She tried to keep her eyes on the movements of his fingers, but a glance let her see that Tai’s smile was pained but genuine. “Huh. What’s her name?”
“His. Keifon the Medic. He’s an apprentice at the hospital. How about the wrist? Flex it this way.” She watched as he tried, but he wasn’t able to move his wrist laterally, or his thumb at all, without hissing in pain. Agna grimaced in empathy. “Sorry. I’m going to connect. Just relax as much as you can. I’ll make it stop hurting.” She took a deep breath and walled off the sound of Whalen and the assistant hauling the chest of drawers across the kitchen behind her. There was no need for theatrics, for the green light she sometimes used to show people that her energy was working during a scan. He’d feel it soon enough. Agna wrapped her hand around Tai’s injured wrist and reached out with her long-studied energy. She knew this, understood this. She could function as a healer, no matter what. Even when she was a garbling, tongue-tied fool, she could find her way around an energy working.
Their energies connected readily, though his energy signature was shot through with pain. His energy wasn’t bitter, just constrained, as though he didn’t want to let on how much it hurt. Agna calmed the nerves in his arm, numbing everything below the elbow. Tai sighed, with a satisfied groan that made Agna’s cheeks warm. “Just stay still,” she murmured. “This shouldn’t take long. I don’t think anything is broken, at least.”
“That’s something,” he said. “I’m really sorry, Healer Despana.”
“No need to apologize. Accidents happen.” She suffused her energies through the wrist joint, checking each of the small bones and tendons. He’d taken most of the blow between the wrist and the base of his thumb, and scraped a patch of skin off the back of his hand against the wall or the banister. The weight of the dresser — when he tried to lift it again, she suspected — had bruised the soft tissue and torn a couple of small tendons. She couldn’t do much for the bruise, but she could fix the tendons and the scrape, at least. She shifted the position of her fingers, feeling the stickiness of his blood on her skin. Blast it, she’d forgotten to have him wash up first. One had to remember proper technique, even when doing emergency repairs on a kitchen table. She’d been too rattled, at first. At least they were on track now. She regrew the scraped skin first, then passed her fingers over the spot to make sure it had closed fully. Tai shifted in his seat, keeping his hand still.
“I can’t feel anything,” he said, his voice hushed. “Should I have? I didn’t hit it that hard, did I?” His pulse raced, which she could have told without her healing energy; she could nearly count the beats among the veins in his exposed wrist.
“I still have it numbed,” she said. “Don’t worry.”
“Mmn.” He was quiet as she knit his tendons together. “Dropped a wardrobe on my foot once. You think that was swearing, well.”
Agna cracked a smile, but did not shift her attention far enough to reply.
“At least I could hobble around the shop for a while. This, though. It’s my off hand, but you have to hold things steady. D’you think I’ll be able to work?”
Agna held up her free hand for him to wait. She’d done operations more complex than this, but they hadn’t hammered the importance of concentration into her head for eight years for nothing. Every working had to have her full attention. The more religious healers, Balance and Tufarian alike, seemed to find it easier to focus. They were working with the essence of whatever god they followed, which lent itself to taking one’s work seriously. Without the conviction of faith, Agna had to respect the fact that she held her patients’ lives in her hands. It was too easy to forget during a routine patching of a superficial injury. She’d done dozens, a hundred of them in her time. But all it took was a minute’s wandering, a sidetrack into distraction, and she could end up joining the wrong tendons together or sealing his blood vessels shut.
Even letting her energy radiate too freely could have dire repercussions. She was trained to tell whether her patients were nervous or hostile, and there was a certain amount of intuition involved in sensing and interpreting their signatures. But if she didn’t keep her own emotions in check today, any untrained layperson could tell that her perfect healer’s calm was constructed over terror. The feedback loop could spin out of control, the healer’s fear feeding the patient’s, until she lost control of the working. And maybe he couldn’t read the specifics of her thoughts, but the general tenor would be bad enough.
She let the nerve block go, with a pang of guilt at the way his back stiffened. The bruising remained; there were too many tiny capillaries to seal individually. She’d explain in a minute. For now she sank her energies into his hand, checking that the tissues she had restored were intact. Tai fidgeted, his feet shuffling under the table. Agna let a breath go and nodded. She’d done all she could. “All right,” she said. “It’s still bruised, and I’m afraid it’ll hurt a while longer. Try this motion now.” She bent her wrist, watching his range of motion as he copied the gesture. “How does that feel?”
“It’s fine,” he said, biting the words off.
Agna smiled despite herself. “Don’t lie to your healers. Touch your thumb again, one at a time, please, same as before. Swear if you need to.”
He did so; his thumb seemed to move more freely, and he let out one muttered curse in Yanweian. “Sorry.”
“I’ll have you know both my parents are very much accounted for, sir. Now. Rest that hand for a few days, at least. As for your question, you shouldn’t go back to work right away, no. You’d risk injuring it again, or straining something else to compensate.”
“Ugh,” he said. “We have a list of orders as long as your arm. But… if you say so. Think I should sling it up?” He held his arm at a right angle, the hand close to his ribs.
The gesture, the thought, chimed some unpleasant bells in her head. She’d worn a sling for a while herself, this time of year. Agna’s eyes flicked away. “It wouldn’t be a bad idea, as a precaution. I don’t have anything here, but if you tie it at an angle that’s comfortable, and don’t put pressure on the wrist, that’s all you’ll need.” She stood and waded through the thicket of displaced chairs to reach the sink. Her grip slipped on the pump handle as she realized that Tai had followed her. “I’m sorry I can’t do much for it,” she said, bearing down on the handle as water began to flow. “Energy healing isn’t much help with bruising injuries. It should fade after a few weeks, at least.”
“A few weeks.” He kneaded the bruised hand with the other, wincing. “What do I owe you?”
She tucked her hair behind her ear and held her bloodied hand under the faucet. “Tch. You hurt yourself moving my furniture into my house. Because of my stairs. I’m the one paying you, remember?”
“Yeah, but…” He ran his uninjured hand through his hair. It stuck up and settled, too fine to stay ruffled. “I mean, we aren’t usually incompetent. Promise.”
Whalen’s voice from the doorway was cynical, but warm. “Some of us aren’t, at any rate.” As Agna turned, he and the assistant, a thick-necked Kaveran who dwarfed him in the doorway, closed in across the table. “What did he manage to do to himself?”
“A deep tissue bruise,” Agna reported, “but nothing broken.” She lathered her hands and rinsed them in the basin, then stepped aside to dry off and let Tai use the sink. He winced as he soaped up his bruised hand, washing away the drying blood.
“And I’m not supposed to work for a couple of days,” Tai said, though it didn’t seem to hold any rancor. At least he wasn’t one to shoot the messenger. “Guess I can catch up on the bookkeeping, stuff like that.”
“Ye-es.” Whalen drummed his fingers on the back of one of the chairs. “How are we supposed to get the wardrobe up here, though?”
Tai stretched his neck from side to side. “Revi would do it if we paid her extra.”
“You’re waiting with the wagon, then,” Whalen said.
“I’ll wait with the wagon, yeah. Or take it back.”
“Hm.” Whalen crossed his arms as he thought. “Fine. Take it slow. Slow-ly. And don’t unhitch the horses by yourself, ask for help, for goodness’ sake.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Agna passed a dish towel to Tai. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Not so much,” Whalen said, “but thank you.”
She stepped back and let them regroup. Whalen and the other man headed down the stairs, leaving her with Tai again. She straightened one of the wooden spoons in the rack on the counter.
He hadn’t left yet. He took up all of the space in her kitchen, all of the air. “Thanks again. I’m sorry about this.”
She shook her head and tucked her hair into place. “It’s not your fault. I’m sorry about my stairs.”
“So. I’ll see you around town, then, I guess.”
Agna nodded, fighting the urge to realign the chairs, to scrub the counters, to hide in her room and lock the door. “We’ll come back for some bookshelves soon.”
Something in his eyes shifted. “Yeah. Yeah, thanks.”
He turned at the door and waved. She returned it, keeping the table and chairs between herself and everything else in the world. Then he was gone, and she sat at her skewed kitchen table to wait.
* * *
The scent of roasted chicken and parsnips brought her out of sleep, looping back in time as she woke. She’d already made dinner and eaten. She’d written a letter to her pen pal Marco asking about a collection of paintings that he’d sold, and a letter to Nelle about settling into their new home. She’d gone shopping to buy ingredients for tomorrow’s dinner, then gone to bed.
Agna blinked and looked around the room. This was her new bed, yes, and that was the new hulk of the wardrobe against the far wall. Right. Delivery day. Yawning, she slipped out of bed, and pulled her dressing gown off its hanger in the new wardrobe. She found the sleeves, pushed her arms through them, and tied the belt around her waist before padding down the hall barefoot.
In the kitchen, red lines of firelight leaked through the vents and seams of the stove, and a gold pool of lamplight circled the tabletop. Keifon had a book open next to his plate of reheated food. He looked up from it, keeping his place with his fingertips. “I’m sorry, did I wake you?”
Agna pulled out one of the chairs and sat, pillowing her head on her arms. “Sort of, yeah, but I can fall back asleep. How was your shift?”
He grimaced. “All right, mostly. How’d the delivery go?”
“Mmph. The carpenter hurt himself carrying things up the stairs. I could heal part of it, but not all.”
Keifon marked his place with the bookmark she’d given him at last year’s Resurrection festival, and closed his book. “I’m sorry to hear that. Do you think he’ll be all right?”
“I think so. It’ll just take a little while for the bruise to heal. Said he might put it in a sling to remind himself not to use it.”
The fork went slack in his hand. “I was thinking about that today, too.”
“What?” Her brows knotted, until her half-asleep brain put the pieces together. Arm in a sling. Today’s date. “Oh — oh, yes.”
Two years ago today, not long after they’d met, she and Keifon had traveled in one another’s company grudgingly. As Agna slept and Keifon practiced his lute by the campfire, the merchants’ camp had been attacked by bandits. They’d escaped with their lives and only moderate injuries — Keifon with some cuts and bruises, Agna with a separated shoulder. She’d lost most of the money she’d brought on the trip, and some of her belongings as well. The experience had made her more sorry to have come, and less likely to speak civilly to the stranger she had felt compelled to protect. Now, though, it was a part of their shared past, part of the dark, early days, when they had both been different people.
Agna sat up and kneaded her right shoulder. “It never hurts anymore, not even when it rains. We were lucky.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Lucky, or blessed. And I still thank you. Now more than ever.”
She dropped her eyes from his, watching the edge of his plate where it caught the light. She’d been lucky, able to break free and fight back with her healer’s art, to stun their attackers and make them let go of him. She hadn’t dared to examine her motivations then, to wonder why she had rushed to help him rather than to run for the guards. She hadn’t been willing to uncover the answers then, and now it didn’t matter. Now she would do it all again, and more. If anything threatened him now, she wasn’t sure where she’d stop.
When she swallowed, her throat felt dry. She got up and turned away, using the retrieval of a drinking glass as an excuse. “I’m glad we’re behind doors and locks, now. Even though there’s more to lose. I’m glad we’re both here.”
“I am, too.” His silverware scraped the plate. The metallic clink was a counterpoint against the ceramic scrape of the ewer on the water stand.
It took her a minute to drink a glass of water, to gather her thoughts. She’d had a few hours of sleep already, and her head was foggy. But tonight, especially, she wanted to sit in the lamplight for a while. Keifon opened his book again, which suited her just fine.
He cut a piece of the chicken and set down the knife to turn a page. Agna returned to her seat, leaning her chin on her hand. “What’re you reading?”
“Mmn.” He swallowed, and she recognized his reaching for his own glass as the same stalling move she’d tried. “It’s one of the books I bought at New Year’s, in a bookshop in the Foreign Quarter in Prisa. It’s, ah…” He flipped to the opening pages, where the title was framed in a tracing of branches and leaves. “Folktales of Nessiny, collected by… Andresaro and Critti.”
“Really? May I see it?” She reached out across the table, and he slid the book toward her. Keeping his bookmark in place, she paged through the book, as her vague sense of familiarity coalesced into recognition. She knew the stories, yes, but also the order of the stories, and the illustrations. She remembered that particular tree sprite, that drawing of the Queen’s Chosen Sword. “I think… huh.” It wasn’t one of her vast array, still gathering dust on her bookshelves at home, and it wasn’t one of Esirel’s small collection. She’d been little when she’d read it, sitting at her mother’s side, Lina tucked on her mother’s other side, not at home, but somewhere she knew and remembered… “Yes! My grandmother had a copy of this book — Mama Sivita, my mother’s mother, not the Despana side. We’d read it when we went to visit at holidays, when I was little.” She turned the book and slid it back to him.
“Is that so! I didn’t realize. The bookseller just recommended it to me.” He spread his hand over the leather cover, smiling to himself. “I just asked her for something I might be able to muddle through myself.”
Agna had been five or six when she’d been old enough to read it by herself, although she’d hung on at her mother’s side for a while longer, pretending it was for Lina’s sake. She and Keifon had begun studying one another’s languages less than a year ago, and he was already able to read on his own. She wasn’t sure she could tackle a book like this in Yanweian, though he’d assured her that the written form was difficult for foreigners to learn. Still, she hadn’t gone out on her own to seek out books to try. “Well,” she said. “I hope you’re enjoying it.”
“I am.” He took a forkful of parsnips while he thought. “I’ve seen a couple of phrases you use, Nessinian idioms, I guess. And one of the stories you told me last winter, about the farmer and the river. I like seeing where they come from, trying to understand your world.”
Agna pillowed her cheek on her arms again, feeling her skin grow warm against itself. He needn’t have bothered. That was what made it so sweet.
“Dinner is delicious, by the way,” he said. “Thank you.”
“Thanks. It’s from that cookbook I got the other day. Thought it was time to try something new.” She rubbed her eyes and watched the lamp’s flame.
He pushed a chunk of parsnip across his plate. “I’m sorry I h
aven’t done much of the cooking since we got here.”
Agna shrugged. “We’re at the mercy of the schedule. I’m sure I’ll be working nights, soon enough.”
“Mmn. We’ll see, I guess. Dr. Rushu said the new rotation should be posted at the end of the week.”
She should have left him to his book and his dinner, but something held her here, soaking in the warmth of the stove. “How’s it going with Dr. Rushu, anyway?”
“It’s going well. Though she usually works some kind of in-between shift. She finishes up a few hours after I start, and then hands me off to one of the other doctors for the night. I think it’s strategic. More exposure to different methods, different approaches.” He paused to chew and swallow.
“Makes sense, I suppose.” She almost wished there were some Balance healers among the senior staff. Even the older Academy graduates were temporary, and she’d hardly crossed their paths on the floor. All she knew of them had been gleaned from Fulvia’s cataloging and from the notes they left in the break room. She didn’t have a way in, a mentor to introduce her. Not this time.
Brooding about adulthood and steep learning curves, she drowsed with her head on the table. It would get easier. Eventually. The Academy had gotten easier, in some ways. Traveling with the caravan had gotten easier, once she’d choked down her pride and formed a truce with Keifon. Someday this shift work and furniture-hauling would feel as routine as packing up their tents had been.
She started awake when Keifon got up. He turned, holding his empty plate. “You should go to bed.”
“Yeah, fine.” She rubbed her cheeks, feeling blood return to the indentation where she’d leaned on her arm for too long. “Oh, have you seen the new furniture, though?”
“I did. The dresser, at least. It’s quite nice.”
The Healers' Home Page 8
