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Sven crawled from the ditch and dragged himself away from the tracks. Wendel watched until the dead man vanished. His eyes had lacked emotion earlier, when he was killing the man, but they smoldered now.
“Fuck,” I whispered, clinging to the cold iron railing. “Was that necessary?”
“He had to be stopped.” Wendel glanced at his hand, red and slick with blood. “That could have been a cleaner kill.”
“But he wasn’t bleeding.”
“Ah.” Red stained the sleeve of his shirt. The fight must have torn the stitches over his wound. “I’m starting to feel it.”
His head bowed, Wendel clutched his arm and trudged back into the car.
I kept pace alongside him. “You didn’t have to kill him.”
“He was working for the Order.”
“Working. You were just another job to him.”
He shot me a glare. “And you have a moral objection to killing on the job?”
I shut my mouth rather than admit he was right.
We encountered Konstantin in the corridor. “God.” He blanched at Wendel’s bloody knuckles. “What happened?”
“He killed the assassin,” I said grimly.
Wendel gestured to his wound. “Can you heal me, archmage?”
“I’m not a doctor!” Konstantin protested.
“Youdoknow at least some medical magic? I’m rather short on alternatives.”
“All right.” Konstantin grimaced. “Follow me.”
Konstantin brought us to his cabin, which was also in the first-class sleeper cars. He fetched a small suitcase from the luggage rack. Kneeling, he unbuckled the clasps and revealed it wasn’t a suitcase at all, but an apparatus built into its own carrying case. I hadn’t seen it before when he patched the Hex.
“I almost didn’t bring this,” Konstantin said. “Luckily for you, I did.”
Wendel eyed the apparatus. “What does it do?”
“Temporal magic.”
“Archmages and their technomancy gadgets,” Wendel muttered. “I suppose it came to this, making a deal with the devil.”
“And you think thatIam the devil?”
Wendel shrugged off his coat and unbuttoned his shirt. Wet with blood, the cloth clung to his wound. He hissed through his teeth as he peeled it away. I couldn’t help wincing. That had to hurt, especially after his adrenaline waned.
“Do you think two weeks will be enough?” Konstantin asked him.
Wendel hesitated. “Make it a month.”
“That will double the pain.”
“I know.”
I frowned. “How will temporal magic help?”
Konstantin tugged on his leather-and-steel bracers. “This magic accelerates the healing time of the wound, but it also accelerates the sensations of that time. Wendel will feel a month of pain in one instant.”
