“I should not mind an old man’s body if the years had earned it for me. But I can’t go on like this.”
She shook her head, puzzled. “Of course you can. Healing is tedious sometimes, but to say that you cannot go on … I do not understand. It is, perhaps, a difference in our languages?”
I took a breath to speak, but at that moment Burrich came in. “Awake? Feeling better?”
“Awake. Not feeling better,” I grumbled. Even to myself, I sounded like a fretful child. Burrich and Jonqui exchanged glances over me. She came to the bedside, patted my shoulder, and then left the room silently. Their obvious tolerance was galling, and my impotent anger rose like a tide. “Why can’t you heal me?” I demanded of Burrich.
He was taken aback by the accusation in my question. “It’s not that simple,” he began.
“Why not?” I hauled myself up straight in the bed. “I’ve seen you cure all manner of ailments in beasts. Sickness, broken bones, worms, mange … you’re stablemaster, and I’ve seen you treat them all. Why can’t you cure me?”
“You’re not a dog, Fitz,” Burrich said quietly. “It’s simpler with a beast, when it’s seriously ill. I’ve taken drastic measures, sometimes, telling myself, well, if the animal dies, at least it’s not suffering anymore, and this may heal it. I can’t do that with you. You’re not a beast.”
“That’s no answer! Half the time the guards come to you instead of the healer. You took the head of an arrow out of Den. You laid his whole arm open to do it! When the healer said that Greydin’s foot was too infected and she’d have to lose it, she came to you, and you saved it. And all the time the healer was saying the infection would spread and she’d die and it would be your fault.”