“Oh, I don’t know,” Zelen said, sitting down at his worktable. Altien had prepared all the essentials: straight lengths of wood, wide bandages, and a bowl of plaster. “My sisters would say, so long as you have your wits, you can take as much vengeance as you want. This next bit might hurt, I’m afraid—yell if you want. Altien’s heard worse, half of it from me.”
The arm was small and the break a thin one, the sort common in children. Zelen pressed, then pulled, picturing the lines that he knew by heart. The coiled muscles stretched, letting him draw the bones beneath straight and true. The girl gave several sobbing yelps, almost hiccups.
“That’s the worst of it,” he finally said, reaching for splints and bandages, “and you did sterling work. Here.” He passed a handkerchief toward her.
The child made a delighted sound—bright-red kerchiefs went excellently well with painkillers, Zelen had found—and mopped her eyes. “Really?”
“Mm-hmm. I’ve heard grown men yell like hunting dogs in full tongue for much less.”
“Huh!” she said, sounding obviously satisfied. Then, with the careless backtracking of children and those not quite with their wits about them, she added, “It’s not because of my arm I can’t get back at him; it’s because of his brother.”
“What about his brother?”
“Not around no more,” she said, the remnants of tears gradually leaving her voice as the memory of pain vanished and distraction occupied her. “Mitri’s mam thinks he was stolen away.Mymam thinks he tumbled down a well someplace.”
Either was possible, Zelen absently thought, dipping and then wrapping cloth. The streets at Heliodar’s border were hazardous places for children, though accident was more likely than kidnapping. “I take it they’ve searched.”
“Oh, yes. My mam and da were out half last night.”
“Was that when he vanished?”
“So people noticed. When he didn’t come back for dinner,” said the girl. “Mitri says he bets Jaron ran off to sea, but who’d take him? He’s not but eleven and skinnier than me. But I don’t want to say it. Even if he did dare me. He didn’t mean for me to fall.”
“You’ve got a good head on your shoulders,” Zelen said, “whatever your arm might be doing just now. What’s your name?”
“Tanya. M’da’s Jan the Wheelwright, lives at the corner of Old King’s Road and Snakebend,” she said, with as much confidence as any baroness Zelen had ever heard announce herself.
“I’m sorry about your friend, Tanya, and your current misfortune.”
“Thanks,” she said. Zelen, absorbed in his work, couldn’t see her face, but there was a preparatory sort of silence about her. He half anticipated her next subject. “You know a lot about the gods?”
“I’ve studied a little,” he said. “I’m no priest.”
“Nah. Priests are always busy. I guess you are too, but—”
“But I can talk while I’m busy.”
“Do you think Letar will let him look back at Mitri and his mam sometimes? If he’s dead, I mean.”
“I don’t know the Dark Lady’s will,” Zelen said slowly, pulling a curtain over old pain for the sake of his patient, who asked earnestly and innocently, “but all I’ve heard makes me believe She would, if he wanted to. She’s kind, in Her way.”
“Oh,” said Tanya, and closed her eyes again. “That’s good.”
Chapter 5
Tanya was still sleeping when the bandages turned firm enough that Zelen could release her arm. As usual, he had to admire the young’s ability to sleep in whatever situation they found themselves. The syrup doubtless helped, but Zelen had taken a bit of it himself now and again, and he doubted he would’ve been able to drift off with one arm held in the air.
He rose and started to reroll the leftover bandages while he walked toward the office. There was always another use for them. The stiffening mixture didn’t keep well, sad to say, but the ingredients didn’t cost too much, and with luck there wouldn’t be a rash of broken bones in the next week.
Altien was still seated behind the desk, making notes. His handwriting was careful, small, and scratchy, better than Zelen’s, although his diagrams were inevitably round where they should be straight and vice versa. “The girl’s father is in the receiving room waiting for word,” he said, “and there’s a small crowd of young people outside the clinic. I invited them in, but I surmise they fear being given tonics or possibly washed.”
“I’m constantly tempted, I admit. Sticky creatures, children.”
“Humans’ are, yes. But I suppose you can’t help it.”
Zelen was chuckling when he went out into the receiving area, which itself relaxed the man sitting there: a dockworker, broad shouldered and large bellied, with dark skin like his daughter’s and gray-specked hair. “It was a terribly boring sort of an injury,” Zelen told him. “Tiny fracture, young bones, should be back at all her old mischief in a few weeks. Try to be more complicated in the future.”
Jan the Wheelwright actually laughed then, as Zelen had intended, and a few more worry lines disappeared from his forehead. “Forgive me, sir, but I don’t think we will. Though I’ve no doubt Tanya could manage it, if any of ’em could.”
