Eona - Alison Goodman [103]
“Put your head between your knees,” Dela said, pressing my head down. She crouched in front of me and pulled my hand off my arm. The wet dressing stuck to my palm and yanked the cloth out of the wound, ripping a gasp from me.
“Sorry,” Dela whispered. “Vida, I think she’s still bleeding. Get something else to bind it.”
I hung my head, breathing through the pain. The world was spinning around me again.
Vida took Dela’s place in front of me. “Let me have a look.”
The eunuch peered over her shoulder. She took my arm in a firm grasp and peeled back a larger section of the cloth with a low grunt of concern. “There’s not enough light to see properly, but from the feel of this bandage, you’ve lost a lot of blood.”
She unwound the sash from her waist and folded it into a pad, then pressed it over the wet dressing, using the ends to tie it in place.
“Hold it up against your chest,” she said, lifting my arm across my body. The weak moonlight caught her frown. “Your skin is cold.”
I caught her sleeve. “Don’t let me pass out. If I pass out, I won’t be able to heal Ido. Everything will be lost.”
At Ido’s name the eunuch stepped back. “Do you mean Lord Ido, the Dragoneye? The prisoner?” He retreated a few more steps, pebbles clinking loudly in the sudden tense silence. “I thought you were Blossom Women. Who are you?”
Dela stepped up to him, her hands held out as though she were calming a nervous horse.
“It’s all right,” she said, then punched him in the face, the snapping blow so fast and so heavy that he staggered backward, sat down on the pebbles, then toppled over.
I gaped at the still figure lying in front of me. Knocked on his arse like the eunuch clown in the fool’s opera.
The ludicrous comparison rose through my shock in a quivering curl of laughter. I bit down on the building wave of whimsy—it was callous and wrong—but it broke out of me in uncontrollable giggles. I clamped my hand over my mouth. It had to stop. The poor eunuch had been punched senseless. We were in extreme danger. Which was suddenly hilarious. I rocked forward and shoved my bloodied knuckles into my mouth, trying to force back the spasms that caught my breath into snorting gasps.
Vida stared at me, a horrified smile pulling at her lips.
“Stop it,” she hissed. The words hiccupped into a snuffling giggle. She pressed both hands against her mouth. “Stop it.” But her shoulders shook, her eyes filling with tears. The sight pushed me further into gulping spasms.
Dela’s hands caught my shoulders, holding me still.
“Eona, calm down. You’ve lost a lot of blood. You need to calm down!”
The low urgency in her voice broke through my hysteria. I sucked in a breath, fighting for control. The fluttering crest of a giggle ebbed away, leaving only the thudding pain in my arm.
Dela looked at Vida. “I don’t know what your excuse is,” she said acidly.
Vida wiped her eyes. “Sorry.”
“Get up and help me roll him under the hedge.”
“Is he all right?” I asked.
“He’s still alive, if that’s what you mean.” Dela hooked her hands under my armpits and helped me to my feet. For a moment everything was still, then the hedge and the wall rushed past me in a spin of nausea. I swayed and fell back into the tight embrace of Dela’s arms.
“Eona?” Her face blurred in and out of focus.
My heartbeat resonated in my ears, fast and labored. At the base of my skull, a sick ache drummed in the same ominous rhythm.
“Get me to Ido, quick,” I said, the words like sludge in my mouth.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
DELA HITCHED ME up higher on her back and edged into the shadowy portico of the Pavilion of Autumnal Justice. Under the tight hook of my good arm, I felt her chest still heaving from the effort of sprinting from the Pavilion of Five Ghosts. I blinked through my own weariness; I had to stay awake. Already I had half stepped into the shadow world twice; only Vida’s vigilant pinches had pulled me back from crossing into oblivion.
Dela’s quick breathing lengthened into a sigh. The portico was empty. Yuso and Ryko had not yet arrived. Had they been