He took a carefully wrapped bundle out of the bag and unwrapped it, revealing dried leaves as long as Rialla’s forearm and twice as broad. He took five or six and lay them in the clean pan of water to soak.
“Here now,” he said, and his normally slight accent was thicker with sympathy. “I’m going to put a bit of this powder on the cut. It should help the pain in a bit.” As he spoke, he sprinkled a yellow powder lightly on the wound, holding the torn skin open with one hand. “It’s an anesthetic made from a plant I caught some local youngsters chewing on.”
He started to put the softened leaves on her leg and chose to distract her with his story. “One of them had a bit too much, and I had a time keeping him from cutting off his hand. He thought that a maggot had gotten into it and was eating its way to his heart.
“I gave the whole village a lecture on the weed. In case that doesn’t work, whenever I run into a patch of the stuff I make sure that the taste keeps anything with a tongue in its mouth from eating it. I’ve found and treated enough of the plants that most of the village young ones steer clear of it; but as a topical anesthetic it has few equals.”
“You’re a magician?” Rialla questioned, hesitantly. Darran was not a place where anyone admitted to being a wizard, but Tris’s words had invited the question.
“Magic-user,” he said as if he were correcting her, but as far as Rialla knew the two were the same thing. “Does that bother you? You are not Darranian.”
She shook her head. “No.”
He pulled the remnants of the old bandages out from under her leg, where they were keeping the sheets clean, and began strapping her leg with new wraps. “There, almost finished.”
A bell rang stridently in the other room, and he called out, “Coming. No need to ruin my ears.” He finished what he was doing, gathered up the mess and headed toward the other room. “You might try to rest up. I’ll be back in to check on you when I am through.”
Rialla shut her eyes and endured the throbbing of her leg for a few minutes before the pain started to lessen. As soon as the powder numbed the wound, she fell asleep again.
When she woke up, the small table had been pulled up beside her bed. The surface of the table was inlaid with light and dark wooden squares, forming a game board. The squares were occupied by small wooden game pieces carved in the shapes of animals, real and imaginary.
The pieces lined up on her side of the board had been darkened by oil until they were nearly black. On the other side of the table, seated on a stool he must have pulled from another room, Tris was carefully lining up similar game pieces that were fashioned from a blond wood.
Without looking at her, Tris said, “This is a game that my father taught me, and now I am going to teach you. You would call it ‘Steal the Dragon,’ and,” he held up a winged lizard carved with loving detail, “the object of the game is to steal the other person’s dragon.”
He explained to her in careful detail how to develop strategies, and the importance of stealth and deceit, following his lecture by saying, “Of course, you realize all I have just imparted to you won’t help you at all. The only way to learn to play is by playing.”
Rialla had noticed earlier that she was unable to stay wary around the healer; he simply wouldn’t allow it. He ignored her silences and treated her as if they’d known each other for years.
After the first twenty moves of the game, Tris gave her bland face a piercing look under his heavy eyebrows and said in a menacing rumble,“ Woman, who taught you how to play?”
In stunned disbelief, Rialla heard herself giggle. She had never heard such a ridiculous sound come out of her mouth, and she pulled the quilt up to her face to keep the silly sound from coming out again.
When she was sure that she had it under control, though laughter still pulled at the corners of her mouth, she said, “There is a woman in Sianim who has taught that game to everyone she can con into it. She hosts a tournament at least once a week. She says that it keeps the rabble off the streets and trains them to be devious, an important skill for a mercenary.”
Tris growled at her and made his move. As the play progressed, the healer’s face grew darker, and it took him longer to move his pieces. Rialla decided that he was playacting more than anything else, because his shoulders were loose and his movements easy.
She took one of his pieces. He glowered at her beneath his heavy brows, leaving her fighting the urge to laugh.
Darkness fell, and with an impatient wave of his hand the oil lamps on the walls lit themselves, and Tris returned his attention to the game, ignoring Rialla’s start at the casual way he used magic. All the magicians she’d ever seen tended to use it sparingly.
Watching the healer, Rialla wondered why the thought of his anger didn’t make her afraid the way other men did. If any other man, even Laeth, had growled at her the way Tris had, she would have been bristling with defensiveness, despite knowing he was only teasing. Why was it that when this total stranger glared at her, she laughed?
Experimentally she lifted her shields and stretched out the fingers of her talent. She’d already discovered she couldn’t read him outright, but maybe she could learn something if she were focused on him. She reached out and touched—then drew back startled.
She had felt him before. He was the fascinating presence that she’d sensed when she woke up in the healer’s cottage. The being so different that she hadn’t even realized he was human.
“Your move,” he said.
She closed her talent off again, reluctantly. Almost absently she moved a piece and went back to her thoughts. With Winterseine and the few other magicians that she’d tried to read, she’d been able to discern no more than their presence unless she was touching them. She’d concluded that the discipline required to control magic gave magicians involuntary shields against her talent. She wondered why Tris was different.
“Your move.” There was a hint of satisfaction in his tone that caused her to turn her attention back to the game.
The last move she’d made had undone the strategy she had been working on for the past several hours. Any move that she made would leave her dragon for Tris to steal, and if she didn’t move (also an option), he could steal her dragon anyway.
“Give up?” he asked, a little more eagerly than he should have, and she closed her mouth and returned her attention to the board.
“Not yet,” she answered. There was something that she was missing; she stared intently at the board. There was nothing she could do to protect her dragon, but maybe there was something that she could do to get his. With a triumphant smile she took her rat and moved it to the same space that was occupied by his dragon. “Theft!” she claimed triumphantly.
“Thief,” he acknowledged with a betrayed look at the board. He gathered the pieces and put them in the drawer of the little table with the same manner that a mother would use to put her children to bed. By the time he was finished, he had a broad smile on his face. “That’s the first good game I’ve had since I came here. Rematch tomorrow. Now, you get some sleep.”
She slid down the bed and pulled up the covers, and Tris waved at the lamps. Compliantly, the small flames extinguished themselves.
“If you need anything, just ask,” said the healer. “I’ll be on the other side of the door. Good dreams.”
“And to you,” Rialla replied with a yawn.
The next morning the dressing on Rialla’s leg still smelled like rotten onions, so Tris replaced the old leaves with fresh ones and covered her thigh with a new bandage. When he was finished, he brought in two bowls of thick porridge and chatted lightly while they ate breakfast; then he left to go collect some herbs he needed.
Rialla waited until he was gone before experimenting with her newly recovered empathy. If she were going to use it to rescue Laeth, she needed to know how well it was working.