The Law of Isolation (64 page)

Curse the narrow-minded bureaucrats that controlled every aspect of life in Giroda. She’d had such hopes when she’d first discovered how effectively sweet vitriol made patients insensible to pain. For a while she’d been sure she would revolutionize the practice of medicine, raising it to heights not seen since the ancient wizards lost their powers. But then one error in dosage had ruined everything. The Magistrates had ruled the use of sweet vitriol excessively dangerous and forbidden it. How could they not recognize that mistakes were inevitable when developing a new procedure? Nalini regretted the girl’s death, but she regretted all the needless deaths since more.

She cleaned up the blood-soaked cloths while giving the man her standard instructions. “If the incision becomes red or inflamed, or if the boy develops a fever, bring him back to me. I have medicines that can cure infection.” Most of the time.

This boy should be fine. He was young and strong and otherwise healthy. The little protrusion off the intestine had been swollen but still intact; none of the noxious fluid had escaped to spread its poison. And since she’d begun taking measures to keep all her instruments scrupulously clean, the incidence of post-surgical infections had dropped a great deal.

He should be coming around soon. Nalini laid an ear to his chest and listened to his breathing. Slow and regular, the way she liked it.

A sudden banging on the door made Nalini jerk her head up. Gesturing the boy’s father to silence, she hurried to the door. If it was the Magistrates’ soldiers she was doomed, for there was no way to hide the evidence of the clandestine surgery quickly enough. But they wouldn’t have knocked.

When she cracked the door open she saw two men in the garb of traders from Ramunna, both clearly the worse for a late night in Nivit’s taverns. The shorter one, with a round face and a neatly pointed beard, supported the taller, rougher-looking one, who clutched his blood-soaked side.

“Are you Nalini Oba, the healer?” the shorter one asked in Ramunnan. “We were told you could patch my friend up.”

“I make no promises, but let me look.” Nalini gestured him to a chair. She wasn’t going to kick the boy off the cot in favor of a drunkard who’d gotten sliced up in a brawl. At least not until he’d fully recovered from his drugged sleep.

She pulled back the man’s jerkin, removed the towel he held pressed to the wound, and examined the jagged cut. It wasn’t pretty. The portion over his ribs was shallow, but the knife had continued downward and sliced open his belly. Layers of red muscle and yellow fat gaped open. Ropy blue bowels were visible. She’d have to wash away the blood to see if any deeper damage had been done.

She scowled at the man. “You’re lucky to be alive. If you want to stay that way, you’ll have to let me sew you up.”

The man grimaced and set his jaw. “Whatever it takes.”

She pushed the edges of the wound together and let him press the towel over it again. “Be still for a moment—what’s your name?”

“Teried,” the man supplied through gritted teeth.

“And I’m Ozor,” the other man offered.

Strange, those didn’t sound like Ramunnan names. “Well, Teried, as soon as I finish with my current patient I’ll see what I can do. Ozor, keep an eye on him and catch him if he passes out.”

Nalini stopped at the washbasin to rinse the blood off her hands and went to check on the boy. He was blinking groggily and struggling to sit up. She supported him and helped him swing his legs off the cot. “How do you feel?”

The boy made a face and worked his mouth. “It tastes funny. I think I’m going to throw up.”

“That happens sometimes. I’ve got a bowl right here if you need it.” She positioned the big basin she kept handy, but after a few minutes the boy waved it away.

“I’m all right.” He peered at his belly. The row of stitches seemed to fascinate him. One hand came up to touch them; Nalini batted it away.

“Hands off. Let me bandage it for you.” As Nalini’s deft hands wound the long linen strip she addressed the boy’s father. “You’ll need to change the dressing daily. Other than that, leave it alone.” She tucked the end of the bandage in place and gave the boy a pat. “Feel like standing up? If you can walk, your father can take you home.”

The boy lurched to his feet. He staggered at first, but after a few minutes he was steady enough that Nalini felt comfortable letting his father guide him out the door. The best thing for him now was a good night’s sleep in his own bed. In a week he’d be up and around again. In a couple of months, nothing but the scar would remain to show he’d ever been sick.

Nalini closed the door and turned back to the traders. “All right, your turn.” She swapped out the blood-spattered sheet for a fresh one and gestured for Ozor to support Teried to the cot. The big man lay back, muttering curses under his breath. Nalini frowned. She was fluent in Ramunnan and Marvannan as well as her native Girodan, but she didn’t recognize his words.

She stripped off his tattered tunic with businesslike efficiency. The cut extended through the waistband of his breeches, so she removed those as well. Teried scowled but didn’t protest, which was more sensible than most of her male patients. She threw a sheet over him to preserve his modesty and set about giving his injury a thorough inspection.

She sponged away the blood as gently as she could, but still he jerked when she got to the deepest portion of the wound. More jerking met her attempts to flush out the breached abdominal cavity, even though Ozor held Teried’s shoulders down, and Teried was obviously doing his best to remain still. Nalini scowled. She didn’t care if Teried suffered while she sewed him up—it served him right. But she had to get a better look to see what sort of damage had been done to his internal organs. That wasn’t going to happen if he kept thrashing around.

“Look,” she said, putting down the flask of water and going to Teried’s head. “I can tell you two aren’t from around here.”

“We’re from Ramunna,” Ozor put in quickly. “On a trading voyage. Our ship’s in the harbor.”

She nodded. “I’ve got something that might help you. It’s illegal in Giroda. I figure you probably don’t care, but if word gets around I’m using it, I’ll get in trouble. Can you keep your mouths shut?”

Teried gave a scoffing laugh, then cursed ferociously when it put pressure on his wound. “Don’t worry,” he wheezed when he recovered. “We’re used to being on the wrong side of the law.”

Ozor nodded. “We’ll keep your secret.”

Nalini went to get the bottle of sweet vitriol and a clean sponge. She showed them to Teried. “If you breathe the vapors from this, it will put you to sleep. You won’t feel anything while I work on you. I know most men swear they can handle pain, but if you can swallow your pride this will be a lot easier on all of us.”

Teried eyed the sponge. “It won’t kill me?”

“No,” Nalini assured him. Now that she had the proper dosage worked out the chances of something going wrong were much too small to mention. “I used it on the boy before you. You saw he was fine. It will just ease your pain.”

“Some people refuse? The more fool them.” Teried lay back and closed his eyes. “I’m ready.”

Nalini dripped sweet vitriol onto the sponge, carefully counting the number of drops experimentation had show her was needed for a man Teried’s size. She held the sponge to his face. “Breathe deep. And don’t try to move. It makes you clumsy before it knocks you out, and we don’t need you hurting yourself more.”

Teried obediently inhaled. After few minutes his tense face relaxed. “Hey, Ozor, this isn’t bad,” he mumbled. “Smells nasty, but feels like being just drunk enough to enjoy it.”

“Can you hold this in place?” Nalini asked Ozor. He nodded and reached for the sponge. “Keep your face well away. We don’t need you getting woozy, too.”

Ozor looked from the sponge to the bottle Nalini had placed back on its shelf, then to Teried’s slackly smiling face. “This is remarkable. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Nalini grinned as she went back to washing out the wound. Teried wasn’t all the way under yet, but he didn’t seem to notice when she sluiced water into his belly. “I discovered it myself.”

“Amazing. Do you mind if I ask how?”

She shrugged, trying not to show her pleasure at his appreciation. Dear Mother, it felt good to have her achievement recognized for a change. “My family have been apothecaries for generations. This substance has been known for years, but no one ever thought to use it this way before. Early in my career I started searching for ways to make surgery more practical. Poppy and mandrake only go so far. I tried a great many substances before settling on sweet oil of vitriol as the most effective.”

She bent over the wound, studying it quickly before fresh blood obscured her view. Thank the Mother, the bowels seemed to be intact. Every time she’d tried to mend a perforated intestine, the patient had succumbed to infection. This time, however, the repair should be straightforward, and Teried would have an excellent chance of recovery.

He was deeply asleep now. Nalini threaded a needle with gut and set to work closing the layer of muscle. At Ozor’s questioning glance, she explained. “I’ve found that full function is more likely to return if I sew the muscles closed as well as the skin. I don’t think your friend would like it if his strength were impaired.”

“I’m sure he wouldn’t. What’s that you’re using?”

Nalini suppressed a smile. How open minded was Ozor? “It’s a thread I make from sheep intestines. Since I won’t be able to take these stitches out once the skin is closed, I can’t use silk. This will be able to stay inside without a problem. I think it actually gets absorbed by the body eventually. Once one of my patients was wounded again in the same place a few years after I sewed him up the first time, and I couldn’t find any trace of the old stitches.”

“Fascinating.” There was no doubting the sincerity of Ozor’s admiration, but there was an oddly speculative tone to his voice as well. “It’s almost as good as the Mother’s power.”

Nalini snorted. “It’s a lot slower and cruder than what they say the ancient wizards could do, but it gets the job done. If only the Magistrates recognized that.”

“You said there’s a law against it? Why?”

She kept her eyes fixed on her work as she finished the inner stitching, switched to silk thread, and started sewing the long external seam. “When I was first experimenting with sweet vitriol, I made some errors. One girl died. Several other patients woke in the middle of surgery. I’ve never been very good at diplomacy, and I’m afraid I offended a few officials with blunt words. Anyway, it ended up with me banished from the capital and any use of sleeping drugs for surgery outlawed.”

“I see.” Ozor was quiet for a moment. “And yet you continue to use them.”

Nalini scowled at her work. “I won’t abandon a useful technique because ignorant bureaucrats made a stupid law.”

Ozor’s silence was longer this time. When he finally spoke, his voice was very soft. “Would you like to travel to a country where your techniques aren’t forbidden? Where you could practice your skills openly? Where you could be acclaimed for the importance of your discovery and rewarded with wealth in proportion to the good you do?”

If she didn’t laugh she might cry. “I’d like nothing better. But since the Purifiers took over, Marvanna has even more restrictive laws than Giroda. And passage to Ramunna would cost more than I could save in twenty lifetimes.” She blinked hard so she could see what she was doing and kept talking to distract herself from despair. “Do you know that in Giroda apothecaries and all other healers aren’t allowed to charge for our services? We’re employed by the Magistrates. They require us to care for anyone in need. In my grandparents’ day the salary was generous, enough to comfortably support a family and live a life of status. But since then it’s dwindled. The requirements to qualify as a healer keep being weakened, so now anyone who can’t earn a living doing honest work decides the Mother’s called them to stir up useless potions, or lay on hands and pray, or sit at the bedside of the dying. The Magistrates have to keep cutting back the amount to be able to afford to pay them all. Meanwhile, those of us who’ve trained our whole lives in complex skills can barely afford to feed ourselves.”

She jerked her head to indicate the little room, which was bare except for what she needed to tend her patients. “I’ve got this and the room I sleep in, and the rent takes most of my salary. I ought to quit healing and start making perfume or soap or something else that’s not regulated, but I guess it’s in my blood.”

She glanced up to find Ozor regarding her with a peculiar expression. “What?” She focused again on the needle in her hand. “I’m sorry if I’m boring you.”

“Not at all,” he assured her. “In fact, this is the most interesting information I’ve heard in weeks.”

At her baffled look, he went on. “I’m a trader. I earn my living by finding goods no one wants, buying them cheaply, and taking them to where people want them desperately and are willing to pay accordingly. It seems to me your gifts aren’t appreciated here. But I’m sailing for Ramunna in a few days. I suspect they’d be in great demand there.”

Nalini’s heart leapt. She’d long dreamed of going somewhere her skills would be valued as they were worth. But she squelched her hope beneath a hard layer of skepticism. She was much too old to be taken in by a man’s enticing but empty words. “So what do you propose? You advance me the price of passage, and I work the rest of my life to pay you off?” Even that bargain might be worth it, if it let her practice openly for people who appreciated her.

She doubted his shock was entirely genuine. “Of course not! We’ll be business partners. I’ll supply transportation and capital to set you up in a new location, and you’ll provide your healing skills. We’ll split any profits equally. The people of Ramunna will be eager to make us both rich.”

He really was dreaming if he though her skills were that valuable to anyone. “What makes you think so?”

He leaned as far toward her as he could without taking the sponge from Teried’s face. “I happen to know something you don’t. The Matriarch of Ramunna has discovered that the legend of the ancient wizards who fled across the sea is true. She’s sent a ship which will be bringing one of those wizards to Ramunna. The Mother’s power is going to become very real for the people of Ramunna. All those who’ve suffered without hope will suddenly realize a cure is possible. They’ll clamor for healing. But one wizard, even laboring day and night, won’t be able to help them all. Many will be turned away disappointed. They’ll shower money on any who can offer them equally effective healing.”