Now the hand was bound with clean linen, and Harran’s tools were clean and in their satchel. The man’s head was lolling to one side, an aftereffect of the lockjaw remedy. Timidly, his wife came to Harran and offered him a handful of coppers. She tried to be nonchalant about it, but it was too plain from her eyes that they were all she and her man had. Harran considered, took one, for form’s sake, and then professed great interest in one of the chickens, a rather scrawny red hen that looked good for soup, if nothing else. “How about her, eh?” he said. “Looks like there’s nice pickings on her.”
The joiner’s wife saw instantly what Harran was trying to do, and began protesting. But the protests were feeble, and after a while Harran walked out of the hut with a copper, and a copper-colored chicken, and blessings raining on his back. He walked as fast as he could out of that particular comer of the
Maze. It was always the blessings that embarrassed him the most.
The only good thing about them, Harran thought as he made his way toward the
Bazaar, was that they made it unnecessary for him to cry his wares like a streethawker. In the old days, as Siveni’s priest, people had known where to come for healing, and had done so without any fuss. Even in the Stepsons’ barracks, they had known. It had galled him, after the return from hell, to have to go hunting the sick and injured like some grave robber in a hurry….
Graves…. It was a thought. There was an old friend he had not seen since shortly after he got back from hell. He began a detour, and stopped in a wine shop for a pot of cheap red, then headed across town toward the chamel house.