Without nearly as much pain to wake him every time he tried to move. Bren waked both with the astonished realization he was not in significant pain and the vague impression of hearing someone of his bodyguard stirring about. Which meant it was probably just before dawn. A tentative wriggle of the shoulders and turn of the head produced one little residual crackle, but no lockup and no pain. Odd. He hadn’t known his back was exacerbating the ribs. But it had been. The shoulders could relax. So now the back could. And the chest almost could. The whole business came of being blown down flat on his shoulders, Bren decided. The impact of the bullet from the front, the lump on the back of his skull—that cursed small gilded chair which had both broken his fall and gotten in the way of it— And he was convinced now, even without the evidence of the x-rays, that he was only bent, not broken. It made him feel better, if only in morale. He’d taken worse falls in his misspent youth. He’d fallen down a ski slope no few times.
