“Healer,” she whispered tentatively, after glancing about to make sure no one was listening, “what does it mean when one bleeds twice in the moon?”
A boy Pel guessed to be Ilsei’s age came to hover over the two of them. Pel glanced up.
“Can you wait over there a while, please?” he asked, pointing to the remains of a bench against the bricks about twenty feet away, and turned his attention back to Ilsei, but her face was frozen in embarrassment. Pel looked up again.
“I’m not used to waiting,” the boy said, putting a hand automatically on the dagger at his belt. Pel recognized him as Raith, youngest of Arizak’s three sons. He was a good-looking youngster, graceful in the way of men who have used their muscles.
“I’ll go!” Ilsei exclaimed, scrambling to her feet. Pel stood and took her hand. He met Raith’s gaze firmly with the confidence of the priest who was used to rambunctious and uncontrollable acolytes.
“He can wait. We will walk over here and finish our consultation.”
The expression in his eyes must have surprised the Irrune prince, for he kept his mouth shut. The girl could hardly choke out another syllable as she kept looking over the healer’s shoulder at the impatient Irrune. At last, Pel let her go, after she had promised to come to his shop on the morrow with her mother.
“Now, ser,” he said, turning to Raith with a pleasant smile. “How may I serve?”
The boy’s mouth twisted, as if deciding whether to spit out a sour mouthful. “You’ve got balls. I came to give you a warning.”
Pel raised an eyebrow. “For what?”
The mouthful came out in a blurt. “For my father. I know you were at the palace the other night. Who brought you? What did you do?”
“That,” Pel said, with more calm than he felt, “is none of your business.”
“Don’t give me your Wrigglie evasions,” Raith snarled, though he stayed where he was. “My father is gravely ill. I know about you healers. You pretend you have skill, but you keep him ill for your own purposes. You make vegetable soups and stinking pills that do nothing.”
“Have you tried them?” Pel asked. “Stop your bristling, young man. I am not being flippant. I will not tell you anything about any patient I have, in the palace or outside it. You would welcome the same discretion if you came in search of my services. Anyone would tell you the same.”
“Well, I will tell you something, then,” Raith said, his face as red as his hair. “I know how devious you Wrigglies are. If you are attending my father, and if you are thinking about using your skills for anything except healing him, and if he dies before I … if he dies and I can trace the reason back to you, you won’t need a fellow healer, you’ll need a hole in the ground for your remains.”
“Ser, there is no need to threaten me,” Pel said, gently. “My task is to give aid to the sick. I do not kill. I never sell or use poisons. On that you have my sworn word.”
But Raith had made up his mind to be offended. Pel realized he had stepped on a tender nerve. He knew that this youngest of Arizak’s three children had no less ambition for the throne than the other two. And he was a boy, no older than the sword-fighting youths who were pulling up roots and raking stones just on the opposite side of the ancient brick wall.
“I will tell you what,” Pel suggested, as Raith glared at him. “If you notice that your father is unwell, come to my shop. I would be glad to call upon him at your bequest. If he gives permission, you may even oversee the treatment.”
A snort told Pel how likely it was his father would ever let him watch, but Raith was appeased.
“I’ve got my eye on you,” Raith said, pointing a finger at Pel’s nose, though he had to point upward to do it. “I have watchers everywhere. If my father dies, you die.”
“I understand, ser,” Pel replied. Raith swept his cloak in one arm and attempted to retreat in a dignified manner, but the heaps of stones made the stride into a series of tiptoeing hops back to where a man-at-arms waited with the boy’s dancing stallion. Raith shot him one more look meant to warn, then spun the horse around. Pel sighed and went back to mixing sun-cure. So he had been followed that night. Raith had wasted a trip warning him to do what he was going to do anyhow.
With Shiprisday safely over, some of Pel’s payment-backward patients came out of hiding.
“My spots came back in only three days!” Whido the baker protested, banging his hand on the old stone altar that served Pel as a shop counter, mixing palette, and operating table in one. He plunked himself down on the tall stool to which Pel gestured him. “Call yourself a doctor, eh? The sisters in the ruins up there,” he gestured in the direction of the Promise of Heaven, “said it’s a condition that goes away in time. Have you been making them come back so you can wring more padpols out of me?”
“Not all acne goes away, you mindless pud,” Pel countered, amused. He had respect for the Rankan women who had moved in to aid the unfortunate of Sanctuary. With an eye for a bargain, or just worried about the best care, many a local had tried to play the knowledge of one against the other. Pel found the ladies to be good neighbors. “Sometimes it stays with the victim for a lifetime. It can only be treated, not cured. Didn’t they tell you that, too?” The expression on Whido’s face told him they had; he was just trying to bring the price down again, for the sixtieth time. Just see what outrage he’d wear if Pel tried to bargain down the price of fresh bread! -
Whido shot a glance at the knot of Irrune men loitering casually by the door. “Well, do something! People think I’m infecting my goods.” He waggled a hand at his flourdusted face. The oil from his pores caused it to cake in runnels.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Pel said, crossing his arms and leaning back thoughtfully. “You look like one of your own crumb cakes. Isn’t that a good advertisement?”
“Pel!” Whido sputtered.
The healer couldn’t help but laugh.
Once more, he handed over a salve and a draught in a rag-stoppered clay bottle. He didn’t need to tell Whido what to do with it, but this time he put out an upturned palm. “Eight padpols. Four for today, and four for last week. I’ll get the accounting for your other missed weeks next time I see you.”
“Pel!”
The healer folded his long arms and fixed him with a bright blue eye.
“No argument. You didn’t come to help yesterday. I don’t walk in shite twice on purpose. Payment at the time of service. We’ll discuss credit again when you’ve been up to date for a few months.”
Grumbling, Whido felt in his scrip. He plunked down eight blackened shards of silver and stomped out. The brown-cloaked man just inside the door came to take his place on the stool. Pel judged him to be around thirty, silky brown hair and beard framing a weather-bronzed face. He held out a hand. The fingers were swollen and bruised, causing the gash across the back to stand out proud.
Pel began to pick the clods of earth and stone fragments out of the torn flesh and swab it with a cleansing solution. “How’d you do this?”
“New horse,” the Irrune gritted. “Bashed me into a wall then tossed me off. Rubbed my glove into my hand. Does that stuff have to sting?”
“Yes,” Pel said. “I’ve never found a mixture that worked that didn’t. It’ll go numb in a moment. Hold still, this won’t take long.”
He took a strand of gut out of the bowl where he kept it soaking and threaded it into a needle cleaned and heated in candleflame. The man tensed as the needle went into his skin, then relaxed visibly at the promised numbness. As Pel worked on closing the deep gash, the man’s companions wandered about the shop. No other patients were waiting, so they spoke to one another loudly in their own language.