The Oran Healers’ Guild didn’t proclaim Mina a never seen before medical prodigy or seat a twenty-year-old woman above physicians who had spent forty winters setting compound fractures. In a city governed by real craft standards rather than tavern legends, what her check earned was better than flattery. It was exact, lawful, and undeniably hers.
The heavy oak doors of the Guild hall opened in the late afternoon sun. Then, Mina walked down the steps holding a box-shaped plaque of planed red cedar bearing the board’s wax seal in its lower corner.
Across the street beside the chestnut roaster’s fire bowl, Seyun stood up from a stone bollard. Meanwhile, Halin nearly dropped his paper cone of hot chestnuts and Pera let out a whistle shrill enough to turn the heads of two passing heavy cart horses.
Seyun walked across the cobbles and looked down at the carved script on the cedar board as Mina held it out.
The plaque approved Mina of Oran for a Limited Independent Pulse-Work and Meridian Recovery License. Under its terms, she was authorized in her own name to lease and operate a public test clinic within the city walls, read pulses and prescribe recovery regimens for Coal, Flame, Bronze. Jade channel injuries, compound non-poisonous herbal decoctions and splints, register one beginner apprentice in cold and exact watching, and attend the Guild’s advanced body and internal-medicine lectures every Tuesday and Friday afternoon toward full senior qualification.
