Grail - Elizabeth Bear [118]
He’d once held an artery in a half-severed arm—not his own—pinched shut for two minutes, seventeen seconds, until the ship’s medic responded. This was not the most blood he’d seen flow across his hands.
But this blood felt wrong: slick, cohering, and … wriggling. Still, it pulsed against his hand like any arterial bleed—and arterial bleeds in general were on the list of things Danilaw never needed to have pulsing against his hand again.
He set his teeth, set his fist into the wound, and yelled for a doctor, now.
Perceval hung in darkness, in wet cold, the only heat in her own blood as it spilled from her with every heartbeat. She felt the blood crawling back, oxygenating from air contact, pulling whatever life-sustaining molecules it could inside her as it struggled upstream against the rhythmic pressure of her heart.
Hands pulled her close and pressed her wounds, more pain than expected, and she felt whoever touched her recoil when her blood writhed and knotted, fighting to seal the wound. Fighting its way back inside.
The question was, could her symbiont save her life before her heart killed her?
If her heart stopped, it could. Hearts could always be restarted. They were simple electrical engines, after all. Pumps. Uncomplicated. Easy. And Perceval would have five to ten minutes of consciousness in which to seal the wound and restart the thing beating. Her lungs would work on their own; her blood could crawl through her veins, albeit inefficiently.
All right, then. She killed the pump.
Distantly, on the other side of the cold and darkness, she heard somebody start cursing.
The rain was like so many small hammers drumming on Tristen’s head, soaking his hair and clothing, stinging his eyes and beading his eyelashes. Wind slashed sideways, but his hair was so heavy with water it swung and stuck rather than whipping about him. That might have passed for a mercy, but the whole thing was foreign and unpleasant and cold, and Tristen tried to think more of making himself a challenge to incoming fire than of how miserable he was.
His feet drum-splashed on poured stone, the shock of each step in such gravity making his bones and ankles ache. The pain helped the Mean woman keep up, but Tristen ran through it.
Amanda pounded along beside him, her firearm bouncing in her hand, until they came within the boundary of the long line of purple-black trees. The broad palmate leaves cut the worst of the downpour, and suddenly Tristen could breathe. He might have accelerated, but Amanda dropped behind and stepped aside.
Tristen understood. Ahead, through the trees, a flicker of movement.
A human being. Running away.
He had hesitated to assess; now he redoubled his effort. Though he pressed against his own crippling weight, the rich atmosphere supported him.
He was not adapted for this, but muscles and bones could strengthen with time. If time he had.
But right now time was suspended. There was only the chase.
Until the firearm spoke behind him—once, twice, a third time—and the running figure ahead staggered, spun, raised a weapon to return fire—
—and toppled majestically backward, as fast as Tristen had ever seen anything fall. Fell like a whole planet was pulling it down.
He drew up, panting, as Amanda closed the gap between them and then pulled ahead, jogging through mud and puddles and leaf litter rather than running flat-out. Tristen dragged himself into a trot to keep up with her, staggering every third step now that the adrenaline and opiates were waning in his blood.
She pulled up a second before he caught her, and stood over the man sprawled on the wet ground, frowning.
“I hope he’s not dead,” Tristen said.
Amanda hefted the gun she trained on the downed assassin—would-be assassin, Tristen told himself firmly. “Non-lethal rounds,” she said. “If he’s more than unconscious, it’s not my doing.”
A circle of people heaved around them. Gain’s hands clutched Danilaw’s wrists. She pulled hard; he shouldered her aside. “What are you