The Saint Who Healed Everyone and the Knight She Couldn't novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Whose Body

"You are being unreasonable," Brunhild said.

"I know."

"The wounded come in at dawn."

"Greta will tell the Marshal that the saint has a fever."

"Yui."

"Sit," Yui said. "Down. On the cot. Now."

It was the voice she used for patients who tried to climb out of bed with a drain in their side.

Brunhild, who had commanded three thousand soldiers for nine years, sat down.

It was well after midnight, and the barracks tower was quiet.

Yui had not spoken to her since the chapel, except to say that she was coming up with water.

She was still angry.

She had stayed angry all through the evening, and it had made her hands very steady.

She knelt and untied Brunhild's boots.

"I can do that," Brunhild said.

"Not tonight."

One boot, then the other.

Then the buckles of the steel, slowly, one by one, and the breastplate was lifted and set aside on the floor.

"What are you doing?"

"Putting you to bed."

"I do not go to bed."

"You do now."

Yui wet a cloth and washed her face.

She did it the way she had washed a hundred frightened faces.

She began at the middle of the forehead and worked outward, over the closed eyelids, the temples and the cheeks.

Brunhild sat very straight at first, stiff as a post.

Then, little by little, she leaned into the cloth.

"This is not a treatment," she said, after a while. "You said you would not heal."

"I said I wouldn't heal anyone. I didn't say I wouldn't nurse you."

"What is the difference?"

"The light takes a curse off somebody and puts it on you," Yui said. "I'm not going to touch the light. I'm going to take care of you instead, with my hands, like I would at home."

She washed the long neck, and the shoulders, and then began to unbutton the shirt.

Brunhild caught her wrist.

"I do not deserve this," she said.

"Nobody asked you to deserve it."

"There are three thousand men who deserve it more."

"They have a nurse," Yui said. "She's holding your wrist."

Brunhild laughed, and it hurt to hear.

Her grip loosened.

Yui stripped the shirt away and dried the arms.

She washed the broad back with the warm cloth, and the round wheel on it, and the skin around the wheel.

She worked her way down, wiping, drying, rubbing in the beeswax salve, with a patience as plain and slow as breathing.

When she reached the tender pale skin on the inside of each wrist, she kissed it.

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