"Tell you the truth, sir," Teo replied, slinging one of Boitan's two baskets over one shoulder, and heading past the bench to the door. "If Vider had been here I would have—uh—not been able to find him. Besides, you're a better surgeon."
Boitan followed on his heels. "I'd be a happier physician if we just had some way of keeping incisions from infecting. Duran had it—but his notes are so vague, as if he expected the method to be common knowledge." Boitan sighed, and hitched his basket a little higher on his shoulder. "Given that, there's not a lot I can do—"
"It's going to work out all right, sir, I just know it is," Teo said fiercely. The surgeon gave him a strange, sideways look, then shrugged. "Sir—" he ventured again, just as they reached the door to the courtyard, "This is the one opportunity we have to show them that they can trust us to keep our word. To show them that they can trust us, period."
"Ah." Boitan paused by the closed door. "I wondered if you'd seen that."
"Yes, sir, I did. This is our testing, I think. If you do everything you can—well—I don't think we'll fail it."
Boitan smiled thinly and reached for the door-handle. "I could wish," he said, as they stepped out into the blue dusk, "that I had your faith."
It was fully dark and the stars were blossoming overhead by the time they reached the canyon; Jegrai himself was waiting for them at the entrance to the canyon, looking much gaunter than he had this afternoon by the light of the torches held by the two men standing sentry there. He led the way to a round, white tent that appeared to be made of felt; the flaps were standing open to the warm night, and the sides were tucked up a little to permit a breeze to come through at the level of the floor. Teo had expected the "floor" of the tent to be bare dirt, or flattened grass at best, but the tent was carpeted with what seemed to be several layers of thick rugs.
The boy was on a pallet near one side; the middle-aged dusky woman knelt beside him, but moved deferentially away when they entered. There was no one else in the tent, and only one lantern hung from the centerpole. Boitan took one look at the amount of light within and shook his head. "We'll have to do better than this, Teo, or I won't be able to see my own hands. Tell them to bring me some water, would you? Two buckets full, at least."
With that he began rummaging in the basket Teo had brought, bringing out a wooden frame with leather slings on it, four hollow glass globes, and an oil lamp. Teo asked for the water as Boitan began setting up the cube-shaped frame, putting the oil lamp in the middle and the four balls in their slings on all four sides of it. When the water came—within a few breaths of Teo's asking—he filled the balls with it, and lit the lamp.
There were sighs of wonder all around the tent as the water-filled balls picked up and magnified the light from the flame. Boitan nodded with satisfaction, set the lamp on its collapsible stand beside him, and pulled out a metal bowl, filling it with water. There was already a small fire in a kind of pot or brazier burning over at one side. Boitan nodded again and set the water there to heat. He dropped some herbs in it, washed his hands in one of the other buckets, and turned to his patient.
"Now, let's see about this boy."
The middle-aged woman inched forward on her knees and said something. Jegrai translated. "This is Shenshu; she is our chief healer and one of my advisors. She wishes to watch, and help if need be."
Boitan, who also spoke Trade-tongue, gave the woman a careful looking over. He lifted one eyebrow at Teo, who replied to the unspoken query softly. "Vider is also not as—ah—flexible as you are, sir."
"If laughing weren't so out of place at the moment—" He turned, bowed slightly, and gave the woman a real smile. "From what I can see you haven't done at all badly, lady," he said to her, directly, as if she could understand him. "I'll be able to use a pair of hands used to this sort of thing, if you think you can follow my pantomime. Teo, I fear, lacks the stomach to help me except in an emergency."
"Pan-to-mime?" Jegrai said, puzzled.
"Hand signals," Teo filled in hastily, and Jegrai translated in a burst of speech too quick for Teo to follow any of it. The woman Shenshu nodded, and scooted over to wedge herself between the boy's pallet and the tent wall, out of Boitan's light.
"Let's get the worst over first," Boitan said, unwrapping the boy's head and not looking up. "Explain to them, Teo. Then tell them how I'm going to open up the wounds again and cut the bad tissue out—maybe scrape bone if I have to."
Right. Explain to them that this stranger is about to cut open the head of the Khene's cousin, then mutilate the rest of his wounds. Thanks, sir. Teo took a long, deep breath, and launched into it.
At the description of how Boitan planned to raise the bit of broken skull off the brain, Jegrai looked as if he was repressing revulsion or horror; Teo couldn't read the woman. The description of cleaning out the wounds seemed to sit better; the woman exclaimed sharply once, but this time her expression was plainly one of "Why didn't I think of that?" There were many questions from the woman, some of which baffled Jegrai's ability at translation, for he could only shrug after failing to find the correct words.
Teo did his best to answer them. It was a tense moment, although Boitan, carefully examining the purpled, pulpy place on the boy's head, seemed to be able to ignore the tension.
Evidently his best was good enough.
"Wind Lords," Jegrai sighed, finally. "If you do this, Yuchai may die, but if you do not, he certainly will die. Shenshu says that she is satisfied you mean no harm and perhaps know what you do—"
"He's done this before, about half a dozen times that I know of," Teo said tentatively.
Jegrai shrugged. "Gods guide him, then."
At this point Teo couldn't watch. He really didn't want to stay in the tent, but Boitan needed his command of Trade-tongue. So he compromised, and hoped he could control his stomach. He turned his back on the physician, the healer, and their patient, and sat in the open tent-flap, resolutely ignoring the moans of the boy, and Boitan's murmurs.
The camp beyond was mostly dark; a few flickers of fires in carefully watched fire-pits, and the two tiny sparks of the torches at the mouth of the valley, but otherwise the camp might have been deserted. Teo looked up at the bright stars overhead and reflected that, given how weary the Vredai had looked, the quiet wasn't surprising. They were trusting the water-pledge, and taking what was probably the first unguarded rest they'd had in a very long time. For a moment he had to hold back tears of pity. All those bright-eyed children—the vacant and haunted eyes of their parents and other siblings. It wasn't fair. . . .
Boitan spoke up, interrupting his thoughts. He sounded a little more optimistic. "Well, the worst is over—the fracture wasn't bad, Teo. This boy's gods were surely looking after him."
A nasty stench wafted by, telling Teo that Boitan was now cleaning the boy's wounds out. He gagged, and held his stomach under control only because there was nothing in it at the moment but water.
There was a whisper of movement and a presence at his elbow. Teo noted the same thing Felaras had—Jegrai was as cleanly as anyone in the Order. He smelled at the moment only faintly of horse and more strongly of herbs. Some time before they'd arrived he must have taken time to bathe. These are no barbarians, no matter what some of the others think. Nobody who keeps themselves and their camp as clean as these folk do is a barbarian.
"I—cannot watch either," Jegrai whispered, his voice shaking. "Strange, is it not? I, who have faced battle many times, have faced death and seen it pass me to strike one at my very side, am aquiver, and I cannot bear to watch the healers at their work. I had to see what they did with Yuchai's broken head, but now—"