The young man looked at Sand warily, fascinated enough to overcome an obvious
trepidation.
“I won’t let him strike,” Snake said.
“I just wondered what they feel like.”
Snake extended her arm toward him, and he reached out to stroke Sand’s smooth
patterned scales. He drew back his hand without comment.
Back in the mayor’s bedchamber, Brian, looking not so downcast, was content
to have his master under his care once more. The mayor was a lachrymose drunk.
Moaning almost tunefully, he wept as Snake approached him, fat tears sliding
down his cheeks. The moans ceased when the mayor saw Snake. She stopped at the
foot of his bed. He watched her fearfully.
“How much has he drunk?”
“As much as he will,” Gabriel said.
“It
would
be better if he were unconscious,” Snake said, taking pity
on him.
“I’ve seen him drink till dawn with the council members but I’ve never seen
him unconscious.”
The mayor squinted at them blearily. “No more brandy,” he said. “No more.”
The words were forceful despite a slight slurring. “If I’m awake you can’t cut
off my leg.”
“That’s quite true,” Snake said. “Stay awake, then.”
His gaze fastened on Sand, the rattler’s unblinking stare and flicking
tongue, and he began to tremble. “Some other way,” he said. “There must be
another way—”
“You are trying my patience,” Snake said. She knew she would lose her temper
in another moment, or, worse, she would begin to cry for Jesse again. She could
only remember how much she had wished to help her, while she could heal this man
so easily.
The mayor lay back in his bed. Snake could feel him still trembling, but at
least he was silent. Gabriel and Brian stood one on either side of him. Snake
pulled the blankets loose from the foot of the bed and let them lie in a visual
barricade across the mayor’s knees.
“I want to see,” he whispered.
His leg was purple and swollen. “You do not,” Snake said. “Brian, please open
the windows.” The old servant hurried to obey, pulling aside the curtains,
swinging glass panels open to the darkness outside. Cool fresh air drifted
across the room.
“When Sand strikes you,” Snake said, “you’ll feel a sharp pain. Then the area
around the bite will go numb. That will be just above the wound. The numbness
will spread slowly, because your circulation is almost cut off. But when it
spreads far enough I’ll drain the wound. After that the antitoxin will work more
effectively.”
The mayor’s flushed cheeks paled. He did not say anything, but Brian put a
glass to his lips and the mayor drank deeply. The flush returned.
Well, Snake thought, some people you should tell, some people you shouldn’t.
Snake tossed Brian a clean cloth. “Pour some of the brandy on this and lay it
across his nose and mouth. You and Gabriel can do the same thing for yourselves
if you want. This won’t be pleasant. And both of you drink—one good gulp each.
Then hold his shoulders easily. Don’t let him sit up abruptly; he’ll frighten
the rattler.”
“Yes, healer,” Brian said.
Snake cleaned the skin above the deep wound in the mayor’s calf.
Lucky not to have tetanus as well, she thought, remembering Ao and the other
collectors. Healers came through Mountainside occasionally, though they had come
more frequently in the past. Perhaps the mayor had been vaccinated, once he knew
he would not have to see a serpent.
Snake unwrapped Sand from her arm and held him behind the bulge of his jaw,
letting him flick his tongue against the discolored skin. He arranged himself
into a thick coil on the bed. When Snake was satisfied with his position, she
released his head.
He struck.
The mayor cried out.
Sand bit only once, and quickly, so fast he was back in his coil before an
observer could be sure he had moved. But the mayor was sure. He had begun
trembling violently again. Dark blood and pus oozed from the two small puncture
wounds.
The rest of Snake’s work was smelly and messy but routine. She opened the
wound and let it drain. Snake hoped Gabriel had not eaten much dinner, for he
looked ready to lose it, even with the brandy-soaked cloth over his face. Brian
stood stoically by his master’s shoulder, soothing him, keeping him still.
By the time Snake had finished, the swelling in the mayor’s leg was already
considerably reduced. He would be well in a few weeks.
“Brian, come here, would you?”
The old man obeyed her hesitantly, but he relaxed when he saw what she had
done. “It looks better,” he said. “Already better than when he last let me look
at it.”
“Good. It will keep draining, so it’s got to be kept clean.” She showed him
how to dress the wound and bandage it. He called a young servant to take away
the soiled cloths, and soon the stench of infection and dying flesh had
dissipated. Gabriel was sitting on the bed, sponging his father’s forehead.
Sometime earlier the brandy-soaked cloth had slipped from his face to the floor,
and he had not bothered to replace it. He no longer looked so pale.
Snake gathered Sand up and let him slide across her shoulders.
“If the wound hurts him badly, or his temperature rises again—if there’s any
change that isn’t an improvement—come get me. Otherwise I’ll see him in the
morning.”
“Thank you, healer,” Brian said.
Snake hesitated as she passed Gabriel, but he did not look up. His father lay
very still, breathing heavily, asleep or nearly so.
Snake shrugged and left the mayor’s tower, returned to her room and put Sand
in his compartment, then wandered downstairs until she found the kitchen.
Another of the mayor’s ubiquitous and innumerable servants made her some supper,
and she went to bed.
The mayor felt better in the morning. Brian had clearly been up all night
beside him, yet he accepted his orders—not exactly cheerfully, for that was not
Brian’s style, but without reservation or resentment.
“Will it leave a scar?” the mayor asked.
“Yes,” Snake said, surprised. “Of course. Several. I took out quite a lot of
dead muscle, and it will never all fill back in. You probably won’t limp,
though.”
“Brian, where’s my tea?” The tone of the mayor’s voice revealed his annoyance
at Snake’s reply.
“It’s coming, sir.” The fragrance of spices drifted into the room. The mayor
drank his tea alone, ignoring Snake while she rebandaged his leg.
When she left, scowling, Brian followed her to the hall outside.
“Healer, forgive him. He’s not used to illness. He expects things to go his
way.”
“So I noticed.”
“I mean
…
he thinks of himself scarred
…
He feels betrayed by himself
…
” Brian spread his hands,
unable to find the right words.
It was not that uncommon to find people who did not believe they could get
sick; Snake was used to difficult patients who wanted to get back to normal too
soon, despite the need for recuperation, and who became querulous when they
could not.
“That doesn’t give him the right to treat people the way he does,” Snake
said.
Brian looked at the floor. “He’s a good man, healer.”
Sorry she had let her anger—no, her annoyance and hurt pride—touch him, Snake
spoke again, more gently.
“Are you bound here?”
“No! Oh, no, healer, I’m free. The mayor doesn’t allow bonding in
Mountainside. Drivers who come with bondservants are sent out of the city, and
their people can choose to go with them or give the city a year’s service. If
they stay the mayor buys their papers from the driver.”
“Is that what happened with you?”
He hesitated but finally answered. “Not many know I used to be bound. I was
one of the first to be freed. After one year he tore up my bonding papers. They
were still valid for twenty years, and I’d already served five. Until then I
wasn’t sure I could trust him—or anyone. But I could.” He shrugged. “I stayed on
afterward.”
“I understand why you feel grateful toward him,” Snake said. “But it still
doesn’t give him the right to order you around twenty-four hours a day.”
“I slept last night.”
“In a chair?”
Brian smiled.
“Get someone else to watch him for a while,” Snake said. “You come with me.”
“Do you need help, healer?”
“No, I’m going down to the stables. But you can nap while I’m gone, at
least.”
“Thank you, healer. I’d rather stay here.”
“Whatever you say.”
She left the residence and crossed the courtyard. It felt good to walk in the
cool morning, even down the steep hairpin turns of the cliff trail. The mayor’s
pastures spread out below her. The gray mare was alone in a green field,
galloping back and forth with her head and tail high, bouncing stiff-legged to a
halt at the fence, snorting, then wheeling to run in the opposite direction. If
she had decided to keep on running, she could have cleared the chest-high fence
and hardly noticed it, but she was running for no other reason then play.
Snake walked along the path to the barn. As she neared it she heard a slap
and a cry, then a loud and furious voice.
“Get on with your work!”
Snake ran the last few steps to the stable and pulled open its doors. The
inside was nearly dark. She blinked. She heard the rustling of straw and smelled
the pleasant heavy odor of a clean horsebarn. After a moment her eyes became
more accustomed to the dimness and she could see the wide straw-carpeted
passageway, the two rows of box stalls, and the stablemaster turning toward her.
“Good morning, healer.” The stablemaster was a tremendous man, at least two
meters tall, and heavily built. His curly hair was bright red and his beard was
blond.
Snake looked up at him. “What was that noise?”
“Noise? I don’t—Oh, I was just countering the pleasures of laziness.”
His remedy must have been effective, for whoever had been lazy had
disappeared very quickly.
“At this hour of the morning laziness sounds like a good idea,” Snake said.
“Well, we get started early.” The stablemaster led her farther into the barn.
“I stabled your mounts down here. The mare’s out for a run, but I’ve kept the
pony in.”
“Good,” Snake said. “He needs to be shod as soon as possible.”
“I’ve sent for the blacksmith to come this afternoon.”
“That’s fine.” She went inside Squirrel’s stall. He nuzzled her and ate the
piece of bread she had brought him. His coat shone, his mane and tail were
combed, and his hooves were even oiled. “Someone’s taken very good care of him.”
“We try to please the mayor and his guest,” the big man said. He stayed
nearby, solicitously, until she left the stable to bring the mare inside. Swift
and Squirrel had to be reintroduced to pasture slowly, after so long in the
desert, or the rich grass would make them sick.
When she returned, riding Swift bareback and guiding her with her knees, the
stablemaster was busy in another part of the building. Snake slid off the mare’s
back and led her into her stall.
“It was me, mistress, not him.”
Startled, Snake turned, but whoever had whispered to her was not in the
stall, nor in the passageway outside.
“Who’s that?” Snake said. “Where are you?” Back in the stall she looked up
and saw the hole in the ceiling where fodder was thrown down. She jumped on the
manger, grabbed the edge of the hole, and chinned herself up so she could see
into the loft. A small figure jumped back in fright and hid behind a bale of
hay.
“Come out,” Snake said. “I won’t hurt you.” She was in a ridiculous position,
hanging down in the middle of the stall with Swift nibbling her boot, without
the proper leverage to climb the rest of the way into the loft. “Come on down,”
she said, and let herself drop back to the ground.
She could see the form of the person in the hayloft, but not the features.
It’s a child, she thought. Just a little kid.
“It’s nothing, mistress,” the child said. “It’s just he always pretends he
does all the work and there’s others do too, is all. Never mind.”
“Please come down,” Snake said again. “You did a very nice job on Swift and
Squirrel and I’d like to thank you.”
“That’s thanks enough, mistress.”
“Don’t call me that. My name’s Snake. What’s yours?”
But the child was gone.
People from town, both patients and messengers, already waited to see her
when she reached the top of the cliff, leading Swift. She would get no leisurely
breakfast today.
She saw a good deal of Mountainside before evening. For a few hours at a
stretch she worked hard, busy and hurried but content, and then as she finished
with one patient and went to hear about the next, apprehension swept over her
and she thought that this time she might be asked to help someone who was dying,
someone like Jesse whom she could not help at all.
Today, that did not happen.
In the evening she rode Swift north along the river, passing the town on her
left, as the glow of the sun sank past the clouds and touched the west mountain
peaks. The long shadows crept toward her as she reached the mayor’s pasture and
stables. Seeing no one around, she took Swift into the barn herself, unsaddled
her, and began to brush her smooth dappled coat. She was not particularly
anxious to return to the mayor’s residence and its atmosphere of dogged loyalty
and pain.
“Mistress, that’s not for you to do. Let me. You go on up the hill.”
“No, you come on down,” Snake said to the disembodied whispery voice. “You
can help. And don’t call me mistress.”
“Go on, now, mistress, please.”
Snake brushed Swift’s shoulder and did not answer. When nothing happened she
thought the child had gone; then she heard a rustling in the hay above her. On
impulse she stroked the brush backwards across Swift’s flank. An instant later
the child was beside her, taking the brush gently from her hand.
“You see, mistress—”
“ ‘Snake.’”
“—This is no job for you. You know healing, I know horse-brushing.”
Snake smiled.
The little girl was only nine or ten, small and spare. She had not looked up
at Snake; now she brushed Swift’s ruffled hair straight again, her face turned
down and close to the mare’s side. She had bright red hair, and dirty, chewed
fingernails.
“You’re right,” Snake said. “You are better at that than I am.”
The child was silent for a moment. “You fooled me,” she said sullenly,
without turning around.
“A little,” Snake admitted. “But I had to or you wouldn’t let me thank you
face to face.”
The child spun around, glaring up. “Then thank me!” she cried.
The left side of her face was twisted with a terrible scar.
Third-degree burns, Snake thought. The poor child—! And then she thought: If
a healer had been near, the scar would not have been so bad.
But at the same time she noticed the bruise along the right side of the
little girl’s face. Snake knelt and the child shrank back from any contact,
turning so the scar would be less visible. Snake touched the bruise gently.
“I heard the stablemaster yelling at someone this morning,” Snake said. “It
was you, wasn’t it? He hit you.”
The child turned back and stared at her, her right eye wide, the left held
partly closed by scar tissue.
“I’m all right,” she said. Then she slid out of Snake’s hands and ran up a
ladder into the darkness.
“Please come back,” Snake called. But the child had disappeared, and even
when Snake followed her into the loft she could not find her.
Snake hiked up the trail to the residence, her shadow pushed back and forth
by the swaying of the lantern she carried. She thought about the nameless little
girl ashamed to come into the light. The bruise was in a bad spot, just at the
temple. But she had not flinched from Snake’s touch—at least not the touch to
the bruise—and she had none of the symptoms of a concussion. Snake did not have
to worry about the child’s immediate health. But in the future?
Snake wanted to help somehow, but she knew that if she had the stablemaster
reprimanded, the little girl would be left with the consequences when Snake went
away.
Snake climbed the stairs to the mayor’s room.
Brian looked exhausted, but the mayor was fresh. Most of the swelling had
left his leg. The punctures had scabbed over but Brian was doing a good job of
keeping the main wound open and clean.
“When can I get up?” the mayor asked. “I have work to do. People to see.
Disputes to settle.”
“You can get up any time,” Snake said. “If you don’t mind having to stay in
bed three times as long afterwards.”
“I insist—”
“Just stay in bed,” Snake said tiredly.
She knew he would disobey. Brian, as usual, followed her to the hall.
“If the wound bleeds in the night, come get me,” she said. She knew it would,
if the mayor got up, and she did not want the old servant to have to deal with
the injury alone.
“He is all right? He will be?”
“Yes, if he doesn’t push himself too hard. He’s mending fairly well.”
“Thank you, healer.”
“Where’s Gabriel?”
“He does not come up here any more.”
“Brian, what’s the matter between him and his father?”
“I’m sorry, healer, I cannot say.”
You won’t, you mean, Snake thought.
Snake stood looking out over the dark valley. She did not feel like going to
sleep yet. That was one of the things she did not much like about her proving
year: most of the time, she went to bed alone. Too many people in the places she
had gone knew about healers by reputation only, and were afraid of her. Even
Arevin feared her at the beginning, and by the time his fear ebbed, and their
mutual respect changed to attraction, Snake had to leave. They had no chance
together.
She leaned her forehead against the cool glass.
When Snake first crossed the desert, it was to explore, to see the places
healers had not visited in decades or that they had never visited before. She
had been presumptuous, perhaps, or even foolish, to do what her teachers no
longer did and no longer considered doing. There were not even enough healers
for the people on this side of the desert. If Snake succeeded on her visit to
the city, all that might change. But Jesse’s name was the only difference
between Snake and any other healer to ask Center for knowledge. If she
failed—Her teachers were good people, tolerant of differences and
eccentricities, but how they would react to the errors Snake had made, she did
not know.
The knock at her door came as a relief, for it interrupted her thoughts.
“Come in.”
Gabriel entered, and she was struck once more by his beauty.
“Brian tells me my father’s doing well.”
“Well enough.”
“Thank you for helping him. I know he can be difficult.‘’ He hesitated,
glanced around, shrugged. ”Well
…
I just came in to see
if there’s anything I can do for you.“
Despite his preoccupation, he seemed gentle and pleasant, qualities that
attracted Snake as much as his physical beauty. And she was lonely. She decided
to accept his well-mannered offer.
“Yes,” she said. “Thanks.” She stopped before him, touched his cheek, took
his hand and led him toward a couch. A flask of wine and some glasses stood on a
low table near the window.
Snake realized that Gabriel was blushing scarlet.
If she did not know all the desert customs, she knew those of the mountains:
she had not overstepped her privileges as a guest, and he
had
made the
offer. She faced Gabriel and took his arms just above the elbows. Now he was
quite pale.