Potent: Book 1

Chapter 27: Trades

Ber, Day 16 of Melia, Winking Moons, Year 602

I've come to learn that women are dangerous.

If you pack enough hurts and wrongs and abuse onto a woman's spirit, yes—she will break.

And then she will grow. She will morph and stretch and shoot her power up into Calumn's sky, and then her fury will rain on those who have wronged her like so many scalding drops of molten lead. I've come to learn that women can change the whole course of history.

And the same strong, supportive hands that nursed us, fed us, and tended our wounds may grow hard and cold with steel veins and iron bones. Treat women as equals, or else beware.

—From the private journals of Bricot Camdetch, Master Alchemist at Craestor University from 600 to 604

* * *

When he next awoke, he was astride a lumbering horse and leaning back against a solid, warm body. The motion of travel jostled him painfully, and the sharp agony in the head wrung a helpless little moan from his swollen mouth.

A steady hand clasped his wrist, and someone whispered, "Shhh, it's alright now," comfortingly in his ear.

He shook his head slowly from side to side as if to clear it, then winced at the pain the movement continued to awaken in him. The world was rocking slowly around him. He couldn't seem to make anything hold still.

Ger was confused. What day was it?

"You're hurt," a woman's voice said softly in his ear. "I'm taking you back to the university. Can you speak?"

The landscape seemed to tumble around them. There was a stand of trees to his right—no, they'd passed that already, and the fields full of eborel swayed in the blistering sun. It was so hot...

He leaned away from her to vomit; she continued to hold tightly to him.

The sick splattered harmlessly down into the tall grasses, only slightly splashing the flanks of the bay they rode together. Where had she gotten a horse?

It didn't matter. He was so tired. He could puzzle it out later.

His eyes fell back and down, back and down, and they ached with it.

"Ger?" she asked carefully. "Stay awake. Can you stay awake for me?"

He didn't answer, but leaned back against her and sighed. His eyes were so very heavy.

"Ger?"

He slipped back into sleep.

A few hours later—or perhaps it was days—something cool and wet on his forehead roused him and he took in a deep, shuddering breath.

"He's waking," he heard a low voice say, and a slight gasp followed.

A warm hand clasped his forearm.

"Ger? Can you hear me?"

His eyes pulled open, almost rusty with fatigue.

It was Farax, looking bruised, tired, and worried. Chancellor Slager peered down at him also, blue eyes anxious. And a third person scuttled about in the background—a university nurse whose name he thought was Tilda.

"Thank the Divines," Farax breathed, leaning forward to lay her head on his chest. He felt her arms snake around his shoulders as she gave him a gentle hug.

She smelled like summer.

"Bricot brought you back from the dead only weeks ago, and I feared I'd undone his work irrevocably," she said against his shirt. "How could I face him if we lost you?"