She swiveled around as the man went by and saw that his outfit included a tail that, rather than dragging limply on the ground behind him as she might have expected, bounced and waved like a natural tail of flesh and bone.
What astonished her almost as much as the bull-man was that no one else seemed to notice him, no one but herself, Wendee, and Doc. Even the innkeeper's son, who was young enough that he should have been delighted by such a colorful figure, passed the bull-man without slowing, pausing only when he realized that he had nearly lost those he was intended to guide.
After they had threaded through the streets for a bit longer, Firekeeper realized why these exotic figures raised no comment. Many they passed on the crowded streets in this part of town could have rivaled the bull-man in complexity of costume and pure gaudiness of finery.
Within the next hour Firekeeper saw so many wildly attired figures that she finally didn't bother to turn and stare after each one. There were people dressed as birds or beasts, people dressed as the night sky in robes set with mirrors, people parading beneath amazing hats—some so large that they required support yokes resting on the wearer's shoulders.
Nor were the domestic animals immune to the general passion for costuming things as what they were not. The horses wore—at the very least—horns jutting from their foreheads or antlers on their headstalls. Their coats had often been colored some unusual shade. Firekeeper had a sudden insight to where the dyes once used to color Princess Sapphire's Blue must have been bought. She wondered if Lady Melina had been inspired by her youthful visit to New Kelvin.
Oxen with intricately curling horn sheaths hauled carts covered in bells and streamers. Even the dogs—though they encountered few of these—were adorned with things that glittered and flashed. Only the birds were, by and large, untouched by the human passion for decoration and seemed drab and plain by contrast.
Within a few hours after noon, Derian and Wendee had located a landholder who seemed interested in renting a portion of her premises to them.
She was a fat woman with rolling chins that effectively disguised the location of her neck. Because of the New Kelvinese custom—fairly universally observed as far as Firekeeper could tell—of shaving the front of her head to a point just above the tips of her ears, the woman appeared to have an extremely large head—or at least a vast expanse of face.
This face was stained bright pink, the color of certain late flowers—the flowers that must compete for the attention of bees who have been jaded by the entire spectrum of spring and early summer. Her eyebrows were stained a darker pink, as were her lips. The blue eyes that confronted the world from this wash of rose were startling in contrast.
Somehow, Firekeeper whispered to Blind Seer, I expected them to be red, like those of a rat seen at night.
The wolf snuffled his agreement. "At least her gown is green. More pink and I would think we had opened a door into the sunrise."
"I am," the pink-faced woman announced haughtily, "Hasamemorri."
She spoke Pellish with a formality that suggested that she had learned it much as Elise had learned New Kelvinese, from books and tutors rather than from daily use.
Wendee said something in New Kelvinese, doubtless a request about the property they had been told Hasamemorri had to rent.
Hasamemorri raised a carnation-pink eyebrow, possibly, Firekeeper thought, considering their previous encounters, at Wendee's archaic phrasing. Wendee, however, had learned it was better to show at least some knowledge of the local language. The locals were either amused or flattered. They took not being told that one among them spoke New Kelvinese—as the trio had learned at their first stop—as an insult.
Hasamemorri said something else. Though she didn't invite them inside, Firekeeper saw her relax slightly.
"Curious about us," Blind Speaker commented. "And she has stabling for the horses. This time I checked."
Firekeeper nodded thanks. They'd wasted a long hour negotiating with a promising landholder only to learn too late that although he owned stable space it was currently leased out. She didn't pass the news on to Wendee. Wendee had learned enough to ask early on.
Wendee continued to speak in New Kelvinese for another phrase or so; then she switched to Pellish.
"I'm sorry, ma'am," she said. "I can't say what I need to in your fine language."
"I doubt," Hasamemorri replied fairly amiably, "that the texts of the great playwrights contained the words you need for discussing a rental. Would you and your companions come within?"
Doc nodded acceptance. Firekeeper spoke quickly before anyone could accept for her.
"Please, Wendee, Doc—I want to stay out here and watch the people."
Wendee gave a quick glance toward Hasamemorri, but the pink lady seemed pleased rather than offended.
"Let the child remain without," she said grandly. "Come into my parlor."
A cup of something hot and smelling lightly of mint was sent out to her. It wasn't tea, quite, but it wasn't alcoholic, so Firekeeper sipped it as she watched the New Kelvinese go by. She tried to think how she would paint herself if she were to pass as a New Kelvinese. None of the designs she saw appealed to her, but the imagining amply amused her.
Doc and Wendee emerged in good humor.
"We have a place and at a decent rent, too," Wendee said as they walked briskly back to the inn. "It turns out that Hasamemorri has trouble with arthritis or something in her knees."
"Nothing that losing a few hundred pounds wouldn't help," Doc muttered.
"And Doc made much of the pain recede," Wendee continued blandly. "In return for his continued services, we're to have the entire ground floor—Hasamemorri prefers the upper apartments. There's a kitchen we can share and she'll even loan us a maid once a week and allow us to combine our laundry with hers for a small additional charge."
Much of this information rushed through Firekeeper's mind as water would over a rock. Still she grasped the essentials.
"And the horses and mules?" she asked, just to be safe.
"There's a good stable out back," Wendee assured her. "We have to supply our own feed and labor, but that's no trouble."
"Good," Firekeeper said. "Now we can find Lady Melina. People will hear of Doc and come to us with stories."
"I doubt it will take long for us to get a line on her," Wendee agreed optimistically. "Right, Doc?"
Doc, perhaps contemplating an undefined period of time during which he must daily contemplate Hasamemorri and her abused knees, replied with unaccustomed fervor:
"I sincerely hope so!"
Arrival in dragons breath dispelled the last of the cloud that had clung to Elise since the bandit attack. They moved from the inn to Hasamemorri's house the very afternoon that Wendee and Derian rented the space. The landlady descended like a pink cloud to supervise their arrival, although she seemed disappointed that they didn't have more baggage.
"Perhaps," Wendee said with a soft giggle as she hurried past Elise with a double armful of groceries, "she thought we would be burdened down with exotic foreign trade goods—salted fish, maybe."
Elise grinned, her happiness continuing unabated when the next day dawned and the work of settling in began in earnest. Hasamemorri might be disappointed, but Elise was not.
Everything about the house—including their pink-painted landlady—filled her with delight. Elise had always enjoyed reading about foreign lands. Bright Bay, cousin as it was to Hawk Haven, had proved to be something of a disappointment. New Kelvin most definitely was not, and now she had escaped the shelter of the inn and was actually living among the native people. It was all she could do to keep from hugging herself with excitement.
The large central hallway that split the ground floor of the house into two parts was transformed into their waiting area. The room to the left of the front door was to be Doc's consulting room. The chamber to the right would double as a short-term infirmary and dispensing area.
At night Edlin would sleep in the consultin
g room; Derian and Doc would, share a chamber that backed onto the infirmary. Elise and Wendee would share the nice, well-lit side room that, owing to its glass skylight, would become a surgery when one was needed.
Firekeeper had made clear that she didn't want any special space in the house reserved for her. If the night grew cold, she would sleep in the kitchen. Otherwise, she preferred the stables. As this provided protection for their horses and mules, no one—not even Edlin—protested that these were quarters far beneath the rank of a lady.
Edlin, Elise thought with a wry smile, was learning something about the reality of the girl he thought he adored—learning that she was often taciturn, that when she did speak she was often disturbingly literal, and that she was as loyal as the sun was bright—most especially to Blind Seer, but also to those humans for whom she felt responsible.
At this very moment, Edlin, however, was presumably too busy to moon over his wolfy lady. Wendee had somehow tricked her young master into supervising the maids Hasamemorri had graciously loaned them. As this meant assisting with the lifting and water carrying—Doc was being a stickler for cleanliness, especially in the surgery and consulting rooms—Edlin was kept quite busy.
Firekeeper and Derian had been excused from anything to do with setting up the household and medical practice. Their job was to learn everything they could about Dragon's Breath. Since the innkeeper's boy had been quite happy to continue as guide and translator, Elise was free to translate for Doc—a necessary task, since without assistance he could not understand anything his patients said to him.
Even before they hung the Healer's Guild emblem out over the door, Sir Jared set very strict limits as to whom he would see. As her very first task, he asked Elise to letter a sign in New Kelvinese stating his limits.
"I am not a miracle worker," he explained, steadily sorting the supplies Wendee had bought for him in the market earlier that morning. "I cannot cure any illness. I cannot make tumors melt away. My gift is for strengthening. I can help a broken bone to mend more quickly; I can convince the blood to replenish itself at a greater rate. I can give the body's own soldiers courage to carry on their fight against an invader but I cannot, cannot…"
He almost shouted the word.
"I cannot do miracles. Moreover, I will not try. Even the little things I can do drain me so that I sleep at night as one dead. I will not waste the capacity I do have to help fussing over those who are beyond my powers."
Elise reached out an impulsive hand to hold one of Doc's. She felt his long, dexterous fingers wrap around hers, grateful for the human contact, forgetting for a moment anything but that they were two people.
This was the man she knew and liked, the man who had taught her how to bind wounds and to mix healing ointments. On the eve of the early battles of King Allister's War, he had also taught her how to recognize a person capable of being treated from one who could not be. That had Been a terrible lesson, one that had been given its first test when her own dear cousin Purcel had been brought in from the field.
"I understand, Doc," Elise said softly, "and I'll make certain the patients understand, too."
Sir Jared nodded and when he pulled his hand out of hers it was not with that sudden, embarrassed jerk that she had come to dread but simply because he needed it to unpack a box of cloth bandaging strips.
"Derian did take care of our paperwork with the local guilds?" he asked.
Elise nodded, busying herself with sketching out Doc's manifest on a sheet of wood with a stick of charcoal. One good thing about New Kelvin—there was never a shortage of writing materials. Anticipating their need, Hasamemorri had loaned her tenants some interesting color sticks in which the pigments were suspended in wax. They weren't as versatile as paint and had a tendency to smear, but they also didn't need long to dry.
Elise paused to squint critically at her draft, rubbing out the end of a line where the letters had started to slope.
"Yes, he and Wendee went out this morning. They registered us with the local—I guess you'd call it mayor's office—and picked up a list of the regulations we'll be expected to abide by. Then they went over to the Healer's Guild and paid for your license."
"Any problems?"
Elise heard Doc pause in his unpacking as if anticipating trouble.
"Not really," she assured him. "They were happy to take our money. Derian and Wendee were very careful to explain that you would be doing more than simply binding wounds and dispensing potions. Derian said that the Healer's Guild officer seemed intrigued rather than challenged."
"That reaction's interesting in itself," Doc said thoughtfully. "I wonder if Wendee's conjecture that the talents don't flourish here is indeed true."
Elise finished the rough lettering for her sign. In the interests of speeding the opening of their business, she'd kept the legend brief and to the point.
SIR JARED SURCLIFFE, HEALER.
SPECIALIST IN BROKEN BONES, WOUNDS,
AND COMMON AILMENTS.
NO MIRACLES!
"What do you think?" she asked, holding it up for Doc's inspection.
"Neat and concise," he said approvingly. "Since you'll be continuing to assist me, my lady, I'll give to you the task of separating the patients into those we can treat and those we cannot."
Elise—threatened at first by the seeming formality implied in "my lady"—warmed to the inclusive "we."
"I can try," she said.
"Good." Sir Jared rubbed his hands briskly. "Now, my hope is to reserve my talent for where it is truly needed. The rest of our patients we will treat by more usual methods."
"Right," Elise said. "Shall I send in your first patient? There's a friend of Hasamemorri waiting upstairs in her parlor."
Doc looked about his makeshift consulting room.
"I suppose you may as well get her. You can color in the sign later."
That first day—their first full day of residence in Hasamemorri's house—they saw three people. First came the friend of Hasamemorri's—an elderly woman with very bad swelling of the joints. Doc gave her a powder for the pain and an ointment for her joints.
Their second patient was the result of a chance accident a street away. A young man had been caught between a cart and a wall when the donkey pulling the cart was frightened by a sudden noise. Someone had noticed Edlin hanging out the emblem required by the Healer's Guild and Brought the injured man there, not caring about credentials as much as proximity.
Elise's battlefield experience kept her from blanching when the pale, blood-smeared youth was hauled in on a makeshift stretcher constructed from someone's winter cloak. She knelt by him out in the street, checked for blood on his lips, the odor of bowel on his breath.
The brownish red stain the young man had used to pattern his face was distracting, but a gentle inspection with her fingertip was enough to show her what was dye and what was blood.
Doc heard the commotion and came to the door, but he didn't rush to take her place.
"Do we have a chance?" he asked, almost conversationally.
"I think so," she replied.
"Have his friends bring him into the consulting room. The surgery isn't ready yet."
With that, Doc retreated. In the background, Elise could hear him bellowing to Wendee for hot water. With the part of her mind that wasn't completely absorbed in directing the bearers, she made a note to make certain that water was always kept warm on the hob for just such emergencies.
The youth looked more badly injured than he really was. Most of the blood proved to be from abrasions. His worst injuries were cracked and broken ribs, but those that were broken had missed the lungs. There was no bowel perforation.
An hour after he had been carried in he was set in the infirmary, sound asleep from one of Doc's potions.
Their third visitor arrived a few hours after the young man had been brought in, when Doc was sitting in his consulting room drinking very strong tea and recovering from the ordeal.
Knowing how exhaust
ed Doc was, Elise nearly sent this patient away. Superficially, he looked quite healthy. Then he held up one of his hands. It was withered, the muscles gone, the fingers collapsed loosely onto themselves.
"I'm sorry," Elise said to him, wishing her New Kelvinese weren't so formal. She thought it made her sound more severe than she wished. "Sir Jared cannot heal old injuries. His ability is limited to strengthening the body when it must battle new wounds."
The man—she had trouble judging his age because of the concentric lines of yellow and orange he had drawn about his eyes and mouth—frowned. His dull blond hair was drawn back into a tight braid and his loose robe hid the shape of his body.
"I saw that on the sign," he said. "Still, I would speak with Sir Jared. I will pay for a consultation."
Something in the patient's gaze—his eyes were a weird, pale shade without tint of their own—made Elise feel that she could not send him away. There was an aura of command about him that made her suspect he was not accustomed to being denied.
She longed to pass the decision onto Doc, but that wouldn't be right.
"Very well," she said. "Sir Jared is recovering from a surgery and must look in on his patient in a bit, but he is available now."
The man glided past her into the consultation room without further comment, without even bothering to knock. Elise followed him in, signing her apology for the interruption to Doc over the visitor's shoulder.
"Sir Jared doesn't yet speak New Kelvinese," she explained when their visitor looked back at her quizzically, as if wondering why she was still there. "I will translate if you wish."
"I do," he said, "for I lack your tongue. I am Oculios." He continued bowing to Doc and then, a bit uncertainly, to Elise herself.
Elise translated. "He says his name is Oculios."
Doc nodded, said, "Oculios," with a slight smile.
He did pretty well. There was something wrong about how he shaped the vowels. He made the "o" sound too flat—a touch more "ah" than "o"—but it was. recognizable.
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