Chapter 788: Wrong

Alex understood the comparison. It offered a way to separate her effort, not proof that their injuries were the same.

At his request, Mara tried to release the pressure she could feel near her wrist. One red thread fell slack inside the ice, but the movement farther up her arm grew stronger.

"That one," Alex said, touching the uninjured skin beside it. "Can you feel it now?"

She shook her head.

He waited through another pulse, then touched beside the point where it turned.

"There."

Her breath caught.

"I think so."

"Don’t pull it toward your hand. Let the part at your hand stop first."

Mingyue widened the space around Mara’s fingers as the blood ceased lashing at it. The woman made a frightened sound when she saw the opening.

"It isn’t open toward them," Mingyue said. "Look at the wall."

The ice gave Mara’s blood somewhere to settle against bare stone. No one stood beyond that side of the enclosure.

Alex kept her attention on the slower movement while the blood near the skin lost its sharp shape.

It took several attempts. Twice she dragged at both parts again, and Mingyue closed the gap until Alex could guide her back to the difference she had briefly felt.

When the movement finally eased, Mara began crying, her hands still pointed at the wall.

"I can hold them," she said. "I can hold them there."

Alex watched before accepting it. Her fingers were still shaking, and a fresh red line appeared each time her breathing quickened. But she was keeping those lines short without driving them back through the damaged part of her arm.

With the lashing blood under control, they could tend her wounds. The damage to her blood remained.

Across the room, the broad man threw himself against his restraint again.

The ice held. His sister flinched outside the doorway.

Alex approached from the side, keeping himself away from the man’s teeth.

"Can you hear me?"

The man raised his head. His gaze stopped at the blood on Alex’s bandage.

Mingyue moved between the prisoner and the doorway before Alex loosened any part of the boundary.

Alex asked Vesa to let Thepes speak to him directly.

Thepes called through the connection, telling the man to stop pulling blood from his chest toward his arms.

For a moment, the man’s wrists stopped straining. Then he slammed forward hard enough to reopen the skin against the ice.

"He isn’t following it," Alex said.

"Or he can’t," Thepes answered.

Alex looked at the new blood moving through his boundary. The woman’s control had improved when she could distinguish the two motions. This man kept gathering more even while his own flesh split.

Alex could hold that blood still from outside. But without the man describing what he felt, Alex could not guide him through the difference as he had guided Mara.

He held the restraint while Mingyue checked the wounds around it. They adjusted the ice to keep the man from tearing his wrists farther apart, but he continued trying to reach the doorway whenever his sister moved.

She called his name.

He made a sound in response, then lunged toward her voice.

"Don’t come closer," Mingyue said.

The sister stopped.

"Can you do what you did for her?" she asked Alex.

"Not yet."

"You made him wake up."

Alex looked at her.

He had known there would be people they could not reach. He hadn’t understood how many might regain their strength and still be unable to control their own blood.

"We’ll keep him from hurting himself or you," he said. "I don’t know how to restore his control."

She covered her mouth and looked back at her brother as he struggled toward her. Alex could see how much the answer hurt.

She did not ask again.

Mingyue stepped beside Alex.

"We can’t put him with the other wounded."

"I know."

"We also can’t leave one of us holding him every time he moves."

Alex inspected the intact rear wall and the floor beneath the man. The room could take a fixed restraint. It had already lost its door, and the people who had sheltered here were now outside.

He asked Dorian to keep it clear while he placed the runes.

The commander came to the entrance with the gray-haired loyalist. Both looked at the prisoner, then at Mara behind her ice screen.

"She comes out when she can keep her hands still," Alex said. "He stays here under guard. No one enters alone."

The loyalist frowned.

"How do we tell the next one from a corpse before someone gets close?"

"Speak from cover," Mingyue said. "Watch what they try to do. She was holding her own hands down when we arrived. Silence alone won’t tell you whether someone’s dead."

"And him?"

"Needs to be stopped before you ask a second time," Alex said. "You don’t have to let someone bite you to prove they’re alive."

Dorian looked past Alex at the man’s bared teeth.

"Our people have just found the strength to stand, and this is what the humans will see."

"They’ll see worse if you leave him in the road," Alex said. "Guard the room."

"I won’t lose another soldier because someone calls a bite a symptom."

"Neither will I. Call us if the restraint starts failing. If he gets through before we reach you, stop him."

The gray-haired man glanced toward Mara. "And her?"

"Has stopped," Mingyue said. "Look at her hands."

Dorian sent for a second pair of guards. He placed them outside opposite sides of the doorway, beyond the reach the man had shown, then made the loyalist move back from the broken threshold.

"Your blade isn’t a reason to stand where he can take your throat."

Alex finished the boundary around the restraint. It would hold the strength the man had shown. He made Dorian watch its response to another violent surge before stepping away.

The prisoner remained confined without Alex’s hand raised.

Mara came out with Mingyue beside her. A folded cloth covered the wounds on her thighs, and both hands rested in a shallow bed of ice she had agreed to keep until an attendant could watch her.

The man with the injured face moved farther from her.

She saw it and stopped walking.

"I didn’t mean to," she said.

He held the cloth to his nose and looked toward the person still bound inside.

"I know who hit me."

He stayed where he was. Mara lowered her gaze and followed the soldier toward a separate place beside the treatment area.

Alex gave them room to pass separately. Mara kept her hands in the ice; Tomas kept his eyes on the broken doorway.

Vesa spoke through the connection.

"Thepes says she should rest before trying the movement again."

"Tell him she can keep it from striking now."

"I heard," Thepes said.

A pause followed.

"The other one?"

"Alive. Restrained. Still trying to attack."

Thepes did not offer another instruction.

Alex returned toward the camp with Mingyue. Behind them, the man’s sister sat where she could see through the broken doorway without entering it. Dorian had found someone willing to stay beside her.

Before they reached Vesa, a second frightened voice came through their connection.

Vesa identified a different transport from the one arranging its arrival. This caller was on a ship Alex had never seen. Someone aboard had driven a blood spike through the cabin ceiling, and the crew wanted to know whether they should bind him before he damaged the hull.

Alex stopped in the street.

"Keep the other passengers away from him," he said. "Tell me what he’s doing now."

Mingyue waited beside him, her wounded arm held against her side.

The first patient was still struggling behind them. Mara needed someone watching her hands. The ship was asking for an answer before it lost the compartment around its own survivor.

Alex looked at the soldier tending Mara, the two men outside the locked-down room, and the sister waiting for an answer he didn’t have. He had been so eager to hear the next voice. Now the next voice needed hands, and nearly every pair he trusted was already occupied.

He asked the crew where the passengers could shelter if the cabin wall gave way.