He grabbed a tray from a stack of them and returned to the bandages cupboard, placing four on it. That would be enough until they learned what was coming. Ramasu stood in front of the closed door to the stillroom, cleansing himself with his Gift. His medical kit was open beside him on the floor, also awash in his power.
Four dirty, muscled men hurried in with a screaming man on a rope stretcher. Arram had no problem guessing what was wrong: the heavier of the two main bones below the patient’s knee had snapped and was thrusting out of his flesh.
“Ol’ Daleric off to see the wife and kiddies?” a stretcher bearer shouted to Arram, panting. “Miggin here’s got the best of luck!”
Miggin, the screamer, took a breath and made several rude suggestions about what the man could do with his luck.
“Very inventive,” Ramasu said, waving the men forward to the edge of the waiting table. “Arram, I will do painlessness. You will raise our friend Miggin and set him down when these fellows move the stretcher. At a count of three?”
Arram fumbled for the right spell and chose the most basic. “One,” he said, walking up to the stretcher. “Two.” Arram cast the signs for an equal lift all around Miggin. “Three.” Palms up, he raised his hands, and the patient, as Ramasu let a wave of his Gift flow over Miggin. With the experience born of practice, the bearers slid the stretcher out from under the injured man. Miggin was now breathing rather than shrieking. He hardly noticed what was going on. Arram gently used his own spell to push Miggin forward until he was over the sheet-covered table, then carefully set him down.
“This one’s good,” the man who’d asked about Daleric told Ramasu. “We’ll keep him if you don’t want him.”
“That’s very kind, but there are masters who wish to keep him,” Ramasu said. “Tell me what happened to your friend.”
The men chuckled. “He’s not a friend,” replied one, a bearded Kyprish islander with a fearsome set of tattoos on his back and arms. “He’s fresh. Some funny man told New Meat here that if he went two falls with Anaconda he’d get respect. This is what happened in his first fall.”
“Now Anaconda’s sad because we took his toy,” another gladiator said. “You’ll see more New Meat today, Master Ramasu.”
“Then you had best go out and collect it, lads,” Ramasu told them. “Though I would appreciate it if you first told Anaconda that I am here. Any extra work he gives me will be paid for, by him, when I see him next.”
“Very good, Master Ramasu,” the tattooed gladiator replied. “It would be nice to have some New Meat left alive for the arena.”
The man who had first spoken to Arram shoved past him toward the door. “We’re glad you’re back, Master,” he told Ramasu. “Daleric’s all right, but he’s not you.” All four of them bowed, then trotted outside with their stretcher.
“We see them at their best in here,” Ramasu told Arram. “Now, tell me about Miggin’s injury.”
Arram looked at the gladiator’s leg. “It’s a compound break of the main bone of the lower leg,” he said, using a spell on his eyes that showed him the bones. “We’ll have a bad time reseating it without snagging flesh on the bone.”
Ramasu twitched his fingers, murmuring a short spell. One of several small tables tucked under the window counters skidded across the floor to his side. “Here is where you learn about compound fractures, and about multiple fractures of bone that do not break through the skin,” he said quietly. “We are likely to see a great many of them. If you will look…”
After several tries, Arram got the knack of drawing all the torn flesh out of the way. Ramasu was working a cleansing over both ends of the bone when Preet landed on the head of their worktable, fluttering her wings. “Understood, Preet, but we cannot rush,” the master said absently.
Arram heard the approach of someone else howling in pain. His hands trembled for a moment before he forced himself to concentrate on his patient.
“Very good,” Ramasu told him. “Now.” Both ends of the bone shifted together. “Is the lower part of the bone seated against the upper part? Don’t use your vision—it isn’t accurate enough.”
Arram set a portion of his awareness in his Gift and wrapped it around the damaged bone. It was fitted back together as well as it could be. Ramasu had left no jags or tiny splinters to dig into muscle or flesh. “It’s very well seated, Master, except for what had to be removed.”
“Release the muscle first, then the skin to their former places,” Ramasu ordered. “Gently.”
Arram released the two spells he had worked to keep both parts of the injured man’s body clear of the damage. He could feel the veins, and the muscles, sigh in relief as they relaxed into their former beds. The skin was slower. “I think the skin is hurt some,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“Either you forgot from your earlier work that the skin is the most easily damaged, or you haven’t held it off its natural form for so long before,” Ramasu replied. “This is normal. You’ve done well. I shall finish with this man. Prepare the next table and send our newest guest to sleep. The second level of his mind only, Arram. He must be unaware of his pain, not dead to it.”
Since he had eased pain before in Ramasu’s infirmary, Arram only smiled at the master’s mild joke. He had never put so much power into a painlessness spell that the patient could not feel anything for a day, though he knew a student who had. Carefully he drew his Gift away from the sleeping gladiator. He recovered it all just as three of the men from earlier and a fresh stretcher bearer came through the door. Arram rushed to seize a sheet and throw it over another waist-high table. By the time the gladiators reached it, he had the lifting spell ready to shift the injured man onto the table. This one had a dislocated shoulder.
“Worst pain in my life,” he whispered, his eyes bulging out. “Worst pain”—he was trying to control himself, but his voice was rising in volume—“in MY—”
Arram hurriedly sketched the symbols he needed to use in order to release a victim from pain, unlike Ramasu, who could do it with a softly whispered phrase. The man fell silent, though his lungs pumped his chest like a bellows. Arram drew a breath and descended into his Gift, where he could deepen the spell enough that his patient would not feel his pain for the time being. He glanced over his shoulder at Ramasu, who nodded.
Arram had dealt with two dislocations before, one hip and one shoulder. Using the man’s own sweat, he wrote the necessary signs for painlessness in the shoulder joint first, before he wrote the sign of the closing lock, and poured his Gift into it. There was the dreadful sound of gristle and muscle returning to their proper place; the shoulder resumed its normal shape. Carefully Arram ran his fingers over it to ensure that the joint was whole once more before he looked at the gladiators. They were dipping drinks of water for themselves from the bucket by the door.