‘I just want to know who’s the best doctor in Gorthan Docks. And where to find him. Or her.’
He laughed. ‘Now I know you’re joking, right? The only good doctor in Gorthan Docks is the afternoon sea breeze, love. There’s a good herbalist, though.’
‘I need a surgeon.’
‘If you need an operation—and I must say you don’t look half as good as you did this morning—then I advise you to take the next ship out and get it done elsewhere.’
‘There must be someone.’
‘If you want to die, sure. Believe me, sweetheart, you’re better off without Gorthan Docks’ only doctor. He’s a drunken butcher, he is.’
I stared at him. ‘Well, maybe that’s what I want. A butcher.’
‘That was only a manner of speaking. I wouldn’t even trust this fellow to carve up a festive dinner. He’s a drunk, Blaze, the good doctor is. Got the shakes. Memory failing. Halfway through delivering a baby he thought he was amputating a leg. The result was not pretty. Forget him.’
‘All right then. What about a real butcher?’
‘Come off it, love. We eat fish on Gorthan Spit. You can’t tell me you’ve forgotten that. Fish-gutters are a setu a score though,’ he added helpfully.
‘There must be somebody.’ I sounded desperate. I was desperate.
He thought for a moment. ‘Well, maybe there is someone. Fellow named Bloyd. I did hear tell he was a butcher by trade, although he sells fish now. I heard he had to leave the Norther Islands because he carved up his wife one day and sold her to his customers as prime pork.’
‘You joking?’
He shook his head. ‘That’s the story I heard.’
‘Where would I find him?’
‘At this hour? He’ll be in that wretched little cantina where the fish-gutters hang out. It doesn’t have a name but you’ll find it by the fishmarket. It doubles as a brothel, and you’ll recognise it by the bouncer who decorates the doorway. Size of a whale, he is.’ He shook his head as if exasperated by my foolhardiness. ‘If you really want to use a butcher when you actually need a surgeon—which has to be the height of insanity—then you had better get yourself a herbalist as well. There’s a very good one on the island at the moment, believe it or not. You can find him down in Chandlers’ Row. He’s rooming with a family of halfbreeds—fellow called Wuk and his wife and kids. His name, the herbalist’s, I mean, is Garrowyn Gilfeather. A Mekaté man. Quite a character.’
I touched his cheek, more grateful than he could possibly know. It almost seemed that things were beginning to go right at last. ‘Thanks, Niamor. Take care—’
He kissed me, without passion, on the lips. ‘Only a temporary goodbye, I hope, my lovely firebrand. I’m still hoping we’ll share a bed one day. Take care yourself, huh?’
###
I borrowed a lantern from Niamor and went to find the herbalist first.
He wasn’t too hard to find. A man selling rancid tallow from a tub on the sidewalk in Chandlers’ Row told me which place was Wuk’s. ‘The one with all the people outside,’ he said, pointing a greasy finger down the street.
‘Why the crowd?’ I asked. There must have been about thirty people in a line outside the house. It was a narrow building, two storeys high, made of rocks cemented together with shell-lime in a haphazard mosaic, its solidness topped by seaweed thatching.
He shrugged indifferently, but gave me a reply anyway. ‘The herbalist that lives with ’em. Sells medicine that works, would you believe? One of those Mekaté medicinemen.’
That sounded promising. Only trouble was, I didn’t have time to wait in line. I nodded my thanks and walked up to the building with a purposeful stride. Once there, I saw that the queue led up to a wooden lean-to built on the side of the house. I bypassed the waiting people as though I knew exactly what I was doing, opened the door to the lean-to without knocking, and closed it behind me.
The interior was unprepossessing—the usual hotchpotch of materials put together to fashion walls and simple furniture. A seal-oil lantern illuminated the man who sat cross-legged on the floor next to a huge sea chest, and his customer, an old woman, who sat on a stool in front of him. They both stared at me, then the man turned his attention back to the woman. ‘Follow the directions exactly, d’ye understand? Nary a change.’
She nodded seriously as he folded up some leaves and seeds into a parcel with seaweed wrapping. ‘And the cost, Syr?’
‘Nay, no Syr,’ he said with a laugh. ‘Not this mun. I’m no more than a humble selver-herder from a distant land. Pay what you will, gentle lady, no more, no less.’
Shyly, she dropped some coins into his hand and bobbed a curtsey. On her way out, she skirted me without a word and closed the door behind her.
The herbalist met my gaze and we took each other’s measure. He was on the wrong side of middle age, this Garrowyn Gilfeather, and I had never seen anyone like him, ever—for all that I thought I had met representatives of all the nations of the Glory Isles. He was from Mekaté, all right; the lantern light shimmered on the pearl inserted into the tattoo of a rabbit on his earlobe. However, he bore no resemblance to the Mekaté people I had encountered before. They had all been dark Souther folk, like the top-hatted Fellih-worshippers: high-nosed, clean-shaven aristocratic-looking people with deep black eyes. This man was red. And hairy. Broad at the shoulder but not, I guessed, very tall. His hair was red, a sort of gingery colour I’d never seen before, and all crinkled. It surrounded his head, a wild array of fleece, worthy of a Calment mountain ram. He had a red beard to match, although that was streaked with grey. A large long nose peaked into a sharp red end that seemed strangely mobile. The tip wriggled at me like that of a dog picking up an interesting scent in the air.
His skin was white, but it was blotched with red freckles, except where hair grew thick and curly on his arms and what I could see of his chest. He truly was a red man.
The clothes he wore suited his wild appearance, although they seemed inappropriate for Gorthan Spit’s suffocating heat. They were made of some kind of rough wool woven in a twilled pattern that confused the eye, and looked all the more startling because the fabric was tucked into haphazard folds around his body rather than sewn, or tied, or buttoned.
I looked back at his face. His eyes were flecked, and I could not quite decide what was the predominant colour. A deep slate grey? Or the dark red-black of freshly spilled blood perhaps…
They regarded me with an amused scepticism, I do know that.
‘Well, wee bittie lady?’ he asked finally. ‘Have ye looked your fill?’
‘My pardon,’ I said, hastily gathering my wits. ‘Are you Garrowyn Gilfeather, herbalist?’
‘Physician,’ he corrected. ‘At your service. And ye, I think, did not wait y’turn.’ His accent had a lilt to it that was all charm and music and it was easy to ignore the bite to the words.
‘No. It is a matter of urgency.’
‘Ye look healthy enough.’
‘A friend needs a surgeon, immediately, or she’ll die.’
‘Ah, lass, I’m no surgeon. I don’t like blood.’
I shifted my gaze to the sea chest. It had hinged top and sides, all of them swung wide so that it opened out into a cabinet. One side was filled with square drawers, labelled with writing I could not read; the other with shelves of stoppered bottles and corked ceramic pots. On the floor in front was a small mortar and pestle, next to that a brass brazier, no larger than a chamber pot, which glowed with hot coals.
I looked back at him. ‘Can you drug her, though? So as she’ll sleep through it? I’ve heard that Mekaté medicinemen have the secret of that… And you have the salves to prevent infection afterwards.’
‘Ay. Possibly.’ He shrugged. ‘Nought is certain, know ye.’
‘I’ll pay you ten setus, if you come to the Drunken Plaice in half an hour. I’ll have the surgeon.’
‘And m’patients?’ he asked, waving a hand at the door.
‘She’s doomed
if we wait.’
Those eyes looked at me from under woolly eyebrows that grew every which way, and the look skewered me with its acuity; the nose wriggled some more. I tried not to look at it.
‘I’ll be there. Who should I ask for?’
‘Blaze. Blaze Halfbreed.’
He nodded. ‘In half an hour.’
###
I made my way to the fishmarket, every sense alert, but I smelled nothing of dunmagic. I didn’t have any trouble finding the cantina Niamor had described. It was about as sleazy a place as I’d ever seen in all the Isles of Glory, and it stank worse than any. The large bouncer on the door didn’t want to let me in: I was the wrong sex, it seemed. Only males went in by the front door. The females used the back, and they all belonged to the local pimp.
If it came to that, I didn’t particularly want to go in anyway.
I raised one hand to my shoulder to finger the sword hilt on my back, and held up a coin with the other. ‘Is there a man named Bloyd inside?’ I asked.
The bouncer guffawed. ‘Yeah. He’s here.’ He plucked the coin out of my fingers. ‘You wanna talk to him? I’ll call him out; this I gotta see.’
Bloyd proved to be a huge man with an impressive combination of fat and muscle that normally marks a wrestler. He looked clean enough, but he smelled of fish. He looked me up and down in disbelief. ‘I don’t have nuttin’ to do with halfbreed muck,’ he said.
‘Aw, come on,’ the bouncer protested. ‘She’s just about your size, Bloyd.’
‘I want your service as a butcher,’ I said. ‘And I’ll pay. You are a butcher?’
‘The best in Calment Major—once.’
Just then, some more customers arrived and the bouncer’s attention was diverted. I drew Bloyd away. ‘You got your tools still?’
‘What’s a butcher without his choppers?’
‘Do you know how to joint and truss a sorgret carcass for Calmenter stuffed roast?’ It was one of the most complex things I could think of that would ever be asked of a Calmenter butcher, and it involved both deboning and some delicate stitchery.
‘Sure.’
‘I’ll pay you twenty setus for a special job. But it’s got to be good.’
‘Twenty setus? What in all the island do you want me to butcher—a sea-pony?’
I told him.
###
Half an hour later we were at The Drunken Plaice, having called at Bloyd’s house for his butchering equipment first. I had glanced inside his master-butcher’s case; his knives and choppers and saws were Calment-made, and that meant quality. He looked after them well too: they all had an edge that could have split a sea-urchin’s spine lengthways.
Garrowyn Gilfeather was already at the inn, and the three of us went upstairs together. Halfway up the steps, Garrowyn grabbed my elbow. I turned to look at him. In the dim lantern light, I could see that his nose tip was twitching in agitation. ‘What is this,’ he hissed. ‘What are ye playing at, girl?’
‘Pardon?’
‘I can smell it,’ he said. ‘The wrongness.’
‘You’re Syr-aware?’ But even as I said it, I knew it wasn’t true. If he was one of the Aware, I would have sensed it.
‘Charnels, no. This is dunmagic I smell?’
‘It is.’ I was muddled: how could he smell dunmagic, yet not be aware?
Now I had the two of them glaring at me. I said quickly, ‘A dunmagic sore that needs removing, that’s all. There’s no dunmagicker here.’
They were only partially mollified. I went to Flame’s room first, leaving the both of them outside the door, eyeing each other, a mindless shark and a scheming octopus sizing one another up, even as they wondered what was going on.
Tor and Ransom were both in the room; Flame was lying on the bed. The swelling in her arm had started to go down but her eyes were beginning to glaze; she could hardly focus them at all now. ‘I’ve brought a doctor,’ I said without preamble.
‘A doctor? No doctor can help me.’ She gave a gesture of defeat. ‘Surely you know that. Not even a halfbreed is that dumb.’ She turned her face to the wall.
A Dustel on the bedpost, presumably Ruarth, glared at her and snapped his beak.
‘It’s the dunmagic talking,’ I told him. I jerked my head at Tor, and he took the hint, ushering Ransom out of the room with him. ‘Flame,’ I said, ‘the poison’s still mostly in your arm. If we could get rid of it, then you have a chance of destroying what’s got into your system, of destroying it with your sylvmagic.’
She twisted back to me, eyes widening. ‘You sadistic bitch! You want to amputate my arm?’
‘Why not? Flame, with your sylvmagic, you have a chance. Most people who die after amputations, die because of infection. But your sylvmagic can deal with that. And just to make certain, I’ve brought a Mekaté medicineman along as well.’
She was silent.
‘Would you rather be dead?’
There was an agitated chatter from the bedpost. Ruarth hopped from foot to foot and flapped his wings.
She listened, the dunmagic temporarily subdued, and tears rolled down her face. ‘He says I must.’
‘The Mekaté man will drug you so that you don’t feel anything while the doctor does it. At least for a while.’
She nodded, trusting still. ‘All right. After all, what’s an arm or two?’ She gave a ferocious smile. ‘Ruarth says he does without.’
I blinked hurriedly.
It seemed that every day in this place was bringing me closer to shedding tears I’d once thought I didn’t have within me anywhere.
TWELVE
Bloyd played up to the doctor role with a lofty dignity that was only spoiled when he opened his mouth: his accent was pure artisan. He spread his equipment out on a table we had brought up from downstairs, laying out each implement on its own white cloth, while I carefully blocked Flame’s view. Four knives of varying sizes. Two choppers. A whetstone. Thread of several thicknesses. Four curved needles of different lengths. A bottle of whisky. Two saws with differing teeth sizes. A number of clamps. A pile of muslin cloths. Everything reassuringly clean and sharp… Ruarth, however, showed considerable agitation until I frowned at him. Ransom, who had come back in with Tor, wasn’t much calmer. Garrowyn’s hedgerow eyebrows shot up to meet his thatch of hair when he saw the array of butchering tools. The look he gave me was one of both amusement and mockery. ‘Are we dining, lass, or amputating? Are ye wanting herbs then, not drugs?’
‘Do your job,’ I snapped at him. He grinned, then opened up the pack he had brought with him and took out his pots and bottles.
We dosed Flame with Garrowyn’s pain-killing herbs and sleeping draughts, while Bloyd rubbed his hands together. ‘Well, now, lass,’ he said cheerily. ‘The last arm I chopped off was actually me wife’s. And I promise you, she niver felt a thing. Niver missed it neither… Now let’s see the problem.’
We lifted Flame up onto the table and he examined the arm distastefully as she began to drift off. Then he looked at me. ‘Thirty setus, and not a copper less.’ His voice was as hard as the muscles of his arm; he knew what he was looking at and he knew how much trouble interfering with a dunmaster could bring him.
I made a show of quibbling, but my heart wasn’t in it.
My heart wasn’t in what followed either.
The drugs dulled Flame’s pain, but she wasn’t entirely unconscious. We had her strapped down, but each slice into her flesh made her thrash about and give vent to moans that had me wincing as if I were the one being operated on. It was awful.
‘Be quick,’ I told Bloyd. ‘And you do realise that this is not a carcass. She can bleed to death.’
His relish for the job was undisguised. He had made the first cut even while I was still adjusting the last of the ties and thereafter kept up a running commentary on what he was doing and why, directing Tor and myself to do this, hand him that, put pressure there, press here. For reasons which I didn’t quite understand, he said he had to take the arm off
just above the elbow, not at the joint. He made the first cut in her skin much lower down so he would have sufficient to fold over the stump later. Ransom fainted while he was explaining that bit.
I couldn’t afford the luxury of passing out. I had to watch every move Bloyd made, scared all the while that he’d forget he was dealing with living flesh. When Flame began to groan and surface to a waking state, Garrowyn dropped a cloth over her face that was wet with one of his bottled concoctions. The smell of it was sweet and nauseating. Even so, Flame screamed when Bloyd took the saw to the bones, but then, mercifully, she seemed to sink deeper into unconsciousness. Garrowyn felt for her pulse, but gave me a reassuring nod. ‘The beat’s strong,’ he said. ‘She may be bonny but she’s as strong as Sindur’s Crags.’ I’d never heard of the place, so it wasn’t a particularly reassuring remark.
Bloyd was a good butcher, I’ll grant him that, and his blithe callousness was possibly an advantage, because it meant he wasn’t nervous. The fresh blood didn’t faze him in the least and he tied knots in blood vessels with casual calm, as though he knew exactly what he was doing; even his sewing up afterwards was deft. Garrowyn watched him with sharp eyes and gave a running commentary of his own. ‘Well now, that must be the main tube for the blood. Hadn’t ye better staunch that flow then, mun? Hey, wee fella, I wouldn’t touch that, if I were you—rather tie that one off there, there’s a wee laddie. Eh, now that’s a neat stitch, sure it is.’ I wanted to scream at him to shut up; it wasn’t until much later that I realised the success of the operation probably owed much to his suggestions.
I paid Bloyd his money, warned him to keep his mouth shut (I had no fears that he wouldn’t; he knew what was at stake if the dunmaster found out what he had done), and ushered him to the door. Then I turned back to help Garrowyn and Tor bandage the stump and return Flame to the bed. She was already surfacing; and pain was making her draw in breath in shuddering moans. Yet she needed to be conscious; she had to rid her system of the residue of the dunmagic and she had to banish any infection from the operation itself, so when Garrowyn suggested some more sleep medicine, I shook my head. ‘Not yet—she has to deal with her own healing first. Mix some pain-reliever instead.’
The Aware (The Isles of Glory Book 1) Page 17