Grave-leeches did not live long when extracted from their pools of putrescent liquid, but the more of them there were in one place the longer they could survive. If a cursewright attempted their use, and there was not enough poison in the patient to satisfy the number of leeches affixed to her body, they would instead feed on her vital essence, consuming it and reducing the physical remains to a stinking mass of rot and bones in a matter of minutes. Bad enough, but the grave-leeches that found themselves in such a decayed body were no longer in danger of expiring themselves. Soon enough they would begin to reproduce, their offspring as ravenous as if full-grown. More than one cursewright had miscalculated the number of grave-leeches that were necessary and found themselves the creatures' next meal. They were among the gravest dangers confronted by explorers, scholars, and thieves who plumbed the domains of the dead.
Ammas hesitated not a moment to retrieve a second leech, nor did he hesitate in where he let it land on her body: on her cheek, just below her eye. Lena clapped a hand over her mouth. Casimir had hid his face against her side for a moment. The leech only writhed and hissed, already dying, and with its fellow on Carala's left breast it began to crinkle and dry, a thin smoke rising from its slimy flesh.
The golden prong was now clinking against the glass again. Ammas knew he had more of the creatures, but they knew their fellows had been seized and were now actively trying to avoid the prongs. How much intelligence grave-leeches possessed had once been a matter of great debate among his colleagues, but no consensus had ever been reached on the matter. All Ammas knew was that they were smart enough to be dangerous, and that he found the loathsome little things hateful, however useful they were.
Ammas knelt over Carala, frowning, sweat pouring down his face. It had soaked through his black robes, the lightweight material sticking to his chest. Both grave-leeches were steaming freely now, their movement almost stilled, twitching in the last moments of their unnatural lives. And now he weighed the most important decision of his career since the dissolution: two or three?
She hadn't swallowed much of the cure, but as his attention had been focused elsewhere, Ammas had no idea how much she had swallowed. If it had been a simple physic's brew or a even an arcane healer's potion, her vomiting would already have expelled it from her body. But a cursewright's brew usually entwined itself with many elements in the body beyond the physical, and the cure for the wolf's blood sickness was no exception. The question was not merely a matter of how advanced the sickness was, or how deep into the balance of her physical humors the cure had traveled, but how deeply it had affected the wolf's blood itself, that spiritual wolf essence inside her that made her the werewolf she had become. That was what had reacted so violently to Ammas's brew, and what had led to the theory dawning in his mind as he worked furiously to save the princess's life.
The theory's shape was clear but sorely lacking in details. Whether right or wrong, it would prove a pointless exercise if her heart stopped. Which led back to two or three.
One grave-leech worked on her heart. One worked on her brain. Wolf's blood pumped through her body; wolf dreams and instincts whispering into her mind. Was that all? Had the cure worked any deeper into her than that before the reaction had begun?
The grave-leech trapped in his prongs squealed hideously. The foul thing was already dying.
He might have two more to spare.
If the two on her were not enough, he would have to start over, and he could not fathom how he might harvest another one before her heart finally gave out.
The way she had arched up at him as he touched her on the altar, almost stirring his own sleeping desires through the cloak of his professionalism.
The way her tongue had lathed at her lips.
The way Tacen had infected her, not merely with a bite and not even with sexual congress, but emotionally insinuating himself into her sheltered life until she craved him in spite of every ounce of good sense she possessed.
Ammas's eyes traveled from her heaving stomach to the mild bump of her pubis, crested in silken black hair; to the blood oozing from her cleft.
Do it.
Ammas dropped the third leech onto the lowest stretch of her belly, almost concave from her poor diet on the road, directly atop her womb.
Its protesting squeals became screams. Within seconds steam began to rise from its dying shape, adding to the now-thick plumes rising from the ones further up her body.
Exhausted, the cursewright sprawled to one side, slamming the glass lid onto the grave-leeches' jar. The smell improved marginally, but the ones dying on the princess's body did not exactly put one in mind of a rose garden. Now he could only watch, and destroy the leeches if he had used too many.
The steam grew thicker and thicker. He could now smell some of the ingredients that comprised the brew, especially the bitter wine and the sunflower oil. And most encouraging of all, the rotten, mulchy odor Casimir had noticed was beginning to soften, to gentle, to become the forest perfume of a she-wolf so newly turned she might fairly be called innocent.
None of that, however, stopped Ammas's pulse from racing until he saw the grave-leeches had steamed away to nothing. Grimacing, his knees complaining against the extended period he had spent on them, the cursewright dragged himself closer to the princess and scanned her as closely as he could. Her breathing was heavy but no longer strained and stertorous. The sobbing and whimpering had ceased. Gently he touched two fingers to her left breast, closing his eyes, gauging her heartbeat. Not the ragged arrhythmic beat that threatened to cease or even burst at any moment, nor the wolf's pulsing rhythm -- just rapid, as if she had run a race. Slowly his gaze traveled to her hips, the Deyn tattoo, the shape of her sex: still bloody, but no longer flowing.
Ammas collapsed backward with a deep sigh, bracing himself on the floor by his hands, then settling his back against the altar itself. After a moment he looked over at Lena and Casimir. On both her pale face and his dark one were identical expressions of guarded hope.
"She's alive. She'll recover."
Lena gave a whooping sigh of relief and hugged Casimir to her breast, who seemed frankly bewildered. "Thank the gods, thank the gods," she murmured, hiding her face in the boy's kinked hair.
Ammas said nothing for a long while, and when Lena looked up, wiping away the tracks in her makeup worn by her relieved tears, she thought he had fallen asleep. Nervously she stretched forward and tugged the woolen blanket over Carala's form. The girl was fast asleep now, breathing steadily, though her face still bore the pallor of deep illness.
"Lena." She turned around to look at the cursewright, who regarded her from glazed and half-lidded eyes. "Take Casimir into the garden. Help him draw and heat enough water to bathe her. You don't mind, do you?"
"No, Ammas," she shook her head. "I've done it many times at the Lioness. Lots of the girls overindulge on the weekends. I've given plenty of unconscious baths." She colored a little and smiled shamefacedly. "Received a few, too."
"That sounds lovely," Ammas said vaguely. He was looking at Carala again, studious and troubled.
Finally Lena chanced the question. "What happened, Ammas?"
"You mean, how did you fuck it up, Ammas?"
Lena's blush deepened. "No, I didn't mean that."
"You should have," he said sharply, almost waspishly. It frightened Lena and drew a puzzled look from Casimir. Neither had ever seen him like this, and both decided not to leave him alone just yet. Finally he looked up at the ceiling of the temple, distant and lost in shadows. "I think I know. I have to discuss it with her when she wakens. Please help me clean her up before that. I can't leave her for so much as an instant until I know she's awake and healthy. Well, healthy as she was before she drank the cure." Scowling he lowered his gaze to her again. "After that, I don't know. There might be options."
Lena nodded, and after a long, pained look at Ammas, she set toward the postern door. But Casimir lingered, and after a moment Ammas waved him over.
"Hunker down here, Casimir." The boy nodded and obliged. Ammas ran a hand along the boy's head, his callused fingers gentle on the boy's curls, tight and black where Ammas's own were soft and graying. Casimir blushed and looked down. Ammas lowered his hand with a smile. "Didn't get the essay done, I take it?"
The boy shook his head.
"Want to talk about it?"
"Not . . . not really, Ammas."
Ammas nodded, watching the boy thoughtfully. "Deacon Pell?"
The boy looked up with a glare, not directed at his master. "Yes."
Ammas laughed sourly. "I thought so. That useless sack of rat shit."
The phrase made Casimir snort embarrassed laughter, though he stifled it and looked worriedly at the girl sleeping deeply on the temple floor. Ammas kneaded the boy's shoulder comfortingly.
"You saved her life, Casimir. You know that, don't you?"
Casimir looked around, startled, then shook his head in disbelief. "You did that. I watched. All those things you did. Those -- those words. The leeches."
Ammas nodded slowly. "Yes. I did. And if you hadn't come back when you had, Lena would still be scrambling for them down in the catacombs and I'd be whispering against that woman's throat until her heart burst, which would have happened long before now. So forget the essay, and forget that shit Pell. You did a cursewright's job tonight. I couldn't have a better apprentice."
Casimir could do nothing but look at the floor, a tear trickling from his eye even as his smile threatened to consume his entire face. It had, after all, been a tumultuous afternoon.
"Go out back and help Lena. Help her bathe Carala if she wants, but she probably won't. If she doesn't, go up to bed. Someone here needs to get some sleep."
"I want to stay with you," Casimir said at once.
Ammas sighed, too tired to argue. "We'll see." Casimir still hadn't left. "Something else?"
"Just I knew her name wasn't Mari."
Ammas laughed hoarsely. "Wise lad. Go help Lena with the water."
When Casimir had departed Ammas turned his attention back to the deeply sleeping Princess Carala, trying to ignore the voice of his father announcing his sentence for a cursewright who had been found guilty of nearly killing a client through incompetence.