As soon as the bandit disappeared from view, Tamir went to fetch the camels from Sorcha, and Shayat came to me. She stabbed the bloodied knife into the hard earth of the Lost River and helped me sit up. She inspected my wounds. I took shallow breaths, my hands hovering uselessly around the shaft of the arrow. It was surreal, seeing it there, jutting out of me. Shayat pulled off her belt and handed it to me, pushing it into my palm and closing my fingers around it. “You’re going to want to bite down on this, Ariah. This is going to hurt.”

“No, no, I…”

She took the belt back and slipped it into my mouth. She closed my jaws around it and looked me in the eye. “This will hurt.” She leaned me forward, taking much of my weight on one of her shoulders. She snapped off the fletching; the force of it jostled the wound, and I howled into her belt. She placed one hand carefully on my back and took hold of the arrow with the other. “Breathe,” she said. I didn’t. I couldn’t. “Breathe,” she said again, and then she forced the shaft all the way through my shoulder: through muscle and sinew, all the way from one side of me to the other and through. I thrashed with the pain; I let out muffled screams.

Sorcha appeared beside me. He pulled the belt out of my mouth and took my face in his hands. “Ariah! Ariah, shh!” He tried to charm me, but he was scared, too, and the magic wouldn’t flow. He stroked my cheek, made me breathe in rhythm with him. “You’re all right, you’re all right, Ariah.”

“He’s not all right yet,” Shayat said. “We have to get the other one out, too.”

“Fuck!”

Shayat inspected my leg. The arrow was not in deep. She told Sorcha to hold me, and I felt her strong, travel-rough hands on my leg, holding it down, holding it steady. Methodically, slowly, she worked out the arrow. Tears streamed down my face and into Sorcha’s shirt. I held on to him so tight I left marks.

“Can he smoke?” Sorcha asked.

Shayat studied me for a moment. “Yes. He can’t count right now anyway, not in pain like this. Pack him a pipe.”

Sorcha cooed at me, stroked my hair, and slipped away. Tamir brought Shayat her pack, and she pulled out a small bottle of red elvish whiskey and clean bandages. She washed my wounds, and stanched the blood flow. She cut off my shirt with her vicious knife and gently, tenderly, wound the bandages around my chest. She was bandaging my leg when Sorcha came back with the pipe. I smoked hungrily, desperately, and I smoked a lot.