Outcasts of Order

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “He didn’t fall,” said Beltur. “He had that white chaos fuzziness in too many places. He was likely beaten with a stick or rod and held up his arm to keep from being hit more.”

  “We’ve seen more than a few of those,” said Jessyla. “If I could—”

  “You can’t, and you shouldn’t even speak like that here,” interrupted Margrena. “If word got out, some men wouldn’t allow their women—most of them who come aren’t really even consorted—to bring the children.”

  “It’s not right,” murmured Jessyla, not quite under her breath.

  “Sometimes, we just have to do the best we can.”

  Sometimes? From what Beltur had seen over the past seasons, it was most of the time, but he only said, “The other woman just left.”

  “There wasn’t anything wrong with her or the children, except that they were cold and hungry. Some of the street women know that they can bring in children and just wait. They get warm, and then they leave.”

  Beltur frowned. The Council Healing House wasn’t all that warm, if certainly warmer than the streets, especially with the wind gusting the way it had been that morning.

  “Klarisia doesn’t say much so long as they don’t linger. After all, it is a form of healing, and one that doesn’t impose too much on the healers.”

  At that moment a young woman, little more than a girl to Beltur’s eyes, half walked, half staggered into the room. “… need help…”

  Beltur just looked for an instant.

  Margrena didn’t, but rushed toward the woman.

  As she did, Beltur saw the darkness of blood just below her shoulder, and he immediately followed Margrena, who had helped the woman into a sitting position and was examining her.

  “Cloths!”

  Jessyla grabbed the basket, arriving beside her mother just as Beltur did, and then handed one of the folded cloths to Margrena.

  The young woman was swaying where she sat.

  The door from the street opened, and a stocky man in brown charged into the room. “Where’s the bitch? I’ll kill her.” In his hand was a bloody knife, but Beltur also noticed blood on his other sleeve as he headed toward the healers.

  Without much thought, Beltur snapped a containment around the intruder, stopping him in midstep. Then he glanced toward the still-open door, but no one seemed to be following the man in brown. So Beltur walked to the door and closed it, shutting off the gusts of cold air that had accompanied the knife wielder.

  “She stole my wallet and then tried to slice me up!” protested the man. “You can’t do this to me. A man’s got a right to protect himself. You can’t do this.”

  Beltur pulled out the patrol medallion.

  The man’s mouth stopped moving.

  Beltur loosened the containment. “Drop the knife.”

  The knife fell to the floor. Beltur shifted the containment so that the knife was outside the shield, then kicked it away from the intruder. He further loosened the containment. “Show me where she slashed you.”

  There was a long shallow slash across the top of the man’s forearm, one that looked to be deep in places, and there was more than a little blood.

  “What are you going to do? Let me bleed to death?”

  “That wouldn’t serve any purpose.” Beltur walked over to the bench where the basket sat and took out the other bottle of clear spirits, and two folded cloths. Then he picked up the spool of canvas and walked back to where the man stood. “I’m going to release your arm and take care of the wound.” Beltur did just that and used one cloth and spirits to clean the slash. Then he used the other cloth as a dressing and wound a length of canvas—cut easily with the cupridium knife that Jorhan had forged for him—around the wound, tying it in place with canvas strips.

  “That should take care of the wound and the bleeding.”

  “You’re just going to leave me here?”

  “No. We’re going for a walk.” Beltur turned to Margrena. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “We’ll likely be upstairs by then.”

  Beltur turned to the man. “I’m going to release the containment. You and I are going to walk out the door. You try anything else, and you’ll be very sorry—that’s if you survive to feel anything.” That was another overstatement, but not by too much.

  When Beltur released the containment, he was ready to impose it again, but the man did not move.

  “Go ahead. Walk to the door.”

  Beltur didn’t say anything else until the two of them were outside in the cold and gusting wind. “You got sliced. She got sliced. Neither one of you should have been doing what you did. I could walk you to Patrol headquarters, and you’d spend at least a year at the workhouse. That’s if you’re fortunate. I’ve bound up that slash. It should heal if you keep it clean. She may not even live.” The girl probably would, but with all the blood, the man would likely believe that. “Even if she does, she won’t be using that little knife any time soon. And you might just want to be a little more careful about approaching women. So let’s just say that I escort you down the street. You don’t get the knife back, and you don’t go to the workhouse.”

  “I got robbed and slashed.”

  “You almost killed her. You’re getting off easily. Do you really want to face a Council magistrate?”

  “If that’s so, why are you letting me go?”

  “Partly because you were the victim, and partly because sending you both to the workhouse wouldn’t do either of you much good. If you think I’m wrong, we can just keep walking to the City Patrol.”

  “If it’s just the same to you, Mage, I’ll accept your offer.”

  “You’re being very wise. Keep walking. I’ll be watching.”

  Once the other was a good block away, Beltur made his way back into the building, found a staircase, and climbed to the second level. He saw Margrena and walked to join her.

  Margrena glanced around, then said, “The girl’s in a small chamber. She’ll be here for at least a few days. She wouldn’t last a night on the streets. We had to get help carrying her up here. Jessyla’s settling her down. I thought it might be better that way.”

  Beltur understood what the older healer wasn’t saying and why she wanted to be the one to meet Beltur, rather than Jessyla. “She doesn’t have any place else to go?”

  “Not that she’ll admit. Either she doesn’t or she’ll be beaten or worse if she does.”

  “How often does something like this happen?”

  “Every eightday, except most of the women don’t live, and no one knows who the men even are.”

  “Do you think this girl will learn anything?”

  “She might learn, but it likely won’t change much in her life.”

  Beltur couldn’t help recalling one of the lifter girls he’d sent to the workhouse. She’d screamed at him that the one thing she learned from going to the workhouse was that the only thing a poor woman was allowed to sell was her body, and that stealing was more honest.

  At that moment, Jessyla came out of a doorway and walked to join them. “I thought you’d be much longer. Isn’t Patrol headquarters by the east market square?”

  “It is. I didn’t go that far.”

  “You let him go?” Jessyla’s voice was filled with outrage. “How could you? How could you?”

  “How could I not?” countered Beltur. “If I took him in to the City Patrol, he’d say that she knifed him. She’d be sent to the workhouse, and she’s in no shape to hide or run. I’d be reprimanded, or worse, for not bringing her in, and then they’d come here for her. Using a knife, theft, and assault while soliciting … do you think she’d survive the workhouse?”

  Jessyla looked at Beltur, openmouthed. “They’d do that?”

  “Unless she were a trader’s daughter,” he replied sardonically, “and I think it’s fair to say that she’s not.”

  The younger healer looked to her mother.

  “Beltur’s right, dear. It’s better for everyone this way. Ex
cept maybe Beltur. If you say anything…”

  “That’s horrible!”

  “Sometimes … life is,” replied Margrena. “Now … we’re needed at the end of the hall.”

  Jessyla winced.

  “What’s there?” asked Beltur.

  “The old men are,” replied Margrena. “It’s not Jessyla’s favorite healing duty.”

  “You’ll see why,” said Jessyla in a low voice.

  Beltur got the impression that he needed to see why she felt that way. “Lead on.”

  Margrena walked almost to the east end of the corridor and then stepped through a doorway, pushing the door all the way open. Jessyla entered next, followed by Beltur. There were four pallet beds in the room, lined up against the far wall.

  “Oh … it’s the pretty healer!” came from one of the men, delivered in a cracked raspy tone, but Beltur didn’t see which of the three men propped up in their beds had spoken.

  “And we brought a mage today,” said Jessyla in the falsely sweet tone that grated on Beltur.

  “Ohhh…” groaned the bald and wrinkled-faced man in the bed on the far right, offering a smile that was more like a grimace.

  Beltur could immediately sense that both his order and chaos levels were low, so low that had the man not spoken and smiled, Beltur might have thought that he was dying. More sensing revealed that the man had no feet, and likely had not had for some time.

  Jessyla moved toward the man who had groaned, but stopped just out of arm’s reach. “You’re looking better today.”

  “Is that all you can say, Healer?”

  Jessyla smiled. “Would you want me to say that you’re looking worse?” She turned to the man in the next bed, with wispy white hair and rheumy eyes that remained fixed, as if looking into the distance. “How are you today?”

  There was no response, although Beltur could tell that the man’s order and chaos levels were higher, if only slightly, than those of the first man, but there were hundreds of tiny points of patterned order and chaos within his head.

  “Hartyn’s not home today,” said the third man, whose voice confirmed that he had been the one who had greeted Jessyla. “He’s not home often anymore.”

  Margrena moved closer to the unresponsive man, touched the top of his head, for an instant, then looked to Beltur.

  “I can sense it.”

  She nodded.

  The third man appeared to be slightly younger than the first two, but his right arm was twisted and gnarled, and the left side of his face was a mass of old scars. He was missing his left eye. Beltur could sense pockets and strands of orangish-white chaos everywhere in his body, especially across his chest and in his lungs, strands so interwoven with order that Beltur could see that nothing he or any healer could do would change the inevitable, which was likely not to be that long in coming.

  “So how long do I have, pretty healer?” asked the chaos-ridden man, looking at Jessyla.

  “Long enough to tease me for a while,” Jessyla replied with a smile, reaching down and touching his twisted shoulder for an instant, and providing a tiny bit of order and comfort.

  Beltur could easily sense the order/chaos conflict that even Jessyla’s slight evasion of the truth created within her.

  The man tried to speak, but burst into a paroxysm of coughing that brought up blood-tinged yellow-green phlegm into the soiled cloth he held in his good hand.

  Beltur moved forward and touched his chest, using just a little order to calm and remove part of the sickness chaos.

  After the man cleared his throat, he said, “Thought you were a mage.”

  “I am,” replied Beltur. “I can do a few things like a healer. You need to rest for a few moments.” He turned to the fourth pallet bed, where Margrena and Jessyla just stood.

  The fourth man was dead, but there were a few lingering bits of order and more of chaos.

  “He died less than a glass ago,” said Beltur quietly to Margrena. Lowering his voice even more, he added, “You knew, didn’t you?”

  The older healer nodded, then drew the blanket over the man’s sunken face. “We’ll go downstairs and let Klarisia know. Then we’ll see if she needs help in the main receiving room.”

  Once the three were outside in the corridor, Jessyla turned to Beltur, a questioning expression on her face.

  “You’re about the only cheerful sight they’ll likely see all day,” Beltur said.

  “I know.” Jessyla sighed. “But they’re still thinking of…” She shook her head.

  Beltur just nodded.

  “Did you do that one any favor?” asked Margrena.

  “It was only a tiny amount of order. It won’t change anything, I think, but he’ll feel a little better for a while.” Even so, Beltur had to wonder, as he accompanied the two to the staircase and back down to another chamber on the main floor, one with at least fifteen people sitting on benches.

  The sense of sickness and chaos was everywhere. Beltur managed not to swallow as he stood back and waited while Margrena spoke a few words to Klarisia before rejoining Beltur and Jessyla. “We’re to take over here, starting with those on the bench at the east end. Beltur, if you and Jessyla would help that woman with the chaos-ridden boil on her shoulder.” Margrena’s words were not a question.

  For a moment, Beltur wondered why anyone with just a boil was even at the Council Healing House—until Jessyla eased away the woman’s grayed shirt, and he saw an inflamed and pus-filled circle the size of his palm just above her right shoulder blade, with reddish streaks radiating away from the circle. He eased his own cupridium knife from its sheath and dusted it with order, then showed it to Jessyla. “It might be better to use this.”

  Jessyla’s eyes widened.

  “It’s cupridium, Jorhan forged it for me. It’s very sharp.”

  “After I clean away the outside.”

  Beltur nodded and watched, finally handing the knife to Jessyla.

  As Jessyla took the knife, the heavyset woman looked up. “You won’t hurt me, Healer?”

  “It will hurt some,” Jessyla replied, “but not nearly as much as if we don’t open it and clean it out.”

  “You healers always say that.”

  “And it’s always true,” replied Beltur.

  “Usually,” said Jessyla, “but it won’t heal if I don’t clean out the chaos inside.”

  Beltur just observed as she trimmed the edges around the eruption, then cut a little bit farther, before handing the knife to Beltur to clean while she used more of the clear spirits. Then he handed the knife back to her.

  After a time, she looked to Beltur. “That’s all I’d like to do, but…”

  Beltur thought he understood, because there were threads of chaos wound into the muscle below. “See if you can sense what I’m going to try.” He concentrated on moving bits of free order into the threads of chaos, trying to make certain that he was using free order and not his own personal order, since the only point of using the order was to destroy wound chaos, not to strengthen or heal the muscle.

  Bit by bit he destroyed the wound chaos, and although it took more than a fifth of a glass, he didn’t feel worn out or light-headed when he finished. At least, he didn’t think he did.

  After Jessyla dressed the wound and the two stepped away, she cleaned the knife with the clear spirits and handed it back to Beltur. “Thank you. That made it easier.”

  Beltur took the knife and again dusted it with order before sheathing it.

  For the rest of the day, Beltur accompanied the two, helping where he could, but watching more than anything.

  Slightly after fourth glass, Margrena gestured to Beltur. “We’re done for the day.”

  Beltur could see two other older women sitting on a bench in the corner.

  The older healer followed Beltur’s eyes. “They won’t allow anyone but Klarisia or Adyla to heal them. One of them will be here shortly.”

  Beltur didn’t argue, but followed the two back to the first chamber, wher
e he had been introduced to Klarisia. Jessyla set down the basket, which had only one cloth left and only a bit of spirits in one of the two bottles, even though she had refilled the basket with cloths several times over the course of the day.

  “Your two are waiting for you,” Margrena told the head healer.

  “They always do. You two will be here tomorrow?”

  Margrena nodded.

  In turn, Klarisia handed a cloth pouch that clinked slightly to Margrena, who inclined her head.

  Then the three left the chamber. Beltur didn’t say anything until they were outside, heading west through a wind even more biting than it had been in the morning. “Thank you for letting me accompany you.”

  “What did you learn?” asked Margrena.

  “More about cleaning and dressing wounds and setting bones, and that I’d rather not set any bones unless there isn’t someone more experienced around.”

  “Are you coming with us tomorrow?” Margrena grinned.

  “I’m forging cupridium tomorrow, and then doing my City Patrol duty on sevenday. Would you mind if I came by the house on eightday afternoon?”

  “Please do,” said Jessyla quickly.

  “I do think I should follow you both more, but it will have to be when I have a day off.”

  “That’s an interesting change in wording,” said Margrena. “Before, you wanted to accompany us. Now, you think you should.”

  “Mother.”

  Beltur kept his smile to himself. “I should because there’s so much I need to know, but I want to see you both on eightday.”

  “Can you stop for a bit now?” asked Jessyla.

  “I think I’d best not. Today was work, and tomorrow will be as well.”

  Margrena just nodded, but Beltur had the sense she appreciated his words.

  At the door to Grenara’s small house, Jessyla turned to Beltur and took his hands. “Eightday. You promised.”

  Beltur smiled. “Eightday. I did. I wouldn’t miss seeing you for anything.”

  “Good.” She leaned forward and brushed his cheek with her lips. “Until then. And thank you so much for the scarf. It’s beautiful.”