It was, by Lori's estimation, more than a taum and a half away from the center of the demesne in a straight line, through uneven terrain and thick foliage. It was a long walk, made longer by the fact her legs throbbed, her side hurt, and her arm was bleeding. The latter she was able to restrain by binding the wisps to stay in her veins, which was basic Whisperer medicinal magic, but it still hurt, every step jarring her and making her aware there were earthwisps in her wounds that she couldn't concentrate on getting rid of right then.

Tackir must have been a fast runner, because it wasn't long before he came back with Rian and some other people. She vaguely recognized at least three of the medics. When they came close, someone began unfolding a large canvas she recognized as one of the old tents, laying it out on a bare stretch of ground.

Rian reached her first, and would have grabbed her other arm to pull over his shoulder if she hadn't pulled it back with a pained hiss and a glare. Fortunately he got the hint, calling for water to wash her wound and for everyone to get ready to start carrying her. Ah. Right. She should have remembered they still had some water. That was stupid. She should have remembered.

The water stung as it was poured over the wounds on her arm, and she winced, gritting her teeth. Someone grabbed her hand and she nearly pulled it back before she realized it was one of the medics, reexamining her wounds.

"There's matter in the wounds," he said, his words clipped and professional through his northern accent. "We'll need to debride, Great Binder."

"Please tell me we still have some kind of antiseptic," Rian said, hovering behind them, just tall enough to see around them.

"We'll have to check our supplies," another man said as the people Rian had brought finished laying out the canvass. "Great Binder, can you walk?"

"I can," Lori said. "I'd rather not. It hurts. Though I don't think anything is broken."

"We'll be the judge of that, Great Binder," one of the other men—another medic—said.

She was laid down on the canvas, and one of the people there—a woman, thankfully—began prodding her limbs, checking for broken bones. Even just through her clothes, the prodding at her right side drew pain, but eventually they concluded that nothing seemed broken, though they lacked the equipment to know for sure.

"I need to look into your eyes, please," the medic said, pulling out a small mirror.

"I didn't hit my head, I'm not concussed," Lori said.

"You don't need to hit your head to become concussed, your Bindership," the medic said. Lori recognized him. He was the one she borrowed scissors from. "A sudden stop will do. Please hold still and let me keep you alive."

Lori pointedly waited, and when he didn't just grab her head to do it anyway, acquiesced. "Fine," she said, trying to relax as her head was held and eyelid peeled back, while the doctor tried to use the small steel mirror to reflect light into her eyes.

Well, if she was going to be stuck here, she might as well be useful.

"Rian," she said. "Have Tackir go back to the clearing we just came from, there's a large conglomerate of dragon scales there. Have him mark it so that I can recover it later. And have him pick up my bag and hat!" She'd only just noticed she'd lost her hat in the fall.

"The dragon scales you just got hurt from by falling off?" Rian said, some kind of restrained emotion in his voice.

Lori would have nodded, except her head was being held still. "That one. Make sure he marks it, I'm fairly sure at least one of the dragon scales is made of anatass."

She heard Rian sigh. "Go do what she said, Tackir. Walk, don't run, you've done all you can. Be careful on the way back. Koe, go with him so that if anything happens he's not stuck out here alone."

Lori heard a pair of "Yes, Lord Rian", and someone apparently walking back the way they'd come.

"This anatass is worth nearly getting yourself killed, I hope?" Rian said. He sounded… very, very sarcastic.

"No, of course not," Lori said. "Nothing is worth nearly getting myself killed."

"Ah. So it wasn't the anatass that had you joyriding such that you could have broken your neck and died," Rian said, nodding. "Well, I'm glad to hear that. I'm sure whatever reason you had for nearly getting yourself killed was worth it and sure to be a great boon to the demesne."

She gave him a sharp look that was ruined when she hissed as someone patted her wound dry, then quickly began wrapping her forearm in a soft, fluffy bandage. "I didn't think you were capable of sarcasm," she said.

"I didn't think you were capable of suicide," he said. "Today is full of surprises. Tackir said you hurt your side. Where does it hurt?"

"Guess," she said flatly, wincing again as the bandaged was secured.

"I used to think it was safe for me to do that, but clearly I was wrong, since I never guessed you'd get yourself hurt after so many reminders to be careful," Rian said. "Now, which side is it that hurts?"

"My right," she snapped.

He nodded curtly. "All right, you heard her everyone. Be careful with her right, she hurt herself there." He sighed. "Lie down on the canvas and we'll carry you back. Tuck your arm against your chest so it doesn't flap around.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Lori glared at him, but she ached too much to really put him in his place. Maybe later, when… yes, when her arm wasn't slowly staining a bandage red, most of her right side didn't feel like it was melting from pain, and it didn't hurt to bend her knee…

She lay down gingerly on the canvas, trying not to feel like a specimen corpse being brought in for educational dissection before it was Deadspoken into a useful undead. They'd tied the side of the canvas to poles, the kind they'd used to make spears with beast-tooth heads, which the men on both side of her bent down to grasp. At a countdown, they all lifted the poles, pulling Lori and the canvas up with it. She let out another hiss as her side was jarred, then jarred again as the group started moving briskly back to towards the Dungeon.

Lori just lay there, wincing every time a break in the tree cover let the sunlight fall directly onto her eyes, and eventually she just closed them, protecting her vision. She started breathing in evenly, drawing in magic, trying to keep herself calm and centered, to have something to focus on besides the pains in her side as she was jostled across the uneven ground. She could hear Rian next to her letting out an unending stream of prattle, occasionally warning her of bumps or slopes, though it was never as bad as he seemed to be warning her…

When she next opened her eyes, they were in the shadow of the hospital. These days, it was mainly the residence of the unmarried doctors and former militia medics, guarding what few medicines they still had, and trying to grow medicinal plants that had originally been brought from River's Fork. The latter was barely more than headache medication, as no one was likely to come down with a heart attack any time soon, and the doctors had intelligently not brought any of the addictive anesthetics with them, since they'd originally had a Deadspeaker.

There was a brief moment of confusion as they tried to fit her stretcher through the door, but eventually she was inside the cool shade of the hospital and being laid down on a bed and oooohhhh lying down on the cushioning of a bedroll felt soooooo good. The comfort of lying down on something that was actually soft and meant for lying down on almost eclipsed the pain of her arm and side…

Lori winced as someone grabbed her bandaged arm and started to unwrap it, pulling her out of the happy softness and into the painful reality of her current situation.

"Stop glaring, it's not going to make the pain go away," Rian said, sitting next to her bed.

"Don't you have work to do?" she said.

"Yes, that's why I'm here," he said. "I'm supposed to keep you alive, remember? I thought you could do your part in that, but since it turns out you can't, I now have to do twice as much work. What were you thinking?"

Lori directed her glare at him. "Watch your tongue," she warned. Perhaps she'd been indulging him too much, with how free he was being with it.

"My Binder has shown idiots and their idiocy shouldn’t be tolerated," Rian said. "I'm following her example. Were all the reminders about being careful and watching your step so you didn't break your leg so offensive to you that you wanted to try breaking your neck instead?"

"It was an accident," Lori snapped defensively.

"An accident you could have easily avoided by not sitting on a moving rock, from what Tackir was able to tell us," Rian snapped back. "For someone who insists on being the most important, irreplaceable person in the demesne, you seem to have forgotten you're the most important, irreplaceable person in the demesne!"

Lori's caustic response was delayed by someone brushing a liquid on her arm that burned, and she nearly screamed, instinctively trying to pull her arm away from a suddenly iron grip before she recognized the alchemical agony of antiseptic on her wounds. She grit her teeth, trying to breathe through the pain, taking in magic in the familiar exercise.

"Your Bindership," the doctor holding her arm said as one of the medics continued cleaning it with antiseptic. "I'm afraid there are debris in your wounds. Unless we remove them, infection is all but certain. Do we have your permission to operate on your arm?"

"I can get them out myself," Lori said, gritting her teeth.

"With all due respect, your Bindership, you shouldn't. Some of the debris isn't rock, and it still needs to be cleaned. And, again with respect, your Bindership," the doctor said calmly, "if you could treat this, you'd have done it already."

If she could treat this? What did they…?

"Doctors," Rian said suddenly, "are educated people. And generally not stupid. The stupid ones just focus on making money, and even they have to be pretty smart to do that. And you've only ever used Whispering."

Lori blinked, then stiffened on the bed, a heartsick cold filling her.

They knew.

They knew!

"As Lord Rian has said, your Bindership, we are not stupid," the doctor said. "I don't know if anyone else knows, but my new colleagues all relate that their former Binder only ever used Deadspeaking after setting up their demesne. And all you've ever built has been with Whispering. Lord Rian has spoken to us about not spreading the matter, and we have not. That being said, your Bindership, do I have permission to begin debriding your arm?"

"Debriding?" she asked, trying to place the word.

"Removing the debris, your Bindership, else we will not be able to prevent infection," the doctor said calmly as the vocabulary fell into place. "Some are embedded, and we might need to use our scalpels. I fear you might assume that was an attempt on your life, so we are notifying you. I also regret to inform you we are out of anesthetics, topical or otherwise."

Lori didn't whimper. She was a grown adult and a powerful Binder. Those do not whimper in fear of pain.

Eventually, she said, "Do it." And if it was with gritted teeth, well, her side hurt.

She was already immensely regretting riding that rock. How could she have been so stupid? Not that she'd tell Rian…

"We shall have to immobilize your arm, your Bindership," the doctor said. "Please don't try to move. We will try to be as quick as possible."

"Just do it," she said.

The doctor nodded. "I… would strongly suggest you avert your gaze, your Bindership," the doctor said. "Seeing your own flesh be operated on can be quite distressing and is known to intensify the sensations, as well as cause people to struggle." The doctor hesitated. "If you think you can risk removing the lightningwisps in your arm to deaden your nerves, then I leave that to your judgement."

"Noted," Lori said through gritted teeth.

Her arm was secured to some sort of armrest attachment that they secured to the bed. Her arm rested on warm copper fittings that had likely just had boiling water poured on it to sterilize it. She didn't remember them having this device before, so it must have been made from the demesne's precious copper stores. Antiseptic was wiped over her wounds one last time.

Even if Lori wanted to keep an eye on the person who was about to start carving at her flesh with knives and tweezers and strange little picks and forceps and other tools, the way her arm was position prevented it, naturally forcing her to lay on her left. So she was looking directly at Rian as she felt the warm blade of the copper scalpel on her skin…

She grit her teeth and hissed through it. If this was a way to lower her guard so they could sever her wrists, she wanted all the warning she could get.

Eventually, Rian held out his hand.

Eventually, Lori took it and squeezed, holding on as she tried not to scream…

"I blame you for this," she hissed. "The map was your idea."

He rolled his eyes. "Noted."