Edvard remained beside the bed.
His young lord had been unconscious for four days. At first, Dagny and the old midwife from the outpost had said the same thing; he would live, but had lost too much blood, and the sleep was natural, that worked until the second day. After that the calm began to drain away, a man could sleep from exhaustion, a voroir perhaps as well. But for so long?
Edvard did not like the tally, Hrafn was young but he was powerful from what he had seen, more than he should be even. Broken ribs and blood loss should not have been enough to bury him in such a silence, there was something wrong there, and Edvard could not bear wrong things when they were under his responsibility.
That was why he paced from one side to the other in the small room. To lose a lord so early would be a stain and a disgrace, what decent butler let his master die before even completing a year of service?
"Stay calm," said the elderly woman, while she changed the cloth on Hrafn's forehead. "He will wake."
Edvard drew a deep breath through his nose and nodded once, but did not argue, she was not a physician, but she was the closest thing to one he had left there. The old woman checked Hrafn's pulse, adjusted the blanket over him and went back to fussing with her little things with the patience of one who had already seen men go and men stay.
He considered taking him back to the Hird, but that did not seem prudent to him, moving a sick man had never been advisable. In the end he sat down and reached toward the shelf and took the old book of tales. It was an undignified volume with a tired spine, a vulgar book if one judged it by appearance alone. But Edvard had already learned that the object carried more value than its ugliness suggested.
He opened it distractedly. Most of those stories seemed like the sort of thing sold in markets to frightened children and nostalgic adults. Even so there was an unsettling difference there, for some passages knew too much, the mandrake story, for instance, against all logic it was correct.
"I see you like reading," said the old woman, without lifting her eyes much.
"Knowledge is indispensable to someone in my role," Edvard replied.
"Even this one?" She arched an eyebrow as she read the cover. "Tales of the World."
"Usually, no." Edvard ran his thumb along the edge of a page. "But this one yes."
"How interesting." The elderly woman wrung the damp cloth over the basin. "I would love to know what kind of tale fascinates a man like you." She then gathered her things with slowness. "But the Star sets, and I go with it."
Edvard nodded once more, half of his attention remained on the book, the other on the bed. Outside the weather worsened with each day. The height of winter would come soon and being trapped in an outpost during the cold season was not a prospect that pleased any man. Even less a butler forced to watch while his lord refused to wake.
He lifted his eyes to the window, there was still no snow, but the wind blew so cold it almost seemed visible. The street lay empty beneath a lean twilight and the light of the Star had already retreated almost completely, leaving the world given over to the dusk. Edvard considered making coffee, perhaps the smell would wake Hrafn, the thought amused him a little. There were men devoted to the Star, to the Salt or to the Hird but his lord, it seemed, was devoted to coffee.
The idea had barely finished forming when something changed.
A cry.
Edvard stiffened, the hairs on his arms rose beneath his clothes. His first impulse was to look at the street, he opened the window carefully and cast his eyes outside, expecting to find some injured child or some foolish accident, but there was nothing.
Only the dark street, the cold, and an old man sitting on a bench farther ahead, smoking as if the world had never produced a thing worthy of haste, then the crying came again, closer, and Edvard closed the window slowly. This time he recognized the direction of the sound with an unpleasant clarity.
It was coming from behind.
The crying grew as he turned his body, thin and shrill, almost pressed against his ears, as if the lamenting creature were right by his nape. His hand dropped by reflex to the dagger. The other rose and adjusted the monocle with a gesture far calmer than he felt. Then he saw, upon Hrafn's chest, seated among the blankets, there was a small mandrake.
It was tiny, little bigger than an open hand. It had its crooked little legs spread to the sides, its short little arms beating against the young lord's body in a frantic rhythm, and it cried with a sadness so strangely human. The leaves on its head trembled, the vegetal skin had a dark, damp green. The eyes, which he saw when it raised its face, looked like two little living emerald stones.
Edvard drew the dagger and the creature turned to him at the exact instant the blade came free. He steadied his stance, expecting the leap, the attack or anything at all. But nothing happened, the little thing merely stared at him for a moment with those eyes, before standing up. The crying ceased and in its place arose a small cheerful giggle. Before Edvard could decide whether he stepped back, attacked or called for help, the creature jumped from the bed, and came running in his direction.
Quick and clumsy, it advanced on its own thin legs with a childish haste. Edvard did not move, his heart pounded violently in his chest, but the dagger remained suspended, unable to come down. Not out of compassion, but rather out of calculation. His lord lay unconscious a few steps away, and attacking that thing without understanding what it was, or what it was doing there, seemed a mistake.
The mandrake reached his boots and lifted its little arms, and they lengthened. The movement made Edvard's stomach tighten, while the vegetal limbs stretched with an unnatural pliancy, wrapped around his leg and began to climb his body with the joy of a child climbing a tree. The creature laughed while doing it, pleased with itself, hopping from knee to waist, from waist to shoulder.
He watched it climb, and his heart, already little inclined toward heroics, seemed willing to retire then and there. It passed by his shoulder, brushed the side of his head, jumped to the other side and came back agitated.
Edvard gripped the dagger more tightly. He did not know what the creature would do if it were opposed, and he did not know what it was to Hrafn, he did not even know whether that was a blessing, a curse or some very cute form of disaster.
And Edvard was beginning to suspect that his heart, old as it might be, would still have to endure things far worse.