by Stacey Berg
“Human milk.” Hunter waved the empty container. “That’s all I had. I got it from the trader who sent me to you. I only found him last night.” She frowned at the disjointedness of her report.
The woman didn’t seem to notice. “That would be enough. He’s just a few days old; babies are born with extra fluid. It helps them survive.”
He wouldn’t have survived in the desert.
“Milse, could you come in here please?” A man popped his head in through the door behind the desk. He wore a loose robe like the Warder’s, not the shirt and trousers of Loro’s men. Probably some kind of helper or apprentice then, rather than a guard, but it was hard to be sure. There were just a few meds scattered through the city, Hunter knew. They were valuable enough to warrant protection, but usually it came from the Church. Sometimes the hunters even brought them in to share information with the medical priests who went from time to time to tend the sickest cityens. She wondered if the hunters knew about this med, who said to the man, “Bring me some of that milk we have in back, would you please? Thank you.” Milse was back in a moment, sack in hand, then stayed, hovering off to the side.
“Could you do me one other favor, Milse? I still need that magnifying lens Exey was working on. He said it would be ready today. Would you mind checking? I can handle the beginning of visits without you.”
“Of course, Lia. Happy to.”
“As if he needed an excuse to run around the city,” Loro said, with the half scowl that Hunter was beginning to recognize as his habitual expression.
Milse smiled tartly in response and went out through the door behind the desk. That meant another exit that way, Hunter noted almost without thinking. Two doors, all the windows; easy enough to get out any time she needed to, though this was exactly where she wanted to be for now.
“You said you found him abandoned?” The med looked perfectly comfortable with the baby sucking away contentedly in her arms.
“Yes.” Hunter’s voice hardened. “Someone left him to die.”
“Poor woman,” the med murmured. “It must have seemed less cruel than letting his struggle drag on if she couldn’t provide for him.” She shook her head, eyes briefly closing. “The Warder tries to help them when he hears.”
“I met a man who I was told was the Warder. He said there’s no such thing.”
“It’s our nickname for him. He doesn’t like to take so much credit.”
“He also told me the children are too precious to be abandoned in the desert.”
The remarkable eyes dimmed. “He remembers the way it was when he was young. But even the children are having children now, or so it seems. Faster, I’m afraid, than we’ve learned to feed them all. It’s a great change from the days when hardly anyone could bear, but it brings its own problems.”
“People can just ask the Church. They help whenever they’re asked, don’t they?”
“Not everyone can even manage that. Sometimes we have to help ourselves.” The woman studied her face openly. “Someone from the Ward might know that.”
Hunter shrugged. “I’m not from the Ward.”
“No, I can see that,” the med said thoughtfully. Hunter waited, but the med did not ask. She only said, “It was a long winter. Until the new grain comes in, some of us will struggle.” The baby stopped sucking, beginning to fuss. She shifted him over her shoulder, patting him expertly until he spat with satisfaction and settled back, snuggling his cheek against her shoulder. She smiled suddenly. The way it lit her eyes put an infinitesimal catch in Hunter’s even breathing. “But I think I know what we can do for this little man. I delivered a dead baby of a young woman a few days ago. It would have been her second child. She’ll still have milk. If we can help her with the food, she would welcome a baby to raise. Loro, do you remember? It was that woman down the alley towards the river. Send someone, if you would, and tell her the Warder asks. She’ll understand. Don’t worry,” she added, sitting down to settle the baby more comfortably. “We’ll be fine until you get back.”
Loro pushed away from the wall he was slouching on. “I’m not leaving you alone with her,” he objected.
“It’s fine. She won’t make problems here, not when she went to all this trouble to bring the baby.” Hunter covered a breath of astonishment. No one could be that much of a fool. Loro looked more unhappy than surprised, but he didn’t argue. That was interesting too. He fixed Hunter with a warning glare until she nodded her understanding, then disappeared the way they had come, pulling the door closed behind him.
“So now,” the med said when they seemed to be alone, though Hunter could hear Milse, or someone, lingering beyond the not-quite-closed back door, and more than one set of footsteps in the anteroom. Loro wasn’t as trusting as the med. “What about you?”
“Me? What do you mean?”
The med’s smile, gentle as it was, didn’t belong to a fool at all. “We’ve agreed that you’re not from the Ward. I don’t know anything else about you, other than that you care something for abandoned children.”
“I just try to get by, like everyone else,” Hunter said, wondering if the Warder had sent word ahead, and whether this was an interrogation. She stood up, just to see what would happen. The med seemed unperturbed. “Well, now that the baby is taken care of, I can leave you to your work.” The guards met her on the threshold as she opened the anteroom door, and she stopped, pretending to be surprised. She recognized one, the first man she had met in the Ward. “Am I some kind of prisoner, then?” She hadn’t expected it to be quite this easy.
“What is this, Justan?” the med asked with a frown. Either she hadn’t known, or she could feign surprise tolerably well.
Justan ducked his head, clearly embarrassed. “Loro said. Sorry, I told’m you wouldn’t like it, but he says she has to stay until th’ Warder’s ready.” Hadn’t known, then.
“Ready for what?” Hunter pushed.
Now he was avoiding Hunter’s eyes as well as the med’s. It was almost amusing. “To decide what to do with you.”
“Now listen, Justan—” the med began.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated, and he looked it, ducking his head again so that his curly hair fell over his eyes. “Best not t’ argue with you, Lia, I know.” He slipped back out of the room, door closing behind him with a firm click.
The med stared at it in exasperation, then let out a sigh. “These days they think everyone is going to make some kind of trouble. I suppose I can’t blame them. All these babies, the Bend and the Ward are getting full enough to bump right up against each other. . . . Another problem we should welcome, but it’s such a strange time.” She frowned absently, contemplating the strangeness, then remembered Hunter with a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry. The Warder is kind to everyone. He’s probably just humoring Loro. We don’t take prisoners here; he’ll let you go if that’s what you want.”
That was the last thing Hunter wanted, but it wouldn’t do to seem too eager to stay. “I hope it doesn’t take too long. I’m not used to sitting and waiting. I’m a—let’s just say, I trade. I make my own way.”
“Well then, let’s make a trade. When Loro gets back, we’ll give the baby to the woman. Meanwhile, I could use some help, nothing too difficult, but it will give you something to do until the Warder sends for you.”
Hunter made a show of pretending to consider it was a choice. “All right, then.”
The med smiled again, and dropped a hand lightly on Hunter’s forearm. The soft touch brought a reflex shiver. “Good,” the med said. “They’ll be here in a few minutes.”
CHAPTER 14
Hunter didn’t know yet where the back door led, but apparently everyone in the clave knew where to find the public entrance. As the med finished feeding the baby and swaddled it comfortably on one of the cots, she said, “Would you ask Justan to send in the first visit?”
Cautio
usly, Hunter cracked open the front door. Justan, who must have been standing right there, thrust himself into the gap, then relaxed with a sheepish grin once he realized she wasn’t trying to escape. She glared at him for show, but it was hard not to smile back at his boyish, open face. Then she looked over his shoulder. She’d been aware of the growing hubbub outside, but until now she hadn’t realized quite how big a crowd had gathered. The anteroom had filled with people, who now overflowed the chairs and sat on the floor or leaned up against the walls wherever they could find a place. Some of them wore bandages or clutched sturdy sticks for support; others had the unmistakable pinched look of sickness and pain. “She says she’s ready,” Hunter said doubtfully.
The med did not seem daunted. At her nod the first person limped in, a woman with a leg wound that needed cleaning and rebandaging. Hunter helped her up on the table, then undid the old dressing. The med did the rest of the job with quick efficiency and a light touch that made the woman smile gratefully even when it hurt. The next visit was a man no older than Justan, with a hand wrapped from fingertips to elbow. Lia readjusted the splint. “That will do fine if you leave it another seven or so. No more punching people in the skull with it, right?”
The man colored bright pink. “Yes’m,” he mumbled. She patted him on his good arm and sent him along with a smile that turned him even redder. So it went, one after another, some who knew the med and greeted her with respectful friendliness, others deferential strangers. The way they just walked in with their bags and carryalls and Saint knew what concealed under baggy cityen’s clothing made Hunter’s palms itch. To be sure, Justan was in the anteroom, and a pair of guards lounged in the corners outside the curtained area where Lia did her examining, but they wouldn’t do the med much good if someone really meant her harm. Relegated to holding basins and bandages while the med worked, Hunter imagined half a dozen ways she could defeat their security if she wanted to. It would be simple, especially if it wouldn’t matter that some died.
The med caught her eye as she was studying the guards. She smiled, sadly, and shook her head, as if she knew exactly what Hunter was thinking. Hunter’s face grew hot, unaccustomed shame at the direction her thoughts had carried her.
These cityens were not here to threaten Lia.
“Hand me that, would you please?” The med’s voice was gentle, forgiving. Hunter passed her the tool, a simple unpowered amplifier with an earpiece and a diaphragm that she placed over the sick man’s chest to listen to his breathing. The priests in the lab had something similar. Hunter wondered whether they had passed the tech on or the cityens had thought of it themselves. She knew so little about the city. Why had the Patri sent her so unprepared? He didn’t send you, the darkest part of her mocked.
The med frowned as the man coughed painfully. She listened a little longer, then leaned back. “Good, you can button up again. May I see your feet?”
The man shifted uncomfortably. “I . . . um, I haven’t washed them yet today.” He probably hadn’t washed them in a month, judging by the rest of him.
The med dropped a kind hand on his shoulder. “That’s all right. I won’t mind.”
Scarlet, the man removed the scraps of plastic sheeting and straps that passed for his shoes. Hunter’s nose twitched at the smell. The med touched a blackened toe, moving it back and forth gently. “Does this hurt?”
“No, mam. Really I don’t feel’t much.”
The med nodded. She pressed her thumb into the shiny skin above one swollen ankle, leaving a depression that stayed. “Are they always big like this?”
“Worse, most times.” His eyes crept anxiously to her face, meeting her gaze for the first time. “Is’t bad?”
It was the same sad smile she had given Hunter. “You’ve been a hard worker, haven’t you?” The man nodded dumbly. “Your heart is a little tired now, that’s all. Go ahead, put your shoes back on. I have something for you.”
While the man reassembled his rags, the med perused the row of jars neatly arranged on her shelves. Someone knew how to write, maybe the med herself; each jar was carefully labeled, the letters tiny to save the precious paper. After a moment the med reached for a small jar, which she handed to the man. “I want you to take a pinch of this, just what you can catch between these two fingers, morning and night, dissolved in some water. Every day, don’t miss any. Come back in a seven to see me.”
The man coughed again, then nodded, clutching the jar close. “Yes, mam. Thank you. Thank you.”
The med watched the door shut behind him, a welcome break in the endless flow of cityens. She passed a hand over her eyes. “They say that once the Saint could work healing. I’d like to have seen that.”
A thin girl, standing over a man with a child in his arms. Hope rising like electric current from the gathered crowd, rising in Hunter’s heart, wild and dangerous as a predator at night. And shattered, just like that, the child dead, the father keening his grief to the dark. “It isn’t true.” Hunter caught her ragged voice back before the med could make anything more of the words, then said with the measured interest of a stranger, “That man’s heart was failing?”
“Yes.” With a little sigh, the med sat down for the first time that morning, absently rubbing her neck. “Probably his kidneys too; they usually go together in someone with feet like that.”
Hunter nodded, thinking of some of the old priests she had seen. “And the dry rot.”
The med studied her face. “You have some experience with these things.”
“A little.” Careful; she did not want to go too far down that line of questioning yet. It was too soon. “What was that you gave him?”
“Foxglove. It might help him for a little while.”
“It won’t make a difference in the end, will it?” The med shook her head. “Then why waste it? You gave him all you had.”
“I can make more, as soon as the plants flower. I grow them out front. It shouldn’t be too long.”
“What if someone comes before then who it really would have helped?”
The med shrugged tiredly. “We’ll just have to hope that doesn’t happen.”
A hunter who thought like that would never survive. No wonder the forebears had seen the need for the Church to keep the city alive. “Hope won’t make it happen or not happen.”
The med’s gaze was sharp, troubled. “He was standing here in front of us. Would you have sent him away with nothing?”
“I wouldn’t waste something that could go to better use.” Almost before the words were out of her mouth Hunter regretted them. She wasn’t here to teach the med.
The woman frowned towards the shelf of jars. Most of them were closer to empty than not. Her shoulders rose and fell. “I can see why you would say that. But people need hope. That’s what the Warder always tells us: we have to have hope, if we’re ever going be more than animals, scrambling for something to eat, killing each other if there isn’t enough.” She glanced at the quietly sleeping bundle on the bed. “Leaving babies to die.”
The Church had never taught that the old world was some kind of paradise. “We were like that even before the Fall.”
“I know.” The med’s hands were open in her lap. She turned them over, studying first the backs, then the palms. If she learned anything, it brought her no comfort. “But we don’t have to be like that forever. The city’s changing, growing. Why can’t we?”
They talk of change, the Patri had told her. It was an unexpected opening. Some part of Hunter drew back, inexplicably reluctant to use the med this way; she shut it out, knowing no chance could be wasted. “Why not send some of the people to the Church, those priests that come around, like other claves?” Hunter asked. “It’s their problem, protecting the cityens, isn’t it?”
“The Warder says we can’t ask the Church to do it all. We have to take care of each other too. You must think so too; you got yourself int
o some trouble helping that baby.”
“That’s not the same thing,” Hunter said.
“No?” The med’s eyes crinkled with gentle amusement, and Hunter felt a stab of guilt at the deception that had stolen that smile. It was something that should be earned. She wanted to, suddenly, and reminded herself angrily that she could not afford such distractions.
“No,” Hunter insisted. “Anyway, as I see it, cityens mostly get by. The Church keeps order, and what do they ask us for? A little grain, a few girls from time to time to make their nuns, it doesn’t seem so much. . . .” She let the words trail off, inviting the med to fill the gap.
“I wouldn’t say that to—” Whoever the med had been about to name, she changed her mind. “Well, never mind. Let’s just say that the price for order can seem high. Though sometimes I wish we had a little more of it, especially when people have had too much ferm and I spend all night sewing them up and setting bones.” Her attempt at a laugh fell a little short.
Before Hunter could answer, a knock sounded on the door and Justan looked in. “Ready, Lia? There’s more.”
Lia stood, stretching, hands on the small of her back. “There are always more. Too many.”
“What d’you expect, only med in the Ward.” Justan’s round face creased in concern. “Want me to send them away until tomorrow? Nobody’s bleeding so hard as you can hear it.”