A woman's voice. Distant. He was barely kissing consciousness, like a drowning man with his head bobbing at the top of the waves to suck in a breath mixed the seawater.

"Corvo? Corvo - open your eyes - you have to stay awake -" Movement. Shaking his shoulders. He couldn't stiffen his neck, and his head lolled helplessly from one side to the next. More words, but the waves were swamping over him, smothering him. Dull pain on his cheek - a light slap, an attempt to keep him awake. It was enough to bring him to the surface once more. "Stay with us - Corvo, focus -!"

It was enough of a shock for his tongue to unstick from the roof of his mouth, if even for a moment. "…Jess'mine?" He gasped out her name like a desperate prayer, and then the darkness took him again. He tumbled back into it, and it welcomed him, and it was all he knew.

And as they lifted him onto the bed, Callista's hands trembled before she went to touch her lips in dismayed thought, not knowing what to do with being called by the Empress' name.

Samuel knew something had gone terribly wrong as soon as Corvo was late. The man wasn't the type to be anything less than punctual, and if he ever was, it was a very purposeful sort of lateness, and Samuel hadn't made Corvo angry enough to be snubbed - at least, not for more than fifteen-odd minutes or so, he figured, even if an old sailor had let loose an insult and not realized it. By half an hour worry had solidified into cold determination, but he told himself that he would wait fifteen more minutes. He waited ten. And then he got into his boat and went to find Corvo.

He was more appreciative than he could ever express that the soldiers on guard at the tower waterlock had been told to let him in unconditionally, even if they seemed twitchy and nervous and distracted. They told him what had happened after the water bore him up to their level, and he thanked them for it. One even recognized him and pointed him towards the servant's entrance. The tower had many such passageways for servants and guards to come and go, after all, and Samuel didn't feel it was truly his place yet to walk the grand hallways reserved for his betters.

He knew the sound of Emily's sobbing, though, and that was enough incentive to slip quietly from behind a hidden passageway tucked away by a bookcase and to walk along the velvet carpets proper. At least the young Empress wasn't sobbing in sadness - not yet, anyway. Instead she was trying to wriggle out of Callista's grasp. "But I want to go see him!"

"No - it's not a good idea, Emily -" her tone was curt and shaken, and Samuel could see her knuckles turning white as she held Emily forcibly in place. "You shouldn't see such things."

"But I'm an Empress now! And I want to see him!" She huffed, trying to push herself out of Callista's grip. "What if I order you to let me see him?"

Samuel cleared his throat and bowed a little; it was just the distraction the two could use. Emily was pleasantly surprised and Callista looked relieved at how Emily's attention had been divided. "I can go see how he's doin', if you'd like, your Highness."

"Please! Callista won't let me -"

"And she's right," Samuel said solemnly, though it made Emily frown deeply and huff. "But I'll go check on Master Corvo. See that he's doing all right."

Samuel knew that Corvo wouldn't be doing all right before he even opened the door. It creaked, and Emily tried to crane her head to see into the bedroom from where Callista held her in the sitting room of the suite. Samuel was careful to shut the door quickly behind him, and for a few moments, nobody noticed him. He was used to such treatment. The world didn't have much use for an old boatman. Not anymore.

Corvo was the worst Samuel had ever seen him. And he had seen the Lord Protector dizzy with hunger and pain, stumbling out from the sewers after escaping Coldridge, or dripping blood from whatever wound he had just gained on his latest adventure, or even flat on the floor, eyes rolled back in his head, very still but not quite still enough to be dead. Now it seemed the color had dripped out of his face. The white sheets on the bed were neat and clean, same with the bandages and even the sutures on his shoulder where one wound had already been patched up. It all made it worse for reasons Samuel couldn't explain. Blood on the rough battlefield was one thing, but this was another, and it made him nervous.

Piero was pacing back and forth while Sokolov wrote down something into a pad of paper. Neither of them noticed Samuel, which was as it should be. His intellectual betters needed to be left to their thinking.

"…No, no, I agree, between the tachycardia and tachypnea, it's quite clear that there must be some massive internal hemorrhagic event, I'm just not sure…"

"Better to try and solve the cause than to sit here and watch," Sokolov grunted. "He's losing blood in any case. A bit more from a scalpel won't matter much in the scheme of things."

"Of course, but surgery without any sort of anesthetic agent? Surgeons have enough trouble even with chloroform, but it's far too risky at this point to administer such a thing. And if Corvo wakes up, I'd imagine that his reaction won't be a good one. We'll need someone to hold him down. Several someones, I'd imagine -"

"Begging your pardons, sirs," Samuel said, making them both jump and turn to face him. "But if Corvo wakes up and decides he wants out of here, there ain't no man who'll be able to hold him down."

Piero chewed idly on his thumbnail in worry, and Sokolov gave a small snort that approached a laugh.

"But, if you're looking for a volunteer," Samuel continued, "I'll help as I can. Seeing a friendly face might make him slightly less likely to panic. If he wakes up, anyway."

Piero seemed, for a moment, about to say something more, but Sokolov just rubbed his hands together in front of him. At that moment it was very clear to Samuel what the difference between them was. The two had a mercurial relationship, to be certain, and both were brilliant minds that the whole Empire was in debt to. But at that moment, Piero was worrying for Corvo, the man, the life he knew, the person the Empress cherished. And Sokolov?

Well. From the gleam in his eye, this was going to be an interesting experiment, but not much more.

Samuel knew how this went - at least, he knew how this went at sea, when a cannon perhaps misfired and a sailor had to be held down while the butcher of a doctor hacked off the mangled remains of his leg. He knew how to deal with the mingling smells of blood and saltwater and even how to scrub blood from the wooden deck afterwards. But all the starched white linen and clean cotton and gleaming steel instruments made him deeply, deeply nervous.

"…I trust you've had enough practice to be able to make a Harron's incision?" Piero's hand was shaking ever-so-slightly as he held the scalpel, and Sokolov stood behind him, snapping a correction. "No - down. Yes, there, along the lines of the bruise. Good. Spleen's sure to be crushed. I suppose Corvo is lucky that he has a good constitution, if he gets through this."

Samuel caught himself gulping reflexively and tried to settle down into what he thought was a useful position. For one thing, focusing on holding Corvo's shoulders down - limp as they were - was an excuse to look away from the quickly-blossoming blood. Corvo's expression was so slack that for a moment Samuel was afraid they were merely cutting on a corpse; he held one gloved hand lighly over Corvo's face. Just the barest whisper of breath. That was enough, he supposed. Anxious and fidgety, he tried to look anywhere except the site where Piero was already peeling back flesh to expose meat and bone. Something red in the box of supplies…

"D'you think one of your health tonics might help him, Mr. Sokolov, sir?"

"Hm?" Sokolov's nose twitched. "Probably wouldn't hurt, if you can get it into him. Now…" He leaned in closer over Piero's shoulder. "Knew it was the spleen. That'll have to come out, of course."

Piero flinched nervously. "You haven't even washed your hands! Not to mention that beard -"

"Doubt it'll make much of a difference to his chances…"

Samuel set his jaw and tried to ignore the conversation, repositioning his hands. With the muscles in his neck gone limp, Corvo's head was surprisingly heavy. Perhaps it was just easy to forget the weight every person carried between their shoulders. In any case it was a little difficult to cradle it just-so, lifting Corvo's head up as he opened the flask of elixir with his teeth and tried to tip some of it into the other man's mouth. Just enough to tease down the back of his throat. He waited until he saw Corvo swallow weakly on reflex before letting a little more of the stuff flow into his mouth. Samuel wasn't at all sure what was in it, and thought it very likely that he didn't ever want to know, but he had seen the elixir help Corvo in the past. Perhaps it wouldn't be asking too much for more help again.

"…No, there. Are you going to actually do what needs to be done, or not?"

Piero grimaced as Sokolov snapped at him. "I am doing what needs to be done -"

"I suppose this is a consequence of not staying at the Academy long enough to observe a proper vivisection, then, Joplin. Your bladework is sloppy at best."

"If you would like to take over, I would be more than happy to -"

Samuel cleared his throat. The brewing argument between the two geniuses stopped in its tracks when he began to speak. There was a steely snap to Samuel's tone, now. "Begging your pardon, sirs," he said (with tone indicating he wasn't begging anything at all now, no matter how highly he thought of them, "Corvo's a person. Not a… vivisection. And as he's a friend, I think it'd be best if perhaps we hurry a bit."

Sokolov seemed a bit chagrined, which was really the most Samuel could have hoped for. The argument simmered into a snippy murmured back-and-forth. Samuel pointedly did not watch. Instead he watched for any sign of color coming back into Corvo's cheeks, any twitch or easier breathing that might have indicated the health elixir was working. It would have been a relief to even hear a whimper, or a sob, or a scream of agony. There was nothing. Instead Corvo just remained eerily, distressingly limp.

There was the wet slap of bloody flesh hitting the bottom of a clean pan. Samuel earnestly tried not to look, but the slick organ-flesh was just gleaming with blood enough to catch his eye. Probably best to leave off any kidney pies for a few days, he considered, even if right now the thought of any meat was turning his stomach.

"…Where did you learn that stitching? Utterly unacceptable."

"I've already mended his shoulder -"

"Which is quite fine in small amounts but this needs a more experienced touch. Go fetch a new needle."

Piero stood as Sokolov all but forced his way into the seat by the bed, and gave an exasperated sigh. "Will you at least rinse your hands if I bring some warm water -"

"Only if you're quick about it."

Samuel was starting to understand, now. Given a common foe at the gates, the two brilliant minds could unite and even coexist. But their truce had been slowly crumbling as the cure for the plague stopped being interesting and began to be routine. And now there was really no adversary at all, just medical necessity. Boring and uninspiring. Perhaps, underneath all of that, they were even both worried. Piero certainly was. Sokolov was much harder to read.

One out of two wasn't that bad, Samuel supposed.

Piero had left the door ajar and Samuel had let his mind wander in musing. When he realized what was happening, it was already too late. Callista gave a strangled yelp from the other room, calling out Emily's name. The girl's eyes were full of frustrated tears, and in her rushing she didn't even use the door's handle, instead nearly body-slamming it open. Samuel saw her take in a breath, open her mouth, ready to belt out Corvo's name as if she could summon him just with a shout. But her lips went slack and the tears came into her eyes more earnest.

He understood the blood. There was a lot of it. And the inside of another person, being stitched back into order - that was not a thing for any little girl to see, much less an Empress. What Samuel did not understand was how, at that moment, a bit of Sokolov's elixir tipped into Corvo's mouth just-so, and in unconscious reflex he spluttered, coughed, and brought the red liquid to his lips in just the same way Emily had seen her mother gagging on blood before Daud dragged her away.

Emily didn't scream. She understood that as an Empress, she was expected to be too dignified for screaming. Instead she just went terrifyingly still, like a rabbit caught in the shadow of a hawk, and cried out of panicking reflex to the point where it seemed as if she might pass out every-so-often.

Three hours, four cups of tea, two offered promises of cake and one shot of rum snuck into hot cocoa later, Emily finally seemed to calm. Or, rather, she was too exhausted to sob anymore. When she fell asleep on the sofa in the antechamber leaving to Corvo's bedroom, Callista didn't try to move her. Perhaps the Empress' suite would be more secure, but that would be a matter for tomorrow. Instead she just made sure Emily had plenty of pillows, and tucked a blanket in around her.

Samuel watched through the cracked door. When Sokolov and Piero went off to argue and obsess about potential remedies for the poison, he stayed. Trying to get elixirs down Corvo's throat gave him something to do, at least, and even if he felt useless, he also felt as if he couldn't just leave.

It was well into the small hours of the night when he unstuck his dry lips and finally spoke.

"I think Emily's just a little bit broken after all of this, Master Corvo. …Makes sense, all she's been through. All you've been through, too." He paused, looked down into Corvo's face, and measured his words carefully.

"And I pray you can hear me in there, and keep fighting, 'cause I don't know what she'd do without you."