Bram Ash stood at the foot of the carpenter’s workbench, his chest heaving, his left hand pressing a wad of clean linen against his own bandaged shoulder to stem the yellow seep of infection. The cold, soot-choked air of the forge shop felt like ice water in his lungs after the scalding fury of the flooded cut. But the chill did nothing to steady the violent trembling in his hands.
Heth stumbled through the forge shop doorway, her boots dragging on the grit. In her hands she carried a shallow clay pot basin of cool well water fetched from the upper water tank. The surface shook with every wooden rattle of her damaged lungs. Behind her came Brant Sallow, the clinic attendant. It grabbed his dressing metal tongs and a pair of heavy iron shears.
“Set the water on the vice bench, Heth,” Bram ordered, his voice gravelly and hollow. “Then step outside to the passage. Keep young Avel with the laundry women.”
“I’m staying, Father,” Heth said, her voice small, hard, and unmoving as iron melted rock waste. She set the basin beside the anvil, her thin fingers stained with lime dust, her eyes fixed on Doma’s still form. “Doma looked after me when the fever took the lower barracks. I’m not running into the dark.”
