"Ten minutes. Fifteen, if we're exceedingly unlucky."
Which seems to be something of a theme for the evening, though he hardly need say as much. Instead, upright and with all his scattered detritus reclaimed, Flint offers a point of contact—evading his usual target of John's elbow given the jostling it might require of his injured shoulder and settling instead for a vice grip on a fistful of shirt and waistband, his knuckles a firm plane against John's side.
To the credit of the Crows, it takes them an extraordinary number of those fifteen minutes just to work their way back toward the mouth of the alley. They only have to linger in the cast shadow for a short interim, during which the adrenaline buzz under his skin may rollover into sharp, unrelenting awareness of the pincushioning John has been subject to and the sound of his pulse in his own ears and to deny himself the impulse to constantly reassess his grip. Instead, he shifts his grip along the unsheathed sword's pommel, fidgeting quietly where it will be least intrusive.
By the time they make it back to the palazzo gardens, griffons dropping heavily out of the sky to land amidst the groomed shrubbery and extensive flower beds, it's very late indeed. One of the healers must be roused from bed. The act of separating John from his collection of crossbow bolts is one of those nervy, tedious things—less morbid than the work performed on a ship's stinking orlop deck, but no less gruesome. Flint's leg, victim to the magebane bolt slashing deep along the outside of his thigh, is more easily addressed with a stinging salve and a combination of patchwork healing and perfunctory needlepoint.
And after, in the room they've been given to share and with a myriad of scrapes and bruises and drying blood left to tend to, Flint wrings out a cloth in the basin of warm water left behind.
"Should I tell Averesch about the blood sooner, or save it for later?"
It's flecked all over the bedclothes. The white linens will have to be lyed and bleached within an inch of their lives to recover.
no subject
Which seems to be something of a theme for the evening, though he hardly need say as much. Instead, upright and with all his scattered detritus reclaimed, Flint offers a point of contact—evading his usual target of John's elbow given the jostling it might require of his injured shoulder and settling instead for a vice grip on a fistful of shirt and waistband, his knuckles a firm plane against John's side.
To the credit of the Crows, it takes them an extraordinary number of those fifteen minutes just to work their way back toward the mouth of the alley. They only have to linger in the cast shadow for a short interim, during which the adrenaline buzz under his skin may rollover into sharp, unrelenting awareness of the pincushioning John has been subject to and the sound of his pulse in his own ears and to deny himself the impulse to constantly reassess his grip. Instead, he shifts his grip along the unsheathed sword's pommel, fidgeting quietly where it will be least intrusive.
By the time they make it back to the palazzo gardens, griffons dropping heavily out of the sky to land amidst the groomed shrubbery and extensive flower beds, it's very late indeed. One of the healers must be roused from bed. The act of separating John from his collection of crossbow bolts is one of those nervy, tedious things—less morbid than the work performed on a ship's stinking orlop deck, but no less gruesome. Flint's leg, victim to the magebane bolt slashing deep along the outside of his thigh, is more easily addressed with a stinging salve and a combination of patchwork healing and perfunctory needlepoint.
And after, in the room they've been given to share and with a myriad of scrapes and bruises and drying blood left to tend to, Flint wrings out a cloth in the basin of warm water left behind.
"Should I tell Averesch about the blood sooner, or save it for later?"
It's flecked all over the bedclothes. The white linens will have to be lyed and bleached within an inch of their lives to recover.