Challie was no exception. She knew anger was not really effective against kender, so she drew a deep breath to calm down and changed her tactics. She let go of Pease’s collar and said in her politest voice, “It’s my favorite axe. About as long as my arm with a head of bright steel and a silver haft. I would really like it back.”
Pease scratched his forehead and shrugged. His face scrunched up in thought. Challie crossed her arms, and her foot began to tap the floor.
All at once his face burst into a brilliant smile. “I don’t know about your axe, Challie, but I have one like it. I’ll show you.” He bolted out of the room.
“I thought you might,” Challie said.
They only had to wait a few minutes before Pease came running back. “It’s my bestest best axe, Challie, and I want you to have it,” he said.
She took her father’s axe out of his hands. Biting back several harsh comments, she managed to thank him with a modicum of grace as she fastened the axe to her belt. “Now,” she said. “How about a noon meal for Lucy?” She shooed him out the door.
Lucy straightened. “Noon? I slept until noon?” She went to the open window and saw the truth of Challie’s words. The sun was directly overhead. A warm breeze wavered over the roofs of the town and stirred dust devils in the streets. The road in front of the inn was nearly deserted except for a pair of donkeys laden with broom brush, a few pedestrians, and someone running headlong toward the inn. A pensive Lucy stuck her head out the window for a better view. The runner looked familiar. He raced to the inn’s front walk, skidded onto the walkway, and vanished through the front door.
“Ulin, I think something’s happened,” she said.
“I’m not surprised. We can’t seem to get through a day here without some incident.”
The runner, one of the men who had ridden with the Silver Fox to help the caravan, hurried to their room, his face sweating and red. “Please come, Sorceress. Mayor Efrim asks for you.”
“Is it important?” Ulin demanded. “She is not recovered from yesterday.”
The messenger saw her bruises and her swollen black eye and winced, but he did not leave. “It is the burial detail. They had some trouble, but they found the body.”
“The gods be praised, they have a body,” Ulin muttered. Belatedly he looked at Lucy and saw the tension in her eyes. He bit back the next sarcastic remark and subsided into a more supportive silence.
“All right, I’ll come.” Lucy pulled out her burnoose and wound it loosely around her head so that part of it encircled her face like a veil. Followed by Ulin and Challie, she hurried after the messenger.
The man led them outside into the noon heat and trotted rapidly north past the marketplace and around the harbor to the old barracks. By the time they arrived, Challie was limping again and Lucy’s head throbbed with fatigue and the pain of yesterday’s injury.
“What’s the hurry? The man’s dead!” Ulin snapped to the messenger as he helped the women sit down on the stone steps of the city hall. “Why didn’t you tell us we had to come this far? They could have ridden the horse.”
“A thousand apologies,” the man said, looking contrite. “I did not know you had a horse.” He hurried indoors and soon returned with Mayor Efrim and a pitcher of water.
The mayor poured the water into cups for the three. “I’m sorry, Lucy,” he said, handing her a cup. “I didn’t realize you were feeling ill.”
“She wasn’t until now,” Ulin replied, since Lucy was too busy drinking water to answer for herself.
The mayor flapped a hand, his seamed face deeply concerned. “I do apologize. The men we sent to retrieve the body ran into a spot of trouble. Two were injured, and this was as far as they could go. Actually, I was hoping one of you had training as a healer.”
Lucy stared over the rim of her cup. “What sort of trouble?”
“Do you mean this town doesn’t have a healer?” Ulin said at the same time.
The mayor shrugged his thin shoulders and tried to answer both questions. “A couple of hobgoblins, early this morning. Unusual this close to town. And not anymore. The best we can do is a midwife or Notwen.”
“Notwen? The gnome?” Ulin exclaimed. “You’re joking.” He considered gnomes to be a nuisance at best, a menace at worst. One with a desire to practice first aid sounded truly frightening.
“Not really. Notwen is not your average gnome. He tinkers with everything. One month it’s machinery, the next it’s construction, the next it’s alchemy. This month it happens to be healing. He’s had no training, but he tries.”
“Where are your men?” Lucy asked.
“Inside. They came from the north road and made it this far.”
Everyone trooped inside. The double doors opened into a wide corridor that passed a short row of offices on either side and led into a large hall. The hall had been recently renovated, but even new roof rafters, some bright wall hangings, and a thorough scrubbing could not completely remove the scorch marks of an old fire or camouflage the smell of fire-heated stone. A long table sat in the middle of the room near a huge fireplace that was empty and cold. Daylight gleamed through long, slender windows on the north side of the hall.
The four diggers of the burial party were by the table. One sat on a high-backed chair, one lay on his back on the floor, and two stood by a wrapped bundle, the length and width of a human, laying at one end of the long table.
“I sent for the rest of the council,” Mayor Efrim told them. “They should be here any moment.”
Lucy and Ulin spared only a glance for the corpse as they hurried to the wounded men. The man in the chair, an old Khur by his swarthy skin and black hair, held his hand clamped over his face. His teeth were clenched shut and sweat stood out on his skin. His other hand gripped the armrest of his chair with a strength that could have torn the chair to pieces if he’d tried. A long, bloody gash stretched from his wrist to his elbow and went through the muscle almost to the bone. Beside him stood Notwen.
Notwen held a steel needle and a long trailing length of thread in one hand, and with the other ran his finger along a line of text in a huge tome that lay open on the table beside him. He read a few lines, nodded, and stabbed the needle into the man’s arm. Despite the man’s clenched teeth, a whimper of pain escaped him.
Ulin stared at the gnome, aghast. He had been forced to learn rudimentary healing techniques on his journeys, but he had never seen anyone try to stitch a gash with three feet of thread and no notion about what they were doing. He jumped forward and snatched the gnome’s hand from the needle. “What in the name of Mishakal do you think you’re doing?” he shouted.
The Khur started like a wild horse. His eyes flew open and he stared pleadingly at the mayor.
Notwen gazed up at Ulin through a pair of large spectacles perched on his wide nose. His blue eyes were intent and filled with concern. “Oh, are you a healer? Could you help? I am trying to learn the basic skills of first aid, and no one around here is willing to show me. I have this book I found in my library, but it’s so much easier to learn through hands-on experience, don’t you think?”
“Unless you happen to be the patient,” Ulin pointed out.
The Khur nodded his agreement.
The gnome stroked his beard. “True. I guess it’s fortunate that one was passed out.”
Ulin and Lucy took a close look at the unconscious man on the floor. His pant’s leg had been cut away to expose a laceration on his upper thigh, probably caused by a slash from a sword. The wound hadn’t been bandaged yet, and in its present condition, Ulin doubted it could be. The gnome had stitched it closed, and while his unpracticed stitches were close enough together, he had tied them off in a tangled weave of knots and ornate bows the likes of which Ulin had never seen.