The Warded Man

“I almost sacrificed myself for a dead man?” the guard with the broken ankle exclaimed. Leesha ignored him, moving over to the other injured man.

With his round, freckled face and slender form, he seemed more a boy than a man. He had been badly beaten, but he was breathing, and his heart was strong. Leesha inspected him swiftly, cutting away his bright patchwork clothes as she probed for broken bones and searched for the sources of the blood that soaked his motley.

“What happened?” Jizell asked the injured guard, as she inspected the break in his ankle.

“We were headin’ in from last patrol,” the guard said through gritted teeth. “Found these two, Jongleurs by their look, lyin’ on the walk. Must’a been robbed after a show. They was both alive, but in a bad way. It was dark by then, but neither of them looked like they’d last the night without a Gatherer to tend them. I remembered this hospit, and we ran hard as we could, tryin’ to stay under eaves, outta sight from windies.”

Jizell nodded. “You did the right thing,” she said.

“Tell that to poor Jonsin,” the guard said. “Creator, what will I tell his wife?”

“That’s a worry for the morrow,” Jizell said, lifting a flask to the man’s lips. “Drink this.”

The guard looked at her dubiously. “What is it?” he asked.

“It will put you to sleep,” Jizell said. “I need to set your ankle, and I promise you, you don’t want to be awake when I do.”

The guard quaffed the potion quickly.

Leesha was cleaning out the younger one’s wounds when he started awake with a gasp, sitting up. One of his eyes was swollen shut, but the other was a bright green, and darted about wildly. “Jaycob!” he cried.

He thrashed wildly, and it took Leesha, Kadie, and the last guard to wrestle him back down. He turned his one piercing eye on Leesha. “Where is Jaycob?” he asked. “Is he all right?”

“The older man who was found with you?” Leesha asked, and he nodded.

Leesha hesitated, picking her words, but the pause was answer enough, and he screamed, thrashing again. The guard pinned him hard, looking him in the eyes.

“Did you see who did this to you?” he asked.

“He’s in no condition …” Leesha began, but the man cut her off with a glare.

“I lost a man tonight,” he said. “I don’t have time to wait.” He turned back to the boy. “Well?” he asked.

The boy looked at him with eyes filling with tears. Finally, he shook his head, but the guard didn’t let up. “You must have seen something,” he pressed.

“That’s enough,” Leesha said, grabbing the man’s wrists and pulling hard. He resisted for a moment, and then let go. “Wait in the other room,” she ordered. He scowled, but complied.

The boy was weeping openly when Leesha turned back to him. “Just put me back out into the night,” he said, holding up a crippled hand. “I was meant to die a long time ago, and everyone that tries to save me ends up dead.”

Leesha took the crippled hand in hers and looked him in the eye. “I’ll take my chances,” she said, squeezing. “We survivors have to look out for one another.” She put the flask of sleeping draught to his lips, and held his hand, lending him strength until his eyes slipped closed.

The sound of fiddling filled the hospit. Patients clapped their hands, and the apprentices danced as they went about their tasks. Even Leesha and Jizell had a spring in their step.

“To think young Rojer was worried he had no way to pay,” Jizell said as they prepared lunch. “I’ve half a mind to pay him to come entertain the patients after he’s back on his feet.”

“The patients and the girls love him,” Leesha agreed.

“I’ve seen you dancing when you think no one is looking,” Jizell said.

Leesha smiled. When he wasn’t fiddling, Rojer spun tales that had the apprentices clustered at the foot of his bed, or taught them makeup tricks he claimed came from the duke’s own courtesans. Jizell mothered him constantly, and the apprentices all shined and doted on him.

“An extra-thick slice of beef for him, then,” Leesha said, cutting the meat and laying it on a platter already overladen with potatoes and fruit.

Jizell shook her head. “I don’t know where that boy puts it,” she said. “You and the others have been stuffing him for a full moon and more, and he’s still thin as a reed.”

“Lunch!” she bellowed, and the girls filtered in to collect the trays. Roni moved directly for the overladen one, but Leesha swept it out of reach. “I’ll take this one myself,” she said, smiling at the looks of disappointment around the kitchen.

“Rojer needs to take a break and eat something, not spin private tales while you girls cut his meat,” Jizell said. “You can all fawn on him later.”

“Intermission!” Leesha called as she swept into the room, but she needn’t have bothered. The bow slipped from the fiddle strings with a squeak the moment she appeared. Rojer smiled and waved, knocking over a wooden cup as he tried to set his fiddle aside. His broken fingers and arm had mended neatly, but his leg casts were still on strings, and he could not easily reach the bedstand.

“You must be hungry today,” she laughed, setting the tray across his lap and taking the fiddle. Rojer looked at the tray dubiously, smiling up at her.

“I don’t suppose you could help me cut?” he asked, holding up his crippled hand.

Leesha raised her eyebrows at him. “Your fingers seem nimble enough when you work your fiddle,” she said. “Why are they deficient now?”

“Because I hate eating alone,” Rojer laughed.

Leesha smiled, sitting on the side of the bed and taking the knife and fork. She cut a thick bite of meat, dragging it through the gravy and potatoes before bringing it up to Rojer’s mouth. He smiled at her, and a bit of gravy leaked from his mouth, making Leesha titter. Rojer blushed, his fair cheeks turning as red as his hair.

“I can lift the fork myself,” he said.

“You want me to just cut up the meat and leave?” Leesha asked, and Rojer shook his head vigorously. “Then hush,” she said, lifting another forkful to his mouth.

“It’s not my fiddle, you know,” Rojer said, glancing back to the instrument after a few moments of silence. “It’s Jaycob’s. Mine was broken when …”

Leesha frowned as he trailed off. After more than a month, he still refused to speak of the attack, even when pressed by the guard. He’d sent for his few possessions, but so far as she knew, he hadn’t even contacted the Jongleurs’ Guild to tell them what had happened.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Leesha said, seeing his eyes go distant. “You didn’t attack him.”

“I might as well have,” Rojer said.

“What do you mean?” Leesha asked.

Rojer looked away. “I mean … by forcing him from retirement. He’d still be alive if …”

“You said he told you coming out of retirement was the best thing that had happened to him in twenty years,” Leesha argued. “It sounds like he lived more in that short time than he would have in years spent in that cell in the guildhouse.”

Rojer nodded, but his eyes grew wet. Leesha squeezed his hand. “Herb Gatherers see death often,” she told him. “No one, no one, ever goes to the Creator with all their business complete. We all get a different length of time, but it needs to be enough, regardless.”

“It just seems to come early for the people who cross my path,” Rojer sighed.

“I’ve seen it come early for a great many who have never heard of Rojer Halfgrip,” Leesha said. “Would you like to shoulder the blame for their deaths, as well?”

Rojer looked at her, and she pressed another forkful into his mouth. “It doesn’t serve the dead to stop living yourself, out of guilt,” she said.

Leesha had her hands full of linens when the Messenger arrived. She slipped the letter from Vika into her apron, and left the rest for later. She finished putting away the laundry, but then a girl ran up to tell her a patient had coughed blood. After that, she had to set a broken arm, and give the apprentices their lesson. Before she knew it, the sun had set, and the apprentices were all in bed. She turned the wicks down to a dim orange glow, and made a last sweep through the rows of beds, making sure the patients were comfortable before she went upstairs for the night. She met Rojer’s eyes as she passed, and he beckoned, but she smiled and shook her head. She pointed to him, then put her hands together as if praying, leaned her cheek against them, and closed her eyes.

Rojer frowned, but she winked at him and kept on, knowing he wouldn’t follow. His casts had come off, but Rojer complained of pain and weakness despite the clean mend.

At the end of the room, she took the time to pour herself a cup of water. It was a warm spring night, and the pitcher was damp with condensation. She brushed her hand against her apron absently to dry it, and there was a crinkle of paper. She remembered Vika’s letter and pulled it out, breaking the seal with her thumb and tilting the page toward the lamp as she drank.

A moment later, she dropped her cup. She didn’t notice, or hear the ceramic shatter. She clutched the paper tightly and fled the room.

Leesha was sobbing quietly in the darkened kitchen when Rojer found her.

“Are you all right?” he asked quietly, leaning heavily on his cane.

“Rojer?” she sniffed. “Why aren’t you in bed?”

Rojer didn’t answer, coming to sit beside her. “Bad news from home?” he asked.

Leesha looked at him a moment, then nodded. “That chill my father caught?” she asked, waiting for Rojer to nod his recollection before going on. “He seemed to get better, but it came back with a vengeance. Turns out it was a flux that’s run from one end of the Hollow to the other. Most seem to be pulling through it, but the weaker ones …” She began to weep again.

“Someone you know?” Rojer asked, cursing himself as he said it. Of course it was someone she knew. Everyone knew everyone in the hamlets.

Leesha didn’t notice the slip. “My mentor, Bruna,” she said, fat teardrops falling onto her apron. “A few others, as well, and two children I never had the chance to meet. Over a dozen in all, and more than half the town still laid up. My father worst amongst them.”

“I’m sorry,” Rojer said.

“Don’t feel sorry for me; it’s my fault,” Leesha said.

“What?” Rojer asked.

“I should have been there,” Leesha said. “I haven’t been Jizell’s apprentice in years. I promised to return to Cutter’s Hollow when my studies were done. If I had kept my promise, I would have been there, and perhaps …”

“I saw the flux kill some people in Woodsend once,” Rojer said. “Would you like to add those to your conscience? Or those that die in this very city, because you can’t tend them all?”

“That’s not the same and you know it,” Leesha said.

“Isn’t it?” Rojer asked. “You said yourself that it does nothing to serve the dead if you stop living yourself out of guilt.”

Leesha looked at him, her eyes round and wet.

“So what do you want to do?” Rojer asked. “Spend the night crying, or start packing?”

“Packing?” Leesha asked.