The Healers' Road

by S E Robertson

  “...Oh.” She said nothing more, and he had to trust that she had fallen asleep. For a little while he wavered, kneeling in the middle of the tent. He wanted her to wake up. It was selfish, but he wanted to talk to her. No one else had seen it and lived through it the way she had.

  He imagined talking with her, just the two of them in private. He told her that he was afraid, that he imagined the bandits jumping out at him from every shadow. He thanked her for saving his life and apologized for getting her hurt. And she listened, and told him that she was afraid too. That it wasn’t his fault. That she’d had to save him, because it was the right thing to do, because they were partners.

  I never really hated you. You know that, don’t you? He’d seen her smile like that, in fleeting moments, at other people.

  Keifon shook himself, pushing away the comforting daydream before it took him apart. She would never understand, and she would never say that to him. She hated him, not without reason, just as he had tired of the sight and the sound of her half the time. He resented the fact that the Benevolent Union had thrown them together, that the gods had abandoned him here to punish him and left him alone with this spoiled foreign child.

  He wanted to cling to her because they were both lost and hurt and alone. But it would never happen that way. He would push her away, and she would push him away, and they would hate one another all the more.

  He forced himself to swallow and look up, though there was nothing to see. Whoever he was, he held the wall up. Two things. Put his nanbur away, and get a clean shirt. It was too dark to see, so he took his pack outside.

  Nita’s eyes were sympathetic. He tried not to look. Not yet, so soon after he had almost given up. He could not cope with her sympathy. She would offer him kind words, and he would crumble. He found another shirt in the pack. He stripped off his bloody shirt and crumpled it. He would wash it as soon as he could.

  Nita uncorked one of the bottles, and the alcohol vapors cut into his eyes. She soaked a clean cloth with the contents and hesitated. “I’m sorry,” she said in a voice too small for a guard, and pressed it against the cut on his neck. He flinched, and she flinched, and apologized, and continued until his eyes watered. She was not a medic, but she had been a guard long enough to dress a wound. Her hands were sure. She dabbed on some ointment and pressed clean gauze against the cut. He helped her hold it still as she wound a bandage around his neck, asking him again and again whether she’d wrapped it too tight. She hadn’t, although it was a tricky thing to bandage a cut like this. He turned and let her clean his back, and bandaged the shallow dig they’d made in his ribs.

  “Good technique,” he managed to say when she was done, and she smiled nervously as he pulled on a clean shirt.

  “Thank you. Is there anything else I can do? Did they get you anywhere else? I don’t think there’s much we can do for your lip.”

  “Nn. Just punched me. A lot.” He half-smiled on the uninjured side. What was he doing? Responding to her, to her kindness, to the submerged suggestion of comfort. Keifon looked away. “If you have some cold water. To drink, and I think it would be good to get a compress here.” He laid his fingers on the edge of his cheekbone, where the bandit’s fist had hit him. His stomach hurt, not only the roiling inside but the bruised muscles and tendons that held him up. There wasn’t much he could do about that, either. Rest. The one thing he couldn’t do.

  “The water I got is pretty cold. Here.” Nita busied herself with getting more, and Keifon sat by the cold fire pit, not thinking. He would put a compress on his face and... then what? Not sleep. Try not to talk to Nita too much. He drank what she handed him, and accepted the soaked cloth, and pressed it against his face. It was cool enough.

  “Would you like the fire lit?”

  “Nn. It’s fine. Just the torches.”

  “All right...”

  Nita didn’t talk much. She waited with him. She patrolled the campsite. She made notes in a logbook from her breast pocket. She talked with the guards who passed through. Keifon sat, not thinking, not sleeping. Nita brought him fresh water and offered to get him some food. He took the water and soaked his compress and refused the food. Sometime later, another pair of guards approached. One pulled the Nessinian’s trunk along behind him, and the other carried his valise. Keifon scrambled to his feet. “You got it back!” The second guard passed it to him. “Thank you. This is... it’s... it’s my livelihood. Thank you.”

  She saluted. “We think some of the bottles in it are broken, though. It’s sounding awfully noisy. You’ll have to see what’s still there and report the losses to the Captain.”

  “I will.” The sight of it revived him. He could be the medic and an agent of the Benevolent Union. He hadn’t lost what the Army had given him.

  The other guard rolled the trunk to a stop next to their water barrel. “This belongs to the other healer, I hear?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’ll have to report her losses to the Captain, too. Let her know.”

  “All right.”

  The two newcomers conferred with Nita, and Keifon sat in a spot of torchlight to check his valise. The first bottle he picked up was just a shattered neck, still stoppered. He spread out his blood-soaked shirt and laid out the shards as he went.

  Seven broken bottles and jars. Three missing. His scalpels were gone. The bandages were soaked with a lung-shriveling brew of mingled reagents and medicines. At least the bandages were easier to replace than the medicines and scalpels. He swabbed out the inside of the valise with one of the cleaner bandages and left it open to dry in the air. The rest of his supplies were all right. He lined them up to dry. Many of the labels had smeared and bled, splashed with the same chemical mess that had claimed the bandages. He would re-label them when they were dry.

  He borrowed Nita’s notebook and wrote down every item in categories. Stolen. Broken. Damaged / reclaimable. Intact. They couldn’t read any of this, but he could translate in the morning, when he had more light and a dictionary.

  He returned the notebook and pencil, keeping the pages with his notes. “Thank you.”

  “No trouble. They said they found it by the roadside, a ways down the road. A team went out there to try and catch the rest of them. They think the bandits just dropped it when they ran. It gave them a clue, at least – they might have turned off the road there.” She seemed to read something in his expression, because she stopped abruptly. “Do you need anything? ...Thinking about getting any sleep, sometime?”

  “Nn. No. And no. Thank you.”

  She patrolled, and he sat by the cold hearth. The bottles dried in the air. The Nessinian slept. Finally Nita met another patrolling guard and turned to Keifon, smiling apologetically. “Shift change. Goodnight, Medic. I’m glad you’re all right.”

  “Thank you.”

  Nita walked into the dark. The new guard looked down at him. This one was older, a man, of an age with the guard captain, or with one of his own superiors in the Army. Keifon nodded, and the guard returned it.

  “Evening.”

  “Good evening.”

  “Can’t sleep?”

  “No.”

  “Suit yourself. I’ll be here till we break camp.”

  “I see. Thank you.”

  The new guard did not offer his name. He set off to walk his rounds around the campsite. Keifon picked up the compress and soaked it. It woke him up for a while.

  It was the slow, grinding part of the night. It was the time that he usually started to think about Kazi, instead of letting him stay as a constant background noise in his head. He imagined curling up on a bed in one of the inns they frequented, the one that scented its sheets with lavender. He imagined Kazi sitting behind him, watching him silently. Finally, as though Keifon were a creature that might turn on him, Kazi laid a hand on his shoulder. The thought of it made him shake, and he pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, squeezing water out of the compress. Kazi would not give him comforting words, would not take care
of him – but even so, Keifon’s need for companionship was breaking him.

  Not Kazi, then. Anything but that.

  Keifon pressed the cloth against his face, because it would help, in some small way. With his free hand he made half of the sign of Darano. He hoped that the god would forgive him for the breach in protocol. He remembered the words, one after another, in their proper order. One prayer after another, for strength, for peace, for justice. When the words blurred into something mindless, he switched hands and made half of the sign of Tufar. He called upon the god for clarity, for sanity, for sureness in his work as a medic. He repeated these and moved onto the next.

  The gods had not abandoned him. He apologized to each in turn for thinking that his assignment had been a punishment. They had a plan for him, and a purpose. He didn’t understand it yet, and his responsibility lay in figuring out what they wanted from him. But they had not abandoned him. He believed, and the gods never abandoned those who believed.

  He said all the prayers he could remember. He prayed for the Nessinian’s safe recovery, even though she was a heathen. He prayed for the health and safety of Kazi and Eri and Nachi and his brother. Everything hurt and his mind was fogged, but he would be all right. He had lived, and the gods still loved him. Everything else could be borne.

  “Son.” Keifon started out of a state that might have been prayer and might have been dozing. It was the Yanweian word, but the standing guard had spoken it. “I think it’s time you went to bed.”

  Keifon leaned back against the ground, getting his balance. “D-did you say...”

  “Yeah. I’m from Laketon,” he said, as though that explained everything. “‘Sides, you speak Kaveran, don’t you?”

  “Uh...”

  “Go along. You have a couple of hours till dawn. Get some sleep.”

  Keifon considered this. He was dizzy, and he wasn’t sure he was experiencing time properly. If it was only a couple of hours, he could only have so many nightmares before morning came. He might even sleep for a while, and forget. He nodded. “All right. Thank you, sir.”

  The guard offered him a hand up. Keifon left his medical supplies out to dry, under the guard’s watch. He picked up his pack. He remembered to tap at the tent flap first, and tell the Nessinian that he was coming. Even if she didn’t hear him, he had tried.

  Agna: The Patient

  “Agent?”

  Agna’s shoulder screamed when she stirred, confirming that last night’s nightmare had been real.

  “We’re moving in a couple of hours. You’d better get ready.”

  “Nnghhh.”

  “I’ll be outside.”

  Agna tried to move, yelped, and lay still until the wave passed. She eased onto her left side and rolled to her knees. She glanced at the other side of the tent. The Yanweian’s bedroll was tied to his backpack. The caravan rolled in a couple of hours. Agna cradled her right elbow in her hand. Not enough time. She had to get dressed – if she had any clothes to change into – and wash up and pack whatever she had left and load it all onto the wagon. Who could she hire for this? Move my trunk was reasonable, but pack my laundry was less so. And she had to get a sling for her shoulder.

  She emerged from the tent. The Yanweian sat by the fire, drinking tea. For a moment she was angry with him – how dare he drink tea as though nothing had happened – but she saw the same vacant, disconnected look in his eyes that she’d seen the previous night. His neck was bandaged, and a bruised lump had risen under his eye.

  The Yanweian set his teacup aside as he stood. “We need to get your arm in a sling.” It wasn’t his friendly clinical voice – not for her. It was his campfire self, half-concealed.

  “I know that,” Agna’s mouth said, while her concentration was occupied with keeping tears from her eyes. Her shoulder creaked and groaned like a foundering ship.

  His hands were up. He took a step forward. “It won’t take long, and it will hurt less afterward.”

  He was right, and that made it worse. She hated agreeing with him. The morning was sliding by too fast. She had to be stronger than this, and prove that she could do all of these things alone. Agna stood taller, eyes watering, conscious of her bruises and her over-protective stance and her unwashed nightgown.

  “I’m going to wash up. And then you can check my shoulder. If you want to.” Her voice cracked a little. It was good enough.

  The Yanweian nodded his concession. “They brought your trunk back.” He motioned. Her trunk was parked by the water barrel. Agna’s lip trembled, and she bit it fiercely. He went on, sparing her the need to reply. “The guards said you should figure out what’s missing and report it to the Captain.”

  “Right.” They might have overlooked her clothes. She wouldn’t have to skulk around Kavera in her nightgown. She knelt by the trunk. The key sat in the lock, without its chain. Agna lifted the lid left-handed and found what she needed. It was all tumbled around, but she found some clothes and her toiletry kit. She gathered what she needed, draping the clothes over her left arm, and headed out.

  ***

  She returned from the baths in the inner layer of her dark red dress, belted by itself, the drawstring barely pulled together at the neck. She felt slovenly, but it had been painful enough to pull her arm through the sleeve. At least she was clean now, and more or less dressed. She found the tent empty, her belongings packed up. The trunk stood in its usual place. She wavered between how dare you and thank goodness, sank to the floor next to her trunk, and rested her forehead against the lid. What had she left behind when she went out? Her blanket and yesterday’s dirty clothes. She hated the thought of the Yanweian touching them, judging them as common and petty. But now she didn’t have to pack them herself.

  Agna was resting when the Yanweian returned, dressed for travel. “Are you ready?” he asked as he tucked away his kit, reminding Agna that her own kit and nightgown were clutched in her hand. She opened the trunk with her elbow and shoved them inside as the Yanweian fetched his valise. She thought she’d seen the bandits carry that away. Maybe the guards had found it, too. She locked the trunk and shoved the key into the money pouch on her belt. There were a few coins in there, at least.

  Agna turned to face the middle of the tent and sat up straight. She concentrated on saying, doing, feeling nothing, despite the fluttering in her stomach. The Yanweian settled cross-legged in front of her and lit the lamp next to them.

  “All right,” he began. “This will probably hurt, and I’m sorry.” He reached out, and she steeled herself. She thought she saw something pained and human flicker in his eyes. Then the clinical mien snapped back into place: not his flirtatious act, but a thoughtful consideration of each symptom. He asked her to raise her arm and guided it forward and back, up and down and circling around. Every movement hurt, and she hated him for it – but he wasn’t causing it. He was sparing her all the pain he could. She knew that, and hated herself for that more.

  “Can you heal it?” he asked uneasily.

  “No. Can’t heal yourself. You need to connect your energy to the other person’s, and if there’s nothing else to connect to, nothing happens.”

  “I see.” He went on, carefully prodding the muscles of her shoulders and arms. The bruises on his face were frightful. And he seemed to be mumbling so as not to split open his lip. Agna remembered the sickening solidity of the force applied to his body.

  She wet her lips. “Can I check you, though?”

  “Check me?” he echoed. Agna raised her uninjured arm in demonstration, and the Yanweian drew back. “Oh. I...um.”

  “Just to make sure they didn’t rupture anything. And I can’t do much for bruises, but I can close those cuts.”

  “I – no, you don’t need to do that.”

  “It’ll only take a second.”

  “Just – let me set your arm first.”

  Agna sighed, aggrieved, and relented. He found a sling in his valise, rolled into a tiny bundle, and unfolded it. It was almost the same brown s
hade as the caravan guards’ uniforms. He fastened it over her shoulder and adjusted the placement, speaking no more than a word or two at a time, until it was seated properly. The sling took the weight of her arm off her shoulder. The pain was muted now, as long as she didn’t move.

  The Yanweian closed the valise and sat back. “It’s pretty bad,” he said. “You shouldn’t move it more than you need to for a few weeks, and see how it feels then.”

  “I know that,” she retorted without thinking.

  “...Yes. Of course you do.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing.” He began to stand. “I’ll take the tent down whenever you’re ready.”

  “Hey, wait. Let me check you.”

  He hesitated, like a cornered cat deciding which way to bolt. “I don’t...”

  “It doesn’t hurt. Look, they could have ruptured something that you wouldn’t even know until it killed you two days later. Just let me try.” It would make it a little better, being even with him, or as even as they could be. She couldn’t lift anything or help with the tent or do much of anything for herself, but she could do this. They couldn’t take that from her.

  The Yanweian warily sat back in his place across from her. “All right.”

  Agna almost smiled. She could handle this, even one-handed. She took a deep breath, gathering her focus, and spread her hand over his abdomen to check for internal damage. The energy connected readily, but the tension in his body nearly broke her concentration. His pulse raced, its rhythm stuttering through her reaching currents of energy. Agna tightened the muscles in her arm and held her own irritation back. Letting it flow into him would cause a feedback loop.

  She reverted to the standard routine to circumvent her own thoughts, checking each organ in turn. The muscles were badly bruised where he’d been hit, but nothing seemed to be broken, and there was no internal bleeding. The lining of his stomach was chewed to pieces, though.