Faint light was just starting to creep through the parted drapes, and from somewhere outside the first blackbird was calling. He shivered, pulling the covers up over his shoulders. The room was cold and empty, the hearth a pile of dead ashes, his friends long gone. Lucien must have kicked them out sometime during the night, he thought, not sure whether to be grateful or annoyed. As he lay there wondering if it was worth moving to retrieve and use the chamber pot, the words of the doctor played through his head like a litany. You were lucky, damned lucky, my lord ... another half-inch and you would've lost your rib; a little more than that your lung, and very likely your life. It was a sobering thought. They'd told him the ball had peeled a strip of flesh off a lower rib, plowing a furrow in the bone and leaving a loose flap of skin that had bled profusely. As wounds went, it was far less serious than it had initially looked. But plague take his rib, Gareth had thought then — and thought now as he groaned and finally reached for the chamber pot, it was his head — the entire left side of his face — that was killing him.
