The sky had gone from black to a grudging gray. The serrated line of the eastern peaks still hid the sun, but the clouds were starting to clear. They’d be hard-pressed to finish tending wounds before full daylight, and Valyn still wasn’t sure what he planned to do then.

“Laith,” he said, voice rough with urgency and weariness, “get this fucking thing out of my shoulder.”

The bolt came out more easily than Talal’s arrow, although Laith needed to make a pair of slices in the surrounding skin in order to free the small barbs on the quarrel’s tip. Aware of Huutsuu’s eyes upon him, Valyn clamped down on his pain, refusing to cry out even as he felt the muscles of his shoulder pull, then tear. The searing agony of the hot knife threatened to plunge him into unconsciousness, but he clenched his jaw and forced back the fog on the fringes of his vision.

“I’m good,” he said, when he trusted himself to open his mouth again. “I’m good. Go check on ’Ra. I can take care of Gwenna.”

The demolitions master was by far the most worrisome case. She still had not regained consciousness, and in the meager dawn light her face looked even worse than it had in the dark, pale and waxen, her red hair plastered flat to the skin by the rain. The wool blanket was rapidly soaking through, and she was shivering, lips dark in her pallid face. Valyn ran a finger along the inside of her hand, but there was no response, no grip or reflex. There wasn’t much to do with head wounds but wait and hope, which meant they were going to have to get her warm. Which meant going in the api. Sometimes there just wasn’t a good option on offer.

“Talal?” he asked, glancing over at the leach. “Any thoughts?”

Talal frowned.

“We’ve already moved her too much. It was a rough night, and with the two drops . . .” He trailed off, shaking his head. “I don’t know.”

“Valyn,” Laith cut in, all trace of levity vanished from his voice.

Valyn turned, hand on his blade, half expecting to find the Flea facing him down. There was only Laith, though, Laith and the bird. Suant’ra had half extended her enormous wing for him, and Laith stood beneath it, hands above him, prodding the joint with both hands. His face was grim.

“What?” Valyn asked.

“Not good.” The flier took a deep breath, then blew it out. “There’s serious damage to her shoulder—probably a patagial tear.”

“Meaning what?”

Valyn had sat through the lectures on kettral anatomy, they all had, but it was the flier’s responsibility to care for the birds in the field, and some of the more specific terminology had slipped.

“Meaning she can’t fucking fly.”

“She flew us here,” he pointed out. “She flew all night long.”