Beastkin Healer (Mend or Smite #2)

1. Chapter 1 The Clinic

The golden light faded from under my hands, and the badger-kin man sat up on the table, rolling his shoulder where the joint had been grinding.

"How's that feeling?" I asked.

He moved it in a circle and lifted his arm above his head, then brought it back down. The wince he'd walked in with was gone.

"It's good." He said the words like he was surprised by them. "It's—I mean, yeah, it's good."

"Good. You're done. It will be nice to be able to actually move now."

He swung his legs off the table and stood. He was short and barrel-chested, the dark bristle-fur along his jawline and the backs of his hands coarse in the morning light from the window. He patted his shoulder once more, testing it, and something in his face softened.

"Thank you, Healer."

"You bet," I said.

He walked to the door where Liv was waiting with her back against the frame, one ear swiveled toward the hallway and the other tracking the room. She stepped aside to let him pass. He paused at the jar.

The jar sat on a small table beside the door, a thick glass cylinder about the size of a beer stein with a brass lid that never came off.

It was Mildred’s work. You dropped coin in through the slot at the top and the coin disappeared the same way things disappeared into my Ring of Holding.

Whatever had accumulated by evening, Bjorna pulled out and put into the party fund.

I didn’t want to charge anything, but the party insisted that I should give my patients the option to donate if they wanted to.

Who was I to argue with a group of gorgeous ladies?

The badger-kin dropped two coppers into the slot. They clinked once and were gone.

"Who's next?" I said.

Liv checked the hallway. "Goat-kin woman with a bad tooth. She's been out there since we opened."

"Send her in."

Liv leaned out the door. "Come on in."

The room was a first-floor space at the front of Rowena's place, facing the avenue.

It had been a sitting room, or a waiting room for the evening business upstairs.

Rowena had cleared it out and put a padded table against the inside wall, a chair for me, and a washstand with a basin and pitcher.

The window looked out onto the avenue and the smithy across the street.

Larg's hammer rang in the morning at a steady double-tap, the sound coming through the glass at a comfortable distance.

A medical clinic located inside a brothel was a little weird, but it was working out well for the community and there had been no complaints.

This was my fourth clinic day. The routine had found its shape by the second one.

Liv ran the door and the hallway and kept the line moving.

Patients came in, sat or stood, told me what hurt, and I put my hands on them and fixed it.

They left something in the jar on the way out or they didn't. The jar didn't care. Neither did I.

The goat-kin woman came in holding her jaw. She was young, twenty at most, with small curling horns set behind her hairline and a thin face pulled tight with pain. She'd wrapped a cloth around her head to hold her jaw shut and it gave her the look of someone who'd been dealing with this for days.

"Sit down,” I said kindly. “Let me see this tooth. Toothaches are the absolute worst. I had one last year, and it put me completely out of commission. It’s some of the worst pain I’ve ever had."

She pointed to her lower left. The swelling ran along the jawline, visible from across the room.

"Open for me. Easy now, I know it hurts."

She unwrapped the cloth and opened her mouth. The molar on the lower left was cracked through the middle, the gum around it swollen and dark. Infection had set in. The smell told me before the color did.

I put my left hand on her jaw, two fingers below the ear where the bone met the joint. My right hand went flat on her cheek.

[Mend.]

The golden light came up and went in. The infection cleared first, the heat of the inflamed tissue dropping under my fingers as the gold ate through it. Then the crack in the tooth sealed, the two halves finding each other and closing. Her jaw unclenched under my hand as the pain left.

"All done. The tooth's whole. The infection's gone. You can eat on that side tonight."

She put her tongue against the molar, pressing, testing. Her eyes went wide.

"It doesn't hurt anymore. I can’t believe it."

"I wouldn’t be a very good healer if it still hurt now, would I? I’m glad I was able to help. I’m sorry you had to wait a while this morning.”

She got off the table and stood there for a second. Then she reached into the sash at her waist and pulled out a small silver coin, not copper, and dropped it into the jar. It clinked and vanished.

"The wait was no problem. You’re a good man.

Thank you," she said. Her voice sounded different without the pain compressing it, a full register higher.

"My sister said you wouldn't charge, and I didn't believe her. However, I’m not leaving without donating something. It just wouldn’t feel right. It’s the least I can do. "

"We appreciate it. Hopefully you don’t get any more toothaches soon," I said.

Liv gave the woman a little wave on the way out and leaned back against the doorframe.

"That's five this morning," Liv said. "You want a break?"

"I'm fine. Keep them coming. I get a little energized after each heal anyway. It feels good to be able to help people that are suffering."

"You always say that. It’s okay to complain once in a while, you know," she said teasingly.

"What do I have to complain about? I’ve got this ability to heal the sick and injured, and I have a gorgeous rabbit-kin girlfriend. It would be stupid to complain."

One ear went flat and the other stayed up, the rabbit-kin version of a skeptical eyebrow. She didn't push it, though, choosing instead to shoot me a dazzling grin.

The morning sun had climbed past the window and the light in the room had shifted from the warm gold of early to the flat white of midday.

Footsteps moved on the floor above us, the brothel's daytime rhythms. Someone was sweeping.

A door closed softly. The building had a different pulse during the day, quiet and domestic.

Rowena, the owner, came by around the middle of the morning. She stood in the doorway and looked the room over. Two seconds, and she'd seen everything she needed to see.

"You need anything down here?"

"We're good. Thank you for giving us the space to do this."

Her eyes went to the jar on its table by the door. Her expression didn't change, but she gazed at it for a long count.

"One of my girls has a bruise on her thigh that won't fade. Old one. Weeks now. When you're done with the line, if you have the time…?"

"Of course. Weeks? Why didn’t she come see me sooner? There’s no need to hurt like that when you don’t have to. I'll come up before I leave."

She nodded and gave me a tired smile. “You are one of a kind and a real blessing to this community. I know working out of a brothel is a little unconventional, but I’m glad it's helping.”

“You’re doing something nice for the beastkin around here. They won’t forget something like that.”

She smiled and nodded. Her footsteps went up the stairs, even and unhurried, the steps of a woman walking through her own house.

Sif came in mid-morning with the smell of the beastkin quarter still on her boots.

She leaned against the wall inside the door, her arms crossed, her silver hair pulled back in its leather cord. She looked at me first, then Liv, then the empty table, then back to me. Blue eyes, checking the room.

"Slow morning?"

"Six patients since dawn," Liv said. "It's been steady."

"Six. That's more than usual."

"Word gets around and it helps that Liv is standing at the door. Who the hell wouldn’t want to come in?" I shrugged.

Liv blew a raspberry. “You’re too much. You just want to get in my pants.”

“Whatever gets me there, gets me there,” I said with a chuckle.

Sif pushed off the wall and came further into the room.

She was compact and precise, every step covering exactly the ground it needed to and no more.

She wore her daggers low on her hips and her shirt was untucked, the hem riding above the beltline.

The strip of bare stomach above her waistband caught the light and my gaze.

"The quarter's talking about you," she said.

"Good things, I hope."

"Mostly." Sif smiled.

“Mostly? What do I have to do to get full marks?” I joked.

“The humans and the elves are a little difficult to read, but the beastkin are your biggest fans. I passed a lady that was in tears about you healing her hip or something.”

"That was today's patient number three. She came in unable to sit down properly. I fixed it for her,” I replied.

Sif shook her head. "You say that like it's nothing."

"It's [Mend] on a hip joint. It took about as long as the tooth I just did."

"The tooth," Sif repeated. She turned to Liv. "He just compared a woman walking for the first time in years to a bad tooth."

"He does that," Liv said. "You’ll get used to it."

Sif's grin came up, openly amused, her chin tipped down, her blue eyes bright. "You're ridiculous."

"Thank you."

"It wasn't a compliment."

"I'm taking it as one."

Liv laughed, a short bright sound that bounced off the low ceiling. "Daniel is in an especially good mood this morning. You would think he got lucky last night."

"He gets lucky every night, doesn’t he?" Sif said with a chuckle.

Liv’s mouth opened and she punched Sif in the arm. “Don’t make me sound like a whore. You’re the whore.”

At the doorway, another patient was hovering, a deer-kin man holding his arm against his chest.

Sif moved toward the exit. "I'll get out of your way. I wanted to tell you what I'm hearing."

"Stay," I said. "Grab the chair."

Liv stepped out to bring the next patient in, and Sif stayed.