“Nothing like practice. Here’s this lot, clean.” Doyle started laying instruments into her hand, one at a time so she did not slice herself.

“I am in the medical tents of the losing side, generally, so we have many wounded.” She dried the scissors with a strip of bandage and clipped through the cloth, testing. They were sharp. “I have been diligently spying upon the Milanese and Austrians who lose battles with some regularity. It has been most odd, all these years, dodging so many completely French bullets.”

There was a good supply of bandages. If she needed more than this, she would have killed Adrian anyway. “If you will lie down, Monsieur Adrian, I will be able to reach you. I am not a giantess.”

She hitched herself close to Adrian, to a position where she could work. Her tools made a neat row on the blanket. She picked them up and put them down till she could find everything without thought. Then she laid a cloth across. It was better Adrian did not spend his time looking at this. Sharp, shiny metal is wearing to the soul. She lifted a stack of bandages into her lap where they would be handy. She must concentrate now and think only of what must be done.

Adrian’s upper chest was nearly hairless, with hard muscles, set rigid in pain. He flinched when she first laid hands upon him, then took a deep breath and did not react again while she examined. The skin around the site of entry was noticeably hot. The mouth of the wound was damp and smelled of infection—the ordinary kind, not the rotting, sweet sort that means death.

Doyle settled on the boy’s right, large and comforting. Grey moved to take the other side. They were not holding him down yet. Soon they would have to. She had operated without opium before.

“Monsieur Doyle, I will show you where I want your hands.”

“There’s one thing we’ll do first,” Grey said. “I’m going to talk to Adrian. It’ll take a few minutes. You get comfortable.”

Almost, she hissed in exasperation. “You have had a whole morning to talk.” Every moment they delayed made it worse. Did they think their Adrian was constructed of imperturbable courage? Did they think she was?

“We’re going to try something I saw in Vienna. It may help.” He leaned close, talking to the boy. “The way you do this, Adrian, is you just relax and listen to me. That’s how we start, remember. You listen to what I’m saying.”

It seemed she must wait until this was done. She called to her mind a picture of the blood vessels in the chest. They ran so…and so. With luck, she would avoid them.

This was her great gift, this memory of hers. Any page she had read, any street she had crossed, any face in a crowd—they all came back to her perfect and exact when she called. Other people forgot things. She did not. That was why Vauban had given her the Albion plans in the small inn in Bruges when Leblanc came to extort and threaten. She had put the plans into her memory and burned each page, one by one, as she read. Her memory was why Maman had taken her everywhere, even when she was a child. Her head was stuffed with the secrets of many nations.

Fortunately, her memory also contained anatomical charts. The upper chest is far from the worst spot to be hit in, if the bullet is not deep, which must be so, because Adrian still lived.

Grey plodded on and on with his so-necessary conversation. She did not pay attention, since it did not concern her and was very dull. He was saying, “We’ll try this for a while, the first parts, anyway, and see how it goes. It’s easy to get started. You’re going to breathe slow and listen to what I’m saying.”

“It feels stupid,” Adrian said. “I’ll try. But the gods know I feel like an idiot.”

“You’re not going to do anything stupid, Hawker. Only what you want to do. You’re the one in charge. I’m just here to help you with what you’re doing to yourself. You lie there and feel the breathing. That’s how you do it. In and out. Now in. Now out. You feel the breathing. That’s all you feel.”

Grey repeated himself in an exceedingly boring way, which gave her no very high opinion of his powers of conversation. She finished thinking about the blood vessels in the chest and sat quietly, with her hands resting in her lap, letting her thoughts drift.

“Your eyes get tired in all this sunlight. You can close them.” Having found another subject of stultifying monotony, Grey droned on and on.

The next thing she knew, somebody was shaking her. Grey.

“Yes. You. Wake up, Annique. That’s it. Wide awake. You feel fine, Annique, and you are fully awake.”

She seemed to have fallen asleep sitting up.

“Of course I am awake.” Her legs had gone numb beneath her. “I am resting while you chatter so endlessly.” She did not keep sarcasm out of her voice. “I had a difficult night.”

“You are what is called an excellent subject,” he said, incomprehensibly. “Adrian, on the other hand, is not. I saw this done a couple times in Vienna, but I’ve never tried it. There’s a man there, uses it in surgery. Let’s hope it works.”

“You are through talking to him?”

“I’ll keep talking. You ignore what I say and do what you have to. Very definitely ignore me. I don’t want you nodding off again.”

“Then hold him.”

She showed them how she wanted him pinned. Doyle held his arm down and the shoulder. Grey took the other side, leaning his full weight on top, all the time talking and talking to Adrian—something about the pain being far away on the other side of a wall. Such bizarre stuff. She would ignore it.

“Do not let him move.” Then she trusted them to do their work and did not think about it again. There were many thoughts to dismiss from her mind. Most of all she must not think of Adrian. Beneath her hands was muscle and bone and skin. Not Adrian.

She took a minute to explore the site from outside, testing the surface of the skin with her fingers. Good. That was the bullet. That lump. They had been incredibly lucky. It lay high in the chest, superficial, just below the collarbone, at the second rib, lodged against bone. The entry path was oddly slanted, as if he’d been shot by someone below him. The lead had not torn into the lung beneath.

The patient was still. Not limp—it was not like working on a man deep under an opiate—but he was most wholly and completely motionless. Good.

There was nothing more his body could say to her. She sat back on her heels and touched her way from instrument to instrument one last time. She would go in through the entry wound. That would minimize damage and clean it, too. She took up the long, slim forceps. Wordlessly, she rearranged Grey’s hold and settled herself at a new angle.

Her left hand pressed the skin above the site, over the tiny lump of the bullet. Through her palm, she mapped the plateaus and valleys of the ribs. She snicked the forceps open and closed, twice, loosening up her fingers.

Now to do it. Fast. No hesitation.

She took a deep breath and went in with the forceps. Push. Spread forceps slightly. Push. Follow the path of the bullet through muscle. All her concentration flowed to the tip of the forceps, sensing the route, nudging along bone and fascia. Warm blood streamed between her fingers.

Push. Farther. Grit on metal. Her quarry. Open. Soft, soft now. Nibble at it. The tiny, slippery hardness. Catch it. Close the forceps. Yes! She had it. Bring it out. Fast now. She could go fast now. The patient held his breath. His muscles—neck, chest, arms—like steel. Next to her, a voice gave firm orders about a wall of darkness, solid as bricks.

She dropped the ball in the palm of her hand and rolled it. The lead was flat with impact against the rib. It wasn’t smooth. A chunk was missing. She must return. She made a single, unbroken motion of it, testing the bullet, going back in.

The missing piece would have been chipped off by the impact with the rib. She must go deep to look for it. Slide in. Keep to the path. Deeper. The patient gasped. Jerked. Go loose on the forceps, ride the movement lest she jab at him. Not her job to keep him still. Think about the metal.

He was still. Good. At the rib, delicate as a fencer, she probed. Blood vessels all up and down the ribs. Between them. She was searching for a grain of hardness where it should not be. Smooth, soft strokes. Soft…soft.

Deep on the lateral surface of the first rib, she found the brittle nub of bullet. The placement! Mon Dieu, the placement. It was as bad as could be. The forceps pulsed in her hand. The artery. Close. Deadly close.

“Do not breathe,” she ordered. The muscles beneath her hand were stone. Quivering. The fragment rested directly against the artery. It pulsed. He must not move. Not move. She eased forward. No pressure. She must take it without the least pressure.

She closed the forceps and gently took hold and gently, gently brought the last of the bullet out. She fitted one piece of metal with the other. There was nothing missing.

“It is done.” She laid the forceps onto the blanket, took bandages from her lap, and pressed them to the wound.

“My God,” Doyle muttered.

The patient panted fast and shallow, hissing out through his teeth, an animal sound.

“Finished. Right.” Grey sounded as shaken as she felt. “That’s the worst of it, Hawker. Now we’re going to build a wall between you and the pain. A big, dark wall. Thick darkness. The pain’s on one side, you’re on the other. Breathe in. Slow. Breathe out.”

She herself had not breathed for a while, obviously. The ground swayed under her, which was an unmistakable sign.

Adrian—he was Adrian again to her—was losing blood. It soaked through the layers she held. Sluggishly, thank the bon Dieu. She had not nicked the artery. She had not killed him. This was not the hot rush of bleeding that meant death.