The dance was different from those he'd grown up with. But it was a dance all the same.

"Report," Yule snapped, hiking up his sleeves as he backed away from the operating table. Two aides heaved a groaning man up onto it, fighting through their fatigue to keep the man steady, to keep his insides from spilling out. Yule wasn't angry with the aides. He was eager to begin.

"Combat healer said he got hit by the same kind of bomb as the last three. Didn't get to him for twenty minutes. Lost more blood than the rest."

"That's right," Danu confirmed. She stepped into her place at the end of the operating table, reaching out to settle her hands on the man's temples and confirm her intuition. She was a beacon of calm amidst all the pain, all the yelling. As self-assured as Yule, but not in a rush. Once her eyes shifted to black, she knew exactly how much time they had. "Get more regen potions from the cart," she said to the aides, and they both shuffled out.

Yule set in on the gash across the fighter's midsection like a man possessed. Not by a spirit, but by a need to know, to understand. Their patient's innards weren't a terrifying mess of gore to Yule. They were a puzzle waiting to be put back together. He sifted through them with his fingers rather than reaching straight away for his magic. "Bleed here, and here," he said to Mirk across the table, without looking up at him. He dug deeper, only resorting to magic once touch refused to reveal the secrets of the fighter's body to him. "There's one more in there somewhere. Probably further up, nicked the iliac maybe. You're up. I'll put make-dos on the ones I can see."

Mirk could never keep the names of all the arteries and bones and muscles straight. But he didn't need to. He knew what Yule meant, could feel his frustration at not being able to reach further up into the man's midsection. He glanced over at Danu. "Only halfway, please," he said to her, before joining the dance. "It'll be easier if he can still respond a little."

She nodded, reaching down and pressing one hand over their patient's heart while she kept the other against the side of his head. His groaning faded to whimpers. Danu's emotions were faint, subtle. Especially when she drew on her Deathly magic. But Mirk still caught the edge of the feeling of relief that washed over her as she let her magic possess her, as she stepped into the half of herself that she usually kept locked up tight, so as to not frighten anyone. She balanced their patient's soul in the space between her hands, keeping it pinned down inside of him while drawing his awareness and the flow of his blood away from his injury.

Then it was his turn to dance.

Mirk pressed his hands to the blood-smeared but unbroken flesh above the wound across their patient’s stomach, closing his eyes and letting his mental shielding fall away. It let in all the man's pain, but it allowed Mirk to hear him. The singing of his blood, slowed to a muddled murmur, the discordant parts of his flesh that'd been ripped apart and didn't know how to align themselves again, though they still kept searching. Talking over one another, a jumble of half-formed tunes.

He couldn't name all the countless paths the man’s remaining blood flowed through down the center line of his body, but he could see them. Intertwined rivers of gold and blue as clear as the edge of the sea on the horizon, grown faint and confused because of the man's pain. Their patient was an ordered water mage; he could feel the man's memory of his own sea in him, the smell of salt and the reek of fish, a father's patient shouts to hold the line.

There was something that didn't belong mixed up in it all. A scraping, plinking sound like a shovel hitting stone, and a warmth that was too intense for the amount of golden ordered potential Mirk could sense in him. Mirk moved himself closer, hunching over the ghostly after-image of the man's body that he could see in his mind's eye, until his cheek was almost pressed against where his chest must be. The foreign thing was buried deep. Forced far away from the man's major wound, worked up deep inside him, nestled in close to one kidney. It had cut a quiet and subtle path of destruction through him as it had come to rest. A shard of some kind of metal that didn't budge at Mirk's efforts to call to it, though he could still hear it, faintly.

Mirk bit his lip. "Can you pull back a little, Yule? Methinks this'll be a little tricky..."

Yule didn't ask any questions. He lifted his hands — though Mirk's eyes were still closed, he could see them in his mind's eye, the drawing away of the pool of greenish black magic hovering over the place where the man's insides were the most snarled. It was going to take a lot of potential to reach that shard. Hopefully, this was the last of the worst-off men.

He slipped his hand into their patient's wound. The warmth reassured him, the hot feel of a man who was still very much alive, still fighting. Mirk allowed his mind to drift further down into the man's body, allowed his healing potential to seep into the bleeding well of his midsection. But he didn't draw flesh together, not yet. Instead, he only tugged on the flesh with his potential as if to begin to heal, engaging muscles that didn't like to move on their own, making all the glowing lines of the man's body twitch and squirm.

Mirk needed to pulse his magic several times. But, eventually, the piece of foreign material worked itself low enough for his fingers, deep inside the man's stomach, to grab hold of it. Carefully, Mirk disentangled himself from all the bits of the man's body that using his magic had called close to him and set the piece of metal — from off-realm, it had to be, since he couldn't hear it so well and couldn’t call it to himself — beside his body on the operating table.

"There," Mirk said, letting out a deep sigh of relief, as he drew most of his magical potential, healing and growing combined, back into himself and blinked open his eyes. "Can you finish up the make-dos, please?" Mirk asked Yule. "I'll take care of the ones further up."

They fell back into the dance. They each had their own part to play. Yule liked to put things together with needle and thread first, then made everything sure with his magic, closing the last of the gaps. A potential-saving technique, so that he could save his magic for things that couldn't be fixed with mundane measures. That and part of Yule always cringed away from mingling his potential with that of a stranger, even if that was the nature of the healing part of his magic.

Danu loosened her grip on the man's soul, lifting her hand off his chest so that she could put the potions the aides had brought down his throat and into the wound in his stomach. She must have been holding his soul for twenty minutes now; it was no longer struggling in her grasp. He'd healed enough not to be in danger of dying. And this man in particular seemed not to be bothered by her Deathly presence.

And Mirk danced too. He pressed both hands against the man's midsection, closing his eyes once more. It was easier for him than it was for either Danu or Yule to heal injuries that couldn't be seen, couldn't be pinched at or sewn. It felt natural to him to dip into another person's body with his mind and magic, comforting, everything becoming soft, yet clear. Mirk ran his potential down into his hands once more and used it to draw together what had been separated. To tie together the brightening threads of his magic coursing through his body, to help all the discordant sounds of the man's parts join together in the chorus of life.

Everyone sounded different on the inside, Mirk had come to realize. There was a slow and steady beat to the sound of this man's body. His flesh hummed a steady, workable melody, one that was both solemn and tinged with hope. It reminded Mirk a little of the Easterners' marching songs. A tune to keep the pace.

He dragged his magic back into himself, drawing in a deep breath and straightening up. "I'll close," Yule said, as Mirk opened his eyes. It took a moment for Mirk to chase away the dizziness that came with healing like that, to draw his mental shields back up. The pain they separated him from now was much less intense. But aching remained, a steady throbbing at the backs of the eyes that reminded him he was due for another shot of whatever drink the aides had on offer. He'd gone through his allotment of pain blockers hours ago. But the reward of helping, of doing good, was enough to make up for going to bed sore in mind and body most days. As long as whatever battle they were cleaning up after hadn't been a total rout.

"One from back home," Danu mumbled to herself, as she blinked the darkness from her eyes after sweeping her palm down over the man’s eyelids. He'd drifted off once the worst of his injuries had been healed, though she'd probably helped ease him into unconsciousness with the touch of her Deathly magic. A trick that could be risky, but one that she was so practiced at that she did it now as an afterthought, a common courtesy.

"What gave it away?" Yule asked, his tone dry as he put the last stitches into the wound snaking across their patient's stomach. He retreated from the table, hands raised and bloody, and Danu slid into his place, to put on the necessary flesh regenerating paste and bandage him up. Another part of their dance; Danu was the best at bandaging. Yule lacked the patience for it, and Mirk lacked the practice.

"Socks," Danu said, nodding down at the man's feet. Sticking out over the tops of his boots were a thick pair of white socks, pulled up over the hems of his trousers to keep the damp and muck from getting up inside of them. Neither the man's handiwork, nor the Supply Corps, considering the meticulous detail put into the cables in them. "That and he didn't fight me as much. I don't know how they can always tell, but they can tell."

They worked in silence for a few minutes — Danu bandaging, Yule taking inventory of the supplies left scattered atop the cabinet, Mirk bracing himself against the edge of the operating table and reciting a decade of the rosary without the benefit of beads to center himself, rest up for the next round of the dance. Once Danu had tied off the last of the bandage, Yule began it again.

"Who's next?" Yule shouted out into the hall, looking over toward the door.

Instead of getting an aide or a nurse, he got another fighter, this one only lightly wounded, a cut across one cheek and an arm in a sling made out of a torn-apart shirt. A shorter, thin man, pale in the face and the eyes. Sean, the captain of the Irish company that Genesis had been given command of right before the Festival of Shades.

"That's all the ones who made it," Sean said as he limped into the room, betraying some injury to his right leg that wasn't plain to be seen through his clothes. "Five for the basement, two dozen for healers, and that bastard wants us out again at dawn. Thought we were done with him."

"Who does?" Yule asked. "Dauid?"

Sean shook his head. "Worse. Percy's back. We're doing support for the Third."

"He's back?" Mirk wiped his hands off on the front of his robes as he went to Sean's side, lowering his shields to take better stock of his injuries. The pain in his leg and arm was nothing compared to the frustration pounding in his chest. Like something inside him, a spirit contrary to his plain and reserved exterior, was aching to burst out and rip the object of his ire to shreds. "I just saw him. He didn't have any magic."

"None of his own, anyway. But he's figured out some trick so that he can nick it off other people. Got two or three of Ravensdale's djinn with him to fill him up."

Behind him, both Danu and Yule cursed. But Sean shrugged it off, fixing his attention on Mirk. "It's a load of shit, but we'll be alright. Came to tell you to leave the grunt work to this lot," he said, jerking his head at the other members of his team. "Gen came to give us a hand at the end. Took one of those exploding things to the arm. Said he'd be with us from the start tomorrow, so we'll want him fresh, and you're the one who knows how to fix him. Percy's not happy about that, but a done contract's a done contract. And we're Gen’s men first, Percy's second. Way it works when there's two divisions out together."

Mirk swallowed hard, then sighed. "Where is he?"

"Dunno," the captain replied, shrugging his good shoulder. "Off trying to get us in a better position for sunup, probably. You know how he is. Banged up arm doesn't bother him any."

"I'll take the grunt work over that any day," Yule said with a snort, as two aides shuffled in past Sean with a stretcher to collect their patient and take him up to a recovery room.

Sean nodded in agreement. "Gen said he'd try to get some of those Easterners to come with, but from what I've seen, half of them have been drunk off their ass or gone all last week. Any of you know where they went?"

"Ask her," Yule said, smirking as he jabbed a still-bloody hand at Danu.

Danu rolled her eyes, taking a rag to the blood their patient had left behind on the table while the aides carried him out of the room. "First we got stuck healing the whole lot of them at once the week before because they took that extra contract to make sure they'd all be off, and now this...it had better be some party..."

"Didn't answer my question," Sean said, though Mirk thought he could see the barest edge of a smile playing at his lips.

"Danu's going to be married this coming Sunday," Mirk said, when Danu refused to answer, despite Yule grinning expectantly at her. "Methinks it's a very important thing for the Easterners that it...hmm, goes well? They have a lot of traditions surrounding it."

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Sean cracked a full smile at that, at the way Danu rolled her eyes again and how Yule snickered. "And you didn't invite us, Danny? Who's going to fight for your honor against those knuckleheads if you don't bring the lads from back home? The healers?"

Yule made a show of deliberately wiping the blood from his hands, while Danu nodded and smirked, black flashing across her eyes. "Fancy trying your luck against us, Sean?"

The captain chuckled, raising his good arm in defeat. "Forget I said anything." There was the sound of yelling out in the hall, followed by laughter that was out of place in the aftermath of a battle. Sean retreated halfway out the door, ducking his head past the frame. "And forget about the grunt work," he said over his shoulder, as he turned to leave, now grinning outright. "You all have bigger problems."

Mirk did his best to keep the mood light, to surrender to the wave of good cheer he could feel advancing down the hall in the direction of the room they'd been working in all morning, mirrored by the gentle press of Danu's happiness against his shields from behind him. But it was hard to give in, considering he'd probably need to go spend his afternoon first hunting down Genesis and then putting him back together again. And the news that Percival was back on contract, putting both the djinn and the Seventh into harm's way, made that ten times worse.

None of them were surprised when K'aekniv wedged his way through the doorway a minute later. Slava was right on his heels, though he remained out in the hall to keep watch rather than following the half-angel in, a bundle of spellpapers in hand. Weak elemental spells, to create the kind of magical interference that teleporting mages found it hard to work around. Danu made an exasperated noise, going to collect her things from the corner of the room, her cloak and a bag of mending that she'd taken to carrying with her everywhere since the Easterners had come back from their last contract.

"I'm sorry!" K'aekniv said without any prompting, though the cloud of good humor didn't lift from around him. "It's bad luck not to do it!"

While Yule had gone easy on Sean owing to his injuries, K'aekniv had no such defenses. Yule stormed up to him, jabbing a pair of fingers that still had blood caked under their nails at his chest. "What did I tell you about this bullshit? We don't have time!"

"All emergency wounded handled," came a cool voice from out in the hall. "Three fresh reserve teams are handling the leftovers."

Emir was gone, his face buried in a collection of notes from the mages out in the field, before Yule could get a word in edgewise. The older healer threw up his hands in exasperation, though he kept his glare fixed on K'aekniv. "If I'm stuck working until midnight again because of this nonsense, you're paying my tab for the next month."

"There'll be enough drink at the wedding for even you to get drunk," K'aekniv joked back at Yule, unfazed by his bad mood, as he crossed the room to Danu. "Which arm?" he asked her.

"Left," she said, as she fastened her cloak around her shoulders. "If it takes him a while to find you, then I might be able to get this mending done in the meantime."

While Slava ripped a few preparatory papers out in the hall to make up for the delay, causing a few passing nurses to scowl and curse at the haze of discordant magics zipping around the hall, K'aekniv scooped Danu up into his left arm. She braced herself against his nearest wing, trying to keep as much of her dignity about herself as possible, though she couldn't quite keep a smile off her face. Though Mirk got the impression that smile was at the sudden breeze that ran through the operating room, a faint voice complaining about fire spells being the worst carried with it, rather than K'aekniv.

As K'aekniv headed out, he waved to Mirk, who was hiding a laugh behind the sleeve of his robe. "Mirgosha! Make sure Gen gets put back together by Friday morning, huh? We need him for that contract thing Mordka's people do."

“I'll make sure of it, Niv."

The half-angel clumped back out into the hall, making sparks rain off his right arm as he went, as another ghostly jumble of curses echoed through the operating room. Yule grumbled his own curses at K'aekniv's retreating back, snatching a fresh rag off the stack on the room's supply cabinet. He wetted it in the ewer and set in viciously on the blood left under his fingernails. "Bride stealing...what, is it still the year twelve-hundred where they're all from?"

Mirk shrugged. "Methinks it isn't hurting anyone to let them have a little fun, Yule. Things are hard for everyone right now."

"Whatever. But I'll tell you one thing, I'd never put up with all that crap. Weddings and babies and every goddamn relative out to five degrees...I'd rather be stabbed. It's the only good thing about being one of us," he added, shooting Mirk a pointed look from across the room. "Aside from the obvious, that is."

"Everyone likes different things," Mirk said with a sigh, unable to keep meeting Yule's eyes, feeling the heat rising on his neck. "Will you take care of the room? Methinks I should start looking..."

"Go on," Yule said, giving up on his nails and dropping the rag on the floor, using his foot to swipe it over the blood underneath the operating table instead. "I wouldn't want to keep you from your beloved pet skeleton."

Mirk didn't know what to say about that. He left instead, rubbing at his temples. The unyielding pace and grotesqueness of the sudden rush of wounded had been upsetting, but it had also been a distraction from how unsettled he'd felt for the past few days. It was as if every minor problem felt like a calamity, while at the same time, every spark of good fortune was touching enough to move him to tears. He didn't know what to blame it on — the impossible knot of problems he could feel drawing tight around him, the contrast between daily life in the infirmary and all his recent forays back into high-born society, or the temperamental English weather.

As he wove his way around aides carrying groaning patients and nurses and healers consulting over bins full of potions and dogeared ledgers, Mirk tried to make himself focus on the matter at hand. He'd check the supply closets first. Unless he was so badly hurt he couldn't move through the shadows any longer, Genesis always tried to patch himself up. And for an injury as severe as the one Sean had described, the odds and ends Mirk kept in their quarters wouldn't be enough to fix things. Mirk was on his way up to the fourth floor — Genesis always went to the lesser-used closets before resorting to the ones on the lower levels — when he was stopped by a sudden hand on his arm.

"Euh, pardon, did I..." he trailed off, looking down at the person who'd drawn him to a halt. A woman in a plain brown dress and a tightly laced gray bodice, a black shawl hiding her hair and face. But the trailing edges of her underskirt were adorned with fine white lace. And her shoes had carved silver buckles.

"If you have a moment, seigneur, I'd like to have a word."

"Bien sûr, madame. Please, let's go up to the fourth floor. I was just on my way there."

Mirk let Comrade Commander Margaret continue to keep a tight hold on his arm, as if she was leaning on him for support, to give them both better cover for their ruse. There wasn't much need for it at the moment; all the other healers and helpers were too busy to pay much heed to him or the common woman clinging to him. But it was better to be safe than draw undue attention from an accidental sideways glance. A tense silence hung between them all the way up to fourth, until Mirk had shown Margaret into an empty overflow long-term patient room, engaged its wards, and locked the door.

Margaret pulled back her shawl, facing Mirk on her feet instead of going for either the room's chair or bed. She looked haggard, Mirk thought. Haunted. Only his fatigue kept him from reaching out to her with his senses, though the impulse rose up in him nevertheless. "What's happened, Comrade Commander? Is something wrong with the potion I gave you?"

She shook her head, once. When she spoke, her voice was hoarse, as if she'd been crying. Or yelling. "No. It's Catherine."

"Catherine?"

"I received a formal letter of courtship today," she said. "The third since the last ball. The first two were from a journeyman and a master in my father's former guild. But the last..."

Mirk didn't prompt her. He simply waited, watching her expression harden as she clasped her hands tight at her waist. To keep herself from doing what, he couldn't be certain.

"Casyn brought it himself. The first real interest he's shown in either Catherine or Kali in months." Margaret lowered her voice even further. "It was from the Comrade."

He was familiar enough with the K'maneda by then to know what that meant. The letter of interest had been from Ravensdale. But even Margaret, in that tense situation, in the heart of the City, didn't feel safe speaking his name. "I...I'm sorry, Comrade Commander," Mirk said, dipping his head into something that wasn't quite a bow. "This is my fault. I should have been more—"

"No," she snapped, with a sharp shake of her head. "I knew this was coming. I was a fool for thinking I could avoid it."

"What do you mean?"

"The man set his sights on her before she was even sixteen," Margaret said as she abruptly crossed the room, going to its chair and sitting down in it. She maintained her grace even while in such distress, Mirk noticed, lowering herself into it properly and neatly arranging her skirts before speaking again. "The K'maneda offers girls some training at the Academy, out of tradition. A formality. Catherine had more potential than most of the boys. They were all pleased to see her leave for the Glass Tower. That was when he became aware of her. And he has been watching ever since."

"He said something about her potential at the last ball," Mirk said, sitting down on the foot end of the bed to keep from standing over Margaret.

"Her magic is well-suited to his. His own magic, not the magic he takes from the djinn." Margaret clenched her fists in her lap, unable to look up at him. "A prime opportunity for him to make himself a few new officers. Sons obey without question."

"What can I do to help, Comrade Commander? Is there someone I can speak to on her behalf? One of the Grand Masters, or the other commanders..."

"The only way out for her is a different marriage. To a more powerful man. One with more magic, or more resources." Steeling herself, she glanced over at him, just for a moment. "I've heard that the present Grand Master of the French dark magicians' guild has yet to wed."

"That's true," Mirk said, slowly. For some reason, trying to arrange something between Catherine and Lazare Rouzet was as galling as the thought of her being tied to Ravensdale. Perhaps because of what had happened with his family, or because of the way Seigneur Rouzet had looked at Kali during the meetings of the Circle her and Catherine had accompanied him to. Or because he knew full well that Catherine had no desire to wed a high-born mage at all.

"Anything has to be better than that beast," Maragaret said, cutting into his thoughts. "Anyone. He's worse than Casyn, even."

Mirk hesitated. He knew that Margaret would refuse him, but something in him still wanted to speak up for Catherine’s genuine interests. He felt like he would be betraying her, somehow, if he didn't give voice to them. Mirk knew that Margaret had no reason to respect or trust him, and that the suggestion might ruin what little of either he’d gained over the past few months. But the look in Margaret's eyes, the powerless rage, was so close to the frustrated way that Catherine had surveyed her prospects at the last ball that he couldn't remain silent. "There's...another man I know of."

"What? From the Circle? I thought the other members were too old. Even for circumstances like this."

"No. Has...Catherine been going out more lately? Helping with her father's horses more than usual?"

Warily, Margaret nodded. "Yes, she's been at the stables often. To avoid her father, perhaps. He doesn’t care about his horses unless he’s looking to run one in a race."

"Methinks she's...made a new acquaintance there. Who shares her interest in riding."

The anger flared up in Margaret again. For the first time, Mirk saw what tied her to Kali, despite all their other differences and disagreements — he'd been on the receiving end of that dark glare enough times to know it by heart. "Is this man from the Fourth?"

Mirk shook his head. "No, the Seventh."

"The Seventh?"

"The man who takes care of Comrade Commander Dauid’s horses."

Mirk couldn't tell whether this was better or worse than Catherine speaking with a man from her father's division. "He must be an officer, then."

"Ah...no, not yet. Though I'm sure he'll climb quickly. He comes from a place where much of their training in magic has to do with mastering horses. I've heard that Comrade Commander Dauid is very pleased with him."

Margaret's eyes narrowed further. "He's not even Scottish? A Scots I could reason with..."

"I'm afraid not. He's never been very clear about where it is...what was the word..."

"He's a Russian," Margaret said, flatly.

Mirk winced. "No, he's very, euh, clear about not being that. He was part of something called a host, like the angels. A...Cossack? Methinks that's the word..."

"And what crime did he commit to make him come here?"

"None, Comrade Commander. From what I've heard, it was because he didn't want to become a farmer."

This news didn't lighten Margaret's frown any. "Farming, at least, is an honest living, despite it being a very poor one. No, I would very much prefer if you'd speak to Seigneur Rouzet about attending the next ball instead. I will not let that man ruin her life. Even if going with this...stranger would keep her from him, her life would be ruined all the same."

Mirk knew better than to argue with Margaret further. Not then, not with the news of Ravensdale's plans for Catherine and Casyn’s satisfaction with them fresh in her mind. Though he couldn't feel any of her emotions beyond the protective haze of defensive magic she kept around her mind, Mirk understood her position.

Even a noble lady could only reach so far, so high. And making sure that her daughters married well, were spared whatever hardships she herself had gone through, was the one power within easiest reach. To have that hope, that small measure of power threatened was unbearable.

"I'll write to my friend in the Circle as soon as I leave here for the night, Comrade Commander,” Mirk said, that time with a full bow, as he got up off the end of the bed. “I had been thinking of other ways to bring the French and the English together. I suppose inviting Seigneur Rouzet would be part of that. He's shown great interest in the English. Methinks I won't have to ask him more than once."

"Very good," Margaret said, rising back to her feet. One corner of her mouth cricked up in a grimace and her hands twitched at her side, but she refused to press at her pain. Something in her back or her leg, from the little Mirk could feel beyond her magic and through his mental shielding.

"Is everything well with you, though, Comrade Commander? The potion?"

"Everything will be fine as soon as Catherine is rid of that horrible man."

She walked out on him then, without either saying a formal goodbye or waiting long enough for Mirk to dash ahead of her and open the door. Rather than protesting, Mirk let her go. As he listened to her head off down the hall, Mirk lifted his hands to rub at his temples again. There was dampness welling in the corners of his eyes, tears drawn up out of frustration at the impossible situation Margaret had presented him with. At least there was no one there to see him so embarrassingly upset over it. He really needed to get more rest. Or at least sort out what was causing his emotions to be so overwhelming as of late.

There had to be a way to make Margaret see reason. Though Mirk had the uncomfortable feeling he'd have better luck getting rid of Ravensdale than he would changing a mother's mind on who was a man fit to marry her daughter.