On the twelfth morning of the journey, Sera woke before Dema called the camp.
For a few moments she could not place the sound beyond the canvas. It was a stream over flat stones. At the clinic, the early water carrier set his buckets down twice beneath her window: once beside the door, once after remembering that the door opened outward. She had grown so accustomed to those two knocks that she heard their absence before she remembered the road.
She lay still.
No patient waited for her in the next room. No apprentice would be standing outside with a question that ought to have been asked an hour earlier. Nadrel had the keys, the rota and the authority to answer without sending every decision after her.
Sera had checked the handover until Nadrel finally said, kindly, “If you come round once more, I shall charge you for the consultation.”
Now there was a stream.
She dressed and went to help with breakfast.
Dema looked up from the small stove.
