The Book of Koli (Rampart Trilogy #1) - M. R. Carey Page 0,27

in the third day of this. Jemiu begged her to come straight to see her, which she did. Normally the first thing Ursala did when she was inside the gates was to sit and have parley with Dam Catrin, telling her how things stood in the other villages and in the valley as a whole. This time, when she heard how it was with Athen, she left the Ramparts waiting and come straightway to our house. She brung the drudge too. It smashed the lintel of the door in coming inside. A crowd come along behind it, there being many in the village who wanted to see this, but Jemiu turned them away at the door and bid them keep respect.

Ursala led the drudge to Athen’s bed and there she put her hands on the drudge’s flank and opened it up like as it was a cupboard. The sight made Mull and me gape our mouths open, for inside the drudge there was nothing but lots and lots of tech, with shining wires that trailed out of it and lights that was shining and moving. This was the dagnostic, which I hadn’t ever seen before that time. Ursala touched some of the wires to Mull and they seemed to go into her. Jemiu went pale and her hands was shaking, but not a word come out of her.

Ursala tugged her sleeve up then, and I seen the mote controller on her wrist. It was glowing silver, like I had heard tell it did, but also there was signs and symbols of the old times running all over it like ants, almost too quick to see.

“This is septicaemia,” Ursala said. “Her appendix has burst, and the poison is spreading infection through her body cavity. The only option is to clean it out, but at this stage I can’t make any promises. I’ll do my best to save her. And your best is to leave me to do it.”

It sounds cruel, writ down like that, but Ursala didn’t say it cruel. She said it in the way Molo Tanhide skinned that needle when it was wrapped around his daughter’s hand: like she knowed how much it hurt but she wasn’t going to dance around it or shy away from it because that would only make the damage that much more.

She was in Athen’s room for some while, a lot more than a glass’s turning, but somehow when she was in there the time didn’t seem to pass. When she come out again, to us it was like we was all of us still in the same moment somehow. Ursala had blood on her, a lot of it, and so did the side of the drudge that was now closed shut again. Jemiu looked at her, pleading, but couldn’t bring herself to ask. So I said it instead. “Is she alive?”

Ursala nodded, and my mother let out the sob that had been inside her all this time. “She is,” Ursala said, “and I have good hope she’ll stay that way. Put this tincture under her tongue tonight and again tomorrow. Then when she wakes, boil some tea from willow bark and let her drink it, hot or cold as she prefers. That will ease the pain.”

My mother wrung Ursala’s hand and thanked her many times. Ursala bore this patiently, but I could see she didn’t like any of it – not the touching, nor the gratefulness. She had done what she had come to do, and now she wanted to go on her way.

My mother offered payment in cured wood or food or the valley scrip that we sometimes – though less and less often – used for trade with the other villages along the Calder. Ursala bore this as long as she could, then took her hand away with some brusque word. “It’s my calling, Dam Woodsmith, and it’s also part of my contract with the village. The Ramparts pay me well. There’s no need for you to pay me too.” When Jemiu still insisted, Ursala finally took some jars of preserves and a string of beads my mother had from my father the one time they were together. She done it with reluctance, and afterwards she went away with her back bent and her shoulders hunched, like our thanks was a burden to her.

Athen lived. She slept for a day and a night, and when she woke up she was her own self again, with all that pain and weakness nowhere