The first thing Iven saw at Bellcut was Tavin arguing with a chair.
He had been told to keep his left leg supported. The chair was too low, the folded blanket too soft and his temper too lively to accept either condition quietly. Pellan stood beside him with another cushion and the patience of a man who had survived a worse argument on the road yesterday.
“Put it down,” Elian said from the doorway.
Both men looked up.
“The argument,” he added. “Keep the leg where it is.”
Tavin settled back.
Iven had left the Gate at dawn with Elian, a clinical attendant and a supply cart. Eighteen kilometers had brought them to the village near midday. Yara traveled with them after sending her own instructions ahead by the faster watch relay. She did not arrive in a different place simply because the road had become urgent.
At the Gate, Sera and the clinic’s other practitioners had agreed to cover Elian’s absence. At Bellcut, Maud Hen had cleared work space for him. The visit rested on people making room for one another, not on one physician ceasing to exist everywhere his next patient needed him.
