“I’m sorry I couldn’t have let you sleep through that,” Harran said to the man he had been cutting. “But with the wound so deep in the hand, if you were asleep and I hit a nerve, we would never have known it, and the hand might have been useless an hour later, though the poison was out.”
The joiner-Harran had forgotten his name, as he always forgot his patients’ names-groaned a little and eased himself up to sit, his wife helping him. Harran turned away for a moment, busying himself with cleaning his tools and not noticing his surroundings. He had been a priest, used to clean, open temples, fresh air, scrubbed tables, light. Cutting someone on a kitchen table that until five minutes ago had had chicken dung on it was not unusual-not anymore-but he would never like it.
The few chickens in the mean little hut walked about the floor, scratching and singing, oblivious to the blood and pain of the last half hour. The joiner had driven a nail through his hand while working, and had yanked the thing out and thrown it away, going on with what he had been doing. Then the wound had festered, and there were signs of the beginning of lockjaw when Harran had finally been called in. He had had to run like a madman down to the flats by the river for the plant to make the lockjaw potion; luckily, even now, the small medicinal magics seemed to work-and then, once that was in the joiner, and the poor man was flushed and sweating from its effects, then came the cutting. He had never been terribly fond of that part of any surgery, but the suppurating wound had to be drained. It was drained, though it nearly turned his stomach, which was saying something.