She had the steam preparation heating over the brazier in under two minutes. The smell of the herbs began to rise, sharp and medicinal.
The compound in the water, the particular ratio that opened the airway without overloading the tissue. The balance she'd been adjusting for four weeks based on how he responded, how his body learned. She watched the water cloud, her focus absolute.
She brought the bowl to the bed, positioned it below his face, and draped the linen cloth over his head to hold the steam. The warmth of the bowl seeped into her palms.
"Breathe it in," she said. "There. Slow." She sat on the edge of the mattress, her body a wall of calm against the boy's fear.
A beat. Another.
His shoulders dropped a fraction. Not much. Enough. The frantic heaving of his chest seemed to catch, then settle slightly.
She kept her hand on his back. Between the shoulder blades, flat, feeling the rhythm through her palm, counting the interval between each breath, noting the slight change in the wheeze as the steam began to work on the inflamed tissue. The heatfrom his skin was feverish, radiating through the wool of his nightshirt.
Her other hand went to his wrist. Pulse fast. Too fast. But present. Strong enough. The thrum beneath her fingertips was a frantic, bird-like beat.
Work.
Work the way ye're supposed to.She willed the medicine to find its mark, her own jaw set tight.
Behind her she heard the door. The heavy thud of the oak against the stone wall echoed through the room.
She did not turn. She could not turn. James's breathing was at the point where a lapse of attention was not something she could afford. The point where the next two minutes would tell her whether the steam was going to be enough or whether she needed the second preparation. The stronger one, the one she kept in the right side pocket and had hoped not to use.
The air in the room grew thick, charged with a new, heavy tension.
She heard Anthony cross to the window. She heard him stop. The weight of his presence was a physical pressure at her back.
She did not look. She kept her eyes on the linen cloth, watching it move with James's shallow efforts.
The wheeze changed.
Not better, different. A new quality entering it, a tighter pitch, the sound of an airway that was still narrowing despite the steam. She reached for the right side pocket. A cold, hard focus settled over her.
Second preparation. Stronger compound. Longer steep time.
She'd made it three days ago and kept it sealed, and it would be ready. She had administered it once before in a different patient in a different keep, and it had worked, and it was going to work now. Her hand didn't shake as she broke the seal.
"James," she said, keeping her voice the same it always was in this room. Level, unhurried, a voice that meant this is manageable because he needed to hear that it was manageable. "I'm goin' to add somethin' to the steam. Keep breathin' slow. Ye're doing well." She caught a glimpse of Anthony's reflection in the dark glass of the window, his face a mask of white-lipped agony.
She added the second compound to the water and repositioned the bowl. "Now breathe."
He breathed. The sound was a wet, struggling gasp.
She kept her hand between his shoulder blades and her other hand on his wrist. Her eyes were on the linen moving with each breath and counted intervals and did not think about anythingexcept the next breath, and the one after that, and the one after that. The world narrowed down to the rising and falling of that cloth.
The wheeze loosened.
Slowly. Not all at once, not the clean dramatic improvement of a body that had simply decided to cooperate, but the gradual fractional loosening of tissue beginning to yield. She felt a shudder run through the boy's spine.
She felt it in his back under her palm before she heard it. The slight drop in the tension of the muscles running beside his spine, the way they'd been knotted against each effort and were now, fractionally, releasing. The knot in her own chest began to loosen, just a little.
She kept counting.
Ten breaths. Twenty. The grey at the edge of his lips had faded. His hands on the mattress edge were less white. The life was returning to his face, a soft, natural flush.
"Better," she said quietly. Not to James, to herself, the word she allowed herself when the evidence justified it and not before. A long, shuddering breath escaped her.
James's head came up slightly under the linen. "Better?" His voice was a tiny, exhausted thread.
