Saint's Blood: The Greatcoats Book 3 by Sebastien De Castell Page B

Brasti’s fingers in a crushing grip. The bow clattered on the floor. ‘What makes you think I need a sword to teach you sense?’ Kest asked.
    Brasti winced in pain, his knees buckling. ‘Stop it, you fool, you’ll break my hand!’
    ‘Apologise to Falcio.’
    ‘I was only trying to help!’ Brasti said, looking at me pleadingly.
    ‘Trying to help?’ I asked. ‘That’s a stretch, even for you.’
    ‘Come on, Falcio. You nearly lost a duel to a pompous fop of a swordsman, practically everyone hates you and then you managed to almost die for the hundredth time. Did you really want to wake up to the sight of Kest wiping your brow with a soft cloth while whispering sweet, reassuring words to you?’
    ‘Compared to waking up thinking I’d been buried alive?’
    Brasti, obviously born without any sense of self-preservation, chortled for a moment before regaining control of himself. ‘Come on, admit it! I bet you’ve never felt more alive than you do right now!’
    I sighed, feeling nothing of the kind. ‘Let him go, Kest.’
    ‘Really?’ Kest asked, his left hand still firmly in control of Brasti’s fingers.
    I pushed myself to sit up. ‘If you break his hand now then how am I going to enjoy the full satisfaction of tearing his fingers off later on?’
    ‘Ah,’ Kest said, and let go of him. ‘Good point.’
    ‘Now wait a minute, Falcio . . .’ Brasti began.
    I smiled. ‘You’ll never know when, Brasti. Maybe tomorrow, maybe ten years from now . . .’ I paused for a long moment, then said, ‘No, probably tomorrow.’
    He hopped off the bed and massaged his hand. ‘One day there’s going to be a God of Humour and he’s going to curse the pair of you as apostates.’
    I rose from the bed, feeling every cut and bruise on my body come to wakefulness. My chest and abdomen were covered in bandages. ‘How long was I out?’
    ‘Six days,’ Kest replied.
    ‘Hells, six days . . .’
    ‘Doctor Histus offered to draw you a diagram of the vital organs in your body and the exact distance by which Undriel’s smallsword missed them.’
    ‘Kind of him,’ I said. Histus. That explains the poor bandaging, anyway. ‘Why didn’t Ethalia tend to my wounds?’ Then I remembered the circumstances that had got me into this state. ‘Saints . . . is Birgid—?’
    ‘Still alive, so far as we know,’ Kest replied. ‘Ethalia’s been working day and night to heal her.’ He paused for a moment, then admitted, ‘Falcio, Saint Birgid hasn’t woken in all that time. Her injuries aren’t healing.’
    I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to focus and clear the fog from my head so I could concentrate on the matters at hand. Instead, I found myself remembering my first meeting with Birgid – how disturbingly beautiful and youthful she’d appeared, glowing with a power that had filled me with both awe and trepidation. Then the images in my mind shifted to how she’d looked when I’d last seen her, just a few days ago, her hair matted and filthy, trapped behind an iron mask, shoulders and arms covered in tiny cuts that were somehow . . . precise . Planned. This was a careful and meticulous kind of cruelty.
    ‘Falcio?’ The voice was Kest’s, but it sounded very far away so I ignored it.
    I stumbled a little, my hand grabbing onto the foot of the bed as my thoughts shifted again. Now it wasn’t Birgid I was remembering, but myself, bound to the split tree in the clearing those eight days and nights as the Dashini Unblooded tormented my flesh, my mind, my soul. Stop , I told myself. Breathe. Focus. Think about Birgid.
    I considered the possibility that somehow there were still Dashini out there and that they had captured Birgid and performed the Lament upon her, but her torture had obviously been different . . . blunter , somehow.
    ‘Falcio, you should rest,’ Kest said. His hand was gripping my arm and I realised that he was holding me up.
    ‘There’s any number of things that Falcio should do,’ Brasti