Flame snapped out of her shock. She moved awkwardly over to her husband, heedless of the blood she was getting on her clothes. She pulled up his shirt and looked at the spot where the stake had gone through. The wound was still ugly, a red and raw hole, but it had stopped bleeding. She breathed a sigh of relief. “He’s starting to heal already. I think he’ll live”

“So what do we do now?”

Flame considered. “Let’s get him off of the street for starters.”

Corinne nodded. “You shouldn’t do any heavy lifting. I’ll carry him.” The tall half-elf picked up the unconscious aerian easily as he was almost a foot shorter than she, and considerably lighter. One wing, feathers matted with blood, trailed down to the ground. He moaned faintly at her touch, and she hurried as quickly as she could back into her house. She had a back room she used for occasions like this, though she was more used to minor accidents; a child who’d broken an arm falling out of a tree, a farrier who'd been kicked by a horse, that sort of thing. She put Aidan down on a table in the center of the room. In the bright lamplight he looked horrible. His skin was far too pale, even for him, he was covered with blood, and his stillness looked alarmingly like death.

Corinne’s every instinct was telling her to do something, anything, but she knew that her usual methods would only cause Aidan more pain. Again she turned to Flame Song who had followed her inside with Littlespark trailing after, her tiny hand clutching her mother’s larger one tightly. “Is there anything else we can do for him?”

Flame sighed. “Not right now. He's healing, and he should wake before too much longer. He’s going to need blood when he wakes up though. He lost a lot of it, and that’s not good.” She paused, thinking. “Animal blood will do just fine, but from what he’s said in the past human blood, or something near it, is better.”

“How much will he need?” asked Corinne

“Your guess is a good as mine. As much as he lost? More? I don’t know. This hasn’t happened before. I mean he’s been injured, but never anything like this!”

“Well, you can’t afford to donate any right now, but I suppose I can. Also, there’s my horse out back. He’s a big fellow, he can certainly spare a few pints.” Then she looked at Flame, saying, “If I can’t do anything for your husband, I can at least check on you.” She put her hand to Flame rounded stomach. A moment later she smiled. “Well, all this excitement doesn’t seem to have hurt the twins any. They’re both still just fine.” Flame Song smiled in relief.

“You know, whoever did this is still sitting out there,” said Flame after a moment of silence.

Corinne blinked. In her concern about Aidan she’d forgotten all about his attacker. “I hope the cobblestones give him a terrible crick in his neck, to go with the headache he’ll have from my thumping him!” she said fiercely. “We’d better go and get him though before he wakes up and gets away. Actually, you stay here, I’ll go fetch him.” She vanished outside. A few moments later she returned, unceremoniously dragging the unconscious man along the ground. She dropped him in a corner, then bent over and pulled back his hood. “Why am I not surprised?” she said.

“Who is it?” said Flame, coming over to take a look.

“That crazy preacher,” answered Corinne.

“Branson! I know he hates Aidan, for no good reason I could ever see, but I never thought he’d go this far!”

“Well, he’s going to regret it,” said Corinne. “He was caught red-handed attempting murder. At the very least he ought to lose his clerical standing."

“Good,” said Flame. “He deserves that and worse. We can turn him over to the watch once Aidan is up, I think. In the mean time, I want to clean Aidan up. I just can’t stand looking at him like that.” Getting all of the blood off of the unconscious aerian proved impossible, but they did the best they could. Corinne helped Flame, but she was continually frustrated by the fact that she was unable to touch her patient. She ended up mostly keeping Littlespark busy.

The child was surprisingly calm about all the commotion. “Daddy is going to be all right isn’t he?” she asked again, and when Corinne answered in the affirmative she nodded solemnly and said, “Then everything is all right. Don’t worry.” The reversal of roles had Corinne smiling. Usually the healer was the one who had to comfort the worried families of her patients.

After cleaning off Aidan, Corinne sent Flame upstairs to clean off herself. She came back down wearing a pair of Corinne’s old trousers, loose enough in the waist to fit her expanded stomach, and rolled up because they were too long. Her shirt had somehow escaped getting blood on it, but Corinne hadn’t been so lucky. She was spattered in blood from head to toe. As soon as Flame Song came down, she went up and got changed out of her bloodstained clothes herself, and then the pair settled in to wait.

Some time before dawn Branson woke up. He opened his eyes, groaned, and put his hands to his head. Then he slowly looked around the room, his eyes bleary and unfocused. Corinne and Flame Song had both noticed his awakening, and they moved as one to block him into the corner he lay in. Flame burred into firecat form and showed the preacher a mouthful of sharp teeth, bared in an angry snarl. He jerked to full consciousness and his eyes widened in shock. He tried to scramble backward but couldn’t go anywhere.

“Branson,” it was Corinne who spoke first, her voice flat. Flame Song found she was so blindingly angry at the sight of Branson’s face that she couldn’t even speak. He’d tried to kill her husband, and he’d come far too close to succeeding. “You are in a great deal of trouble. You know that murder is cause for being defrocked as a cleric, at the very least.”

Branson’s eyes were wild with hatred and he spat his response. “That wasn’t murder. That hell-spawn was undead, a blot on the face of the world.” He rambled on along the same lines for a while, before a soft voice interrupted from behind the two women.

From where Branson sat on the ground he’d been unable to see Aidan lying on the table. But now Aidan had swung his legs over the side of the table and was sitting up. “I’m afraid the past tense isn’t appropriate, Branson. Your aim was a little bit off.” His voice was clear, but weak, and he looked deathly pale and even thinner than usual.