Silent Hall by NS Dolkart Page A

a third, tearfully, to Elkinar, who was apparently a God of death as well as life. Go figure. The ragged girl called Bandu just stared at the proceedings, and Narky didn’t blame her. The rituals didn’t make much sense to him either, and he hadn’t spent his whole life in a ditch.
    The pretty girl was very forceful. She had bought a pair of shears and a razor upon their arrival in Atuna, and had forced Bandu to sit while she sheared off all her tangled hair and burned it. She burned Bandu’s clothes too, after dressing her in the drowned nursemaid’s spare garments. When the bundle of clothes and hair was aflame, the number of agonized bugs that hopped about in the fire was truly astounding. Not that the radical change in appearance did Bandu much good. Without her hair and in clothes meant for someone twice her weight, she managed to look a good deal more pathetic than she had to begin with.
    She approached him now, standing uncomfortably close. “Do you know about hits?”
    Narky wondered if pretending not to hear her would make her go away. He doubted it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
    The girl looked frustrated with his lack of understanding. “When you hit with sharp things, and it gets red and bad.”
    â€œThat’s called bleeding.”
    More frustration. “No! No, not bleeding. After. When it gets red after , and hot.”
    Narky scratched his arm. “Like an infection?”
    â€œIn fiction?”
    â€œYeah, an infection. When the skin changes color all around the cut, you mean, even after the cut’s not bleeding anymore. They’re very dangerous.”
    Bandu looked excited. “Dangerous, yes! In fiction. Do you know how to make in fiction go away?”
    â€œWell, you can cauterize it before it gets infected. Burn the wound shut. It usually works, I think.”
    Bandu nodded and took him by the hand. “Show me. Show me to help Four-foot.”
    Oh Gods, what did I just agree to do? Narky wanted to shake loose, but the girl wouldn’t let go of his hand. He could probably yank it away from her if he really tried, but he honestly didn’t know how she’d react if he did. The girl lived with a wolf; who knew what would happen if he angered her? He let her drag him most of the way out of town before he even thought to stop for supplies, and then it took some convincing to get her to wait while he bought a tinderbox and a knife, and a skin of strong spirits. He didn’t know if the wolf would drink spirits, but it seemed worth a try to him. If he was going to go poking a wild animal with a piece of heated metal, that animal had better be slobbering drunk.
    They cleared the city wall and crunched their way into a small dry wood, Narky getting progressively angrier at himself. Bandu couldn’t be more than fourteen years old, yet here she was, bullying him. A coward’s son indeed.
    With a growl, Bandu’s wolf slunk toward them out of the trees.
    â€œYou know,” Narky said. “I think you should do this, not me.”
    Bandu glared at him. “You help,” she commanded.
    Narky withered. “All right,” he said. “I’ll help. But you do the burning. You have this, this, relationship with the wolf, and I don’t. Burning out a wound hurts. If I do it, the damn thing’s gonna bite me.”
    â€œYou don’t talk that way,” Bandu said darkly. “Four-foot is not damn thing, Four-foot is my friend. I don’t call your friend damn thing.”
    â€œI don’t have a friend,” Narky said. “Anyway, since Four-foot is your friend and not mine, I think you should do the burning.”
    Thankfully, Bandu accepted his logic. She whispered in the wolf’s ear and it lay on its right side, staring at Narky as if daring him to comment on its wound. The wound was long and shallow, stretching down from the wolf’s shoulder toward its