The sorcerer’s red-haired companion removed a glass jar from his rucksack. It wasn’t a large jar; it would barely hold a mugful of ale. “I don’t have a hollow needle or a bleeding tube,” the sorcerer said to no one in particular. “So we’ll have to cut her thumb.”

“No . . .” Mula tried to step back, but Orlín was in the way. He grabbed her shoulders and held her fast as the copper-haired man pulled out a dagger and a whetstone. He spat on the stone, rubbed the blade across it. Swick, swick. Then he reached forward and slipped the blade’s edge across the fleshiest part of Mula’s thumb.

Blood welled immediately, and the pain came a split second after. The redheaded man held the jar beneath her thumb and caught the blood as it fell; he had cut deep enough to provide a steady drip-plop. The blood slipped down the inside edge of the glass, coating it in thick scarlet. The room began to spin.

“Let her sit,” the sorcerer said. “She’s going to faint.”

They guided her to the bench and she sank onto it gratefully.

“It helps to look away from the blood,” the copper-haired man said. “Think about something else.”

Mula didn’t want to cry in front of all these awful men, but she hardly knew up from down and her life’s blood was leaving her body and she had just seen a sparkle stone go bright with power. Her lips trembled; her eyes filled with liquid.

So she thought hard about the other side of the world. What it must be like. She imagined a desert, the sun shining on snowless mountains of orange sand. Warmth blanketing her skin. More sky than a single person ever knew existed. If she got to see the great desert for true, she’d know she was lucky after all.

“There we go,” said the copper-haired man. “That wasn’t so bad, yes?” He wrapped her finger in a strip of cloth and tied it off. “Put pressure on that for a few minutes until the bleeding stops,” he said.

She cradled her thumb in her hand. It throbbed so badly she could hardly stand it.

The red-haired man stoppered the jar and slipped it into the rucksack. The sorcerer counted out six coppers and handed them to Orlín. “You’ve got a good bleeder here. My countrymen will be coming through soon, and they’ll pay you decent money to bleed her so long as you keep her well fed and watered.”

Orlín was staring at the coppers in his palm. “I will. Thank you, my lord.” To Mula he said, “Go back to the kitchen. Cook needs your help.”

The girl was weak and dizzy, distant from her own body, and her thumb throbbed like a drum. But she wanted more than anything to get away from the sorcerer, so she turned and fled, careening into tables and chairs as she went.

16