The Nightborn by Isabel Cooper (howl and other poems TXT) 📗

“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.”

“She seems the sort. Brave girl, likely more than is good for her,” he added sympathetically. “You can take her home now if you’re up to carrying her, or wait a bit for her to wake up.”

“She’s not so heavy,” said Jan, rising from the long bench that rested along one wall.

“No.” Zelen dithered briefly between concern and respect for privacy, then came down on the side of the former. “She mentioned that a friend of hers was giving you all a bad time of it.”

“Jaron. Mmm.” Tanya’s father sighed. “No trace of him. He’d reached the age to argue with his mother a bit, so he could’ve run off, but…”

There was no need to finish. Heliodar had no shortage of abandoned buildings and old wells, nor of predators. Being forcibly taken aboard a merchant ship or a fishing boat as a dogsbody was the most pleasant possibility.

“Would another set or three of eyes help?” he asked. “I’ve a bit of time on my hands.”

“Might,” Jan said, slow and cautious. “And I’m sure the lad’s parents would thank you for it. As would I. Best tomorrow, though, when there’s light enough. You know where we’re at?”

“Tanya mentioned.”

“Then thank you twice, sir,” Jan said. Reaching into the battered pouch on his belt, he produced a small cloth sack of coins, likely copper swordfish, the smallest and most common currency. Zelen didn’t try to give it back but didn’t examine it either. If the payment covered the ingredients that went into Tanya’s cast, he’d feel fortunate. If not, it wouldn’t be the first such episode.

“Fair night to you,” said Zelen, and opened the outer door.

Five youths of various ages and degrees of grime were gathered there, watching in wide-eyed suspense. They weren’t watching him or the door any longer, though, whatever they might have been doing when Altien had spoken to them. A shining black carriage across the street, harnessed to a pair of immaculately groomed gray horses, had commanded all their attention.

Zelen knew the driver’s russet-and-gold livery. He knew the coat of arms on the door. If he hadn’t recognized those, he would have known the three men who emerged, and particularly the figure in the center: tall, slim, dressed in unornamented black and gray clothes that cost a month’s wages in this part of the city. His hair was platinum blond, but his face was otherwise very similar to Zelen’s own.

The children didn’t miss the resemblance. They stared at Gedomir and the guards, then back to Zelen. The coach and the liveried, armed men were clearly the more fascinating picture, but the knowledge that one of the clinic healers had a relative his age, likely a brother, and a rich brother at that, was clearly striking a few of the older ones as interesting.

“Gedomir,” said Zelen. “I hadn’t known you were coming to the city.”

It took all of his self-control to keep from swearing.

* * *

It seems you played a few cards right, a familiar mental voice said as the butler opened the door to Branwyn’s room. I can’t enjoy a room like this as I once did, but it’s a much finer view than the inn.

Yathana was lying across the foot of Branwyn’s bed, three feet of straight, razor-edged steel in a scabbard covered with midnight-blue silk, with thin golden chains connecting small amethysts and garnets. Her hilt appeared gold too—a thin layer of gilt did wonders—and the eye-sized fire opal in the center of her guard was now flanked by two