“You read my mind,” he tells Harrow, his hands steady when he rests one on her head and begins to cut the stitches with the other. Palamedes flashes Gideon the briefest of smiles. “Can you hand me gauze when I ask for it?” he asks her, thinking she might handle what’s to come better with a task to do.

With the stitches removed, Palamedes presses the knife into the still-healing scab. Blood pools up immediately; he presses through until he hits bone and traces the old incision. At this range, Pal is fairly easily able to close up the capillaries, though it’s still a more complex bit of necromancy than he has had a need to perform here in Darrow. He’s going to have a hell of a headache tomorrow.

“I’ll take that gauze now,” he tells Gideon. “Then I’ll be ready to detach the temporal bone.”