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take, but it had to be a matter of at least a couple of minutes.
It wasn't supposed to happen that fast.
The ring? Well, that was possible, but... no. He could never seem to get it to
work on him, although he had tried, and tried hard, but usually by the time he
was done concentrating, whateverthefuck he was using it for was
Holy shit.
Ian's trembling hands opened the black plastic bottle of hydrogen peroxide.
"Please use this to wash out the wound, and then please dry it with those
gauze pads. We'll disinfect it, and then dry it, and then close the wound with
a few of those Steri-Strips
there, yes, those."
He should have tried it before. And he should have thought it out Freya wasn't
W. C. Fields "Keep all your eggs in one basket, then watch the basket" any
more than Hosea had been, when he had originally hidden the Brisingamen
jewels.
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Put them in one place? But what if somebody found that place? And if you
stayed to watch over them, what if somebody found you?
No. That wasn't what either of them had done, because neither of them was a
fool.
Freya had hidden one gem far away.
No, not just one: she had hidden the first one, the ruby, far away. She had
still been living with Odin at the time, and she had promised not to give it
to him, or to anybody else. And then, when Ian had given her the second gem,
the diamond, she had kept it near her. Perhaps it was in the caverns
somewhere, or beneath the floorboards of the cottage. Or maybe she had buried
it deep in the ground at some spot she would remember. With her strength, that
might have made sense.
But, in any case, it was near enough to magnify the power of Harbard's ring.
Had it made the ring powerful enough to persuade an Aesir that she had to let
him have the diamond, if only for a few days?
Ian's jaw clenched.
It was time to find out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Acton's Legacy
The door had been left open about a foot, but Ian knocked on the doorpost
anyway. It swung open so quickly that he wondered if she had heard him hobble
up the walk and was waiting for him.
"Ian, I'm so " she glanced down. "You're hurt," she said, slipping an arm
around his waist before he could object.
He had never doubted that she was strong, but still he was surprised at how
she lifted him off his feet without any apparent effort, bracing his hip
against hers. It would have been embarrassing, but Ian had never had any
illusions about their comparative strength.
Arnie was up and out of his chair, then down on his knees in front of him. "Do
you think you broke it?"
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Ian shook his head. "No. Just cut it some."
Arnie took a familiar-looking first aid kit down from one of the few remaining
shelves. "You wash it out?"
"Valin did. Hydrogen peroxide, a few Steri-Strips to hold the edges of the
wound together. I'll be fine."
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"Yeah, right. I'll take a look at it anyway." He broke the seal on a pair or
slant-nosed scissors and propped Ian's ankle on his lap.
Freya rested a hand on his shoulder. "Perhaps I might? If we're still
speaking, my Silver Stone? Even if we're not, might we possibly call a truce
between us for long enough for me to help you?"
"We're still speaking," Ian said. "But it doesn't hurt all that badly."
In fact, it didn't hurt at all. The ankle didn't want to move as quickly as
Ian wanted it to, and if it hadn't been for the Ace bandage that had helped
him hobble up the path, he might have fallen; he probably should have taken
the hay crook to use as a crutch.
He had no objection to Freya healing him, though.
Shit, she owed him. Besides ...
"We're talking, but we're not done talking," he said.
"Of course, my Silver Stone. I'll always give you a fair hearing."
A quick glance down at his ankle made Ian queasy; he looked away as Arnie cut
away the bandages for her ministrations.
Between the hydrogen peroxide and the Bacitracin, he was probably safe from
any real risk of infection when was his last tetanus booster?
"Well, I've seen worse," Arnie said. He looked up at Freya. "I think I should
debride it before you do anything, though. I wouldn't want to count on a
vestri having washed all the grit out of the wound."
She held up a finger to warn Ian to silence. "That would be very nice, Arnold;
thank you," she said, the grin she shot over her shoulder and Arnie's head as
she walked toward the water barrel making it abundantly clear to Ian that she
was going to some trouble to make Arnie feel useful, and that she would be
pleased if Ian would have the decency to go along with the charade.
Maybe it wasn't even a charade. Maybe rinsing the wound out would actually
help a little. Still, Freya had been healing much worse than this without a
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