“I see,” she said, a little coldly. Had I gotten crumbs on her, too? Well, it had to be unpleasant, being pulled back into service because your former charge’s mother had murdered her. Anyone would be cross in that situation. Still, the sooner I could cure Snow, the sooner I’d be out from under Nurse’s feet.
I want to be clear, by the way, that I knew perfectly well what she was suggesting. (Well, fine, I’d figured it out by the second or third repetition, anyway.) I knew how the story was supposed to go. I would meet Snow and my woman’s heart would be wrung by the plight of the poor motherless child who had suffered so much, and I would win Snow’s affection as I sought desperately to find the cure.
It was a good story. If I succeeded, people would almost certainly be telling some version of it.
The problem was that my heart did not contain a shred of maternal affection anywhere in its chambers, and even if it had, I didn’t have the least idea how one dealt with children. They frightened me. I lived in fear that I would say or do something that scarred one for life. (Generally when I say this, some well-meaning soul pops up to tell me that children are actually very resilient and would find what I do fascinating. At that point I have to explain that myentire jobis deadly poisons and extremely fragile glassware. This usually shuts the conversation down nicely.)
More than that, the storyannoyedme. If I saved Snow, it would be because I had spent the last twenty years researching every poison known to man and staring into the guts of dead roosters. It wouldn’t have anything to do with women’s intuition or maternal affection. It wasn’tfeelings,it waswork.
“Your problem,” Healer Michael had said to me once, pouring out a measure of agave liquor, “is that people aren’t real to you.”
It had been so late that it was early again, and we had actually managed to save someone’s life, through no fault of our own. Itwas a rough one. Charcoal at both ends for nearly six hours, until their breathing evened out and their heart stopped fluttering at every third beat. Then we went back to the temple and drank heavily. It’s strange how winning can be more jarring than losing sometimes.
“People are real,” I protested. “I’m not amonster.”
Michael sighed. “Not like that. Look, a patient is a person with a problem, right?”
I took another slug of agave and allowed as how this was so.
“Right. Except that foryou,a patient is a problem with a person inconveniently attached. If you could just have the problem without the person, you’d be much happier.”
There are truths that you can say, drunk, in the small, gray hours of morning, that you can’t say at any other time. I grunted as that truth lodged in me like a cactus spine and began working its way inward.
He wasn’t wrong. Michael was one of the kindest people I knew, and it’s easy to forget thatkinddoesn’t meanstupid. That was why I wasn’t really a healer. A good healer wants to help the person. Whereas whatIwanted was to solve the problem.
Oh, in the abstract, I wanted to help Snow, of course. I genuinely wanted all my patients to be healthy and happy. I just didn’t feel any need to be involved with that beyond solving their current problem.
Even at the very beginning, when Cousin Anthony had been poisoned, my real obsession had been with why there was no cure.
I just want to save people and then have those people go away and, ideally, not take arsenic again. Is that really so much to ask?
“Eh?” I looked up. Nurse had said something, breaking into my woolgathering. I wondered how long I’d been staring into my sandwich and hastily shoved the rest into my mouth.
“I asked if you were finished,” she said. “Snow will be back before long, and we need to tidy all this away.”
She had told me earlier that Snow took a nap in the afternoons.I could not quite bear the thought of sitting in a chair, watching the girl sleep for hours on end. “Thank you for lunch,” I said politely. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Yes, of course,” Nurse said, and managed a brittle smile.
Halfway back to my room, I had a sudden epiphany—Blue cheese! That’s what’s in the spread!
Now, if I can just figure out what’s in the poison so easily…
CHAPTER 10
There was another appointment that I had to make and had probably put off for too long already. I went by my workroom to pick up a wicker cage, then went out in search of a doctor and a rooster, in that order.
The villa’s doctor was a man named Rinald, who moved with the peculiar choppy grace of people who spend a great deal of time avoiding being kicked by horses. Since a population of fewer than a hundred was not sufficient to employ a doctor full-time, he doubled as the horse leech. I wondered which job he preferred.
“Healer Rinald?” I asked, tapping on the doorframe of the tack room, where he was mixing up a poultice. “May I trouble you?”
He looked up, chuckling. “I don’t often get called that. You must be the poison doctor from the city, eh?”
Poison doctorwasn’t the phrase I’d have chosen, but I didn’t argue. “I’m sorry I didn’t come yesterday,” I said. “All I can plead is that people kept insisting I be here or there or decide something, and suddenly it was late.”
Rinald grinned, showing irregular teeth. “I know how that goes. In truth, Healer, you’re the first one of the doctors who’s come to see me at all.”
“Then the other doctors were fools,” I said bluntly. “Also rude, since you don’t take someone’s patient without the courtesy of addressing them, but mostly fools. Surely you know more about the progression of this illness than anyone who arrived after the fact?”
