“Okay,” she breathed. “Okay.” Still straddling the branch, she pulled Nick away from her and, holding his body steady with one arm, brushed the tears from his cheek with her free hand. “Nicky, everything is going to be okay. But you need to listen to me, okay?”
He nodded, chin wobbling.
“Okay.” Pulling him close, she used the trunk of the tree to steady herself as she pushed to her feet, bringing her waist level with the next branch. “Okay. This is going to be easy, my love. This tree is like a ladder. Hang on to me, okay? I can’t hold you and climb at the same time.”
Eli clung to her, legs wrapped around her waist, arms looped around her neck, and she climbed to the next branch. Then to the next. But before she could climb any further, she heard voices.
Freezing, balanced on a branch, she wrapped one arm around the trunk, the other around Nick, and peered through the spindly branches of the trees. She could just make out the ridge from which they’d come, Eli just cresting it as she found him through the trees.
The voices came from the direction they’d been heading, and Mara’s heart thumped wildly in her chest when three figures came into view up the path from Eli. She could barely see them, but they looked big. Armed. Scruffy.
Eli stopped walking when they came into view, greeting them, though she couldn’t make out the words. His voice, what trickle of it made it through the distance, sounded relaxed. Unbothered.
One of the figures answered. The biggest one. Walking in the middle. He sounded low, gruff. Very much bothered.
Eli said something more. The figure on the left pointed in the direction he’d come. Mara didn’t move, didn’t breathe. Nick was whimpering quietly into her neck, and she lowered her head, whispering into his hair. “It’s okay, my love. Just stay quiet. It’s okay. You’re okay.” Her eyes burned and blurred. She’d forgotten to blink.
She blinked away the blur, just as one of the figures sprang forward in an attack, wielding a small, curved sword. A cry threatened to burst from her lips, but Eli dropped swiftly to a knee, dodging the blow and flipping the attacker cleanly over his shoulder as he shot back to his feet.
The other two figures converged, and, in a series of movements too quick for Mara to comprehend, were reduced to writhing, dark heaps on the ground.
Mara stared. Was it over? That quickly? No sooner had she had the thought than Eli sidestepped and something dark sprouted up from the ground at his feet like a particularly eager spring sapling. Her sluggish, befuddled mind fumbled with the details as more dark sprouts popped up at his feet.
Arrows.
Gods, no.
She bit her lip so hard she tasted blood, clung to Nick so hard he squirmed in her arms.
Eli took two running steps up the sloping ridgeline and disappeared over the far side. Had he been shot? Was he fleeing? Was he leaving them behind?
She didn’t need to have faith, because it didn’t matter whether he left them behind or successfully defended them. He’d put her up a depths-bound tree, and now the only reasonable course of action was to wait here, where at least she was hidden.
Mara took a deep breath, focusing on the hard ridges of the tree bark beneath her palm, the stickiness of the sap. “It’s okay,” she whispered to Nick. “It’s okay.”
Two more figures ran into view, peering down the ridge where Eli had disappeared. One jerked back, fell, the dark line of an arrow protruding from its chest. No sooner had the other turned to run when it too fell.
Mara watched. Waited. The dark shapes on the ridge still moved–some of them. But no more appeared.
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She watched. Waited. Her legs began to ache from not moving, and she carefully lowered herself to sit on the branch, still holding Nick to her. The move shifted her vantage, but she could still see the miniature battleground. The bodies. One tried to rise and was felled by an arrow, this time coming from higher up on the ridge.
Good gods. Were there more?
But no, why would they be firing on each other?
As she watched, Eli trudged into view, and began meandering amongst the fallen. There was a rhythm to his movements, a business-like pattern. He took a knee beside one body, still moving, placed a hand on its chest, and it went still. Was he killing them with his healing magic? It was possible, she knew, but considered unsavory even by morally ambiguous Order doctrine. Doing harm with healing magic was a kind of evil she couldn’t imagine Eli perpetrating.
Discarding that theory, she quickly formed a new one that was confirmed when he moved on to the next body—one with an arrow protruding from its chest. She watched as he yanked the arrow free and shoved it haphazardly back in the quiver, strapped to the side of his pack. Then he placed his hand on the person’s chest, and they went still. A long few moments later, he stood and moved on.
He was healing them. And then, she guessed, spelling them as he had the Order lieutenant back in the city.
She watched him move through the rest of the bodies with that theory in her head, her theory further confirmed when he paused between one body and the next, head lowered, breathing as if winded. The physik in her yearned to clamber down the tree and go make herself useful, but the voice was weak and she stayed where she was.
When had she grown so used to hiding in safety?
Finally, he left the bodies behind and began a sliding, fumbling descent down the steep slope towards her, disappearing behind the curtain of overlapping branches. Mara didn’t wait. By the time he reached the tree, she’d awkwardly shimmied her way back down to the low branch on which he’d left her.
“I told you to climb,” he said crossly, nonetheless reaching up to receive Nick when she passed him down. Her son curled into his arms with a little whimper of anguished relief that ought to have made her feel something unkind or unjust, but didn’t.
“I did,” she said, hopping down, her landing a little awkward on the slope. “I climbed up. And then I climbed back down. Are you alright?”
“I’m fine.”
She looked him up and down, eyes catching on his left pant leg, just above his knee. “You’re bleeding.” Heavily, by the looks of it.
“No, I’m not.” He turned and stalked to where he’d stashed her pack. How he planned to wrestle it free from the vines with Nick still in his arms, she didn’t know.
“Yes you are. Move.” She nudged him aside and crouched to untangle the bag. “I’d better take a look at it before we move. You’ll leave a trail.”
In a twisted way, she was grateful he’d gone and gotten himself sliced open. At least now she could contribute something–a couple neat stitches and a pain elixir toward the debt she owed.
“You don’t need to look at it. It’s fine.”
“Eli, you are bleeding.” Yanking her pack free of the last few clinging vines, she spun to glare at him. Relief had catalyzed the conversion of her terror into a bevy of frantic biproducts–agitation and gratitude, euphoria and angst. The only thing that could quiet the storm was the reliable rhythm of making herself useful.
“I’m fine, Mara. It’s healed.”
“It–” Oh. Oh. Of course. All healers, even weak ones, were able to turn their magic inward. With a gift as strong as Eli’s, he probably didn’t even have to concentrate. It was probably a natural impulse, to heal himself when he was hurt. “Right.”
“We really do need to move.”
Shrugging into her pack, she cinched the straps down and followed as, Nick still in his arms, Eli led the way back up to the ridge. He angled their path somewhat, so that they skirted around the mess of bodies he’d left behind.
“Are there more of them?” she asked breathlessly, once they reached the top. She trusted that the ones he’d dealt with posed no further risk, but what if they had friends lurking in the hills?
“No.”
She didn’t ask how she knew. He must have persuaded the answer out of them while he was healing them.
“What will happen when they wake?”
“They’ll come to with vague memories of a battle in which they were severely outmatched and the conviction that the gods were looking out for them. Outlaws are a superstitious bunch. They were heading south, so once they wake up they’ll carry on their way.”
Mara quickened her step to walk next to him. “It would have been easier to kill them. Planting all those false ideas must have been a drain.”
He eyed her suspiciously. “You can turn the physik off, Mara. I told you, I’m fine.”
Mara didn’t argue, but she had faith that he was telling the truth. She had faith, now, that he could protect her. She had less faith than ever in herself.