He set her hand down and pulled up a three-legged stool next to the table. When he was comfortable, he took her hand up again and poured magic over it.

Oreg had been part of Hurog since there was a Hurog to be a part of, and I was Hurog-bred sensitive to the magics imbued in the land and in him. When Oreg worked magic around me, it felt almost erotic—like a hand touching me intimately. It was disturbing, but I shrugged off the uncomfortable feeling with the ease of long practice.

There is an art to working magic, and Oreg was very, very good at his art. His touch was focused and powerful, eerily beautiful to watch. When his power began to flicker, I rested my hands on his shoulder and gave him what I could of mine, all the while watching what he was doing to Tisala’s hand.

Flesh peeled back and burned away in bright purple flame, leaving healthy pink behind. Oreg left other bits of flesh that looked no more healthy than the flesh he’d destroyed—he must have seen things I did not.

When he was finished at last, her hand looked more swollen and bruised than it had when we started. I hauled Oreg off to rest on the padded bench against the wall, then turned back to Tisala with clean bunting.

“Don’t wrap that hand,” Oreg said. “The air will help it heal, and she won’t be doing much for a few days to get it dirty.”

I looked to the wounds we hadn’t dealt with yet. “I think she’s got a rib that’s cracked or broken,” I replied. “Do I bind her ribs, or will that hurt her back?”

Oreg pushed himself off the bench, and moving like an old, old man, examined the place I showed him. “Bruised,” he grunted, shuffling back to the bench. “Don’t wrap it.”

I left Oreg, pale and sleeping, in the library and took Tisala up to my own room to rest. She looked oddly fragile in the bed built for me, I thought, smiling because she would have laughed if she’d heard anyone call her fragile.

AMIDDLE-AGED MAN WITH SWEAT FROM THE FIREcoating his bald head looked up as I came into the forge and nodded at me before turning his gaze back to the bar he was shaping.

“Good ’noon, Hurogmeten,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

“Hinges,” I said. “And a portcullis door to go with the gatehouse we don’t have. Bars for all the windows. A thousand blades and the warriors to use them.”