Stitching the Wounds

How much rot a man could carry before his blood turned black was a matter of simple arithmetic, and Naoto was running out of numbers.

I threw my weight against the reinforced iron door of the central armory, shoving the heavy oak-and-iron slab into its frame. The latch caught with a sharp, heavy clack. I dropped the crossbar into place, the iron thudding into the stone sockets on either side of the jamb. Outside, the dry canal bed lay littered with eleven headless Shimi carcasses, their dissolved remains already sinking into the cracked river silt. Inside, the armory smelled of stale tallow, damp mortar, and the sour reek of scorched sulfur clinging to our skin.

Naoto did not make it to the chairs.

He hit the edge of the central weapon-dressing table with a dull thud, his right hand catching the rough oak plank to keep his knees from buckling. His left arm hung limp at his side. The dark wool of his Cordon service coat was shredded from collar to elbow, the fabric sodden with canal mud and a thick, tarry fluid that was not blood. Five jagged parallel gouges ran from the crest of his shoulder down across the pectoral muscle, the torn flesh weeping an oily, purplish venom that smoked faintly where it met the cold air. Thin black veins were already branching outward from the edges of the lacerations, spidering toward the hollow of his throat.

"Sit," I said.

He did not argue. He sank onto the low bench beside the table, his head dropping forward. His chest rose and fell in ragged, shallow pulls, each intake catching on a harsh rasp in his windpipe. The brass casing from the sabotaged turbine lay heavy in the pocket of his trousers, clinking against the bronze key ring at his belt.

"The bulkhead held," he muttered. His voice sounded like dry gravel ground under a heel. "The seals on the eastern sluice are seated."

"The gate held because you were stupid enough to lock yourself outside it," I said, unbuckling my prisoner satchel and dropping it onto the table. The eleven amber cores we had cut from the swarm clattered inside the coarse hemp, glowing with an uneven, fevered heat that radiated through the fabric. "Take off the coat."

He reached across with his right hand, fingers catching the silver-washed buttons of his uniform. His knuckles were raw, scraped to the pink meat beneath the grime, and his grip lacked purchase. By the third button, his hand shook so badly he nearly tore the cloth.

"Let me," I said.

I stepped into his space. Up close, the heat radiating off him was unnatural, a dry, baking fever generated by the necrotic venom warring with his bloodstream. I drew the First Assault dagger from the sheath at my ribs. With two clean, practiced upward slices, I parted the ruined wool of his coat down the seam and slit his undershirt from collar to waist, peeling the blackened cloth away from the wounds.

The claw marks were deep. The pack leader’s talons had punched through the muscle belly, scraping the surface of the clavicle before tearing free. The edges of the meat were already turning the color of bruised plums, crusted with the gray, crystalline frost unique to a Shigai rot-bite.

"You have about ten minutes before that reaches the subclavian artery," I said, tossing the blood-soaked wool onto the flagstones. "If the black bile gets into the deep circulation, I will have to burn the whole shoulder down to the bone with lye."

Naoto lifted his chin. His jaw set in that rigid, infuriating line I had come to recognize during our first morning in the Great Hall. "Then you had better be quick with the needle, deserter."

"Don't flatter yourself. If you die, I have to drag eleven cores to the perimeter gate by myself, and Souta will shoot me on the walkway just to save the cost of my barley ration."

I turned to the storage shelves lining the eastern wall of the armory. The Housen Grounds had been stocked by Cordon quartermasters who skimped on food but maintained an obsessive paranoia regarding estate maintenance. Beside the racks of heavy billhooks and repeating crossbow quarrels sat a row of ironbound cedar chests marked with the red chevron of the Frontier Medical Corps.

I hauled the largest chest to the table and flipped the bronze latches.

Inside lay the grim, utilitarian tools of military field surgery: rolled bandages of unbleached linen, two bone-handled scalpels, an iron probe, a heavy jar of coarse gray salt, a clay flagon of caustic sulfur vinegar, and three curved bone needles threaded with waxed gut.

I uncorked the sulfur vinegar. The fumes hit the back of my throat like crushed mustard seed and burnt matches.

"This is going to hurt," I said, picking up a clean linen rag.

"I am familiar with Cordon antiseptic," he said through his teeth.

"No, you aren't. Cordon regulars get diluted spirits of wine and a prayer from an ordained clerk. This is assault vanguard wash. It's meant to kill the rot before it eats your marrow, and it doesn't care what happens to the skin around it."

I did not give him time to brace. I folded the rag, soaked it in the sulfur vinegar, and pressed it directly into the open claw gouges.

Naoto’s entire body went rigid. His right hand clamped onto the edge of the oak table with enough force that the seasoned wood creaked under his fingers. A sharp, violent hiss escaped between his teeth, but he did not scream. He did not pull away. The muscle beneath my palm knotted like iron cable, the heat of his fever searing through the wet cloth.

The purplish venom hissed and bubbled as the caustic acid bit into the necrotic tissue. Thick, grayish foam welled out of the tears, running down his ribs before dripping onto the stone floor. I took a second rag, wiping away the sludge with firm, unforgiving strokes, scouring the gray frost from the exposed muscle until bright, clean crimson blood welled from the depths of the wounds.

His head fell back against the wall, his throat corded with strain. Sweat ran through the canal dust plastered to his temples, cutting pale tracks down his neck.

"Still breathing?" I asked, keeping my voice flat as I discarded the fouled rag.

"You missed... the lower edge," he rasped, his eyes fixed on the timber rafters above us.

"I'm getting to it."

I reached for the curved bone needle and the gut thread. My hands were steady. Out on the frontier, during the retreat from the Kuroda Gap, I had sewn three men back together by lantern light in a ditch while enemy skirmishers lobbed incendiary pots into our rear guard. You did not think about the flesh under your fingers as a person; you treated it like torn canvas that had to be made watertight before the storm hit.

Except this was not an anonymous conscript in the mud.

Every time the needle pierced the crimson margin of the tear, I felt the involuntary hitch of his breath against my forearm. His right shoulder was broad, marked by old, faded scars from weapons drills and pack straps, the disciplined body of a man who had spent ten years obeying orders without questioning the hand that wrote them.

"The voice," Naoto said suddenly, his words tight and clipped as I pulled the first suture snug.

I paused for a fraction of a second, the gut taut between my fingers, before tying off the square knot. "What about it?"

"In the canal. When the leader went down." He did not look at me; his gaze remained locked on the dark stones of the ceiling. "It spoke. It used a name."

"Shimi mimic sounds they hear on the perimeter," I said, driving the needle through the second gouge. "Old screams. Camp orders. It doesn't mean anything."

"It wasn't a camp order." He let out a low, shuddering breath as the needle pulled through the muscle fascia. "It called you Kiyomi. It asked why you left him at the ditch."

The armory went very cold. The only sound was the drip of sulfur wash pooling on the floor and the distant, hollow hum of the wind across the dry moat.

"His name was Ren," I said. My voice did not shake. I made sure of that. I set another stitch, precise and clean, pulling the torn flesh together until the edges met in a neat, pale ridge. "He was nineteen. He was the junior scout in my assault file at Seta Redoubt. When the order came down from the Directorate to fire the civilian granaries and seal the cellar doors from the outside, he refused to turn the key. The provost marshal shot him through the throat and threw him in the drainage ditch behind the motor pool."

Naoto’s chest remained still for a long beat. "And you?"

"I took his tags, killed the provost marshal with his own trench knife, and walked west into the marsh." I cut the gut with the edge of the First Assault dagger, the steel making a faint ringing sound in the quiet room. "The Cordon called it cowardice in the face of the enemy. It was cleaner than calling it a mutiny."

I reached for the jar of coarse gray salt and the clean bandages, waiting for the lecture. I waited for him to quote the third article of the Meisho Military Code, or remind me of the blood-debt owed to the state, or tell me that an order from the Directorate was absolute.

He did none of those things.

Instead, his right hand moved. His fingers, calloused and stained with carbon soot, reached out and lightly caught my wrist, stopping the movement of the bandages.