Healers by Laurence Dahners Page B

with healers. It specified brief enslavement periods for charging someone for a cure that didn’t work. There was a longer enslavement for a cure which did harm but the harm later resolved. A cure which resulted in permanent harm carried a much longer sentence. A cure which killed someone resulted in lifelong enslavement.
    “What if someone comes to you who’s dying and you merely fail to keep them alive?!” Eva asked rhetorically.
    Daussie said, “Look down at the bottom. It says such things are to be decided by the king’s judge.”
    “And how’s he supposed to know?!” Eva said.
    Nervously, Kazy said, “I don’t think you should try to do any healing while we’re here.” Since Kazy didn’t believe healers could do any good, it looked to her like attempting to heal someone was a surefire way into enslavement.
    “Yeah, we won’t,” Eva said disgustedly. “But, I find it really hard, not helping people who’re suffering.”
     
    The others went back to the market area while Eva and Tarc headed on into town with the bay horse to buy supplies. Realth seemed much like other cities, though larger. People thronged the streets, but seemed subdued. Few jostled for position, they waited turns patiently instead.
    The lack of jostling seemed nice, but unnatural.
    Eva didn’t see any unaccompanied women and, when she stopped to ask directions to the grocers, she realized the man she addressed seemed uncomfortable to have been spoken to by a woman. When he gave his reply, he spoke mostly to Tarc.
    Eva knew women were second-class citizens in many places, but she hadn’t encountered it before. She took meager comfort in the fact that the “laws” posted at the gate didn’t codify such a bias. It seemed ingrained in the people and Eva knew habit could be worse than law.
    She supposed it had started in all innocence when men began accompanying women to protect them from lawbreaking and subsequent enslavement if they could. An inability to go about by themselves would then have seeped into attitudes as an expectation that women could do little else by themselves either.
    The grocers, when they found it, was large and had some unusual foodstuffs, so Eva and Tarc enjoyed looking around and trying to think what they might add to their menus. Tarc finally stopped Eva from buying any more, telling her with a laugh, “If you add one more item we’re going to have to go back for another horse!”
     
    They arrived back on the merchants’ plain outside Realth just before lunch time. Tarc headed for the wagon to put away their supplies while Eva went to the stall to see how the food was coming. As they had been running low, she took a round of cheese in case pizza sales went well.
    Approaching their stall, Eva saw with some sadness Daum had covered the part of their sign that referred to healing. She realized it would be easier to not have any patients ask for help than to turn them away, but still she felt like a traitor to her true nature.
    She stopped, wondering whether she could give away free treatment to those truly in need. After all, it would be hard for a patient to complain about a free treatment even if it didn’t work. On the other hand, there were those severe penalties for treatments that caused harm. Eva was well aware that almost any treatment could cause harm. Some of the things Daussie or Tarc could do, removing pieces of someone or heating tissue to kill it; those probably had the potential to do substantial harm even if the Hyllises hadn’t had a patient suffer an injury yet.
     
    Joe Lee wandered out of the market stalls belonging to the Simpson caravan and into the stalls belonging to the Nortons. He stopped at every stall, looking for goods he might be able to sell at his own store once the caravans moved on. Joe specialized in antiquities, but was happy to sell anything people would buy. He looked forward to talking to his old friend Henry Roper who sold antiquities in the Norton caravan. Joe had