“I—I don’t feel well,” Klia said, pressing a hand over her eyes. Suddenly she felt light-headed and nauseated.

“Hertas, fetch the healer!” Myrhini ordered, righting the overturned cot and helping Klia to lie down.

“I’m all right,” Klia said, looking at the cut on her arm.

“It’s not deep, but it’s bleeding.” Myrhini staunched it with the corner of Klia’s blanket, then turned on the others. “Quit your staring and raise the alarm. If there are any other assassins sneaking around, I want them captured. Alive!”

“Thanks.” Klia winced as Myrhini insisted on looking at the stab wound on her hip.

“Bastard must have been going for your belly.”

Klia looked past Myrhini to the dead men littering her room, which was beginning to spin. They wore Plenimaran uniforms. “Looks like we missed a few. They must have been carrying poison in case they got caught. I think—” Her tongue felt thick and she tasted something bitter. “I’m poisoned, too.”

“If you are, it’s something different, or you’d be as dead as they are,” the other woman growled. “This wound is deeper and bleeding badly. You’re lucky as Sakor that it wasn’t a few inches to the left, or it would have been in your guts.”

Klia couldn’t help a shudder; gut wounds were some of the worst, and generally ended in a lingering, painful death. But perhaps the poison— It was becoming difficult to form coherent thoughts.

The last thing she heard was Aden the drysian shouting for hot water. Coldness crept over her, but she could feel Myrhini’s hand warm and sure around hers.

Klia came around in daylight, sick, achy, and very surprised to be alive. Myrhini was still beside her cot, watching her intently.

“How long?” Klia tried to ask, but her throat felt swollen and her mouth tasted bitter. Her head was splitting. “Water—”

“Aden left this for you.”

Myrhini held Klia’s head up and helped her sip from a cup. The infusion smelled of herbs and minerals, and tasted mildly sweet. She managed a few sips, then gagged it up again.

“You have to keep it down,” Myrhini told her calmly. “Aden did what he could with magic, but he said you need this to fight any remaining poison. It’s a good thing you bled the way you did, too. Apparently because most of the wounds were shallow, the bleeding washed out the poison, or at least the worst of it. The stab wound to your hip was the worst.”

Klia flexed her leg and grimaced. “He didn’t have to cut anything out or off, did he?”

Myrhini chuckled. “No. Here, have some more.”