Adders & Tinted Glass
The poster was small, so small he had to squint to decipher the labels printed alongside the graphite human spine. He counted twelve dorsal pressure points, each with notes describing the effects their stimulation warranted. Beliefs like these had lost their importance in the face of Gralinn medicine, but to some doctors, they still held value. They did to him, too. If nothing else, they reminded him of his past.
Rannek flinched in pain. The young man over his shoulder sighed, but did not say anything before continuing to stitch.
Researching for the Imperial Encyclopedia had been an easier job than prefect, and more suited to his talents. One day he would be tasked to translate a radio broadcast. The next, he would enquire the origin of the Tahori Lag. Still, having to catalog the sages’ treatments for spirit possession in less than ten pages had been a night among nights. A crammed night, full of illustrations like the one he was studying now, and written down accounts of bizarre treatments and dances meant to draw the—often thought of as benevolent—entity out of the possessed. A blissful night once he found the loophole: he could add tiny, tiny footnotes to the edges of the document, wrapping the typed text into a scarf of his own handwriting.
Back then, work challenged his mind. It kept him hungry, flexible, and if he remembered correctly, he wasn’t too unhappy back then. His neck rarely hurt, nor did his feet as he walked from street to street and city to city interrogating anyone who’d entertain his curiosity, secretly trying to impress them with his newest bit of idiomatic Tahori. What had gotten into his mind to give up a job as perfect as that, Rannek couldn’t say.
He flinched again when the door swung open. The young man sighed.
“Rein in your frustration, boy,” said a familiar voice. “That man can smite you with a wink of his pinky.”
The young man tensed up. “Yes, doctor Mireri. My apologies, prefect.”
Rannek raised his hand, contracted it. “My pinky’s not that powerful.”
“He doesn’t know that.” Mireri closed the door behind him and sat down on a stool mounted on a cross mounted on four small wheels that squealed as he rolled closer. “You’re alive, but somehow look worse than last time. I clearly remember treating that wound.” He bowed forward. “It take it those aren’t my stitches.”
“I tore them. Arguing. A field medic of God’s Army made those. He instructed me to keep the bandage another seven days, but it burns like streetlice, so I thought—”
“You thought you’d bother me again. I already told you cuts like these are beneath me.” Nonetheless, something about the wound seemed to intrigue the doctor. “Whoever said to keep it under wraps was either a moron or an assassin in pale disguise. No wonder so many of your soldiers die from flesh wounds.”
Rannek flinched. This time, the young man didn’t sigh, but gasp, and glance at Mireri before resuming his work. Rannek chuckled. “I take it your interns are better trained, then.”
“My interns are inept at stitches. Too fidgety. Fili here’s one of the residents.” Mireri patted the young man’s shoulder before rolling away with a long aching squeal and busying himself with a file. “They’re inept, too, but their hands are steady.”
Rannek looked at the poster until he’d read all the labels. He thought back to the worst times during his research years, the threats, being robbed, researching the gogo flu and then catching it, but even those seemed like mere adventures to him now. “Do you know the IET, doctor?”
Mireri responded without looking up from the file. “What’s that?”
“The Imperial Encyclopedia of Tahor. It’s—“
“Oh yes. The great Gralinn tourist guide. Can’t tell you how many folk come in here after getting bitten by loneadders just because they read that it’s safe long as you stay behind them. I usually tell them to burn the book.”
“… I worked for the Encyclopedia, years ago.” He paused. “Come to think of it, I might have written part of the loneadder article.”
Mireri shrugged his shoulders. “Well, you’ll be delighted to know that more than a few of said folk weren’t your shade, but mine. Your mistakes reach a broad audience. Past like present, I guess.”
A vibration shook resident Fili’s leg touching his; a well-kept giggle. Rannek let it pass. Ever since he had returned to Koeiji, certain things seemed to have lost their edge, and words were one of them.
Nothing about his job had changed, only his fears had. Going out onto the street remained a risk, as Hulsnyk never failed to point out, but he had come to enjoy his afternoon walks with the new head of the Guard. On top of that, he was still expecting further reprimands by Syrkanan, supreme general Ullston, or even Chancellor Korush for his ‘losing’ Glane. Rannek found that he was less anxious than curious about what course they would take, now that he had played his hand. Perhaps they’d mouth off. Perhaps they’d force him to resign. At the end of the day, he would survive either.
Where old fears left, new ones settled in, the dark for one. Three times, his first night at home had catapulted him from sleep into sheets cold with sweat, seeing shapes and hearing sounds in the pitch black room that weren’t there, couldn’t be there. Echoing drip-drops. Bone grinding on bone. The breathing of hidden beasts. He’d learned to keep the lights on and to keep his curtains open at work, and to be grateful his job rarely forced him out of the light. It was another fear altogether that plagued him the most, throughout the day, with company and without.
The truth. Ullston may have silenced all the witnesses to the fires, Syrkanan may keep all of Bitaab under lockdown, but it was only a question of time until people came asking questions. Already, he could see the cracks in the lies being fed to the media. Newspapers publishing far-distance photographs of the blackened rock around the entrances. Farmers reporting the strange death of plants downhill from the site, a sure sign of Orefire remains seeping into the ground water.
And then there was his own tongue. Now that he had to guard the thing in his mouth more closely than ever, Rannek had started to notice all the little chances to create his own doom, a doom that wouldn’t take him back to Grale with a decent pension in his pockets. People finding out was bad enough; them learning from him could amount to treason.
It posed a peculiar set of problems. “… What are you reading there?” Rannek asked.
“Your file.” Mireri’s tone suggested this was an unnecessary question.
“What does it say?”
“Nothing interesting. Spraining your ankle isn’t atypical for men our age. You’d do well to move around more, build muscle.”
“I take walks. Does that count?”
“Do you move while walking?”
He was getting nowhere. “Still, it really hurts a lot. I only described the pain to good Fili here. I was hoping you could maybe take a gentle look yourself.”
Mireri rolled his eyes, and finally looked up. “If you described what happened to Fili, and he said it’s a sprain, it’s a sprain. When I say they’re inept, it’s more of a figure of—“
“I’m a patient. Patients tell all kinds of silly things, don’t they?” Rannek made sure to impress a deep stare on the doctor. “Please.”
Mireri heaved a sigh before putting down the file. “Fili, go ahead and schedule an x-ray for the prefect.”
Rannek raised his hands. “Oh, no, I don’t think that will be—“
“Make sure to fill out the whole form. Everything needs to be in order, we’re not just treating any man here. Let’s make the Empire’s health funds bleed.”
Fili nodded. “I’m almost done with the—”
“I’ll finish up. Go, go.” Mireri stood up and pushed the stool aside with the slightest squeak as Fili scurried out. The room grew quiet. Mireri washed his hands, disinfected them, and went to work on Rannek’s wound. Three stitches later, he cut the thread, swabbed the area, and taped a cotton pad over it.
“We’ll wait for Fili to return before we roll out the bandage. Let’s see that leg of yours.”
“Don’t tell anyone,” Rannek said. “It’s not… I don’t need people talking.”
Mireri sat down on the stool again, and with three short squeaks came to sit before Rannek. “Either roll them up, or take them—“
He silenced when Rannek pulled up his left pant leg to reveal the bandage he had applied himself, afraid to let any of the guards see the wound he shouldn’t have. It bulged out. Fibers of cotton stuck out everywhere. Blood and pus had seeped through the fabric, coloring it in a gradient of red to milky white. A faint smell of death emanated from the center.
Mireri’s stool squeaked many times during the procedure that followed, but he seized asking questions, instead muttering under his breath, calling Rannek moronic, lack-witted, suicidal, and inept in every conceivable order. Rannek pushed down the pain as best he could, biting his knuckle from time to time.
He learned that it was indeed a fracture, ‘a bad one’. He also learned that, had he waited a few days more, they might not talk about healing, but damage control. When he asked what that meant, the doctor asked him if he had heard about the Gwai.
There was a knock at the door once, but Mireri only cracked it open to scare away the inept, and resumed cleaning the inflamed wound. He threw the old bandages into a garbage hatch. He rubbed a lotion into the wound that burned at first, then seemed to freeze Rannek’s calf into a solid block, before finally numbing the pain. He reapplied new gauze with the casual perfection of one who had exorcized every flaw from his hands by lifelong practice.
He stood up, stepped back. “Put some weight onto it.”
Rannek did, and found that there was still pain, but a milder one. »Praise Vohl…« He paused. “Or what gods should I rather thank? Ieri of the sages?”
“Ieri isn’t a god, just an ambitious spirit.” Mireri reached out to him. “Thank me.”
Rannek shook his hand. “I’m in your debt. Not just for this, also last time. Your discretion—“
“—isn’t bound to your office. You’re a patient.” The doctor withdrew his hand after a short squeeze, and turned to pick up the file. He spoke with his back turned. “You’re going to want to find a good reason to have that injury. When you do, come back so we can properly adjust it. Daytime, mind you. Ask for me.”
Rannek nodded, and walked to his crutch with only a slight limp. Mireri wrote something into his file, yet he didn’t bother ask what. Rannek turned to the door.
“A word, Lorne,” Mireri said.
Rannek stopped, fingers around the handle. “Yes?”
“I won’t ask. But listen.” The doctor closed the file and slipped it into his coat without deigning to look at Rannek. “No one’s above disease or harm. We get all kinds of people in our care, and you can’t properly treat them without earning their trust. It doesn’t mean we have a vested interest.”
“I understand.”
“Whether we’re interested or not,” Mireri went on, “we hear things. All kinds of things, from all kinds of people.” He walked to the poster. Stood before it. “It’s when all kinds of people start saying the same thing that I start to get anxious.”
“I can hardly imagine you anxious.”
There was no chuckle, no response at all. “Show the girl. There’s a reason no one’s asking.”
Rannek froze. “… And what’s that?”
“The implication of her name.” A long silence ensued before Mireri spoke again. For a breath, he sounded endlessly tired. “You can go.”
Rannek went, back to the care of his guards, the safety of his enforced van, the tint of its windows. The afternoon break had just started, and the moving on the streets was slow. Tahori were everywhere around them complaining about their day at work just to start conversations. A sage held court on the pavement, his listeners clogging the street. They moved out of the van’s way with that lack of hurriedness he had come to appreciate for what it signified. A sense of ease. The privilege to choose one’s speed. The Tahori Lag.
A few heads turned, nonetheless. They did so without haste, following the custom. Their stares pierced the tinted glass.
Martin Surga 