In place of Nitu’s life, Tain Shir had macheted off two fingers of Baru’s right hand.

Execarne had watched it happen. Iscend had physically restrained Yawa from interfering. Nitu had wandered off cooing and insensate. Shir’s machete the last thing Baru remembered before—the cut—

“Hold her arm,” Yawa ordered. “Execarne, you’re biggest. Hold her down.”

I’ve definitely pissed myself, Baru thought. What had she lost? Did she use those two fingers for anything important? Would she still be any good in bed? Could she still write?

The alcohol bandage went on first. Baru’s stumps performed combinatoric operations on the possible varieties of screaming pain. She’d burnt out her throat: all she had now was a whispering sandy tube. Yawa was tying on the outer bandages, tight, too tight; Baru managed to shriek, “For fuck’s sake, Yawa!”

“Marines are coming,” Iscend snapped.

“Shit. Keep her still—”

“She’s strong.”

“She’s just a woman, Execarne, you can hold her!”

“How anti-egalitarian of you, Yawa.”

Execarne tried to force a pellet of wax or gum into Baru’s mouth and Yawa slapped it aside. “You can’t drug her, you ass. She needs to keep her blood up. You’ll kill her.”

“If she struggles in the glider, I can’t control it—”

“Baru!” Yawa slapped her on the cheek. “Baru, you’ve got to be still! Do you hear me? Stop writhing and be still! I need you alive, damn you!”

The pain was in her right hand. Baru glanced left. The pain went. Something was still very wrong with her but now it didn’t seem so urgent.

“How do these work?” she croaked, and pointed, left-handed, at the gliders. “I’ve never seen one before … the construction is ingenious, but I doubt that it’s light enough to fly like a kite. Without a mooring, they’d be impossible to control, wouldn’t they?”

“She’s addled,” Execarne said.

“No,” Yawa said, with a softness like relief. “This is normal.”

Hands lifted her. Ropes and leather buckles clasped like surrogate arms. Now she lay on Execarne’s broad warm back in the glider’s harness. His feet rocked against the stone: he was crouching and uncurling, warming himself up. Baru squinted up at the canvas wing overhead. She knew very little about aeronics. Didn’t gliders usually flutter out of control and plunge?

“You’ll need a little speed,” Execarne said to Iscend, who had harnessed Yawa onto her own back. “So dive at first, get the air moving under the wings, and then glide out toward Helbride. Don’t let the prow come up. When you strike the water the glider will float, that’s how we always land, but you must get out of the harness, understand?”

“I understand,” Iscend said, smiling blissfully. “I’m to protect Xate Yawa. The word was given.”