[This post is from David O’Credne Miller’s point of view.]
“It’s not the first time I’ve heard something like that,” the healer said, smiling wryly. “And I imagine that you’ve got as good a reason to say it as anyone I’ve ever heard express that sentiment.”
“You could say that,” David said slowly, glancing toward Issy, then Bryant. He swallowed hard, trying to collect his thoughts, wondering who, exactly, the healer might have been talking about with that statement.
For all you know, it could be anyone. It could even be your uncle.
That was still hard to swallow. His uncle, here.
Still here, he corrected himself. The Wanderer wanders no more, I guess.
Still, it seemed a little odd.
“As to the question of what hit him,” Bryant said, “it wasn’t just outriders.”
“Is that what you told Matt it was?” the healer smiled faintly. “I’d wondered. None of them told me—not that I’ve given them all that much chance since yesterday. I’ve been a little busy.”
Bryant nodded slowly. “It definitely was linked to a larger force, but what hit us wasn’t human.”
The healer didn’t flinch—she didn’t even look surprised. David swallowed bile that suddenly rose in his throat. If there had been even a shred of doubt in his mind that they were in the right place, it would have been erased then and there. The healer’s gaze flicked toward him again, her expression softening slightly.
“I knew what I was looking at when I looked at your wounds,” she said softly. “I know what the looks of them and your fever mean. I’ve seen it before, I just have to wonder what kind of creature it was, if not a fury or a camazotzi. Figure out that piece and we start to sort through whose forces you ran into—and then we can figure out the ramifications of the same.”
