“Want me to clean it? I've got a salve that smells terrible but works.”
She looks up at her mother. The woman hesitates, then nods. The girl steps forward, chin trembling, and holds still while I dab salve on the scratch with the tip of my finger.
“There. You're tougher than most of my patients.”
She doesn't smile, but her chin stops trembling.
We walk. Kovren pulls the cart, and the harness creaks against his grip but holds. Petre lies in the back, leg elevated on a folded blanket, face tight with pain but conscious. The woman walks beside the cart, the girl on her hip, watching the road ahead.
I walk beside Kovren.
His breathing is heavier than it should be. The fever I beat back last night is climbing again with the exertion, and pulling the cart is costing him. I see it in the set of his jaw, in the sweat darkening the collar of his leather armor, in the slight hitch in his stride that he's trying to hide and can't.
“You don't have to do this,” I say quietly. “We could rig something else to get Petre. Find a branch, make a travois.”
“It's fine.”
“Your definition of fine and mine are very different.”
“Noted.”
I watch his hands on the cart tongue. The knuckles are white. But the grip is controlled. Measured.
“You're good at that,” I say.
“Pulling carts?”
“Being careful.” I glance at him. “With the man. Lifting him. You didn't jar the leg once.”
He doesn't answer for a few steps. Then: “I've had practice. Being careful.”
“Because you have to be.”
“Yes.”
“Because if you're not careful, you break things.”
“Yes.”
I think about that. About what it means to live your whole life calibrating every touch, every grip, every movement, because the alternative is destruction. About how exhausting that must be.
“For what it's worth,” I say, “you're good at it.”
I reach up and touch his arm, just above the elbow. A brief pressure, the kind of touch I'd give any patient. Reassurance. Professional.
My hand stays a beat longer than it should. The heat of his skin seeps through the leather, and I pull back.
He looks down at me. His eyes are warm in a way that has nothing to do with the fever, and I hold the look longer than I mean to before turning back to the road.
He doesn't say anything. But his stride evens out, and the hitch disappears for a while.
The girl falls asleep on her mother's shoulder. Petre dozes in the cart, waking every time a wheel hits a stone, grimacing but quiet. The woman walks and watches the road and doesn't speak.
When the walls of Gorvani appear through the afternoon haze, the woman stops. Turns to Kovren.
“Thank you,” she says. Stiff. Uncomfortable. But she says it.
He nods. Doesn't speak. But his posture changes, and I think it might be the first time someone has thanked him for anything in a long time.
