The man recovered, much to Haggs' dismay. He grunted as the doctor arrived, equipment ready to transfuse them. Haggs didn't want the blood in a tube. He sorely wanted to use his axe.
"I'm in your debt, Aurora Campbell," Blue Knife told her, needle in his arm. "The doctor says that Rallis will live because of you. He wants to know who trained you – says he hasn't seen such skill with herbs since some Romali woman who took up with a Scotsman in the Moors."
"I've never heard of her," she lied, pressing her lips tightly.
"You have skill, Miss Campbell, if I may say," Doctor Tavis spoke over her shoulder.
She was careful to keep her eyes from meeting his, as he was the man who delivered her twenty summers ago. Doctor Gregg Tavis was an imperial exile who worked alongside her mother, begrudgingly at first, believing her remedies were nonsense. Then, he witnessed Talia stop a woman from hemorrhaging using yarrow and tassel bark. He marveled at her work until the day she died.
"You have your mother's hands," he whispered in Briar's ear, speaking in an accent that was high and magisterial. She always found it amusing as a child, but today she shuddered. He knew.
"I don't know what you mean," she told him palely. Doctor Tavis softened his gaze and studied the girl, seeing the dirt on her cheeks and hollowness in her eyes. His mind was keen enough that he didn't say her name.
"Commander Bricken, I haven't seen a healer with hands like hers in many years. Not since the death of Talia MacLeod, God rest her soul. Keeping her at a spinning wheel is a waste of talent. I've been conscripted to serve at Bahelin Forge, and I believe that Miss Campbell would excel as my apprentice."
"She could do very well as a nurse for the infantrymen," Blue Knife agreed. "They're always coming back from the mountains half-dead, bloody savages putting gashes in their heads. The Forge needs skill like hers. I'll put in a word with my superiors and have her sent there on the morrow."
Briar kept silent. The idea of aiding the ones who burned her village filled her with disgust. Yet, she'd be far from this place. Far from the prying eyes of Haggs and the overseers. The way he studied Briar's curves made her feel like a freshly killed lamb before a starving lion. She'd also be closer to the Highlands. The notion of a way out was elating. Then, she remembered her promise.
"What about Innis? My grandmother, she's the one who taught me what I know," she fibbed. "I'll only go if she does."
The room bled silence red as the tubes coming from his arms. Blue Knife was unenthused by the notion. Even after her great accomplishment, he was surprised at her audacity. They discussed her as a prisoner, nothing else.
"Child's hungry, I see. Does strange things to the mind. Let me have a word with her." Doctor Tavis quickly put a hand on her shoulder and took her into another room. The look in his eyes was grave. "Briar, you're not the little girl I watched your father paddle over his knee. I don't know what debt you owe this woman, but you're not in a position to make demands."
"Innis is mountain born. She may not know as much about herbs as Mother, but she has her ways- "
"I'm aware of her ways," the doctor interrupted. "Innis is indeed mountain born, and I know the kind all too well. She also has two broken shins that aren't going to mend, and insisted that I let her out of bed, so she could go to work on her knees, since Lilliard fought limbless. Tomorrow they'll take her where they take all of the prisoners with broken bodies."
He spoke the words with such arrogance that Briar twanged her lips in fear and disgust. The doctor furled his brow. It wasn't the look of the man she knew, with a plump face and gently inquisitive eyes. The doctor's face was gaunt, and his eyes were the cold orbs of a mortician. Even the ruddiness of his cheeks had been replaced with tallow.
"Feall-duine," she told him through gritted teeth. "You've turned your back Moorland and all the Gaels to become one of the Magistrate's dogs again."
"A dog who wants to help you, no less," he shot back coolly.
Briar shook her arms in anger, but his aged hands were firm on her shoulders. They had the same bumps and ridges as the ones that examined her neck during a bout with scarlet fever, one of her earliest memories. They were rough in appearance, but soft as he applied perfect pressure to his touch. His palms were just as calloused as when he handed a bottle of white pills to Talia, explaining the medicine of the Empire.
The moon was full and the moors muggy. Clouds blanketed the night in a way that sent a strange glow through the farmhouse windows. Cal was out in the fields with his father, grazing the flock upland. There had been a mild outbreak of white tonsils in the village, but those who were not already immune were cured with liverwort tea.
It was by misfortune of the gods that the only one Talia couldn't heal was her own daughter. When the tea failed, her skin became speckled rouge and her body inflamed. The little girl was hardly two years old, just yesterday a babe-in-arms. The fever was high and intense, not even a dip in the snowmelt would break it. Talia tried every remedy she could remember, but when the fever wouldn't break, she realized it was the cruel hand of death reaching out. It was a hand that everyone in the moors knew well.
"I obtained these from a smuggler in Devon. I've been hesitant to use them, as they're hard to come by in these parts. It's hard to justify using it when they can only save just one from death and condemn ten others..." Tavis trailed off, looking at the child ailing in the bed beside him.
"Whatever it is, save it for someone else," Talia told him, concern evident in her voice. "I'll use more of the moss."
"I've saved it long enough. Give her these pills. They'll keep the infection from reaching her blood."
"I don't understand. This little thing will make her well?" Talia gaped confusedly, unscrewing the lid and holding a small oval to her candle.
"Yes, Mrs. MacLeod. At least, it will give her a fighting chance. This is a medicine of the Empire, and it's more concentrated than the tea you make. It doesn't hold the key to everything, but I know it does to this," he intreated. The mother was still uncertain. She watched her toddler's chest rise and fall in shallow, agitated breaths.
"How can I trust it won't harm her?" Talia asked. The doctor grabbed her hand and met her eyes with kindness and certainty.
"Sometimes, when circumstances are unfortunate, we must reach beyond what we know. We must have faith, and find another way," the doctor replied. "This cures certain ailments that your herbs cannot, just as there are things your herbs can do that this never will."
She took it from him and gave it to the girl, the two opposing magics becoming one in her daughter. Science became art that day, just as it did when Talia saved the woman with her poultice of yarrow. When Briar recovered, Gregg brought them get-well gifts of black tea and books. They were copies of the Hippocratic Corpus, Zale's Journal of 22nd Century Medicine, and Surgical Methods for Army Personnel, 1975.
Today, Doctor Tavis didn't bring tea or books. He came bearing a different sort of gift.
"They're not going to let her come with you, Briar," he told her eighteen summers later, eyes unyielding. "War changes all of us. It's every man for himself, and you must see that. If you don't take this opportunity to leave, you never will."
"Only with Innis," Briar stamped her feet, unrelenting. "I won't let them take her away from me."
Tavis grabbed her arm somewhat forcefully, leading her back into the room. Blue Knife welcomed them, his blood hanging in a bag overhead. It was darker than rubies, never hitting the air. It was such rich purple that it almost reminded her of the man with blood like ink.
"Nearly done, nearly done," the doctor remarked. "Let's get this into your brother."
He took the bag and had Briar pierce the brother, still unconscious, with a special needle that that connected a line to his arm. She'd only seen the doctor do it, but she caught on quickly and flawlessly at his tactile instruction. Soon, the blood was transfusing into the sickly man and he was finally coming to.
"She's taking to your instruction already," Blue Knife remarked. "The Fort will be glad to have her."
Against his better judgement, Doctor Tavis spoke up.
"I think it will be glad to have the old woman as well."
Briar looked at him in silent victory. Bricken seemed dubious, but nodded cautiously.
"I'll see what I can do. Aurora's displayed talent that warrants a transfer. The old woman, I'm afraid... Well, she's the responsibility of Haggs." He saw the sinking look in her eyes and changed his tone. "But, we'll see."
The next morning, she rose in the barracks with hope. She nudged Innis awake before first sunlight, viewing her frailty in full. For the first time, Briar saw the way that the machines were shriveling her body. The constant slump over her wheel had set her arthritic spine into a permanent hunch. All that was left of her fingers were the bones. Her legs were bruised and broken between the two wooden splints Briar fashioned for her last night. She opened her eyes and looked at the girl sweetly.
"I'm tired, a sheòid."
"Don't worry," Briar stroked her thin grey locks. "Today we're going somewhere better. There won't be any more spinning, and there will be enough food to regain your strength."
She lifted the woman into her arms, which was disconcertingly easy. The splints might have been heavier than she was. Briar felt the porcelain fragility of her frame and winced. If she was leaving today, Innis was too, even if she had to force her into the carriage. She felt the fox pendant sitting on her chest, still raw and irritated from the wolf's tooth. Innis took her hand and weakly patted the spot on her sternum.
"Guard it well, a sheòid," the woman leaned in to whisper in her ear. "Your daughter will be wise as the fox and fierce as the valkyrie."
She carried her out of the barracks as the sun rose. A dense cloud awakened their lungs. Pale mist settled around them, refracting a rainbow beneath the orange glow of a patchy sky. The light consumed all it touched, blanketing the moors with warmth and glory. Innis sighed.
"I remembered the sun fondly in darkness. As I sit in the sun, the darkness is only a memory. It'll be like this forever one day; the night only a thought."
She carried Innis to the carriage that waited in the razed schoolyard. It was parked on a slab of packed dirt where she played marbles and hopscotch as a child. Those days long gone, her only joy sat there, hope covered in canvas. Their way to the mountains; Innis back to her homeland, and Briar back to Cal.
If they could make it out of the Forge, of course. And why wouldn't they? As she hoisted the woman into the wagon, Officer Haggs ran from the back door of the school and ripped the Innis from her arms. Doctor Tavis stood beside his horse with another officer, urging patience, but Haggs disagreed. They held the girl back as the man pulled a pistol from his belt and pressed it against the old woman's forehead. He glared at Briar with eyes of stone.
"Remember where you are, little wench."
They placed a blindfold over the girl's eyes, throwing her into the back of the cart. Her windpipe landed on something sharp. It didn't pierce the cartilage, but it may as well have, for the pain it caused. When she opened her mouth to scream, the air wouldn't leave her throat. Her vocal chords were paralyzed.
"Don't handle my apprentice so roughly!" Doctor Tavis snapped.
She heard the voices with throbbing ears, pain radiating from neck to skull. Feet shuffled against packed earth. Something heavy dropped, but it neither banged nor whimpered. It was the sound of a splintering twig, fracturing as it collided with the dirt. Could it have been the splint? Briar heard them dragging someone, but if it was Innis, she didn't cry. The absence of breath was terrifying in her blindness.
She felt the cart rock as someone stepped inside. A scaly hand settled on her shoulder, moving her neck carefully without touching the blindfold. When the leathery finger touched her windpipe, she winced.
"Bruised, but not punctured. You'll be alright," Gregg told her. "Don't speak, or it will only hurt more. Think of it as a blessing in disguise. Right now, silence is golden."
When he left the carriage, Briar's ears were met with the clanking of chains. The buggy shook as weighted iron smashed against it. Hinges creaked, and there was a click, presumably of key-in-lock. The wheels began moving, and she hugged her knees. Ten gunshots broke the silence with their deafening echo.