Angel-Seeker (45 page)

There wasn't much Elizabeth could do for the other two injured men, for other hands had cleaned their wounds and applied rough medicine. But she checked the splints anyway, offered drugs to stop pain and infection, and asked after any symptoms of dizziness or fever. One of the men, a thin, evil-looking fellow, cursed venomously the whole time she looked him over, furious at the prospect of missing work and losing pay, and blaming someone named Joe for carelessness on the job. His fellow sufferer just looked tired and morose, accustomed to more and worse setbacks than this.

“If you have any pain or bleeding or any red marks streaking up your arm, come look for Mary or me,” Elizabeth instructed the second man.

“It's just a bone,” he said wearily.

“A broken bone can kill you if you're not careful,” she said.

The thin man had been listening to their conversation. “Then I'll just have to kill Joe first,” he said.

“Or find a job that better suits your good temper,” Elizabeth said without pausing to think about it. There was a short silence, and then the second patient burst out laughing. The thin angry man jumped to his feet and stalked away.

“That's better than any number of drugs,” said the tired man, suddenly cheerful. “Thank you for your help.”

“You're welcome,” she replied.

After he left, levering himself to his feet and cradling his wrapped arm against his chest, Elizabeth repacked her bag with slow, deliberate movements. She was so exhausted she wasn't sure she could stand up, and the thought of making the long walk back to the dorm was almost overwhelming. Her eyes were not focusing properly; her mind kept flashing her images of the long, ugly gash in Henry's chest, the sharp bits of bone protruding from the destroyed hip. Neither Henry nor Mary was to be seen in the street, so Elizabeth assumed the other workers had carted the patient off to some protected place where Mary was doing what she could to set the bone.

Elizabeth should go help her. She should push herself to her feet and ask one of the construction workers where the healer and her patient had gone. She should go stand at Henry's bedside and closely watch Mary's ministrations, so that next time she was alone with someone so drastically injured, she would not feel foolish and helpless and terrified.

Instead, she leaned over and vomited into a ditch at the side of the road.

There was nothing she hated more than throwing up. She hesitated a moment, and then vomited again.

“Maybe it was the soup I brought you, but I think it was the sight of Henry's blood pumping out of his heart,” said a soft, burred voice behind her, and a hand was laid comfortingly upon her shoulder. She knew even before she looked that it was Rufus. “You haven't been at the healing profession so long that you're used to sights like that.”

“I'm sorry,” she whispered, wiping at her mouth and hating the taste on her tongue. She was mortified that he had seen her.

“Sorry? For being sick? That's a silly thing to say. Here. I think a little water might improve things.”

He handed her a jug of water but nothing to pour it into. She cupped her hand and managed to take a few swallows. The water tasted sweet, a welcome contrast to the acrid residue in her mouth.

“Thank you,” she said. “I didn't realize—I haven't done that before.”

“Now let's see if you're able to stand up,” he said, a trace of humor in his voice. “You look worn down to sinew. A mighty frail state for a girl who's going about saving lives.”

She climbed to her feet and found herself a bit steadier than she'd expected. “Where's Mary?” she asked. “She might need me.”

“Mary sent me out here to tell you to go on home.”

Elizabeth regarded him with suspicion. His face was smooth and dark, the face of any Edori man; the silky black hair had been cut recently, leaving the broad cheekbones and brown eyes completely exposed to view. Yet she found it hard to read his expression. “You might just be saying that,” she said, her voice half-accusing, “because you think I look so weak.”

He grinned. “And I would say it, too, for just that reason, except she really did tell me to send you home. She said, ‘I've got things well in hand here. Tell that girl to go home and sleep.' ”

“I think I'm too stunned to sleep,” Elizabeth said.

Rufus nodded. “Oh, and I forgot! She said, ‘And if Elizabeth says she doesn't feel like sleeping yet, well, Rufus, you just take her back to town and make sure she gets a good dinner.' ”

In spite of herself, Elizabeth giggled. “Now, that I know you made up.”

“I did,” he admitted. “But doesn't it sound like a good idea? You've just lost your lunch and breakfast.”

“I don't think I could eat,” she said. “But I'd like some hot tea.”

“I know just the place,” he said.

They sat in a cozy little cafe not far from the center of town and talked for the next two hours. After the hot tea, Elizabeth decided her stomach was calm enough to chance a little bread; and after the bread, she believed she would try some soup. Rufus ate more heartily but paused every few bites to ask her how she was feeling. He didn't order any wine, which made her grateful. David's constant indulgence in wine and other spirits had made Elizabeth begin to lose her taste for alcohol.

Not that she had seen David for three weeks or more.

“So how's the healing business going?” Rufus asked. “You seem to have become adept in a short time.”

Elizabeth made a face. “There's so much I don't know. I feel like I've learned amazing things—and then every day something happens, and I don't know how to deal with it. It makes me feel stupid.”

“Not stupid,” he said quickly. “But young enough to have a lot to learn.”

“I don't feel so young, either,” she grumbled.

He grinned. “Well, but younger than Mary, who must be fifty, wouldn't you guess? Do you think she learned everything in one winter? I would suppose it took her a good twenty years to become the healer she is now. And even she is probably still learning.”

“I love the work,” she said. “But there are so many things that can go wrong.” She looked up at him, her face serious. His own face looking back at her readied itself for solemn news. “I've seen two people die,” she said in a quiet voice. “Though we did everything we could. And I saw someone almost die—a friend of mine.”

“And you hadn't seen people die before?”

She nodded vehemently. “Yes! My mother and one of the hands on my cousin's farm. But they weren't—I wasn't trying to save them. I didn't know that I might be able to. Now I think, if I do everything right, why
shouldn't
I be able to save everyone? So it frightens me to think I might do something wrong.”

“Though everyone will die sooner or later, and not all the work of the best healer in Samaria will be able to save them,” he said gently. “Yovah gathers up the old souls to make room for the new ones. That is the way the cycle goes.”

“Yes, but—” She shook her head. She was not thinking clearly enough to get into a debate on religion and the miracle of existence. “Yes, but they shouldn't die because my skills failed,” she said.

He nodded gravely. “And this friend of yours? What happened to her? For it's clear she was one you did save.”

Elizabeth was silent a moment, long enough for the Edori to guess that the story was not a simple one. “Or clear that I almost killed her,” she said at last. “I gave her some herbs, and she took too many, and her body started bleeding, and she almost died.” She
looked up at him. “I did tell her. I did warn her. But I didn't speak strongly enough. I was irresponsible.”

“Or she was,” he said. “What did she want so badly from these drugs? Sleep? A release from pain?” He half-smiled and made a motion with his hand. “Those brilliant, crazy, waking dreams that you can distill from the lossala plant?”

“Fertility,” Elizabeth said. “She was in love with an angel boy, and he was on the point of leaving. She thought—if she had one last try—these herbs would increase her chances of conceiving his child. But instead—” She hesitated a long moment, remembering Faith's bitter sobs that day they had conferred in Mary's office. Faith had not blamed Elizabeth, not once, but Elizabeth felt as guilty as a murderess. “Instead, the drugs have burned out her womb, and she will never bear children for anyone, angel or mortal. She believes her life is ruined. I am so happy that she is alive, but she is so sad that sometimes I'm not sure she can go on.”

Rufus made no reply for so long that Elizabeth had to look up at him to try to gauge his reaction. He, too, looked sad, but he did not exhibit Faith's level of wild grief, just a certain wistfulness at the way the world was ordered.

“I understand the desire for children—that is a deep need among the Edori, to bear children and raise them with great joy—but this obsession with bearing angel children—” He shook his head. “I cannot comprehend it.”

“It's just that—”

“A child is a gift from Yovah,” he interrupted, his voice gaining passion as he spoke. “Every child. Can you imagine a greater miracle—a new life, set in your arms by a god who trusts you? One day there is nothing, just you and your small circle of friends. The next day there is another living creature, created from
you,
from desire and divinity. That thought doesn't stop your heart with wonder? That realization does not make you shiver where you sit?”

Elizabeth stared at him, struck dumb.

“Among the Edori, every new birth is celebrated. The whole tribe rejoices, and when the clans come together at the Gathering, it is with pride and delight that the elders stand up and recite the names
of every new child born to their tents. But among the mortals—” Rufus made another gesture with his hand, an angry one, brushing debris from an invisible surface. “Children are thrown away every day. In Semorrah, in Castelana, there are beggars in the streets—cripples and blind boys and girls who are missing an arm—these were left behind by parents who decided an imperfect child was not pleasing. How can such things happen? But that is not the worst of it. Women who care only for angel babies will abandon infants who are born without wings. Will leave them in the streets or the alleys or the roads outside of town to die of exposure and starvation. So they can seduce another angel lover and try again for a better child.”

He stopped, his generous mouth pinched tight, his dark eyes even darker with a long-held fury. “But why am I saying this to you?” he said, his voice quieter. “It is for just such a child that you made your way to Cedar Hills.”

She was racked by emotions so deep and conflicting that for a moment she could not answer him. She wanted to lie—she wanted to explain—she wanted to say something that would make him admire her, or at least forgive her, and she could not think why that mattered. She scarcely even knew this man. But she could not let him leave this table thinking so badly of her, classing her with the worst of women, the worst of human beings. And he looked like he was ready to surge to his feet at any second and stalk away.

“Yes,” she said in a small voice. “But that is no longer why I stay.”

It was enough; it kept him in place, anyway. “I came because I—because it had been so long since I had anything of value. Since I had been anyone who mattered,” she said, her voice quavering but determined. She had never really thought how to put this into words. All the women she knew understood this instinctively. “If you bear an angel child, everybody loves you. I just wanted to be loved. I wanted to do something to be loved
for
.”

“People love you for who you are, not the angels you produce,” Rufus snapped. But he was listening.

She nodded. “People love you for who you are if you are worth loving,” she said in a soft voice. “And I don't think I was. What did I do, what did I know, that mattered to anyone?”

“But you could have done anything!” he exclaimed. “Taught children or constructed buildings or written music or merely determined to be a kind person—”

“Or become a healer,” she said steadily. “Yes. I understand that now. Don't hate me because I didn't know it before.”

He grew suddenly quite calm but intense; his gaze was fixed on her with both sternness and speculation. “So you no longer chase angels like a child chasing after butterflies?”

She gave a tiny smile. “I only ever chased one angel. And I haven't seen him for weeks now.”

Rufus shrugged. “There are plenty of other angels in Cedar Hills. And other holds across the three provinces.”

“Having seen the—the
rigors
of childbirth, I am a little less eager to experience it for myself,” she said. “And from the stories I've been told, delivering an angel child is even more dangerous. If I fell in love with an angel and he fell in love with me? Oh, then I would happily try to bear his child. But as it stands right now—” She spread her hands palm up over the table. “I have other goals.”

“Falling in love with an angel is probably no better than falling in love with any man,” Rufus said rather gruffly.