the doors in the main part of the building, where the floors would be more stable, but no such luck.
The door was opened by a boy so thin he was almost gaunt. “No!” he cried, the moment he saw Nate. “No, I told you not to send for him!”
“Calm down, Georgy,” somebody else said. The door was opened the rest of the way by an elderly woman. Nate recognized her; she was a seamstress, arthritic in both hands, and one of Nate’s first patients in Highfall. He kept her in ointments, one with capsaicin and camphor that she could use whenever she wanted, and another with opium that she was to use sparingly. In exchange, she kept him more or less tatter free. As she let him in, she looked him over, head to toe, and said, “Give me that coat, magus. I can see the lining’s torn from here.”
Nate gave it to her. “It’s good to see you.”
Meanwhile, Georgy hovered protectively by the room’s lone bed, where a young man lay. “Not good to see you. Go away,” he said to Nate.
“Hush,” the seamstress said and nodded at the man on the bed. “See what you can do for my boy’s leg while I sew, eh?”
Georgy scuttled over to a corner, still scowling. The man’s eyes were clouded with pain, his breath short. Understandably, since his leg was broken in at least two places. As Nate measured out a dose of opium syrup—he would have to set the bone, and it would hurt—the injured man said, “Don’t mind Georgy. He’s just scared.”
“Of what?” Nate said.
The seamstress, sitting on a stool next to a table piled high with clothes, snorted. “I don’t have my independent’s license yet, that’s all. They cost the earth, those things!”
“The factory magus took away my papers when I got hurt,” the man on the bed said quietly.
Taking his papers meant the other magus thought the hurt man wouldn’t ever work again. The company stores wouldn’t sell to anyone without work papers or an independent’s license, but the seamstress was right: the licenses were exorbitantly expensive. Nate found the whole process infuriating. At least Elban’s system had left enough cracks for the people it broke to survive. Before the coup, the man’s coworkers would have taken up a collection to pay an outside magus, but all anyone had now was company credit. He wondered how the tiny family was finding the money to feed themselves. “I don’t see anything to report,” Nate said, passing the man on the bed the opium and rolling up his sleeves.
The man nodded at Nate’s springknife. “That’s a pretty thing. How’s it work?” So while they waited for the syrup to take effect, Nate showed him. The man seemed particularly fascinated by the spring. “Never seen metal like that before,” he said, and then his eyes glazed over and Nate got to work setting the bones.
He needed both the woman’s help and the boy’s, which they gave with nary a wince, even when the bones snapped back into place with a loud, uncomfortable jolt. After, as he wrapped clean bandages around the splint, the woman picked up her needle again. “When the Seneschal took over, I thought I’d be paying you in coin,” she said ruefully as they both worked, “but here I am still doing your mending, except my needle’s duller and my thread is garbage. The more things change, eh?”
The boy, who had retreated to the corner, hissed. His bitterness was startling in one so young. “Now, George,” the woman said. “Gate Magus and I are old friends. Gate Magus won’t rat on me.” Her tone was admonishing but Nate saw a flicker of fear in her eyes.
“Sure he won’t,” George said, sullen. “Cozy in the Seneschal’s pocket as he is, with his own apprentice’s sister the third-lieutenant from Paper.”
“Which only means I can help more people. You’ve nothing to fear from me.” Nate hoped he was telling the truth. He couldn’t be sure; he could never be sure. He tried to do what he could. He knew he was distracted, though. Each time he went to the House, it became harder and harder to focus, even after Derie was done fixing him. A broken leg was simple, mechanical, more a matter of brute force than reasoning or insight, but more than once he’d caught himself making a potentially dire mistake with ingredients or dosages, and he was loath to think how many he’d made and not caught. He’d