Page 54 of Malady

“Will you be bringing your cane?”

“Oh, shut up.”

A fan of hot, blackish-red blood sprays across me, soaking through my bodice and splattering the linen mask tied over my face.

Luke Callow thrashes on the mattress, shrieking around the leather strap clenched between his teeth as I struggle to keep his arm still.

“Hold the limb steady, Ophelia Harrow,” Iscairn says, his gloves and sleeves already soaked dark with blood to the elbows.

“I am holding it,” I grit out. “He’s fighting me.”

My boots slip on the slick floorboards as I dig my fingers into the meat above the tourniquet and hold on while the muscle trembles beneath my hands. It reeks like a butcher’s pit left open through the heat of August, rising from flesh gone the dark purple of a bruise. Iscairn has already cut through the ruined skin and is working his blade through the muscle, drawing the flesh apart as yellow pus and dark blood spill into the sheets. Then he lays down the knife and takes up the saw.

I’ve assisted with four amputations in my life, which ought to be enough to stop the sight of one turning my stomach, but apparently not. My own thigh aches as I watch him cut, and I have to force myself not to think about what would happen if someone ever looked at my leg and decided there was nothing left worth saving.

Pasties. Pasties. Think about pasties instead. Hot mutton, crisp pastry, a little gravy running into the crust⁠—

Luke writhes, his whole body twisting against my hands as the blade catches in a strip of rotten muscle and tears it loose. Yellow filth gushes from the wound, spilling over the bloodied gloves and splattering onto the floor.

No. Not pasties, then. Do not think about pasties.

This has gone on long enough. He has the soulglimmer—why the bloody hell isn’t he using it?

“Iscairn,” I hiss over the screaming. “Do something.”

The saw stops, but instead of a flicker of blue appearing at his fingertips, Iscairn looks to the corner of the room, where Luke’s daughter Melissa is backed against the limewashed wall. Both hands are clamped over her mouth, tears running down her face as she stares at us as if I haven’t already told her to get out of the room twelve bloody times.

“Give him another mouthful of poppy if he can swallow it,” Iscairn says, setting the saw back against the bone.

I snatch up the bottle and pull the leather from Luke’s mouth just long enough to tip a measure between his lips. Most of it comes straight back at me as a gargle, so I clamp his nose between my fingers and hold his jaw shut.

“Swallow it.”

With a groan, he does. Then I shove the strap back between his teeth, set the bottle aside and press both hands against his shoulders as Iscairn takes up the saw again.

Luke bucks, his heels hammering against the mattress while I throw my weight over him, struggling to keep his shoulders pinned as the saw grates through the bone.

“Hold still,” I gasp, bearing down harder as another spasm arches his back.

Iscairn works through the last of the bone with short, rough strokes until the arm finally comes free, dropping into the bucket at my feet with a wet, meaty thud.

I let go of Luke and snatch the iron from the brazier. The heat blisters my palm even through the thick linen wrapped around the handle, but I shove it blindly into Iscairn’s waiting glove.

He drives the glowing metal flush against the stump.

The hiss of cooking flesh fills the room. Thick, greasy smoke curls up between us, hitting the back of my throat a second before the smell does. It’s a gag-inducing mix of charred meat and burnt marrow, and my stomach pitches so fiercely I have to lock my jaw to keep from emptying it all over my boots.

Luke cries through the leather strap, his back arching so violently that he nearly lifts himself clear of the mattress. For a moment, I think he might wrench himself free of my hands altogether, but then his eyes roll back in his skull, and he collapses into the blood-soaked sheets, mercifully unconscious.

Iscairn sets the iron aside and gives the slightest dip of his beak.

Oh. Now?

“Melissa.” I wipe the back of my wrist across my masked chin, smearing the blood. “He needs warmth. Go down to the kitchen, put the hearth stones into the fire and leave them there until they’re properly hot, then wrap them well and bring them back up. Thick blankets, mind. I don’t want them burning his skin.”

She flinches at the sound of her name and finally tears her eyes from the bed. “But⁠—”

“Go.”