of his doings then! I'll be back." He rose.
"Sir?"
"What?"
"How did you—who told you?" His father grimaced.
"Oh, that. Well, that scum sent them. With the badge off your cloak, incidentally. Good gold, that. It's as well he did, Cal: he has nothing to do magicks with, except some blood, and you've spilled blood all over the south. Now rest, and I'll see what the surgeons say." His father left; Cal found himself smiling.
From the front room came a murmur of voices. The surgeons would have no chance, Cal realized. Soon enough they came trooping back in, along with his father, a Captain of Falk, and the Duke's mage.
"I don't care," his father was saying, "which of you does what, or in what order—but I want him up this day."
"But, my lord—"
"Impossible. If he—"
"I can't be expected to—"
"Silence!" That roar was the Duke, just inside the chamber. "Aliam, my surgeons are at your command. My mage has some constraints I don't understand—but, Master Vetrifuge, I expect you'll do what you can. I do suggest, Aliam, that as he got no sleep last night, you might let him rest today."
"Kieri, he'll sleep better when he's healed—"
"Very well, then. As you will." The Duke withdrew. The surgeons looked at each other and at the mage and cleric. The mage stared at the floor, and the cleric looked at his father.
"Get on with it," snapped Aliam Halveric.
* * *
He woke, ez