Raven was a slender but muscular woman with the long dark hair and elegant features characteristic of the Emerald Isles. Her olive skin was pale, but it looked to only be so because she clearly hadn't been in the sun in a very long time. Every ounce of her cold grace and attention was fixated on the broken woman before her.
Raven.
I dunked the blood-soaked rag into the basin again, pausing only briefly to wring it out. The girl before me had been flayed, that much was clear. Entire strips of skin were missing in patches all over her body. The crisp neat lines of the missing patches of skin were telltale of someone who'd been practiced in flaying and a fondness of mercifully sharp knives. She had also been badly beaten. The skin that did remain was a wretched mix of purple, crimson, blue and black. I shuddered, not wanting to picture how long she'd been tortured nor by whom.
Moving lower down her body it was apparent that her leg was broken. Examining the injury made my own leg ache. My calf was an ugly, broken thing and I had to shift regularly to prevent my leg from cramping. I winced remembering the beating I'd gotten for trying to escape, the snap as my tendon had coiled up the back of my leg like a spool of yarn and how the madame had not let me treat the injury so that it would be impossible to make another attempt to run in the future. 'You don't need legs to lay on your back' she'd said at the time, delighting in the loss of hope.
The girl before me was, despite the wounds, arguably very beautiful. She had pale skin that seemed unblemished paired with delicate but strangely angular and symmetrical features. Her lips were a reddish-purple colour even without tint. Arched, even and full brows a whisper darker than her platinum blonde locks. Her body was curvy but gaunt, someone who'd been fed well during her life but had recently fallen on hard times. Maybe she'd been a member of Salva's court when it fell like the other girls they'd trapped to bring here. Many of the girls in the court had bleached their hair light blonde to match their crown princess.
I brushed one last blonde strand away from the girl's face before I placed the cloth back into basin and pushed myself up into a standing position. I took the basin and emptied it into a sink nearby before filling it with scalding hot water. The water burned my hands a little each time I refilled it but I still liked the feeling of the heat. The girl was so wounded, so decimated and so filthy that I'd had already emptied her basin twice now for fresh water. The plumbing in the Aviary was a marvel of engineering not common across Salva and something I'd never get used to.
This time, I added medicinal herbs for pain, to further disinfect her wounds and promote healing. The room took on a sickly-sweet smell and I cringed, hating the taste of it on the air, on my tongue, as I breathed it in. With some difficulty I carried the basin back over to the girl, sitting again at her side on a hard wooden stool and dunking the rag in the water.
Gently I continued to pick any final grains of sand out of the wounds, soaking the skin in the liquid before moving on methodically to the next area. When I was satisfied, I dropped the cloth back into the basin and stood up again. This time I nearly fell, my leg seized in a cramp, but I caught myself on a chair. The basin's water splashed all down my legs and all over the floor around me with a clang. The girl on the table didn't move despite the loud noise.
I took a moment to stretch my bad leg, before, with a sigh I picked up the now empty basin. I dropped it into the sink loudly. In slow, careful paces I walked over to a shelf and picked up a basket. It was heavy but I maneuvered myself back over to my chair. Inside the basket was string, smooth exotic-looking oversized leaves and a large jar.
I recognized that the balm inside was worth more than my weight in gold. Spelled medicine that could heal almost anything. I'd been surprised when I was directed to use that on the girl, I'd only seen the balm one other time during my tenure at the Aviary. I snuck some on my own leg when I was sure nobody could see me before gingerly starting to cover the girl's entire body in the balm. The balm itself made my ache ease instantly and it smelled of peppermint. I hoped that it would help my own recovery at least a little and sent an internal prayer up to whatever god may deign to listen.
Each area I applied the balm was wrapped in leaves to prevent the girl from moving and wiping the medicine off. By the time I was done, the girl's body reminded me of the last funeral I'd attended with my mother in the Emerald Isles. My people cleaned their dead and then bound them in beautifully coloured leaves, their only dress on the funeral pyre. I wondered to myself if this girl had been taken from somewhere further North because of her pallor. The women here did not come by choice and even more rarely did they come by chance.
Either way, once they were here there was no turning back. I gave her a sad smile, she didn't know the horrors that awaited her when she opened her eyes and I wished her to find whatever small peace or solace she could before discovering where they'd taken her.