“I had to help heal troopers who were injured.” Only one really, and a Gallosian at that, but he’d felt almost useless in dealing with a broken leg. “I’d rather learn than just help Meldryn, especially since I’m more likely to be in the way than useful in the bakery. If you prefer, I’ll only accompany you, or even Grenara.”
For several moments, Margrena said nothing. Then she looked to Jessyla.
“He’s being truthful,” replied her daughter.
“Why now, though?” asked Margrena.
“I have the time, and too often anything I’ve put off … well, it’s turned out that I wish I hadn’t.”
“We’ll try it,” the healer conceded. “We leave here at about half before seventh glass.”
“I’ll be here.” Beltur looked at Jessyla. “You don’t have to tell me. I will wear my good black tunic.”
Jessyla shut her mouth.
Margrena laughed. “I wish your aunt could see the expression on your face.”
“Don’t you dare tell her.”
Margrena looked to Beltur. “What do you think? Should I?” Then she smiled. “Don’t answer.”
“You’d best answer,” replied Jessyla.
“I don’t think you should tell Grenara, that is, unless Jessyla … well…” Beltur grinned.
“You two are impossible.”
“Difficult at times, clueless at other times,” replied Beltur, “but not impossible.” He stood. “Much as I would rather be here, I do need to get back to the bakery. Today was a long day, and I suspect tomorrow will also be long.”
“If you weren’t…” Jessyla shook her head.
“You can see him out,” said Margrena, standing and moving toward the kitchen.
Jessyla stood, but made no move toward the door.
“I do have to go,” Beltur said. “I’m not used to working as hard as I did today. I think you can tell that.” He paused. “And I smell like I’ve worked that hard.”
Jessyla took his hands, then wrapped her arms around him. “You think I care about that?”
Beltur embraced her … carefully, although he thought he’d gotten the grime off his hands.
After a time, Jessyla released him. “You do need to go. Make sure you shield yourself on the way home.”
“I always do.” Beltur squeezed her hands before letting go. “I’ll see you in the morning. Half before seventh glass.”
Jessyla moved to the door and opened it.
Beltur brushed her cheek with his hand, then stepped outside. “Until tomorrow.”
He could feel her eyes on him as he walked toward the corner and Bakers Lane.
III
After fixing, eating, and cleaning up breakfast on fiveday morning, Beltur donned his new black tunic, then slipped the solid silver patrol medallion over his head and tucked it inside his tunic, since he didn’t want to leave it behind, not when losing it would cost him half a gold. Then he made sure he had the woolen-wrapped shimmersilk scarf safely in the inner pocket of the tunic before making his way downstairs and out into a morning that was clear but with cold gusty winds, suggesting a storm might be coming. By the time he reached the door of Grenara’s house, his hands were chill, and he realized that he was going to need a pair of gloves, and fairly soon. He’d never had to worry about gloves in Fenard, but then Fenard had never gotten as cold as Elparta did.
Jessyla opened the door just before he was about to knock. “Come in. It will be just a moment before Mother’s ready.”
“Good.” Beltur eased out the wool-wrapped package as soon as she closed the door. “This is for you.”
She looked at the drab cloth doubtfully as she took it.
“It’s what’s inside. Go ahead.”
Jessyla unfolded the cloth. Her mouth opened when she saw the green silk. “Beltur!”
“Try it on.” Beltur just hoped it looked as good on her as he’d thought it would.
“I … I don’t know. You shouldn’t have.”
“I’ve been looking at that scarf almost since the first days I came to Elparta. I decided that waiting to buy it wasn’t a good idea.”
“What wasn’t a good idea?” asked Margrena as she came down the narrow steps.
“Not buying the scarf she’s wearing.” Beltur stepped back so that Margrena could see.
“Not buying it?” Margrena raised her eyebrows as she looked at Beltur. “It’s beautiful.”
“There are times not to be completely practical,” Beltur said.
“I’m glad you said ‘completely,’” replied Margrena.
“How does it look?” asked Jessyla.
“Absolutely beautiful on you,” declared Beltur.
“You would say that,” Jessyla turned. “Mother?”
“It’s gorgeous. Especially on you.” Margrena offered a quirky smile. “There is one problem. Beautiful as it is, it’s totally unsuited to wearing today.”
“I’ll put it away upstairs in a safe place. I won’t be long.”
As soon as Jessyla headed up the staircase, Margrena asked, “Do you think that was wise?”
“Not completely practical, as I said, but it expresses what I feel and what I owe her … and you, but I could only afford one.”
“You really couldn’t afford that. What was it? Half a gold, at least.”
“The vendor took pity on me. I’ve been looking at it for a season.”
Margrena shook her head. “At your age, that’s patience.”
“I’m not so sure that I wasn’t too patient.”
“You thought about getting it before the fighting?”
“I didn’t. I should have. I was fortunate.”
“Fortunate about what?” asked Jessyla as she hurried down the steps.
“Fortunate that I was finally able to get the scarf for you,” replied Beltur with a smile.
Jessyla shook her head. “That wasn’t what you were talking about.”
“I can’t keep much from you.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“We do need to be going,” suggested Margrena. “You two will figure it out, I’m certain.” She moved toward the door.
This time it was Jessyla who shook her head.
Beltur managed not to smile as he followed Jessyla, then waited for Margrena as she locked the door. Once they were on the street, heading west, he asked, “Where do you begin?”
“Where we always do, at the Council Healing House,” replied Margrena. “It’s two blocks from the northwest market square. It won’t be exciting.”
“Usually, it’s not,” said Jessyla.
Margrena glanced sideways, then continued, “Most of the time, it’s cuts or scrapes with wound chaos, sometimes a broken bone.”
“What about fluxes?”
“We don’t see many of those. There’s usually not much a healer can do besides telling people what to drink and eat, and what not to, because the chaos is in such small specks and spread through the entire body.”
Beltur frowned. “If you could reduce some of that chaos, would it help?”
“It might, but the effort might also take a toll on the healer. A flux isn’t like a wound, where most of the chaos is concentrated around one spot. The chaos specks in a flux are so small I can barely sense them. Grenara could when she was younger, she says, and Jessyla can, but there are hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of them.”
Although Beltur wondered about that, he recalled how hard it had been to eliminate all the chaos from Claudyt’s grandson’s head—and all that chaos had been in one small spot. As he walked beside the two, a gust of especially cold wind reminded him again that he needed to do something about getting an overcoat or warm cloak—and some gloves.
“There’s the Council Healing House,” said Jessyla after a time, pointing at the building on the next corner.
The building was just a two-story graystone oblong, with narrow windows. The shutters, the window trim, and the doors were painted blue, and some of that paint was peeling from the
shutters. Beltur noticed that there were at least five chimneys, but despite the chill, only one showed a trace of smoke.
Even before the three reached the main door, Beltur could sense the excess chaos, well beyond the normal pattern. When he opened the door for the other two, he felt almost assaulted by that chaos as he stepped into the foyer, floored in wide planks that had been obviously scrubbed into a worn whiteness.
“If you come often, you’ll get used to it,” said Margrena, taking in Beltur’s involuntary reaction.
“I haven’t yet,” added Jessyla.
“Perhaps I should have said that you’ll accept it as necessary,” replied Margrena dryly. “No one will mind that you’re here, Beltur, but I should introduce you to Klarisia. She’s the senior healer in Elparta for the Council.”
“Just like Cohndar is the senior mage?” Beltur tried to keep the sardonicism he felt about Cohndar out of his voice.
“I’ve only met the senior mage in passing, but I think you’ll find Klarisia more to your liking.” Margrena led the way to the first doorway on the left, stepping into the chamber beyond.
Two other healers stood there, one tall and thin, her hair jet black, likely some fifteen years older than Beltur. The other was about Margrena’s height, blond, and appeared only a few years older than Jessyla. The older healer looked to Margrena and Beltur.
“Klarisia, Beltur will be accompanying us. He was forced into doing healing during the fighting, and will be spending some time, I suspect, on and off, learning more about the basics.”
Klarisia offered a wide and warm smile. “You must be Athaal’s friend. I’ve heard about you. Felsyn told me about what you did for Claudyt’s grandson.”
“That’s why I’m here,” replied Beltur. “I did what I thought was necessary, but I have the feeling I was very fortunate that I judged correctly when I didn’t know as much as I should.”
“We’re glad to have you here.” The dark-haired healer looked to Margrena. “If you would begin with the children’s room. With the cold, there are already several mothers and children there.” She gestured to a small basket on the side table. “That’s what we have today. There are more cloths and spirits, but not much else.”
Jessyla stepped forward and took the basket by the arched handle.
Beltur sensed that whatever was in the basket had been lightly dusted with order.
“We’ll start there.” Margrena turned. Beltur and Jessyla followed her into the hallway.
Klarisia was already back talking to the other healer. “As I was saying, there’s only so much you can do with the older ones…”
Beltur looked at the basket, taking in the folded squares of clean cloth, two corked bottles, and a jar with a large cork.
“Those are the basic supplies, except for poultices or splints and the like.”
“What about debriding a wound?”
“All healers have their own knives and tweezers. The clear spirits in the bottles will clean them.”
“Are there separate rooms for older people?”
“One for children and one for anyone else,” said Margrena. “The more seriously ill are on pallet beds up on the second level. If we’re needed up there, a runner will come and get us. Otherwise, we’ll go up after we finish with the children.”
When the three entered the children’s room—a space little more than four yards square—there were three women, each with a child, each sitting on a different wooden backless bench. On the first bench sat a woman and a girl who could not be more than six or seven. The second held a woman and a boy who might be ten. He cradled an arm that Beltur sensed immediately was broken. The third held a woman and two children.
Margrena moved toward the woman with the small girl. “How can we help your daughter?”
The woman eased a patched woolen cloak off the girl, then lifted the girl’s shirt to reveal purplish welts across her back. At the end of the top welt, just above her shoulder blade, was an angry pustule almost a digit wide and as long as half Beltur’s palm. Greenish pus oozed from both ends of the narrow oblong.
Beltur immediately sensed the orangish-red chaos in the center of the pustule, surrounded by a white chaos mist, and a dull gray at the edges. “The dull gray?” he murmured.
“That’s where her body fought off the wound chaos.”
“The wound chaos in the center is stronger. I could do something…”
“Not yet. You need to save your order for what’s necessary.” Margrena turned to Jessyla. “You can start.”
The girl’s mother watched nervously as Jessyla took a small folded cloth from the basket and began to gently wipe away the pus, working from the outside toward the suppurating center. Then Jessyla took a small bottle from the basket, uncorking it and pouring a little of the liquid on the girl’s skin, before using a clean part of the cloth to clean away the crust and pus. The child winced and whimpered, but held still as the young healer cleaned the wound.
Finally, Jessyla looked to Margrena. “Unless you want to cut…”
Margrena shook her head. “Since Beltur’s here…” In turn, she looked to him.
Beltur used his senses to study the wound, then began to gather free order, not order from himself, deliberately moving one small piece at a time to the wound, until the orangish red was gone, and the entire wound felt grayish.
Margrena looked to Jessyla. “You’ll need to clean it again.”
Jessyla did so.
Then the older healer took out her knife and used a cloth dampened with spirits to clean it before making the narrowest of cuts across the center of the welt. Then using the spirits-dampened cloth, she gently worked out more greenish pus.
When she finished and dressed the wound, Beltur added a touch of order.
Margrena turned to the mother. “Keep the wound clean. If she does not get better in two days, bring her back.”
“Thank you, Healers.” The woman nodded.
Beltur watched as the two left the small room, wondering what the girl possibly could have done to deserve being beaten with what had to have been a belt—using the buckle end—and knowing that it couldn’t have been the child’s fault.
Margrena turned to the woman with the boy on the adjacent bench.
“He fell off the front step running out the door,” said the thin, almost gaunt woman in a patched gray cloak and equally faded trousers. “He put his hands out.”
Beltur managed not to react to the falsehood, indicated first by the chaos swirls around her as she talked and by the splotches of fuzzy white in more than a few places on the boy’s arms, back, and chest.
“His arm is broken,” said Margrena kindly. She looked to Jessyla. “See if there’s any knitbone left. We’ll also need some heavy cloth and splinting reeds.”
Jessyla—almost stone-faced—handed the basket to Beltur and headed for the door.
“Beltur,” said the older healer, “is there any deeper chaos around where the bone is broken?”
“There’s a little, but it’s not bad.” Not nearly as bad as that in the girl’s wound.
“Good.” Margrena looked to the boy. “We have to set the bone in your arm so that it will heal properly. That means we have to line up both ends of the bone. When we do that it will hurt some. Then we will splint your arm. That means we’ll wrap it tightly so that the bones do not move and will grow back together again. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Healer.”
“Beltur, you hold the boy’s elbow and the upper part of the lower arm.”
Beltur frowned. “You want his arm to remain unmoving, I take it.”
Margrena looked almost annoyed. “Of course.”
“I think it would be better if I encased it in a shield. That way nothing at all will move.” Beltur pointed. “The shield will end there. Is that how much you need to work with?”
“A little more.”
Beltur nodded, then anchored the shield to the floor, then formed it tightly around the boy’s upper arm, elbo
w, and perhaps four digits below the elbow. “His arm and elbow won’t move. Any time.”
“OHHH!” The boy’s body twisted, but neither arm nor elbow budged as Margrena moved the bones back into line, then continued to hold the arm.
“I can shield the entire lower arm, now,” said Beltur, slowly extending the shield down. “Just move your fingers back as you feel the shield.”
In moments, the healer’s hands were free. She looked to Beltur. “I wouldn’t have thought of that. How long can you hold that?”
“Something that small? Glasses, most likely. I can certainly hold it until Jessyla returns. When you start to splint it, I can make the shield thin and against his skin.”
“That might not work, totally. I’m going to surround the skin around the break with a knitbone poultice.”
“I can just move the shield so that the part where you put the poultice is unshielded.”
“We’ll see.”
Jessyla hurried back into the room carrying both thick and thin reeds, a large jar, and a spool of canvas or heavy cloth a handspread wide. “They do have knitbone.”
“Good.”
Beltur just watched and adjusted the shield around the boy’s arm as Margrena let Jessyla apply the poultice to the area around the break in the arm. Then Jessyla held the thicker reeds in place as Margrena lashed them together with the thinner ones, and then wrapped the reeds in the canvas. After that, Beltur added a trace of free order to the point where the bones met.
Margrena turned to the mother. “The canvas and reeds should stay in place for at least four eightdays, even if his arm does not hurt. If there’s any foulness bring him back here immediately. He’s not to carry anything with that arm or hand for four eightdays, either.”
“His father will not be pleased that he cannot work.”
“If his father wants a son who is either one-armed or dead, he may put him to work.” Margrena’s tone was icy. “He should not have let his son fall.”
The woman looked down. “Yes, Healer.”
Beltur looked around, only to discover that the woman with the two girls was gone, but he said nothing as mother and son slowly walked from the room.
“It would have been better to set that in plaster,” said Margrena, “but we’re short of plaster, and she likely wouldn’t have come back to have a cast removed properly.”
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