novel
| ← Ch.021 | Ch.023 → |
"Take this paper to Jane of The Green Corporation. You have to give it to Jane. If they say she's not there, tell them you'll wait until she arrives. You know who Jane is?"
The children knew Jane because Jane would sometimes came to the temple. After Kevin was sent out, only Robin, Sienna, and Carl, who was on the table, remained.
"Then, what should I do?" Robin asked in a shaky voice.
He always acted like an adult, but Robin was no less a child than the others. Fear came into play as they both were witnessing the sight of someone dying in front of their very eyes. Sienna's hands also started to shake.
If Priest Roy had been there... Sienna shook her head to shake off her thoughts. It was true that he could perform miracles, but it was not without aftereffects. He, who had treated Kelly, was still asleep.
'Let's do what I can with my abilities. I'm sure he won't die. Is it really that easy for a man who is going to become the emperor to die from a situation like that?'
"Let's settle down, stay calm..."
In the North where Sienna was from, there were occasional injuries from monster invasions. Those injuries were by no means simple. Knights would fall off the walls and break bones, or get their bellies cut through by monsters' claws.
Although Sienna was the only daughter of the duke, she had also helped the medical staff when they were in a hurry to work. During that time, she had taken on the task of carrying clean, sterilized towels back and forth, but those were also years of watching and listening from the sidelines.
"Would you sterilize these scissors in boiling water? And boil those fabrics over there as well."
Sienna cut off Carl's clothes with the scissors Robin handed her. The damp cloth soaked in his blood was not easy to cut through.
"Ugh!"
Carl opened his eyes slightly. She didn't even notice he had woken up while cutting his clothes.
"Lady Sienna, the man has opened his eyes."
"Huh?"
Sienna's and Carl's eyes met. He looked at her suspiciously and with a pained expression. Sienna avoided his eyes deliberately because she had a hard time facing him. If she were to feel uneasy now, he would not be able to get the necessary treatment.
Carl grabbed Sienna by the wrist as she tried to turn her head away again and again. She felt a great deal of strength on her arm.
"What are you trying to do to me... ?"
Carl seemed to think that Sienna was trying to intimidate him, so she said determinedly, "I have to see the wound."
Even as she said that, Carl held on to her wrist for a while.
"If I were trying to kill you, I wouldn't have dragged you all the way here. I would have just left you to die there. So, let me go!"
Only then, did Carl release Sienna's wrist. He had held it so hard that her arm was numb. The place where Carl had held on to had was stained by a bloody handprint.
Sienna finished cutting and removing the clothes off of the wound. Carl groaned painfully as she raised his clothes slightly off the wounded area. The wound seemed to have been attached to the fabric, making the area even more sensitive to pain.
The cut was large enough, but it didn't look deep. Of course, she wasn't an expert, so she couldn't be sure. She wiped the wound with a towel Robin gave her.
"I hope Jane can get someone soon." Carl made a face when he heard her, but Sienna said, "Don't worry. She's reliable. I'm sure you've lost more blood than what I'm seeing."
When she helped Roy make hemp, she realized the procedure was very familiar to that of the creation of other conventional medicines.
"Where's the flopple?"
A flopple was a pineapple-like herb that was used in conventional medicine, and it was proven to have miraculous medicinal effects. It had the side effect of inducing great pain and burning sensation to the injury, but they couldn't help using it relative to what was readily available. Sienna showed Carl a thin cloth with an herb inside for the pain.
"I've never treated anyone with medicinal herbs before, so I'm not completely sure what the effects will be and if it'll work."
Carl frowned at her words and said with difficulty, "What the... ?! You were just a quack?"
"I am a quack, but I'm the only one who can help you here at the moment, " Sienna replied in a low voice."I've heard the pain is terrible, so bite on to this painkiller herb. You never know, it might be better to pass out instead."
Sienna poured some of the minced flopples into his wound, and his upper body shook and spasmed from the pain.
"Robin! Hold him down, please. If he moves, the area from where he's bleeding could widen."
The blood loss had decreased in comparison to before, so the treatment seemed effective, but now, she felt like she had to sew up the wound.
Carl's face was covered in cold sweat. He seemed to have lost his spirit, but he was still showing pain. Sienna was sorry to see him suffer.
'You were a strong man. The man who took a firm stand against that venomous, snake-like wickedness that is Arya, and was able to slash her throat. '
She disinfected the needle and thread, but she became hesitant to sew up his wound. The use of medicinal herbs was also already a huge mental burden for her.
'If my assumptions are wrong, what should I do? What if I shouldn't have used the herb... What if he dies because of me?'
Her hands shook as all kinds of thoughts ran through her mind. It was too much for her to perform the procedure herself.
"Miss Sienna!"
Fortunately, Jane rushed into the restaurant at that very moment. Her voice sounded like the voice of salvation to Sienna.
"Jane!"
When Sienna saw Jane, she burst into tears of relief.
"What's going on? Are you OK?"
Jane came up to Sienna, who had been so nervous during Carl's treatment that her legs finally relaxed, so Jane assisted her to a chair.
The old man who came with Jane went to Carl, looked at the wound and said, "Well, there's nothing for me to do. The disinfection was done well, and the right anti-hemorrhaging agents were used too. It seems I just need to sew it up."
He sewed Carl's wound with the thread and needle that Sienna had disinfected. He was so good that he sewed up the wound in an instant and fixed a bandage over it.
"The wound is not deep, so he'll recover soon. I'll give you some medicine to help him heal, so when he wakes up, give it to him. I'll go back now."
When Jane compensated him, she asked him to keep that event quiet. The doctor left, saying, "Don't worry."
"Is he someone worthy enough of your trust?"
"Yes. Although he's in it for the money, his abilities are known for being the best of the best in the capital. In addition, he's someone who'll most absolutely keep a secret. More than that, who is this?"
"Carl. He is the first Prince of the Laifsden Empire."
Jane, whose expressions didn't usually change, opened her eyes wide with astonishment.
*
"Lady Sienna, you should get some shuteye too, " Jane said when she entered the room where Carl was lying.
On the night of the treatment, Carl had been quietly taken to Kelly's mansion. Three days had passed, and he still hadn't woken up.
Sienna had left the temple to Robin, and Jane had assigned some people to protect the children, fearing that the people who had tried to kill Carl might come looking for him and hurt them.
Sienna looked down at the pale-faced Carl, who was not waking up. The man who had looked at her arrogantly and diminished any attempt she made was now lying almost dead on the bed. Sienna thought about what Carl might've done before the ceremony.
The first time she had met him had been at the ceremony. She had no idea what had happened to him before that.
"You were under continuous threat even way before we met, I see."
She had heard that when Carl was growing up, he had often been threatened by assassins sent by Arya, but it was the first time she was seeing it with her own eyes. Seeing him lying helpless, her hostility to Queen Arya grew even more.
'You wicked queen! In any case, why was Carl being chased by those armed men? Moreover, the Green Corporation, famous for its intelligence gathering, didn't receive any information that Carl was in the capital, so why is he here when he should be in the battlefield?'
She bit her lower lip anxiously. Then, she breathed a deep sigh.
| ← Ch. 021 | Ch. 023 → |