She discovered the trail of blood and the gouges in the snow where a thing had, like a cumbersome load, been dragged. And then she found, laying derelict, the unfired crossbow.
Someone else would do the stitches; Cherny's frayed flesh would require them, and her fingers shook too violently. After bringing him to the Rememdium Edificium, the girl had excused herself as quietly as possible -- a kiss to the boy's brow was what she left, a tender touch of black-sweat palms to his knuckles, a cheek to press against his own. He would be fine, he would be just fine, and before even the smears of his blood had cooled on her dress, she stumbled into the bitter cold of Myrken night and sought out the wildling, the friend left behind--
The stables were hot and acrid with the breath of horses. The zagging trail of beast's blood marked a crimson narrative through the snow, between the great doors, and into the straw and mud. A climax had already been met -- a struggle, Cherny's wounds, Noura's knife driven to the hilt inside the offending creature. Now, with scraping feet, the seamstress followed the spattered denouement between the stalls. With Dulcie Miller's crossbow thumping like a wooden limb behind her, she meandered toward where the red scrapes terminated behind the furthest stall-partition. On the plank-walls, iron and bridle-leathers dangled, latent decorations to some equine god.
"Noura," she whispered, squinting her eyes against the sickly lantern-light that flickered in the stables.