Trader's Honour

by Patty Jansen

  An old man had been brought in with infections on his leg and feet that were so bad that he had to go into surgery immediately.

  She was so tired. Her legs ached, her back ached, and behind her, a man called for a healer.

  Mikandra found herself thinking, Please, let Eydrina take care of it. She had barely sat down. Just one moment of rest. Her feet felt like they were about to fall off, both with the bitter cold and fatigue.

  "Healer Lasko! Healer Bisumar! Someone! Please come." The voice grew more insistent.

  Heaving a sigh, Mikandra put down her tea. So Eydrina was out and wasn't going to take care of it. She re-tied her apron and walked between crowded rows of beds.

  Two soldiers of the street guard waited in the emergency room, which was bare and white with only a treatment table and cupboards of emergency supplies and a few basic monitors that the hospital could afford.

  The men carried a stretcher of the type used by soldiers in battle with a bundle of blood-soaked fur that, if Mikandra looked closely enough, might conceal a man.

  Not another one. Not counting Leitho, they had already lost two homeless people this morning.

  She gestured at the table and the soldiers heaved their load onto the sterile surface. The body, wrapped in fur, looked small enough to be a child. A chill crept over her back. She hated it when young people were involved.

  "Who is this, and what happened?" she asked, pulling on gloves.

  The guard glanced over his shoulder. Two emergency room nurses were preparing instruments on the bench against the back wall.

  Eydrina Lasko's voice drifted from the next room. "Coming."

  Mikandra squirted disinfecting spray over the front of her apron.

  The soldier said, "Dunno how he came t' be like this, mistress. Found him in the street this morning. Dunno how long he's been there. Looks like he's been had by the maramarang real bad. Blood everywhere. Din' look too good."

  Mikandra repressed a shudder. If no one came to a victim's defence, the flying scavengers would rip a person to shreds. She'd seen that, too.

  "He is still alive, right?"

  He swallowed. "Think so, lady. Couldn' be sure."

  Mikandra looked at the bloodied mess cemented together with ice. Something underneath moved, and there was a sound of short ragged breaths.

  Guess that satisfied the definition of "alive". Only just.

  She tried pulling away the fur, but it had frozen together, and maybe onto the victim's skin, it was hard to tell. She turned to the cabinet behind her to get a scalpel.

  "I covered him up like ye told me t' do." The young man's face had gone pale. Oh right, this was the soldier who was likely to faint at the sight of blood; she'd picked him off the floor before. "Ye said t' keep them warm, lady, so I did."

  "You did well. You can go now." Before he fainted and she'd have to deal with that, too. "It's all under control now—Eydrina!"

  The men left, and Mikandra tried to figure out where best to cut the fur so she wouldn't cut the patient. She peeled away a corner of the disgusting fur blanket—made from a couple of cloaks stitched together in the way soldiers re-used their old clothes. A couple of chunks of ice fell off.

  She found the victim's hand, covered in blood. When she wiped it off, the skin underneath was pale blue with teeth marks from maramarang which barely bled despite being open. She fingered the skin of the wrist—very cold—for the artery, which wasn't where she expected it to be, because his muscular tissue was attached in an unusual way.

  There was a pulse, but very weak and irregular.

  Eydrina came into the room, dressed in her surgical gown, gloves, and her bush of curly hair tucked under a cap.

  She took one look at the table. "Heavens. Another one." She folded back the cloth covering from the tray she had brought. Underneath lay an assortment of needles and surgical instruments, as well as bandages. "How bad?"

  "Skin is blue, pulse is very low. Severe bleeding somewhere. We need to get all this stuff off him before we can see, but it's all frozen. You may want to call the surgeon."

  "Already did that. Let's have a look."

  Eydrina took another scalpel and also started working on the blanket. A lock of the victim's hair fell free. It was course and bright red. What the . . . ? A foreigner?

  "Heavens," Eydrina said.

  Mikandra met her wide eyes. That fitted with the unusual structure of the wrist.

  She freed another section of furs, slowly uncovering the man's head. His breaths were fast and laboured. A dribble of pink fluid ran from his mouth. His lips were blue.

  His left cheek and forehead were a tapestry of scratches and bites, messy, but none of them more than skin-deep. Blood had run into his shoulder-length hair, most of which had come out of its ponytail. The skin on his temples was covered in large brown splotches of pigment. That and the red hair made him Kedrasi.

  Mikandra removed the frozen fur, and cut away a thick jacket splattered with blood and hard with ice. Underneath, she found a blood-soaked red uniform.

  "Oh no, it's a Trader Guild courier."

  Eydrina lifted his eyelid and shone a light into his eye. The iris, sand-coloured as for a Kedrasi, was a small rim around his pupil and didn't react to the sudden brightness.

  "Get his shirt off," Eydrina commanded.

  That was easier said than done. The shirt was wet and in places caked with ice that Mikandra didn't dare pull for fear of pulling his skin off with it. She worked with the scalpel. It almost felt like sacrilege to cut the red tunic. The fabric was tough, well-made, like everything the Trader Guild provided. Underneath, the man's skin was very pale and clammy.

  His lower abdomen was a bloodied mess, with gashes exposing ribs and intestines.

  Maramarang attacked a victim's arms and head, and never got to the abdomen unless they'd already ripped the flesh off the limbs.

  Eydrina said, "This is not a maramarang attack. He's been stabbed."

  Several times, she pointed out, in the chest, back and lower abdomen, with the knife going through the chest wall between the ribs and into his lungs. His chest was moving fast in laboured breaths.

  The surgeon came into the room and as she examined the victim, his muscles cramped and stiffened several times. Eydrina had attached the heart rate monitor and the line on the screen jumped wildly in between periods of quiet.

  His eyes opened a slit. He tried to cough or speak, but only pink froth came out of his mouth.

  Mikandra met her mentor's eyes and read despair in her expression that said He's too far gone.

  "But he's Trader Guild," Mikandra whispered.

  The surgeon said, "I know. I can't help him. Not with what we have, and probably not even with what we don't have."

  So she only gave him a dose of a painkiller that would probably be too strong for his heart so that he could go to sleep peacefully.

  Not long after Mikandra started at the hospital, Eydrina had given her long lectures about patients and how to assign priority. Make sure that at first you save who can be saved, and let no one with minor ailments die from neglect. And, When there is only so much medication—and however much you have, it won't ever be enough—you have to decide where you are going to spend it. It should be with the patients you are sure you can save.

  Mikandra couldn't stop looking at the man's labouring chest which was already becoming more quiet. Her heart beat in her throat; her eyes pricked with tears. Trader Guild, her heroes, the people who could make a real difference. She had been accepted to become one of them. He was a Guild employee, not a member, but regardless, this was one of the people she'd swear to protect.

  He must have unwittingly walked into a trap set for someone else, or tried to break up a fight, something foreigners did for no clear reason.

  Then a more disturbing thought: the guard hadn't known how long the victim had been in the alley, but with the ice in his clothes, the man had clearly been exposed to the weather for a quite a while. Would this have been the
courier who had brought her the letter that she carried in the pocket of her dress?

  He would die for the Guild, and for her, in a hostile place far from his home. And she was worried about what her father thought about her wish to join the Guild?

  One thing she clearly remembered from her last meeting with Iztho Andrahar, the one where he had signed her application. She could still see him sitting by the fire in his private room. He'd asked her to come to his house, which was unusual. He seemed relaxed, very reflective and not his usual taciturn self.

  He had spoken a bit about the political situation in Miran with the boycotts, and then he said, "There are many things people accuse us Traders of, and especially people in the Mirani council. The Trader Guild, with all its members and its network throughout gamra is like a very large family. As you do with family, they always take priority over everything. For many of us, the Guild is a closer family than our non-Trading family. It is closer to us than our origins or place of birth. Because of this, the Guild has the power to break governments, to financially destroy entire nations. It is a power that must be used with caution. It also means that sometimes you will need to stand strong in a current of different opinions. That requires extra-ordinary courage." His eyes met hers in an intense look. His irises were so light blue as to be almost white, exceptionally light-coloured, even for a Mirani Endri. "To be a successful Trader, you will need to maintain the courage that burns in you because people will relentlessly try to cut you down."

  He had said maintain the courage. He had placed his trust in her because he thought she'd displayed courage by coming up to the most successful Trading business in Miran and bluntly asking them to sponsor someone who was not related and of the wrong family and the wrong gender.

  He trusts me and has hopes for me.

  It hit her like a blow to the head.

  Of course she couldn't refuse the offer, no matter how much her family was against it and no matter how much trouble it would get her into. She might be shy and unwilling to fight with her parents, but she had courage. How was it that she'd allowed herself to forget that?

  She owed it to the dying courier and his family to act on the message, to go to Kedras, and succeed. Dreams didn't exist for adults to belittle them as silly or childish. They existed for inspiration.

  While the nurses packed up and cleaned the floor, Mikandra sat next to the bed and held the courier's hand. It was so cold and clammy. Eydrina came in looking for her, probably to give her a job to do, but took one look and left again.

  The man's heart beat for the last time not much later. She placed his hand on the fast-cooling body and arranged his ripped tunic so that, if you ignored the slashed fabric, it looked like he was asleep. It was not the first time that she'd seen someone die, but if it was up to her, it would be the last.

  Eydrina said behind her, "Clean him up and you can go home."

  Mikandra faced her tutor. She felt like telling her that she would never come back, but this might not be the time for that announcement. It might be wise to pretend nothing had changed for a few days yet.

  While Mikandra was washing blood out of the courier's neck, his ID card fell out of the pocket of his tunic onto the bench. She picked up the card and stared at her own face reflected in the black metallic surface. The card would need a reader to divulge the courier's name.

  In the inner pocket of the remains of his jacket, she found his message satchel, wet, but otherwise unharmed. It felt empty.

  "What do you want me to do with this?" she asked, holding it up.

  "It will need to go to the Trader Guild," Eydrina said. "I'm thinking that they'll have a thing or two to say about this."

  "I can't imagine they'll be impressed." It was sure to put her aunt in a difficult position as both a member of the council and the Guild.

  "They'll be livid." Eydrina took the satchel from Mikandra, opened it and slid the ID pass inside. She put it on the bench next to the door. "I'll ask one of the boys to deliver it."

  Mikandra walked past it on her way out of the room. The front of the satchel had a clear pocket inside which there was card with names where the courier had to deliver documents. The man's last-ever delivery had indeed included her letter. There were a few young men of her age on the list, as well as other names she recognised. Ilendar, Andrahar, Tussamar and others.

  So yes, the Trader Guild would make a big stink about this. They would have said that if decent medicine had been used, the man might have survived. They would demand to see treatment records. They would see how Eydrina and the surgeon had decided not to treat the man. They might even demand that the surgeon and Eydrina explain themselves in the Trader Court.

  They would say that the attack was motivated by Miran's hatred for foreigners. They would say this was proof that Miran was sliding into anarchy. There would be official Guild protests to the council, and then the local Traders would get up and say that their Guild was right and that the council were idiots and failed in their basic duty to protect citizens.

  Then traditionalists in the council would argue that this was proof of the increasing influence of foreign control of Miran, because the Guild's headquarters were at Kedras and their agenda was foreign and that they were therefore trying to control Miran. Mikandra could already hear Nemedor Satarin's words. Do we let this alien, foreign, entity control the way we do things in Miran? Do we grovel at the feet of these organisations that are run by people whose only aim is to cut us down? She'd heard so many of his speeches, which the Nikala workers lapped up like honey.

  But beyond Miran's borders and in the hallways of the gamra assembly, people would say that Nemedor Satarin's response to the incident was extremist and dictatorial and justified the boycotts to Miran. They might even strengthen the boycotts.

  Whatever the reaction, one thing was certain: it would not improve life in Miran.

  Chapter 5

  Mikandra took off her apron, found her cloak and left the building through the draughty foyer with its unending stream of patients. The main desk would close at night, except for the worst of emergencies, but some people would wait here until morning. They had nowhere else to go.

  Out in the street, she turned up the hill in the direction of the Foundation Square. The air was cold and wet and shards of mist floated low over the city roofs. This morning's snow had melted and the paving stones were cold and wet enough to be slippery. Judging by the way the city's lights reflected in the clouds, there would be more snow tonight.

  On each side of the street, shopkeepers were shutting doors and pulling down blinds. The baker's assistant carried a basket with bread outside and put it in the porch of his shop. Within moments, a rugged-up man with his hair in a mess of matted curls had scurried out of an alley. He plunged both arms into the basket and came up with an armful of rolls, which he tucked into a bag under his cloak. As he scurried off, two other men made for the basket, both at least as scruffy and long-haired as the first man.

  These people were the shame of Miran, proof that the Foundation agreement wasn't working as it should.

  She came out into the Foundation Square, a rectangular space flanked by the business district downhill, the markets to the left and the council buildings and library uphill.

  The Foundation monument stood in the middle of the square. The five pillars on the ancient pentagonal platform were silhouetted like black fingers against the lit facades of the council building and the library.

  Mikandra climbed the three ancient steps up the monument's platform. The weathered stone felt gritty under her feet and a mist-laden breeze whipped all her hair to one side.

  The monument was an ancient thing, dating from the time that the first people settled this highland valley.

  Before the city was founded, the two peoples had lived somewhere on the upper plateau near the gorges where the menisha fungus grew. The Nikala ancestors, who were hunters and harvesters, lived in the canyons. They made their living harvesting moss, fungi and lichen off the sh
eer walls, and fishing in the streams. Their descendants still lived that area today. They were people with strong arms and hands with claws on their thumb and little fingers.

  By contrast, the Endri cave dwellers had built an entire underground city on the very top of the plateau. They lived mostly indoors and occupied themselves with art and music, while they grew their vegetables in large caves and bought meat and fish off the harvesters in exchange for items of clothing, healing or trinkets. If the tales were to be believed, the two groups were continuously at war.

  After the last and most bloody conflict in which the cave dwellers were almost wiped out, a few of the survivors had fled their underground city, carrying all they owned on the backs of twelve tiyuk. They'd walked for days with their pack animals over the freezing passes and icy mountain slopes until they came to a valley with green grass, a burbling creek and a view of endless plains that no one had ever seen before.

  They had set up camp on a hillock next to the creek, they built houses from river stones and started to work the fields. They'd divided the land up between the families. The harvest was poor and the crops they'd brought from their cave too soft to do well in the thin and cold air, but they were determined to survive, and they did.

  At the end of the summer, a group of the Nikala whom they used to fight sought refuge in the valley. They were sad and sorry people, diseased walking skeletons who begged their former enemies for help. They had walked all the way from the highlands carrying their sick without any pack animals and resorting to eating maramarang whenever they could catch them. And everyone knew maramarang were terrible eating.

  The Endri realised that they needed people to work their fields and build a wall around their sanctuary against further attacks from the large body of hunters still on the highlands. They promised that the Nikala could live inside the walls if they helped build those very walls and helped farm the crops to feed the settlement. And so the classes had been born.