until Yrene had walked a few steps away and begun giving stretching instructions to the ladies.
“This is a place for learning,” Hafiza murmured. “Older students teach the younger.” Even with her accent, he understood her perfectly. “It was Yrene’s instinct, Lord Westfall, to show the girls what she did with the brace—to let them learn for themselves what it is to have a patient with similar difficulties. To receive this training, Yrene herself had to venture out onto the steppes. Many of these girls might not have that opportunity. At least not for several years.”
Chaol met Hafiza’s eyes at last, finding the understanding in them more damning than being hauled off a horse by a group of girls half his weight.
“She means well, my Yrene.”
He didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure he had words.
Hafiza straightened his other foot. “There are many other scars, my lord. Beyond the one on her neck.”
He wanted to tell the old woman that he knew that too damn well.
But he shoved down that bareness, that simmering roar in his head.
He had made these ladies a promise to teach them, to help them.
Hafiza seemed to read that—sense it. She only patted his shoulder before she rose to her full height, groaning a bit, and walked back to the place left for her in line.
Yrene had turned toward him, stretching done, and scanned him. As if Hafiza’s lingering presence had indicated something she’d missed.
Her eyes settled on his, brows narrowing. What’s wrong?
He ignored the question within her look—ignored the bit of worry. Shoved whatever he felt down deep and rolled his chair toward her. Inch by inch. The gravel was not ideal, but he gritted his teeth. He’d given these ladies his word. He would not back down from it.
“Where did we leave off the last lesson?” Yrene asked a girl in the front.
“Eye gouge,” she said with a broad smile.
Chaol nearly choked.
“Right,” Yrene said, rubbing her hands together. “Someone demonstrate for me.”
He watched in silence as hands shot up, and Yrene selected one—a smaller-boned girl. Yrene took up the stance of attacker, grabbing the girl from the front with surprising intensity.
But the girl’s slim hands went right to Yrene’s face, thumbs to the corners of her eyes.
Chaol started from his chair—or would have, had the girl not pulled back.
“And next?” Yrene merely asked.
“Hook in my thumbs like this”—the girl made the motion in the air between them for all to see—“and pop.”
Some of the girls laughed quietly at the accompanying pop the girl made with her mouth.
Aelin would have been beside herself with glee.
“Good,” Yrene said, and the girl strode back to her place in line. Yrene turned to him, that worry again flashing as she beheld whatever was in his eyes, and said, “This is our third lesson of this quarter. We have covered front-based attacks only so far. I usually have the guards come in as willing victims”—some snickers at that—“but today I would like for you to tell us what you think ladies, young and old, strong and frail, could do against any sort of attack. Your list of top maneuvers and tips, if you’d be so kind.”
He’d trained young men ready to shed blood—not heal people.
But defense was the first lesson he’d been taught, and had taught those young guards.
Before they’d wound up hanging from the castle gates.
Ress’s battered, unseeing face flashed into his mind.
What good had it done any of them when it mattered?
Not one. Not one of that core group he’d trusted and trained, worked with for years … not one had survived. Brullo, his mentor and predecessor, had taught him all he knew—and what had it earned any of them? Anyone he’d encountered, he’d touched … they’d suffered. The lives he’d sworn to protect—
The sun turned bleaching, the gurgle of the twin fountains a distant melody.
What good had any of it done for his city, his people, when it was sacked?
He looked up to find the lines of women watching him, curiosity on their faces.
Waiting.
There had been a moment, when he had hurled his sword into the Avery. When he had been unable to bear its weight at his side, in his hand, and had chucked it and everything the Captain of the Guard had been, had meant, into the dark, eddying waters.
He’d been sinking and drowning since. Long before his spine.
He wasn’t certain if he’d even tried to swim. Not since that sword had gone into the river. Not since he’d left Dorian in that room with his father and told his friend—his brother—that he loved him, and knew it was good-bye. He’d … left. In every sense of the word.