[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.”Emily nodded.The first patient turned out to be an older man who had a nasty cough.Emily ran a check, discovered an infection in his lungs and removed it, then told him to be more careful what he smoked.He was still laughing as he walked back out the door.Emily sighed, and called for the final patient.He was a young boy, short with dark hair and blue eyes; Emily quietly estimated him to be no more than ten years old.The way he looked around, peering into the darkest corners, suggested he was jumpy.But there was nothing obviously wrong.“You’re safe here,” Emily said, feeling her heart go out to him.She couldn’t help feeling a sense of kinship with the young boy.There was something about him that reminded her of herself.“Sit down on the table, please.”The boy walked over to the table and stopped, unmoving.Emily frowned; he wasn’t sitting down or undressing.or trying to speak.Was he mute? Or.she hesitated, then motioned for him to undress.His entire body trembled as he pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it on the ground.Emily took one look at his back, then looked away, horrified.Her gorge rose within and she had to swallow hard to prevent herself from being sick.She’d seen horror.She’d seen Shadye and the Mimic.But this was different, all too human – and somehow all the worse for it.The boy’s back was covered in dark scars, several ending in very nasty bruises.Emily had seen marks on her own buttocks when she’d been caned by the warden, but this was worse.The skin had broken under the blows and become infected in several places.It was clear, she realized, as she forced herself to concentrate, that the boy hadn’t been caned.The bruises at the end of the scars were where the belt buckle had hit and broken his skin.Be clinical, she told herself.But it was so hard to look and not feel the desire to tear the person who’d beaten the boy into hundreds of tiny pieces.She could turn them into slugs and stamp on them, turn them into rabbits and set the dogs after them.there were so many options, but none of them would help him now.The infection was spreading so rapidly that she was honestly unsure how he’d stayed alive, let alone reasonably mobile.“Finish undressing,” she told him, even though she didn’t really want to know.She raised her voice, hoping that Lady Barb wasn’t in one of the stages where the potion couldn’t be left untended for more than a few seconds.“I think you should take a look at this.”She looked back at the boy, then turned away and threw up, violently.The bruises covered his buttocks and the back of his thighs, marching down his skin with almost military precision.Emily had had problems sitting comfortably for hours after the Warden had caned her, but this.she cursed herself for ever moaning about the Warden’s punishments.This was far worse than anything she’d ever endured, even in the moments everyone had wanted to blame her for the Mimic’s trail of bodies.Lady Barb looked pale as she ran her fingers over the bruises, then pushed the boy into bending over the table.Emily looked away, sickened.Lady Barb’s voice was cold and clinical, but Emily knew her well enough to hear the outrage she couldn’t quite hide.“No sign of rectal damage,” she said.“But, under the circumstances, it’s a small mercy.”Emily shook her head when Lady Barb motioned for her to take a look.She’d always disliked examining private parts in class, even though the parts were mounted on a homunculus.Here, she didn’t want to strip the boy of what little privacy he had left.no, that wasn’t entirely true.She didn’t want to see any signs of whatever else had happened to him.It was selfish, but she couldn’t help herself.“No physical reason for inability to talk,” Lady Barb noted.“Muteness probably comes from fear.Mental damage is a very strong possibility.”No, Emily thought.The Allied Lands stigmatized any signs of mental trauma or illness, fearing that it was a sign of necromancy.There were no psychologists to help coax the boy out of his trauma, no one who might be willing to help.she closed her eyes, wondering if there was something she could do to help.But she couldn’t take in everyone, could she?“Pass me the painkilling potion,” Lady Barb ordered.Her voice was still clinical, almost completely dispassionate.“And then stand ready to help me if necessary.”Emily hated her at that moment, hated her cold clinical approach to the problem.Cold logic told her that rage and fire wouldn’t help, but cold logic was no comfort.Lady Barb took the potion, helped the boy to drink enough of it to numb his entire body, then started casting spells over his back and buttocks.The infection would have to be removed before the skin could be healed.It hadn’t been once, Emily told herself, as she watched, fighting to avoid retching again and again.The boy had been beaten to within an inch of his life, not once, but many times.Each of the scars lay on an older scar.she wasn’t even sure how the boy had remained alive for so long.How often had he been beaten that he’d managed to keep going despite the pain?She watched the scars heal up, remembering one of the lectures Lady Barb had given her class when they’d talked about working as healers.It was quite possible for someone to be tortured, healed and then tortured again, prolonging his torment indefinitely.Lady Barb had told them that it wasn’t quite a violation of Healer Oaths, but they might have to be prepared to decide if they wanted to cooperate or not.And, if they decided poorly, they might be blamed for the whole affair.“We can’t send him back,” she said, as the boy slipped into an enchanted sleep.Lady Barb helped him down to the floor and placed him on a rug, but even so he didn’t look comfortable.Emily wondered what nightmares would torment his sleep, then decided she didn’t want to know.“What are we going to do with him?”Lady Barb shook her head.“I’ll have to talk to the headman,” she said.“He will have to make the final decision.”She turned and headed for the door.“Stay with him,” she added, as she picked up her staff.“He shouldn’t wake up for a few hours, but just in case.keep an eye on him.”Emily watched her go, then turned back to the boy, picked up a blanket and draped it over his body.He looked small, too small.He’d been deprived of food as well as love and care.Poor bastard, she thought.But we can help him, can’t we?Chapter FourteenIT WAS NEARLY TWO HOURS BEFORE Lady Barb returned, two hours that Emily spent alternately reading a book and keeping an eye on the boy.He twitched and moaned in his sleep, but not enough to break the spell.Emily watched him, wondering if there was something she could do to help, yet nothing came to mind.All she could do was watch.She shuddered as she looked down at the pale skin covering his back
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]