Page 22 of Of the Stars and Sea

He lets loose a long sigh before lowering his glasses on the bridge of his nose and looks at me with exasperation. “The injury to your shoulder will only worsen as the days go by if you don’t let me treat it properly. The journey ahead of us is certainly a perilous one. A journey, no doubt, that you will want to be at your full strength for. So, you can either sit on the bed and allow me to stitch you up or you can suffer in this room until the pain becomes so agonizing you will be begging me to make it better.”

Glaring at him, I grind my teeth together, because he has a point. A point that angers me.

Silent, I sit down on the bed.

“Good. Now lift your shirt.”

Rolling my eyes, I move to lift the tunic over my head and find that my left arm won’t rise higher than my stomach without a daggerlike attack slicing through my shoulder.

“Hmm.” Doc grunts at me and I have half a mind to kill him where he stands. The pain is eating away at my nerves and the leash on my irritability grows shorter by the second.

It takes me a few moments, but I manage to use my other arm to gently guide the tunic over my head and off my left side. Doc hands me a bottle of rum and I take a long swig, the clear liquid going down my throat with a delicious burn. I move the long black strands of my hair to the side as he grips my arm and assesses the damage. The dark blood soaked into my discarded tunic tells me just how bad is.

“There are some shards of wood lodged in the wound.” He pulls back and looks at me, the furry white of his eyebrows are bunched together. “I need to remove them before I can stitch you up.”

“Do it.” I grab the bottle of rum again and drain a good portion of it as Doc reaches inside his bag and removes a set of tweezers. I watch as he runs the ends of the tweezers across the lantern flame to disinfect the metal.

I know the rum will only make me bleed more, so I take a final sip and discard it onto the bedside table. Doc follows the bottle with his eyes and to my surprise, they don’t linger on the Serpent’s Key sitting plainly in sight on the small wooden table. He gets to work on my arm, holding it firmly as he works his tweezers into my skin to start removing the shards of wood.

I grit my teeth against the sharp prick of his tool digging around my wound and wait for the effects of the rum to settle in.

“A prize with that much gold is worth far more than your earnings from working on this ship, I imagine. The king himself would offer three times its worth if it was recovered from the one who stole it. Yet, you don’t pay it any mind.” I try to make conversation to distract myself from the throbbing in my arm, but Doc remains silent, his forehead scrunching every few seconds as he concentrates.

After a while, I think he won’t respond at all and then he says, “When you live as long as I have, you learn there are far greater things in the world than riches.”

I huff a breath then grip the duvet as he wiggles his tool back and forth, pulling a large splinter from my arm. “It won’t take long for the news to spread that the Serpent’s Key is on this ship. Grayson won’t just have Blythe to contend with then. The king does not take kindly to those who betray him.”

Doc peeks at me over his glasses. “You’re correct in that Blythe has a notorious reputation for bringing secrets into the light, despite it being better for our kind if they were kept in the dark. But by the time his news has spread, we will be long gone from Esoros. It will take quite some time for the king’s armada to get organized and find us. By then, we can only hope the goal has been accomplished.”

I stare at him for a moment, mulling over his words. “This was Grayson’s plan all along, then. Wait for another to steal the trinket only to take it for himself. All for a treasure that may not even exist.”

Doc pauses, his tweezers hang in midair as he assesses me. “Says the woman who tried to steal the Serpent’s Key from Blythe in the hopes it would lead to that same treasure? The woman whose crew memberdiedtrying to steal it?”

I swallow. He has me cornered and he knows it.

He chuckles, then goes back to work on my arm.

We are silent for a long while. The rum sinks its claws into my mind, helping to ease the pain as Doc finally sets his tweezers down and starts with the suture kit.

A pinch stings my arm and I can feel the pull of the thread making its way through my skin. The sensation is familiar and reminds me of all the times Amara and I have stitched each other up over the years. With my father’s old debts keeping us bound to Red Beard and our dwindling crew, there hasn’t been any coin left for me to hire a doctor or healer on board. We’ve had to learn how to take care of one another.

“Are you a real doctor?” I ask, the words feeling thick on my tongue.

“Trained under the best Esoros has to offer,” Doc responds.

“Grayson must pay you a pretty shilling to work on a pirate ship.”

Doc snorts. “He doesn’t pay me any more than his other crew members. And it wasIwho offered my services tohim.”

He must be playing coy with me. Grayson’s reputation stretches across the entire Southern Realm. Surely, there’s something Doc isn’t telling me. Some secret, that if revealed, would put his life at the end of Grayson’s sword.

I need to play my cards right, though. I don’t want Doc or any other member of Grayson’s crew telling him that I’m trying to seek information. My situation here is perilous enough with the only known reason Grayson chooses to keep me alive is the education my mother provided me. The moment that knowledge no longer serves a purpose for Grayson’s ventures is the moment I will be thrown to the depths with shackles bound to my ankles.

So, I sit in silence and ask no further questions while Doc finishes suturing my wound.

With the last of his supplies secured back in his bag, he reveals a small amber vial of liquid. “Drink this,” he says, handing it to me.

I pop the cork out of the top and take a sniff. It smells sweet. Like some kind of nectar mixed with a hint of floral musk. As I peer into the vial, I see the liquid is thick and red. It looks just like the blood staining my hands, but there’s no iron scent.

---