Down in the stone-walled supply room behind the hospice clinic, the air was cool and dry. It smelled of cedar shelves, beeswax, and the sharp stone tang of Ash Reed’s upper spring. On the scrubbed pine table sat Bel Sar’s three oiled-canvas sacks. The first sack already down by three pounds from the healing wraps Mina had applied to Seyun’s ribs, Senn’s chest, Osen Tal’s flank, and Seyun’s left collarbone over the past two days. Meanwhile, the second and third sacks still bore their unbroken red stone wax seals.
Mina stood behind the table with her brass balance scale and iron weights laid out on a clean linen cloth. Halin stood at her left elbow holding the wooden scoop and a stack of measured parchment squares, his brow knit in concentration as he checked his teacher’s addition on a wax tablet.
Down in the cool, stone-walled supply room behind the hospice clinic, Mina cleared the center table and set Bel Sar’s three oiled-canvas sacks of refined stone spring ash in a row beside her brass balance scale and her leather-bound medicine ledger. Halin stood at the corner of the table with a wooden scoop and a stack of square linen wrappers. He watched carefully as she taught him how a healer accounted for scarce supplies before a siege.
