She was well beyond the point where a voice -- its denials, its pleas -- could ever matter. Out in the bloody snow, she'd fallen long past the apex of reason and somewhere down into the muddy depths of delirium. That was the truth of pain: it was, for any body or creature, a natural warning, a snarling reaction of nerves, muscles, and flesh to foreign intrusion, signals and sparks that shouted to the mind pull back, pull away, flee from the catalyst of this burning, scorching, harrowing agony--
The wolf-beast's jaws had clamped, crunched, severed too quickly for mere pain to fill its role as deterrent, as a warning. So the pain fled like a frightened beast, and she was left empty.
A blur, flickering images that existed out of time, somewhere else.
(Duquesne, so warm and familiar. Had he something to teach her? Had he a new lesson, a grand vision of reason to offer her? No, just his chest, heartbeat thrumming behind his ribs like an ebbing, muffled lullaby. And Noura? Noura will be fine. Did you see its eyes? Did you hear how it spoke Mama, Mama and seemed so lost; it swung at her, too, held a knife like some infant trying to brandish a chisel. Cherny, where was Cherny; he was crying, I touched his cheek, I swear to the Nameless I reached out from the snow and touched his cheek.)
Two seeds of henebon dissolved on the tongue (refused, refused), then were lodged into her throat by an attendant's thumb until hot saliva filled her mouth and she knew she was going to be ill, let me go, let me up, I can't. To wash down the acid and bile, tincture of hemlock, milk from the green teat of the poppy, both mashed together and rendered into stringy fluid in the bowels of the stone mortar.
Set to sharpen the saw. The bones are splinters. Did they bring the hand?
No hand. It was teeth, had to be teeth, just like what got to the boy; twisted her wrist into the back of its jaw and--
I know. I know.
Did someone put the iron to heat?
Aye, it's white, nearly glowing. Like a star.
--gnawed on her like gristle. You ever see bones this color? Is that--
A finger under her cheek jabbed against her neck. Her jaw clicked, opened wide; poppy-milk and hemlock were cold webbing on her tongue, trickling like a worm into the recesses of her throat. The liquid had hooks hidden in it, invisible and ghostly. Crawling up through her nostrils as menthol and mint. Reaching with an apparition's vaporous fingers into the soft meat of her brain. Whispering to her, seductive, sweet-tongued, voice of her mar'dak in the haze, tingling fingers that slithered icy serpents along the undersides of her wrists and inside the channels of her thoughts. Something scraped against her bones a thousand leagues away, grinding, but all she heard was her mother saying, sleep, it's safe to sleep, it's safe to sleep, it's safe to...
There was magic in the infirmary, subtle and clever. No matter of power or the occult, but of scholarship and study, the kind done by healing hands and vibrant minds. Black henbane, hemlock, and poppy. Poisons, all, but wielded judiciously--
For three days she slept. Shallowly breathing. Unmoving. Right hand at her side, the other a bandage-bound pugel, stinking of burnt flesh and juniper.
It's safe to sleep.