The carter’s finger was the colour of a bruised plum, and it was still bleeding at the nail.
Vesna looked at it for a long time before she touched it. Calen had taught her that in the first lesson, and she had hated it then. Look first. Count the breaths. Touch last.
She did not hate it now.
At her old school, healers had closed cuts by the bell.
A student paid a coin to the desk. The bell rang, and the cut was closed before the next patient was called.
Nobody looked at the bone. Nobody asked what the hand was for.
Calen’s first lesson had started differently. It had begun with a wax arm on a bench and one word, said before anything else.
She could still see the bench clearly. Vesna had been very good at the old way. She had been paid for being good.
