Paxa Sel didn’t ask for permission. She didn’t look at Kezra, nor did she look at Yseld’s leveled staff.
The thirty-six-year-old traveling healer walked into the center of the sunken service chute, unclasped her heavy canvas splint roll from the side of her satchel. Then she held two flat ash splint-boards high in her left hand. In her right, she raised a three-inch roll of raw, unwhitened linen bandage. That let the white cloth unspool two feet in the mountain draft so that every soldier on the low roof wall could see she held no weapon.
She looked up at Captain Hest Vale, her voice cutting through the silence of the gorge with the total, unbending power of a woman who had treated battlefields before Vale had earned her first commission.
“I don’t trade splints for hostages, Captain Vale!” Paxa shouted up the stone steps. “I’m a sworn fighter of the Provincial Guild of Healers. My charter doesn’t recognize military bargains over broken bones! Put your crossbows on the stone wall and step three paces back from the low roof wall. Keep your troopers above the cart axle. I’ll walk up these steps alone, I’ll set your corporal’s leg under skilled truce. Then I’ll walk back down to my party. If a single bowstring snaps while I’m on those stairs, your man bleeds to death in the gravel before your troopers can reach his belt!”
