“Press here,” Lilia said. She put Ohanni’s hands onto Roh’s thigh. “Press hard. To the bone.”

Ohanni did. The flow of blood eased from the worst of the wounds. Lilia wadded up Roh’s novice apron and pressed it against the major wound itself. Blood and death. A hungry thorn fence. She remembered bleeding out into a shallow dish to protect her village from harm.

Matias joined them at Roh’s side. He wiped at his eyebrows. “Oma,” he said. “This injury is too much. Tira is descendent. I can’t fix this.”

Lilia thought him a fool. She had seen worse, with her mother’s patients. She knew the major arteries in the body. She had learned basic anatomy with everyone else in the temple. But closing a wound as bad as Roh’s was beyond her.

“Please, Matias,” Ohanni said. “You must try. This violence… someone did this to him. It’s not as if he tumbled off the stage during some grand jeté.”

“I’m sorry, Ora Ohanni. He’s dying.”

Ohanni made as if to draw her hand away from Roh’s thigh.

“Don’t!” Lilia said. “He will bleed out.”

“There are no tirajistas with the skill to fix this,” Ohanni said. “Ora Almeysia is the most sensitive, but she doesn’t specialize in matters of the body. Can you ease his pain?” she asked Matias.

“He is nearly gone,” Matias said. He pressed his hands to Roh’s wrist. “There is nothing to ease.”

“Try!” Lilia said. “Won’t you try?”

“Child, I’m sorry,” Matias said.

Ohanni drew her hands away.

“No,” Lilia said. She pressed her hands there instead, hard. “Close the artery. Stop the bleeding.”

“He has lost more blood than I can replace,” Matias said. “Even if I could find every source of damage–”

“Is this him?”

Nasaka’s voice. She strode in ahead of a young man, handsome, with scars on his hands. Lilia had not seen him before.

“I’m sorry, Ora Nasaka,” Matias said. “He’s lost too much blood.”

“Sina’s breath,” Nasaka muttered. She came up next to Matias. She wore a willowthorn sword. Lilia had never seen an Ora with a sword. “This boy can’t die, Matias.”

“The blood–”

“I don’t care about the blood. He cannot die. Wash your hands. Are you a physician or a soap maker?”

Matias hurried to the stone sink at the center of the room.

Roh’s breathing was almost imperceptible. Matias was right. Lilia knew that, but she pressed hard anyway, though her hands ached and her chest still burned. She coughed and coughed.

Matias pulled the apron away from the wound. He carried sinew, a needle, and a delicate knife.

“I cannot see for all the blood. Mop this up,” he told Lilia.