A Prelude to Penemue by Sara M. Harvey Page B

up and dashed back into the fray, leaving Hester reeling.
     
    “I thought you said you had never healed before,” Anna said, almost playfully.
     
    Hester shrugged.
     
    “Well done.”
     
    She smiled, but the weight of the engineer’s injuries plagued her. She mentally shifted them from hand to hand, but she did not know what to do with them. She could not put them down, she could not throw them aside. So, she swallowed them.
     
    For a moment, it seemed like the right thing to have done. The report of the cannon echoed through her still-quiet mental space, followed by the roar of the beast.
     
    She smiled and made to stand, but pain wrapped around her and her knees gave way. Each breath came with a rending of her lungs; blood began to bubble up into her throat. She staggered, and her husband elbowed his way to her, catching her in his arms.
     
    “ Charlotte ,” she whispered, “where is she?”
     
    “Safe,” Marius assured her.
     
    “No, not here. Not safe here. You and she—” the pain seized her and crushed the breath from her body, “must both go!”
     
    “What’s going on here?” Anna stooped over them both. “Princess? How are you hurt?”
     
    Hester could only shake her head, she was too overwhelmed to speak. Anna glanced toward the front line, then back to Hester.
     
    “Dear Lord, you just…wait here. Judith!”
     
    The healer emerged from the shadows and frowned at Hester. “Good for nothing,” she spat. “I had to leave good fighters to come and care for you.” The Vedma’s accent was strange and twisted with anger. “What did you think to take on her injuries like that? So you can die from them instead and have us all to decorate the gallows when your mother finds out? Do not look at me like that, child. I know who your mother is, just as I know who you are: Hester Regalii , run off with a mortal and got with child, too. And here she is, the Prodigal Daughter, battling the legions of Hell with us plebeians.”
     
    Tears welled in Hester’s eyes and she trembled, blood oozing from her close-pressed lips.
     
    “Be easy with her, Judith, she came to help.” Anna’s voice was stern. “Do you see her sister or her cousin lifting a finger out here? And there are few among us blessed with the ability to heal through that kind of empathic prowess. Besides, I like her.”
     
    “Enough. This is going to take time to unravel. Husband of Hester, help me take her into the banquet hall. It will be quieter there and I can make sense of the mess she has made of herself. Plus, if she has been spotted, especially by the groundlings, they’ll stop at nothing to see her dead. Little would upset the Primacy more than to lose the Grand Dame’s wayward daughter before she is brought back into the fold. Pick her up, I said! Hurry now.”
     
    “Be gentle,” Anna admonished.
     
    Marius carefully scooped her into his arms. Every little movement was a fresh sea of agony. Hester moaned, but no one paid her any mind. With Judith at his side, Marius ran back to the hall where a score of servants, nobility, and the host of Regalii were waiting out the battle.
     
    Judith swept the fine porcelain dinnerware from a table and ordered Marius to lay his wife down upon it. The healer was not gentle in the slightest as she prodded Hester’s ribcage. The screams were lost in the rising darkness that threatened to envelop her.
     
    Outside, the furor grew louder. She heard Anna’s voice clearly, but the word was foreign. “Automation!”
     
    I must be about to die. I pray that clever child lives; I do not want my death to be entirely in vain.
     
    Judith paused. “That hussy cannot possibly mean they have one of those .”
     
    The walls shook as if every brick built into them were trying to tear itself lose and run away. Those who remained in the hall began to back away very slowly, even Judith, leaving Hester alone and immobile on the table. The nearby window shattered and the wall collapsed,