The Aeronaut's Windlass by Jim Butcher

“In my weskit. I’d almost forgotten.” A moment later there was a dim source of pale blue light as Bayard removed a lumin crystal the size of a fingernail from one of his pockets and held it up.
    The tunnel was unsightly. Blood that looked black in the pale light was splattered everywhere—more near Grimm than Bayard. Bayard himself was scarcely mussed from the action. His sword, though, was stained dark to half the length of its blade.
    “God in Heaven, you’re a sight,” Bayard said, lifting an eyebrow. “There’s more blood than man.” He looked past Grimm to the heavy splatters on the wall. “My word, old boy. You missed your calling as a butcher.”
    “Tried,” Grimm said. “But I couldn’t manage. I had to settle for the Fleet.”
    “Bitterness does not become you, my friend,” Bayard said. His dark eyes flicked around the hallway. “How’s your arm?”
    “Painful,” Grimm said. “I’d as soon not unwrap the coat from around it until we’re somewhere where we might find bandages.”
    “Best we move deliberately, then,” Bayard said. “It would be rather funny to watch you run until your heart pumped all your blood out, but I’m afraid Abigail would be cross with me. She might refuse my attentions for hours. Even days.”
    “We can’t have that,” Grimm said. He shook as much blood as he could from the blade of his sword, and then grimaced and wiped it off on the leg of his trousers not already soaked with the stuff. He returned the weapon to its sheath just as Bayard finished wiping his sword clean with a kerchief and offered the cloth to Grimm.
    “You might have said something,” Grimm growled.
    “That outfit’s ruined anyway.”
    Grimm glowered at him and opened his mouth to say something more, when Bayard abruptly pitched sideways and began to fall.
    No, that wasn’t it at all, Grimm thought. Bayard was standing perfectly still. His friend hadn’t fallen— Grimm had. He could distantly feel the cold spirestone floor beneath his cheek. Bayard’s mouth was moving, but the words seemed to be coming at him from several hundred yards down the tunnel, and he couldn’t quite make them out. Grimm tried to put a hand beneath him and push himself up, but his limbs wouldn’t move.
    “Bother,” Grimm mumbled. “This is rather inconvenient.”
    Bayard leaned down and peered closely at Grimm’s face. The last thing Grimm remembered of the moment was the feeling of being hoisted up onto Bayard’s slim, wiry shoulders.
    *   *   *
    G rimm opened his eyes and found himself in a warm, dim room. The ceiling was made of hardened clay—one of the most common construction materials for the more modest residences within Spire Albion. It hadn’t been painted white, but instead was covered with a colorful and rather fanciful mural that looked like it had been done by a particularly enthusiastic child. It made little sense, containing seemingly random images of airships, the sun, some sort of odd-looking plants that only partially resembled trees, and an image of the moon that was much too large in relation to the sun opposite it. Strange creatures occupied the same space, none of them familiar to Grimm, though he might have seen some of them in his more fanciful childhood storybooks.
    The room was lit by dozens and dozens and dozens of tiny, nearly dead lumin crystals, collected in jars of clear glass. Their light was a nebulous thing, showing everything clearly and seemingly originating from nowhere. It was a small, spare chamber, sporting a student’s desk and a small and overstuffed bookshelf. He lay on a bed of woven ropes with a thin pad over them, and blankets had been piled over him until they more threatened to smother him than keep him warm.
    He began to push them away, only to find that his left arm had been bound to his chest. Both arms were wrapped in what seemed to him irrational amounts of cloth bandages. They weren’t white. Instead they had been made from a broad