Tamora Pierce - Street Magic

“Can’t you get a real healer?” Briar demanded, feeling pulled in two by Evvy and the Camelguts. “I just make medicines!”

The look in Douna’s small brown eyes made him ashamed that he’d asked. What could a poor gang offer a healer to make it worth the risk to visit them? Even if they had enough coin for one of the locals, what kind of healing could they get? Up until he reached Winding Circle, Briar himself would have found the idea of getting a healer for his gang’s wounds hilarious. Street kids, whether they were called rats or thukdaks, learned to fend for themselves.

“Sit,” he ordered Douna, pushing her toward the table. He pulled off his overrobe and folded it neatly, putting it on the sideboard. “Have some tea and something to eat. I’ll need to get some things. Evvy, grab that basket and come with me.” They’d have to argue about her schooling later. Right now he would use the healer’s trick of putting every idle pair of hands to work.

Evvy stuffed the rest of a large slice of cheese into her mouth and grabbed the basket he’d pointed to. He led her upstairs to the workroom. It wasn’t as elaborate as the one at home at Winding Circle, but there were still plenty of lotions, balms, teas, and syrups, some of them his, some Rosethorn’s. He’d replenished his kit the night before out of habit, but he would need as much extra as he and Evvy could carry. He fully subscribed to Rosethorn’s belief, sometimes thinking ahead was just as good as magic.

Quickly Briar filled small jars from the large ones, wrote down contents on the corks that stopped the jars, and tucked them into Evvy’s basket. Next he stopped at the linen chest and cushioned the jars with pads which could be made into bandages. From the roof he fetched a number of thin, flat boards used for gardening: they made good splints. Another length of bandage was converted into a sling for the boards, which he hung on his own back.

“What’s all this for? And why are you letting some Camelgut order you around?” Evvy wanted to know.

“Because I can help and they won’t get anyone who can help better,” retorted Briar, trying to think if he’d missed anything. Suddenly he noticed a flaw in his plan to put Evvy to use. “What gang are you with?” he asked. Some gangs had treaties, allowing members to cross territories. If her gang had a treaty with the Camelguts…

She interrupted his thoughts with her abrupt reply. “I’m not in a gang.”

Briar made a face. “Evvy, this is serious.”

“So am I,” she insisted. “I didn’t belong, I don’t belong, and I’ll never belong.”

“Because if the Camelguts are at war with your gang,” he began.

“Is I’m not in a gang just too big an idea for you?” she cried.

Briar shook his head. He’d get the truth out of her later. Right now he needed an extra pair of hands. Not only had Evvy shown she was inclined to obey him—within limits —but she was also too young and too little to try to fight him if he vexed her with an order. He couldn’t say the same of any Camelgut.

He walked into the dining room. “Douna, is there a decent pot at the den? A clean one?” Douna, who had stuffed her mouth as rapidly as Evvy had, shook her head. Briar marched into the pantry and came out with a cauldron that was roughly as large as Evvy’s basket. Boiled water was safer if the pot it got boiled in was clean. He grabbed Evvy’s napkin from the front of her tunic, where it still rested, and tossed it to Douna. “Wrap some food in that and let’s go,” he ordered.

The Camelgut den was in chaos. Gang members lay on pallets as others tended them. Apparently there had been fights throughout the night. Very few Camelguts sported no bruises at all, and there were eight fresh victims, not five.

Briar took a deep breath. For some reason he remembered a talk he’d had during one of Summersea’s medical crises, one of the many times he’d been pressed into work with the sick. “Why do they obey you?” he’d asked the woman as those who were well enough to work carried out her orders.

“It’s no mystery,” she’d said then. “I act as if they should. And they’re frightened enough to turn instinctively even to those who only know a bit more than they do.”

Act as if they should obey, Briar thought now. And they did send for me again, after all. They must trust me some. He turned to Douna. “Get that pot filled with water and put it on to boil,” he ordered. “Evvy, stick close to me.”

“Oh, I will,” she muttered, watching the Camelguts from the corners of her eyes.

Briar unslung the staves from his back and leaned them against the wall. Then he scratched his head and considered the room. Since his arrival at Winding Circle, he had worked in sickrooms in three epidemics and a border war, but he’d always been under the guidance of Rosethorn and experienced healers. What would they do?

First straighten out the mess, Rosethorn’s voice said in his mind. You won’t be able to find your ankles with both hands and a lamp otherwise.

“Here’s how we start,” he called loudly. All conversations stopped. Even those who were moaning fell silent. Urda save me, Briar thought, they are actually listening. He didn’t try to savor the moment, but rattled off instructions. He’d already found with Evvy that if he didn’t give her time to argue, she wouldn’t. He put that knowledge to use with the Camelguts, ordering some to move the pallets into rows and others to clear away the mess of jars, rags, crates, and barrels that littered the floor.

“Why are the doors and windows covered?” he asked one of the Camelguts.

The boy, who was about Briar’s age, shrugged. “We got tired of local kids peeking at us all the time.”

“But it’s not that this is a secret place?” Briar wanted to know. The Camelgut shook his head. “Then uncover them,” Briar ordered. “Let’s get some light and air in here.”

The Camelgut pulled aside the rags that covered the windows and doors and secured them: now some light and fresh air entered the room. A group of three was sent with jars and handfuls of sand to fountains, where they had orders to scour the jars with sand, fill them with water, and bring them back. The fire was built up and trash taken outside. Even with the windows uncovered, the den was still shadowy. Two Camelgut boys made rough torches and thrust them into holders on the walls.

As the gang members cleaned up, Briar inspected each victim. Those whose bruises and cuts didn’t look serious were ordered to clean up or sit on a bench against the wall. Dealing with the less seriously hurt was easy for Briar—growing up in the slums of Hajra, he’d learned about all kinds of injuries and wounds, including the ones that might eventually kill someone. In Summersea’s epidemics he had seen how the healers sorted groups of the sick, treating the worst off first. He found those now, and got to work.

Briar could do little for the boy whose forehead was visibly dented, except make him comfortable. Sometimes people recovered from such injuries; sometimes they didn’t. He moved on to another boy, squinting as he tried to see the extent of his injuries. The nearest torch burned poorly, dumping smoke into the air. Briar’s eyes stung. It was hard to tell if he was looking at a mammoth bruise or dirt on his patient’s shin. His hands told him it was a bruise, but it would have been nice to see the difference.

That gave him an idea. “Evvy,” he said.

“Yep.” The girl crouched beside him, careful not to jar the contents of the basket she carried.

“Put that down.” She obeyed as Briar grubbed in his breeches pocket. He found his worry stone, a small crystal egg he liked to hold whenever he thought he was about to say or do anything stupid. Its coolness seemed to draw the anger from his veins whenever he remembered to use it. Rosethorn said it worked because thinking of the stone instead of the thing that upset him simply broke the chain that fed a rising temper.