Chapter 19 Sage
Sage
I pushed through the infirmary doors into the morning light streaming across the main room.
It was halfway through the rotation and so far every morning had been the same.
Reef told me to do the cleaning while he taught Garridan basic healing arts, sometimes even letting Garridan help him treat minor injuries.
But I didn’t want to complain. Cleaning the infirmary was easier than mucking out the stables and didn’t strain my already aching muscles.
I’d also learned that if the injury looked minor, Reef didn’t use his magic to determine its severity or to heal it. Payne hadn’t lied — not that I’d expected him to — when he’d said the Black Guard healers conserved their magic as much as possible, but it was nice to get confirmation.
And that meant so long as the injury was small, perhaps only requiring a few stitches at most, I could probably get away with receiving medical attention instead of dealing with any injuries myself and hoping no one noticed.
Of course, there was no guarantee that Flint or any of the other healers in the Black Guard were as stingy with their healing magic as Reef was. For all I knew Reef didn’t have a lot of magic power to begin with and had to be particularly circumspect with it.
And really, it was best to avoid getting injured at all.
This morning, Reef stood at one of the patient tables in the middle of the room tending to a man with a bleeding arm.
The injury didn’t look too bad, and Reef must have thought the same because he’d pulled one of the rolling tables close and was stitching the wound together instead of closing his eyes and releasing his power.
The healer glanced up as I strode past him, but I didn’t bother asking if I was going to be doing anything different today. He’d seemed upset the day before yesterday that I’d bothered asking, as if talking to me was too much work.
Which, now that I thought about it, might not have been because he thought it was too much work just that he was supposed to be going along with everyone else and pretending I didn’t exist — something he couldn’t actually do because he was in charge of me for my morning chores.
I headed straight to the hall with the patient rooms and the cleaning closet at the end.
Behind me, I heard the infirmary doors open, then Reef greet Garridan and tell him to come closer to watch how he sewed the stitches.
I reached the cleaning room and started filling one of the buckets with the magical cleansing water, the sharp sour smell stinging my nose.
“You know both novices are supposed to do the cleaning so it’s done in half the time,” Payne said from behind me, startling me and making me slosh water out of the bucket. “You’re both supposed to get training in basic healing.”
I shrugged and went back to filling the bucket. “It’s fine.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Stop bothering my novice,” Reef said, his voice sharp as he approached from down the hall.
“Your novice? Could have fooled me,” Payne huffed. “An infirmary rotation is supposed to be half cleaning and half basic healing. Sawyer’s been on scrub work for five days straight. I’ve been thinking of informing the quartermaster that he must have been misassigned.”
Reef’s eyes narrowed. “How I run my infirmary is my business. Not yours, the quartermaster’s, or anyone else’s.”
“It’ll become everyone’s business once the boy is in the field and needs to know how to bind a wound.”
Thankfully I already knew how to bind wounds, but I also knew speaking up right now would just draw unwanted attention, not to mention undermine Payne’s argument. And while I felt it was unnecessary, I didn’t want Payne to think I wasn’t grateful for the time and consideration he’d given me.
“It doesn’t matter if the runt can bind a wound or not,” Reef said. “No one trusts him. He can learn basic healing the next time he’s assigned infirmary duty.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Payne huffed. “If he can’t be useful in the field, he won’t gain any trust. With his size, no one’s going to put him on the front line. Basic healing is the field skill he should be focusing on.”
“Well, he’ll just have to prove all of us wrong,” Reef shot back.
Now it was Payne’s turn to narrow his eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“We’re shorthanded,” Reef said with a dismissive wave before turning his attention to me. “Put the bucket away, we’re going to the ring to meet a merchant with medical supplies and escort him back to the Tower.
“You’re going to escort him?” Payne asked
Reef’s hand dropped to the hilt of the longsword at his hip. “It might have been before your time, but I served my fifty years as a guardsman before I came back as a healer.”
“Then you know no one goes beyond the wall by themselves,” Payne said.
“I’ll have the runt and Garridan,” Reef said. “The area’s patrolled and it’s daytime. It’s safe enough.”
Safe enough. I didn’t like the sound of that.
“Two novices don’t count,” Payne shot back.
Maybe Reef was an exceptional fighter, and it wouldn’t matter that while I might be able to hold my own against a small shadow monster, Garridan didn’t stand a chance.
He wasn’t one of the novices experienced with fighting and the glimpses I’d gotten of his skills over the last couple of days made my brother — who could have tripped over his own feet while standing still — look like an adequate swordsman.
“And safe enough, isn’t safe at all,” Payne growled.
“Then find someone to back me up?” Reef spat. “You can’t, can you? Because there’s no one else right now. I checked.”
“I’ll go.”
Reef’s eyes widened with surprise. “Your team is still on medical leave. We both know as soon as Kit and Lewin are given the go ahead you’ll be put back on light duty and you won’t see lieu time for days.”
“Still going.” Payne shrugged. “I could use some exercise.”
“Fine.” Reef jerked around and stormed back toward the infirmary’s main room. “Garridan, grab your sword and let’s go. We’re going to the gate.”
“What a fucking moron,” Payne hissed under his breath. “And did he just tell that novice to get his sword? He’s supposed to be wearing it at all times.”
“He says it gets in his way.” And it wasn’t my place to correct him. “He’s never had one before, so he’s still getting used to it.”
“That’s no excuse, and Reef should know better and correct him,” Payne said.
But Garridan was Reef’s favorite novice at the moment. I had no doubt if I set my sword aside, Reef would reprimand me without a second thought.