Chapter 8. Recovery and Salvage

Aster woke up about 6 hours later.

Perhaps the phrase 'wake up' did not accurately describe her return to consciousness. Suffice it to say that she gradually became aware. First of darkness, then of pain.

She wasn't entirely sure where she was, or exactly what had happened. She lay in the position she was, too agonized to move, in darkness as profound as that which she had once been in, in her basement, hiding from a battle between two twin giants. She couldn't even make out shapes. Or her hand in front of her. If she'd been able to move her hand. Any attempt at motion brought pain.

What is this? She wondered. Where am I? Did I fall? Am I dead?

The possibility of being dead seemed a highly likely one, but simply being alone in the dark, in pain, was definitely not heaven, and also wasn't any sort of version of hell she had ever heard of. Then again, who was to say that hell would necessarily be what anyone expected it to be?

If I'm dead, there's nothing I can do about it. If I'm alive, I need to find out where I am and what happened. Best to proceed on the second assumption, it can't make things worse if I'm dead, and might help if I'm alive.

She opened her mouth slightly to call out, and became aware of a sour crust around it. Her chest hurt when she tried to take a breath to call for help, and her mouth was too parched to speak, anyways.

She lay there for several more minutes. Beyond the darkness and the pain, nothing seemed to be happening. So wherever she was, and whatever had occurred, she was probably in no immediate danger. She licked her lips (her tongue being one of the few parts of her body that didn't hurt to some degree) to get rid of the dry sourness around her lips. The taste was familiar. Apparently she'd vomited at some point. Why?

She couldn't see, but her other senses such as taste were working. She tried taking several shallow breaths, rapidly. It hurt slightly less than her attempt at taking a deep breath. She tried to think. What could she tell about where she was?

She could feel something soft underneath and around her. She wasn't lying on a bare floor. But it wasn't grass, either. Probably she was inside. There wasn't any hint of wind against her skin, which confirmed that assessment.

There were a few sounds. Distant voices. The clatter of machinery. Smells, too. Smelly sweat and some sort of animal musk. The heavy scent of a variety of rich food.

Food. She thought. Then she remembered. The horrible mockery of a wedding feast. The damned Maestro and what he had done to her. Bloody damn hell. Her thought of being dead and in hell was half right at any rate.

I shouldn't have eaten with opium in my stomach. Aster shook her head at her own stupidity. But the Maestro had ordered her to eat. Something about her tits or something. And by that point she wasn't thinking clearly.

Something was wet between her legs, and she cried out in disgust, fearing that it was the Maestro's filthy seed all over her. Her right arm seemed to hurt less than the left, and she reached down to feel what it was. It was warm and wet, and seemed thinner than the animal sperm that she had often collected. There was an awful lot of it, too.

What is this? I don't care if that fucking green bastard is ten feet tall, I don't think he can come that much. And even if he had, it ought to be cold by now. Something isn't right. I need light. There was a curtain across the opening to this room. I've got to find it. Maybe there's still some lights in that dining hall.

Aster reached outward and upwards with her good arm, sweeping it in a circle, as far as she could reach. To her right, and behind her, her fingers barely brushed cloth.

It hurt to move her legs, and one of her ankles was especially painful. She pushed with the other foot, sliding herself across slick fabric, towards the curtain. She couldn't move her left arm at all. Well, she could, but the very attempt brought agony along the whole length of it. She didn't have enough strength of will to ignore that degree of pain. How was she to do this?

Carefully, she slid one toe under the curtain and lifted it slightly. She was as weak as a kitten, and didn't understand why. The fabric felt like it weighed nearly 50 lbs. Still, there were a few lights still lit in the dining area, and now she could see herself. She wished she hadn't. She looked like the victim of a chariot accident she had once seen in the market in Dystopia. There were bruises everywhere on her body., especially along one side of her ribcage and her left arm. The bones were probably broken underneath. Not good. There was no way for her to set and splint them herself.

Her foot trembling with the effort, she turned her attention to what had been worrying her a few moments before. That odd wetness between her legs. What was it. She reached down with her right hand into her crotch, got some of the wetness on her fingers, and brought it up to her face.

Her entire hand was covered with dark liquid, nearly black in the dim light.

Blood! The panicked thought hit her like a bucket of ice water. So much. There's got to be nearly a pint on me already. And I'm still bleeding! Otherwise it wouldn't be warm and liquid like that, it would be clotted already. I've got to do something. I only weigh a little over 100 lbs. If I don't stop this, I'll bleed to DEATH!

What to do! What, what what! Think! Aster began hyperventilating, and the panic made her heart beat faster, which unfortunately had the effect of actually increasing the rate of bleeding from the soft tissues that the Maestro had torn with his brutal rape of her. Luckily, however, the accompanying adrenaline also cleared the last remnants of the opium out of her head. Several solutions flashed through her head in less than a second, and were quickly rejected. Stitches, cauterization, pre-War superglue were all impossible. What else? Think Aster! Think or die! Pressure and bandages, maybe. I haven't got anything sterile, but if I get an infection, I'll have a couple weeks at least to figure out how to deal with it. Right now I have to stop this blood RIGHT NOW!

Using her right hand, Aster felt around on the fabric covered floor until she came up with a large scrap of something or the other. In point of fact, it was actually the remains of the sheer dress that the Maestro had forced her to wear during the feast, but she neither knew nor cared about that now. All she cared about is that it was there, and she could use it. Using her mouth and her good right hand, she twisted one end of it into a point. Then she pushed the point up into her vagina. It HURT! Not as bad as when the Maestro had violated her, but bad enough. She almost pulled it out again, then stopped. She put the other end of the silken dress into her mouth in a wadded bunch, and bit on it and her lip at the same time. Then she pushed the other end of the cloth farther into herself. She screamed against the gag. And pushed more cloth into her torn body.

Eventually, she couldn't seem to get any more of the fabric up into herself. She was panting, and sweat covered her face, loosening the crust of vomit a little. She used the end of the cloth that she had been biting on, now dampened with her saliva, to wipe her face a little. Sometime during her attempts to stanch the bleeding with cloth, her foot had come out from under the curtain, so she couldn't see if she was still bleeding, or not. She didn't have any more strength left to try to raise the heavy, heavy fabric again to look. No matter. It had either worked, or not. Either way, there was nothing more she could do to help herself at this point, and looking to see if she was still bleeding from down there would not alter the facts.

Aster wasn't sure what else to do. She didn't know if she had stopped the bleeding or not. If she had, trying to move might start it up again, and she'd die. If she hadn't, then she needed to try to find help and if she stayed here, she'd die. On the other hand, either staying here OR moving (assuming she even could move any significant distance with her injuries) might displease the Maestro, and he'd rape her again as a punishment. She was pretty sure she wouldn't survive a second round with that monster. At least, not until she healed up, if she ever did.

Probably the Maestro being the Maestro, he'd find a reason to be displeased with her regardless of what she did or didn't do. That being the case, Aster decided to stay where she was. The odds of death seemed about equal to her regardless of whether she stayed or tried to find help, and moving was painful. So painful that the odds of finding help probably weren't very good, either.

She groaned loudly in pain for several moments, then went silent again. Groaning took too much effort. She lay back. Time seemed to jump oddly again, as it had when she had been on the opium before. Was the drug still in her system? Or was she blacking out from pain and exhaustion? She heard the rumbling sound of machinery a few times, and once, a few voices in the distance.

"Hello?" her voice was barely audible. "Somebody? Is anyone there? Help me. Please."

The voices faded. Of course they couldn't here her when she could barely speak above a whisper. She tried to pucker her lips to whistle, but the dry crust of vomit somehow got in the way of her doing that.

Time seemed to fade out again, and Aster wasn't sure how much went by before she heard footsteps. The seemed to get louder, approaching the curtained alcove where she lay.

Oh no! What if it's the Maestro again?! Aster whimpered in panic.

Then the curtains were pushed back, and the light of a Pre-War flashlight shone through. Aster squinted, but couldn't see who it was holding it. Whoever it was didn't look as tall as the Maestro, but she wasn't sure.

"Bloody hell." The voices sounded vaguely familiar. "You're still alive? You're so damned short. I thought for sure the Maestro would kill you."

"Father…" No, it wasn't her father. The comment about her shortness identified the speaker. "Wolfkiller… is that you?"

"Yes." The dark haired man still smelled bad, but no-where near as bad as the Maestro had. He set down his flashlight on a blanket, where the beam angled down to illuminate Aster's nude, battered body. "Damn, you're a mess. I've seen worse, though. You might be short, but you're tough."

Aster snorted. She didn't feel tough. She felt like she'd been trampled by one of the extinct elephants that used to live in the Zoo before the war.

"How…" she pressed her right hand to where her ribs ached whenever she took in too large a breath. "How the hell could it be worse than this?"

"Trust me." Wolfkiller said in a grim voice. "It could be. For one thing… he had trouble… getting it up. He had to get drunk, first, and even then he had trouble."

The thought of the Maestro suffering from so human a frailty as occasional impotence made Aster laugh. She winced with the pain, and cut off the laughter. "He didn't seem like he had any trouble.. with that.. to me."

Wolfkiller spread his hands helplessly. "Trust me… he did. You're actually not his type."

Aster started crying. Not even his 'type' whatever that was, and the Maestro had still done this to her. For what? To prove what? The Maestro had been angry with her, apparently for being smarter than him. But how the hell did his raping and nearly killing her prove that he was smarter than her? It didn't prove anything except that he was stronger. And that she already knew, and wouldn't have tried arguing with or complaining about any more than she would complain about the fact that a horse was stronger than her. What would be the point to deny the glaringly obvious? Nor would raping or beating up the horse change that fact, either.

Disgust spread over the scarred man's face at the tears. "I did warn you to keep it under your hat."

That just made Aster cry worse.

Daniel Wolfkiller sighed. "It was probably pointless to warn you. You're brilliant, but you've got… pieces missing from you. And too brilliant, probably. You can hide candle under a hat, maybe. But you… might as well try to hide a bonfire under a hat. But I did try."

Aster suddenly hated all men. "Yeah, that worked real good. Now what are you going to do. Have a big laugh at how stupid I am and then go off and let me die? Or rape me yourself?"

"Stupid girl." Wolfkiller looked like he wanted to slap her, probably would have slapped her if she hadn't already been so badly hurt. "You aren't MY type either. I like women, not little girls. Which you're plenty nosey and smart enough to know. I didn't bother you or your sister, did I? You might have had the manners to return the favor and keep out of MY business."

He left the alcove, and Aster started crying again. A moment later there were some scraping sounds that she couldn't identify. Was that Wolfkiller? What was he doing, devising some new torment for her? There was a louder scrape, then a 'thud', and a moment later, Wolfkiller came back into the alcove, dragging a small, upended table behind him.

"I need to get you onto this." He told Aster. "It's going to hurt like hell. I'd suggest you try not to scream."

"Where are you taking me?"

"There's a fairly good hospital, here in the palace. From what I can tell in this light, they can probably help you. Consider yourself lucky."

Aster didn't feel very lucky, and wondered for a moment what happened to those women who weren't so lucky. Then she was being slid onto the hard undersurface of the table, and the pain in her arms and ribs flared bright red, so bad she blacked out again for a moment. When she recovered, there was a blanket on top of her, and Wolfkiller was pulling the table down the hallway. The lower part of her legs hung out past the edge of the wooden surface, and her heels dragged on the floor, hurting her ankle terribly.

It was dark, and it seemed like the hallways in the palace were endless. She knew that the Maestro's palace was huge, but other than the bathing and dining areas, and the Hall of Fallen Heroes, had never really seen any of it.

There was a trip up an elevator, in which Wolfkiller had to slant the table slightly in order to fit it inside, causing Aster to whimper with more pain as her weight went onto her broken ribs. They went up several floors, then down another dim hallway into a room that was brightly lit. The table Aster was on was too wide to fit through the door, so Wolfkiller left her in the hallway while he went in. A Doctor in a white coat sitting at a desk near the entrance started as Wolfkiller came up to him.

"Get up, Llewellyn" The stablemaster ordered the doctor abruptly. "I've got a patient for you."

The doctor, whose name was Matthew Llewellyn looked through the door, and saw the shape of Aster's body lying there on the table. He dashed out, crouched down near the table, peeled back the blanket covering her with clinical efficiency, and took in the extent of her injuries quickly.

"Not good. Several broken bones. Soft tissue injuries. Sprained ankle and hip. What happened…?" he knew Wolfkiller was the Maestro's stablemaster. "This doesn't look like she was trampled by a horse."

"No. It was him."

"Bloody hell." The doctor was painfully familiar with the uses to which the Maestro put women, and the brutal aftereffects. "Would have been better off being trampled by a horse. Poor child. She can't be more than ten. What the hell is he thinking?"

"She's fourteen actually." Wolfkiller corrected him.

"Never mind." Said the doctor. "I've got to get her on a stretcher. Help me. I'm the only one here this time of night."

He got up, went back into the small hospital, and came out with a stretcher. He laid it on the ground next to the table. Then he took a small screwdriver out of his pocket and removed the two legs of the table that were on the same side as the stretcher, so they wouldn't get in the way of moving Aster. "Take her by the hips and help me slide her over. I don't want to twist her body, in case she has a broken back. In fact, you probably should have left her where she was and called me down to help you move her."

"Well, excuse me for not wanting her to bleed to death." Said Wolfkiller in a disgruntled voice. "I don't have a fancy medical degree like you."

"Never mind." The doctored sighed. Most people didn't know any better and it was pointless to argue with them about it. He took Aster by the shoulders, and turned to the other man. "Roll her over onto the stretcher on the count of three. Ready? One, two, three!"

Aster was rolled over, and the motion hurt her ribs again. She cried out, once, then she was on the stretcher, panting with pain. Someone, she wasn't sure if it was the doctor or Wolfkiller, put the blanket back over her.

"Pick up that end of the stretcher." The doctor told the stablemaster. "Let's get her inside onto the table. I need to look at her in better light."

Even the jars of the two men's footsteps, not coordinated with eachother, sent spasms of pain through Aster. It felt like she was nearly slammed onto the examining table, though she was actually set down as gently as the two men could manage. Then the doctor took the blanket off her, and with expert hands and eyes examined her injuries.

"Hmm. Fourteen, you said?" He glanced up at Wolfkiller. "She's small for her age. Not stunted from malnutrition like I first thought. A slow developer, it looks like. Probably made her injuries worse, but in a way, she's lucky."

Aster failed to understand why that was 'lucky' if it made her injuries worse. The doctor took out a light and shined it in her eyes.

"Good pupil response. A bit slow, but no obvious brain injuries." He addressed Aster for the first time. "I'm Doctor Llewellyn. Can you tell me your name?"

Her mouth was still dry and crusted with vomit. "Aster. Aster Aversa."

"You're the Zookeeper's daughter!" The doctor seemed a bit surprised for a moment, then went back to his medical routine. "Aster, your eyes aren't responding to light as fast as they should. Have you been drinking alcohol, or taking any drugs?"

"Opium…" it seemed like a lifetime ago and she had to struggle to remember. "Ingested orally."

The doctor's brow furrowed. Odd language to come from such a young looking girl. But it wasn't important. "How much? How long ago."

She tried, but couldn't remember. "I forget. Before the feast."

"Well, it doesn't matter. If it were a lethal dose, it would have killed you by now." He thought to himself that the girl probably would have been far better off taking a lethal dose. But maybe she didn't know how much would be deadly. And perhaps it wasn't his decision to make.

Doctor Llewellyn went over to a counter where an old, pre-War book lay open. He picked it up and turned to the girl. "Aster, I'm going to show you something, and I want you to tell me what letter you see."

He flipped the book over quickly, so that Aster could see a page with a picture and showed it to her. She glanced at it quickly and told him: "I see a bunch of letter 'H's."

"I see." From things that Daniel Wolfkiller had mentioned about the girl, he had expected such an answer, but had to make sure.

He set the book back down, turned back to Aster. "Aster, you've got three broken ribs, your left arm is broken in two places, and your ankle and hips are sprained."

He looked down at the blood encrusted cloth between her legs. "Did Daniel Wolfkiller put that cloth down there, where you were bleeding?" It didn't seem likely that the Maestro would bother with such a thing, but he supposed it was possible.

"No… I did."

"You did… well." The girl might be small, but she was damned resourceful. Her Zookeeper father had obviously spent a lot of time and effort on her education. Wasted time, unfortunately, it would seem.

"I'm going to have to leave that cloth for right now." The doctor said. "If I take it out, you'll probably start bleeding again, and right now I don't think you can afford to lose any more blood. But I need to get your bones set. I'm going to give you a shot that will put you out for a while, do you understand."

"Yes."

"Good." The doctor took out a syringe, took it over to a large shelf with some jars, pulled on off, and filled the needle. He found a vein in the elbow of Aster's unbroken right arm, and gave her an injection.

"How long does it take to work?" She asked the doctor.

"Count to a hundred. Out loud." He suggested.

"Alright." Aster began counting. "One. Two. Three…

She got to seventeen, and everything went black.

It seemed only a moment later that there was light. Aster looked around. She was lying on a rather hard bed, the sun shining through a small window near the ceiling. There was a cast on her left arm, and another on her ankle. There was a pitcher of water, a glass, a mirror, and an odd thing like a button attached to a wire on a small table nearby.

She sat up, and rubbed her face. The crust of vomit had been washed off while she had been unconscious. She looked down at herself, and she was wearing an odd sort of lightweight white tunic that didn't seem to close right in the back. Useless, whatever it was. Both for modesty, and keeping warm.

Aster picked up the mirror and looked at herself. Her face was one large bruise, and there was another one going down from her collarbone to her chest, where the doctor said she had broken ribs. He had mentioned her hips were sprained. She lifted up the blankets and looked under the idiot white tunic she was wearing, but quickly looked away from what she saw under there.

How do I get the doctor in here? She wondered. Probably the button with the wire coming out of it, she doubted that it had been put there just for decoration. She had seen Pre-war switches that looked like buttons, so probably the button was a switch for a light or a bell or something in whatever room the doctor had gone into. She reached over, hooked it with one finger, then pressed it. There was a ringing in another room that lasted several seconds, followed by the sound of footsteps, and in less than a minute, the doctor came into her room, carrying a metal clipboard full of crisp white paper under his arm. Aster thought at first it was Pre-war paper, but it seemed too white for that. Probably made somewhere in the Maestro's palace, then. Some things of Pre-War technology were still made her. Not very many, though. Certainly not enough for everyone in Dystopia to have.

"Ah, you're awake. Earlier than I expected."

"What time is it?" Aster shook her head blearily. Maybe that wasn't the right question. It seemed a lifetime ago since she had been taken from her nice home at the zoo and paraded naked in a cage through the streets of Dystopia. "What day is it?"

"Good. Lucid questions. Probably no brain damage. Do you remember my name, from before?"

Aster thought for a moment. "Doctor Llewellyn."

"Good. No short term memory loss." The doctor pulled out his clipboard and made some notes on it. He looked back up at his young patient. "You have some pretty bad injuries, Aster. I think I mentioned them to you before, but you were in a lot of pain then, and might have forgotten. Your left arm is broken in two places. You have three broken ribs. Your ankle and hip are both sprained. If you stay off your feet as much as possible for a couple weeks, the sprains should heal up. I'm going to recommend to the Maestro that you remain here for that time."

Aster bit her lip. "Do you think he'll listen?"

Doctor Llewellyn ignored that and went on. "The cast can come off your arm in eight weeks. There's no way to put a cast on your ribs, but they should heal up by themselves provided you don't do anything strenuous for eight weeks, as well.

Like getting raped by that bastard, again. Aster thought.

The doctor continued reading down what he had written, and frowned. "You had some very bad injuries in… well… where you were raped. I cleaned you up, stopped the bleeding, and applied some antibiotics, but there wasn't that much I could do to repair the damage. You're going to have some bad scarring inside you. Most likely, sex.. . with anyone… is going to be at least somewhat uncomfortable to you. I don't know if you can still have children or not. I'd suggest you don't try, unless you have access to myself or another doctor who can perform a cesearean. Giving birth will probably kill you."

A thought occurred to the doctor. "Do you know what a cesearean is?"

Aster drew a finger across her lower stomach. "My father did one once, on a goat. It died a couple days later, but the baby lived."

"Mmm." The doctor nodded. Either complications from the hard birth or infection could have killed the mother goat. "I'd actually recommend that you get a hysterectomy… your uterus and ovaries removed… to make sure you never get pregnant. I can do that here, if you want me to."

Aster shook her head. The thought of having more injuries, from the surgery, to recover from, along with what she already had, was too much to deal with. Besides, after her sickening experience with the Maestro, she had no intention of ever voluntarily touching a man, or letting one touch her. Ever.

"Well, it's up to you." The doctor shrugged, and his tone made it clear that he disagreed with Aster's decision. "I can't do it without your consent."

Aster felt resentful at Doctor Llewellyn's patronizing attitude. It must be wonderful to be a man, like him, and get to rape people and not have to worry about being raped.

"Why didn't you just let me die?" She sulked. "What do you do around here, anyways? The Maestro rips women apart and you put them back together again, so he can do it all over again?"

Doctor Llewellyn slammed down his clipboard. "Mister Wolfkiller told me that you were a rather rude and foolish girl. Brilliant, obviously. But still rude and foolish."

"Oh, I'm rude?" Aster sneered. "I'm not the one working for a sick giant green pig!"

"Do you honestly think I have very much choice about that? None of us around here have much choice about what we do. Or we choose to protect ourselves, and our own families. Don't tell me you wouldn't do the same thing. If I could change things, believe me, I would. If I could undo what happened to you last night, I would. But I can't. Now grow up and deal with it, or you won't live long enough to grow up."

"Fuck you." Aster had only very seldom used what she thought of as the 'F' word before in her life, but the very rude doctor deserved it. So did that horrible Daniel Wolfkiller with his dirty hair. And the Maestro. And all men. Except maybe her father.

"Well, that's a truly brilliant answer." Said Doctor Llewellyn sarcastically. "Wolfkiller gave you some advice, a few years ago. You probably weren't smart enough then, to follow it. Maybe you are, now. Don't attract too much attention to yourself. Learn to keep your eyes and ears open, and your mouth shut. Then, just maybe, you'll survive around here."

"Whatever." Aster curled up on her side, the side without the broken ribs and closed her eyes, tears trickling through the lids.

The doctor shook his head. "I have to leave for a while. I've been working nearly 16 hours. I need to go home and get some sleep. There'll be a nurse in the other room. If you need anything, press that button again, and she'll get it for you."

Aster refused to respond, other than to pull the blankets over her head, so the doctor could only see a few tufts of her short hair, on top. One of the jeweled clips that had been put into it the previous night was still there. Almost tenderly, the doctor took it out, regarded it for a moment, then put it in his pocket. He doubted if the girl would want it, and the gems in it looked real. It would fetch a good price, and he had several uses for the money.

After leaving the hospital, the Doctor did not go straight home. Instead he went to a small park, lined with withered oak trees which were large enough to perhaps have been growing before the War. He sat down on a weathered wooden bench, missing one slat in the back, far away from the few other people in the park at the time. Then he took out a slim medical book from his satchel, opened it up and read it while he waited. Within a few minutes, Daniel Wolfkiller came from another direction and sat down near him.

The doctor continued to pretend to read his medical book.

"Well?" said the Maestro's stablemaster. "What do you think of her?"

"Lucky to be alive." Said Doctor Llewellyn. "Luckier still that most of her injuries are going to heal. The opium she took probably helped. It relaxed her muscles, made the injuries less severe than they otherwise might have been."

"I told you she was resourceful." Said Wolfkiller. "So you agree I was right."

"Oh, she's brilliant." Agreed the doctor. "You also told me she was rude. That's true as well. She'd best learn not to be, at least in front of the Maestro."

"She's got some pieces missing." Wolfkiller explained. "I don't know why. Probably too many animals and not enough people around her, when she was growing up."

"Maybe. Or maybe she has too many pieces. That can be just as problematic, in some ways."

"What do you mean?" Wolfkiller often couldn't keep up mentally, with the physician.

"You know horses." Said the doctor. "You tell me, what good would it do for a horse to have eight legs instead of four? Especially if the extra four legs were pointed sideways, or straight up, instead of at the ground."

"I don't know." Shrugged the stablemaster. "Running upside-down, maybe?"

The doctor said nothing for a while. "I did a simple test on her. The answer she gave... wasn't what most people would give. I've read about cases like hers in old books. Pre-War books, I mean. At that time, they probably would have called her 'autistic'. But from what I can tell, that never was a very accurate term. The people who lived before the war applied it to all sorts of different behaviors, some of which were actually complete opposites. From what I can tell, what they generally meant by it most of the time was that someone wouldn't pay whatever amount of attention to various other people that the other people felt they should be paying. Which in itself makes the incredibly arrogant assumption that the other people were necessarily even WORTH paying attention to, and the obviously mistaken assumption that they somehow had a right to attention, even if they were worth it."

"I still think we can use her." Said Wolfkiller. "You told me yourself, last night, that the way she saved her life, bandaging herself with that dress, was more resourceful than most adults."

"Then you'll use her as a tool." The doctor was obviously uncomfortable with the idea. "A fourteen year old girl, who was raped by a monster."

"Better a tool, than a toy." Said Wolfkiller.

The doctor didn't like it, but didn't protest. Unpleasant as the idea was, Wolfkiller was right. Children abused and threw away their toys out of fickleness and cruelty. Adults didn't break or throw away tools. Not so long as they were still useful. But still…

"I still don't like it. To use a hurt young girl like that. Even if she is rude. She's been through so much."

"Do you have a better idea? She's incredibly observant. And who gets closer to the Maestro, close enough to spot some possible weakness he might have, than the women he keeps around?" Wolfkiller waited for a moment and went on. "I can't undo what was done to her, or prevent what's going to happen to her. And if someone doesn't find a way to stop him, he'll hurt other girls like her. Nothing you or I do can help her, but using her might save others."

"Yes, but how are we going to get her to help us?" asked the doctor. "She's a fourteen year old girl, for pities sake. We CAN'T tell her what we're about. She wouldn't last a minute under torture. Hell, she hates you and doesn't like me much better, if we ask her to help us, she'd probably run straight to the Maestro and tell him just to get the chance to go home. He'd have her head on a spike right next to ours, but she's too naïve to understand that."

Wolfkiller looked at the oak trees near them for a minute. It seemed they grew less leaves every year, and the leaves that did grow seemed stunted and yellowed. He wondered if he would live to see a year when the trees sprouted no leaves at all, and what their city would be like, then.

"I don't need to ask her." He finally said. "And she'll help us without knowing she is, specifically because she hates me."

The doctor was nonplussed. "And what, exactly, will accomplish that miracle?"

"Miracle?" Wolfkiller chuckled. "No… not a miracle. Pride."