I put my hands under my chin and tried not to think of how my dearest friend was skinning me alive.

So that was all I could think about.

“Okay, it goes a little deeper than I’d like, but not all the way to muscle. We should be able to excise this. Don’t move. When I’m finished, I’ll still need to heal you.”

“Oh yes, please do. I don’t feel like fighting a dragon while missing all the skin from my back.”

“Look, about that…”

“Me missing the skin off my back? Will it scar?”

“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “No, I mean, about killing Aeyan’arric. Have you ever thought about just … fixing the poison in the Spring Caves instead? I mean, you’d be a hero. They’d erect your statue in every cave system.”

“And Relos Var would keep right on asking Aeyan’arric to freeze villages. Damn it, Qown, what’s gotten into you—”

“I said don’t move!”

I felt his hand shove me back down to the bed again.

“Sorry,” I muttered.

“I can’t stress how important it is that you don’t move,” he said after a long pause. “This is tricky work, and I’d like to make sure you don’t scar … or anything else.”

I’ll be honest, I didn’t like that “anything else.”

I stayed still, but I thought about what he’d said. Yor had never been the least bit expansionist before Quur had come in and messed up their entire country. I remember the stories from my childhood about Suless and Cherthog, how necessary it had been to free the Yorans from their enslavement by god-kings. I think Quur was just running with what they knew: slay the god-kings, take their countries, add them to the empire. They’d done it with Jorat (albeit with actual cooperation), and they’d done it (much less willingly) with the city-states that made up the area once called Zaibur, now called Marakor. Of course, Quur had gone on to conquer Yor next. Had there ever been any doubt they would?

How disappointing it must have been to whichever emperor ruled back then (Gendal? I think it must have been Gendal) when all the god-kings had been conquered. South lay nothing but the Korthaen Blight, which no sane person would want, and the Manol, which no sane person would be fool enough to invade a second time.

But back to my point: Yor had every reason to hate Quur, didn’t they? Even if being freed from Cherthog and Suless might have been a blessing under other circumstances, Quur had literally poisoned the ground under Yoran feet. How many had died in agony for Quuros generals to break their siege? Didn’t Yor deserve to have that fixed?