“Now sit still,” she told him, as if he could get up and run away. “I'm going to lift your leg up and put a pad underneath it so we don't soak all your bedding. Then when we're finished, we'll give you clean linens.” He clenched his teeth and squinted his eyes and managed not to make a sound as she lifted his stump and deftly slid more folded rags under it. “Now I'm going to wet the old bandages before I try to take them off. They pull less that way.”

“You seem to know a great deal about this,” he gritted out.

“Whores get beaten up a lot,” she pointed out pragmatically. “If the women in a house don't take care of each other, who will?”

“And I should trust the care of my injury to the woman who cut my leg off?” he asked coolly.

All her motion ceased. Like a flower wilting, she sank down on the floor beside his bed. Her face was very pale. She leaned forward until her forehead rested on the edge of his bed. “It was the only way I could save you. I'd have cut off both my hands instead of your leg, if that would have saved you.”

This declaration struck Kennit as so profoundly absurd that he was speechless for a moment. The charm, however, was not. “Captain Kennit can be a heartless pig. But I assure you that I understand that you did what you had to do to preserve me. I thank you for your deed.”

Shock warred with fury that the charm would so betray itself to another. He immediately clapped his hand over it, only to feel tiny teeth sink savagely into the meat of his palm. He snatched his hand away with a gasp of pain as Etta lifted her face to regard him with tear-filled eyes. “I understand,” she said hoarsely. “There are many roles a man has to play. It is probably necessary that Captain Kennit be a heartless pig.” She shrugged her shoulders and tried to smile. “I do not hold it against the Kennit who is mine.”

Her nose had turned red and her leaky eyes were most distressing. Worse, she dared to believe him capable of thanking her for cutting off his leg. Mentally he cursed his sly, malicious charm for putting him in such a fix, even as he grasped at the straw of hope that she truly believed such words could come from his lips. “Let's say no more about it,” he suggested hastily. “Make the best you can of the wretched mess of my leg.”

The water she used to soak the bandaging free was warm as blood. He scarely felt it, until she began gingerly to peel the layers of linen and lint from the wound. Then he turned his head aside and focused on the wall until the edges of his vision began to waver. Sweat sheeted his body. He wasn't even aware that Sorcor had come back until the mate offered him an open bottle of brandy.

“A glass?” Kennit asked disdainfully.

Sorcor swallowed. “From the look of your leg, I thought it might be a waste of time.”

If Sorcor hadn't said that, Kennit might have been able not to look at his stump. But now as the sailor fumbled clumsily in a cupboard for an appropriate glass, Kennit turned his head slowly to look down to where his sound, strong, muscular leg had once been.

The dirty bandaging had actually cushioned the shock. Seeing his leg end in a wad of stained fabric was not the same as seeing his leg stop in a mangle of chewed and seared flesh. The end of it looked partially cooked. His gorge rose, and sour bile bubbled into the back of his throat. He swallowed it back, refusing to disgrace himself in front of them. Sorcor's hand was shaking as he offered him the glass. Ridiculous. The man had dealt worse injuries than the one he was looking at now. Kennit took the glass and downed the brandy at a gulp. Then he took a shaky breath. Well, perhaps his luck had held in one odd way. At least the whore knew how to doctor him.

Snatching even that bare comfort away from him, Etta said in a quiet whisper to Sorcor, “This is a mess. We need to get him to a healer. And quickly.”

He counted three breaths as he drew them. He gestured with the glass at Sorcor, but when the man tried to fill his glass, Kennit took the bottle from him instead. One drink. Three breaths. Another drink. Three breaths. No. It was time, it was time now.

He pushed himself up to a full sitting position again. He looked down at the thing on the bed that had been his leg. Then he untied the lace of his nightshirt at his throat. “Where is my wash water?” he demanded brusquely. “I have no wish to sit here in my own stink. Etta. Leave off that until I am washed. Lay out clean garments for me, and find clean linens for this bed. I will be properly washed and dressed before I interrogate my prisoner.”

Sorcor cast a sideways glance at Etta before he said quietly, “Begging your pardon, sir, but a blind man isn't going to notice how you're dressed.”

Kennit looked at him evenly. “Who is our prisoner?”

“Captain Reft of the Sicerna. Etta made us fish him out.”

“He was not blinded in the battle. He was intact when he fell in the water.”

“Yes sir.” Sorcor glanced at Etta and swallowed. So. That was the basis of this deferential wariness the mate now had for his whore. It was almost amusing. It was evidently one thing for Sorcor to dismember a man in battle, and quite another for the whore to torment one in captivity. He had not known Sorcor was prey to such niceties.

“Perhaps a blind man might not know how I was attired, but I would,” Kennit pointed out. “See to your orders. Now.”

But even as he spoke, there was a tap at the door. Sorcor admitted Opal, who bore two steaming wooden buckets of water. He set them down on the floor. He didn't even dare look at Kennit, let alone speak to him. “Mister Sorcor, sir, them music people want to make music on our deck for the captain. They said I should uh, ‘beg your indulgence.’ And,” the boy's brow furrowed with an effort to recall the foreign words, “urn, they want to, uh, ‘express extreme gratitudes’… something like that.”

Kennit felt a tiny twitch of movement against his wrist. He glanced down at the charm hidden in the cradle of his folded arms. It was making frantic faces of assent and enthusiasm. The traitorous little bastard-thing actually seemed to think he would heed its advice. It was mouthing some words at him.

“Sir?” Sorcor asked deferentially.

Kennit feigned rubbing his head to bring the charm near his ear. “A king should be gracious to his grateful subjects. A gift disdained can harden any man's heart.”

Kennit abruptly decided it was good advice, regardless of the source.

“Tell them it would give me great pleasure,” Kennit told Opal directly. “Harsh as my life has been, I am not a man who disdains the finer pleasures of the arts.”

“Sar!” the boy blasphemed in admiration. He nodded, his face flushing with pride in his captain. A serpent might bite his leg off, but he'd still have time for culture. “I'll tell them, sir. Harsh life, finer pleasures,” he reminded himself as he scurried from the room.

As soon as the boy was out of the room, Kennit turned to Sorcor. “Go to the prisoner. Give him enough water and food to revive him. Etta, my bath, please.”

After the mate had left, she eased him out of his night-robe. She washed him with a sponge, as Chalcedeans did. He had always thought it a nasty way to bathe, a mere smearing of sweat and dirt instead of a clean washing away, but she managed it well enough that he actually felt clean. As she attended to the more intimate parts of such a washing, he reflected that perhaps there was more than one way for a woman to be useful to a man. The bathing and wrapping of his injury was still unpleasant enough that afterwards she had to once more wash sweat from his back, chest and brow. Soft music began, a gentle composition of strings and chimes and women's voices. It was actually pleasant.

Etta matter-of-factly ripped a side seam out of one pair of his trousers to allow her to dress him almost painlessly, and then stitched it up around him again. She buttoned his shirt for him, and then groomed his hair and beard as skillfully as any valet. She took more than half his weight to help him to his chair while she stripped the bed and made it up afresh. It had never occurred to him that Etta might possess such talents. Clearly he had not appreciated how useful she might be to him.