Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 320
found a beveled edge to one of the panels, and with several
quick jerks, pulled the wood strip away from the wall. It
groaned like a lost soul as it came. He broke it over his knee
and returned to the woman.
He didn’t warn her before taking her forearm and pulling
it straight. She yelped, but it was all over before she had time
to tense or really feel the pain. Armiger aligned the stripping
with her wristbones and wrapped it quickly with strips from her
shawl. Then he bound the whole assembly in a sling about her
neck.
"Why wasn’t it set earlier?" From the swelling, he
judged she had broken it earlier in the day.
"I shouldn’t be here," she said.
"That’s not what I asked."
"Yes, it is you see because the soldiers, they, some of
them are hurt, so bad, and there’s not enough people to tend
them. I, I went there, but one man, his stomach was open, and
he was dying but they wouldn’t leave him, and another his eyes
were burned somehow. And I stood at the doorway and they
were all hurt so badly, I, I couldn’t go in there with just my
silly broken arm. I couldn’t..." She wept, clutching him with
her good hand.
What Armiger said he said not to comfort her, but
because he had observed this in human men: "But the soldiers
would have gladly given up their beds to a woman."
"Yes, and I hate them for it." She pushed him away.
"It’s the arrogance of men that leads them to sacrifice
themselves. Not real consideration."
Armiger sat back, confused. "How did you get in here?"
he asked at last.
"I’m a friend of one of the maids. She offered to shelter
me when, when the soldiers came. I... I didn’t know where to