The room was quiet, save for the groans of patients that ghosted in from beyond the doors in the infirmary ward. Adrian’s face was set with focus and Silversmith had finally stopped asking questions and began to hand Adrian whatever tools and items he asked for. They were intent on the task at hand and Adrian held his breath as he finally felt the tongs grab hold of the bullet. Careful not to tear anymore muscle he pulled it free and held it up with a look of satisfaction.

“You got it.” Silversmith beamed in triumph.

Adrian gave a nod and let the bullet just drop to the floor unceremoniously. “Indeed I did. It looks like it was whole too, so we don’t have to fear of shards or fragments being left behind.” He leaned back a bit to see the sliver of Francis’s face under the cloth. “You are a lucky man Colonel Emberfell.”

“He is isn’t he? He always has been. The Wiskusset 17th always called him our lucky charm.”

“No, I meant he’s lucky to have me as his surgeon,” Adrian laughed.

He didn’t catch the blush and annoyed look that came from Silversmith as he ducked back over the wound with a clean cloth doused in the adamas mixtures and more tools to stitch the wound shut. He was careful not to touch anything with his bare hands and gently swiped the wound clean with the cloth when the blood became too slick to stitch. Finally, he lifted a shard of refined adamas into his hand from a secret pocket inside his bag. It was long with the end flattened and smooth. Adrian murmured under his breath and brushed his thumb down the spine of the stone. The energy that crackled from him made him take his first deep breath in what felt like days and the familiarity of the thrill of power made his pale face gain some color. The magic of the adamas crackled in his hand and he turned to Francis to press the flat end of the stone to the stitches and slowly dragged it down.

There was the faint smell of burning flesh, but underneath it, there was the smell of something clean and fresh. Silversmith’s eyes widened in shock as Adrian worked. Wherever the refined stone touched the stitches glowed the bright and beautiful blue of adamas and the inflamed and reddened skin began to turn to a healthy color.

Silversmith’s head jerked to Adrian in sudden understanding and Adrian just glanced at him. “You’re one of the Emperor’s Alchemists.”

Adrian didn’t respond, he just dropped his eyes back down and focused. It was a slow and careful process and he had to direct the cleansing magic from the adamas properly or it wouldn’t work.

“I just thought you were a normal…a normal surgeon but you’re…you’re one of them. Why are they putting people like you out in the field?”

“Stop talking or you’ll ruin my concentration,” Adrian snapped and he saw Silversmith jolt in the corner of his eye.

An hour later, the wound was stitched shut and glowed a radiant blue of adamas. The two doctors hovered over it with identical looks of worry. Silversmith looked up to Adrian then and frowned deeply, “Do you think it’ll be okay?”

“We won’t know for a few days, a week at best.”

“And then what?”

“We hope no infection sets in and he doesn’t run any fevers.”

“Could you do this with…other soldiers?” Silversmith turned his head to the closed door, to the shouts of pain on the other side of it.

Adrian looked too and his long ears splayed back at the cacophony. “I don’t know. Many won’t be nearly as lucky as Colonel Emberfell. They’ll have shards, shrapnel, cut ligaments and arteries, all things that will kill them long before I open them up to try to fix them.”

They looked at each other and a long, silent moment passed between them. Silversmith bowed his head and whispered, “Can’t you try?”

He wanted to be frustrated, to shout. Adrian wanted to tell them all to go to hell. He was a captive among them and had been begged and cajoled into spending his precious resources on Francis and now they were asking for more? But before his temper could get away from him there was a long, agonized scream that pushed through the door and his eyes shut at the well of empathy that shot through him. The ward was full of men and women contorted in blood and sinew and pain. It would reek of the disease already prone to run rampant and no one would likely listen to him if he tried to explain quarantine zones and ways to prevent diseases from spreading further.

They were people, they were lives that could be saved- or by the least brought to comfort before their end. Exhausted beyond measure, he sighed.

"I can try,” Adrian finally murmured in response.

Silversmith looked up, no happier than Adrian was to have to ask. But it brought relief and comfort, “Could you…teach me? To do what you just did?”

Again, a knee jerk reaction of anger. He was a prisoner and now they wanted him to teach them? That would make him a traitor to the knowledge of the Emperor.

Frustration bubbled in Silversmith as he recognized the dark look of skepticism that passed over Adrian’s features. “I’m not asking you to teach me to be one of you. I’m not asking you to turn me into a goon of the Emperor. I’m just asking you to show me how to get bullets out and how to close the wound up and…and whatever else you can teach me!”

Adrian felt exhausted, the thrill of the adamas in his hand suddenly replaced with days worth of lack of sleep and hunger. But he carefully put the shard back into the hidden pocket with the others and he wiped his hands clean with a fresh cloth. “Are you going to kill me?” he finally asked.

The question took Silversmith aback for a moment. “What?”

“I’m a prisoner. Don’t think that just because we bonded over the leg of the Colonel Embefell means I’m suddenly not. You want me to help. You want me to teach you. You want me to do all these things- but the question I’ve had for days remains. Are you going to hang me when it's all over?”

“I don’t…I don’t know.”

“Then before you start begging me for favors, you might want to figure out if this man plans on hanging me as soon as he wakes up. Or if the rebels outside those doors plan on stoning me to death.” Adrian shook his head, frustrated at the naivete of the medic. “If you run and tell them all I’m an Emperor’s Alchemist they will react in anger- in rage. Not everyone knows the differences of the Emperor’s and the Empress’s Alchemists you know. They will just know I am one of their scientists, one of their chosen, and that it was our collective experiments and the creations we made with adamas that triggered this war.”

“But the Emperor’s Alchemists are just doctors and nurses and surgeons- you don’t make weapons! You make medicine and invent things for the good health of the people.”

“And? We are Alchemists all the same. We’ve had bodies sent back to us of men and women you people captured. Good men and women. Executed for being enemies of the Atelan state because of their use of adamas. They see our title as Alchemist and it is enough for them. Don’t you think it’s going to be good enough for them?” Adrian pointed to the door, to all the officers and soldiers of the rebel army standing outside. He roughly set a cloth down onto the table and began to clean it free of blood.

“They wouldn’t…” but Silversmith trailed off. The truth was he didn’t know. Not until Francis woke up.

Adrian shook his head. “Get this man a cot and some blankets and pillows. Lets make him comfortable at least. We’re not going to know how bad off he is for a couple of days.”

Silversmith put his hand on his hips and shut his eyes. “I won’t…I won’t say anything.”

Adrian just looked at him with his mouth pulled into a harsh frown. “What?”

“I won’t say anything. To any of them. About any of this. I’ll tell Colonel Francis when he wakes up and let him decide but I won’t…I won’t say anything…”

“And? What is that supposed to do for me?”

“You said you would help. Out in the infirmary ward? I won’t say a word to anyone, I promise. Do what you can do without the alchemy and adamas but just…help us. We can’t let all these people die if there’s a good enough doctor right here who can save them.” Silversmith stood up straight and his jaw set into a look of determination as he looked Adrian in the eye.

It would be so easy to just say no, to go find somewhere to lie down and take a long nap to take the edge off the exhaustion and the migraine. But with a shaky sigh, he remembered what he had already promised before and he remembered the oaths he had made on a bent knee back in Pracis. Wary and deeply fatigued, the words that came from him made him sound as if he had aged ten years. As if he knew he was not going to enjoy any of it, but he could see he had little choice.

“I can try.”