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wasn't as far below, of course, but I was in control. I, little Kami Khuzud,
had managed to jump a horse across a fence.
Arefai was right, I decided.
This wasn't bad.
Then the horse landed hard, tearing me from the saddle. The ground came up and
hit me, harder, on the side.
It was just as well I hadn't had breakfast, all things con-sidered.
9
The Deep Personal Concern of Our Beloved Ruling Class, the Gentle Touch of
Vizards, and Other
Lies
"I think it safe to move him, eh, Tebol?" Narantir's thick, whisker-rimmed
lips split in a smile; one of the many things I hate about Narantir is how
much he enjoys his work, particularly when that work involves me being hurt.
I didn't remember the others leaving, and that bothered me. Not that I would
have expected members of our be-loved ruling class to loiter to see to the
welfare of a lowly bourgeois.
But there was fuzz around the edge of my brain. And I hurt, badly.
"Best to be sure," the slimmer man said. Tebol pushed the end of a long
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straight rod into the ground next to me; it looked more like a spear than
anything else. He knelt on the grass and tied the tops of two canvas sacks,
each large enough for a body, to a long, thin board, then lifted the board
into the air, the bags dangling below.
They clicked and clattered, like dice. Or bones.
"Bones," I said. It hurt to talk. It hurt not to talk.
"Be silent," Narantir said. "And don't move. If you move nothing wrong, you'll
hurt nothing more; if you say nothing, you'll say nothing stupid."
"Minch? The others?"
Narantir sniffed. "All gone. They saw no need to stay around and watch after a
damaged bourgeois, not that I blame them."
"Narantir& " Tebol raised a finger. "A bit of fairness, a touch of honesty, a
trace of truthfulness would go well. Arefai wanted to remain to see after you,
but Narantir and I told him it wasn't necessary. You took quite a clobbering,
and were muttering things. You could have said something that he might have
had to take exception to." The slim wizard pulled rolls of wires from his
magician's bag, and talked while he worked. "Nice bit of inference on the
ar-row, by the way. Clever of you. Almost as clever of Minch, though."
"Demick," Narantir put in. "Minch doesn't have the wit."
Tebol shrugged. "So it would seem. But someone has enough wit to see that
trying to get Arefai to dishonor himself is the best chance at stopping the
wedding, and Minch was, at least, the one who put his neck in the way. Rather
nicely done, whoever had the idea in the first place."
I snorted. It hurt to snort. What sort of worm tries to trick another into
making a true-but-disprovable accusa-tion?
Narantir's snort was louder than mine. "Don't be so quick to despise Minch. By
the standards of the nobility, he hasn't done anything dishonorable he's just
ridden himself hard near the thin edge of dishonor, trying to lure Toshtai or
Arefai to jump after him, miss, and disgrace himself. But lie still and let
Tebol work." Not ungentle fin-gers pushed my head back. "Are you ready to test
the bones?" Narantir asked.
"Just a moment& there. Ready."
Bones, I thought.
I knew how this worked; I had been through this before with Narantir. Law of
Similarity. One bag contained a skeleton, its bones intact; another contained
a skeleton with each bone carefully broken.
They would connect each of my possibly broken bones to the corresponding bones
of the skeletons with bright wires that terminated in sharp, painful needles
that Narantir would stick into my flesh un-til it touched the bone.
They then would apply the Law of Similarity; like to like. Phlogiston whatever
that was would flow from unbroken bone to unbroken, or from broken to broken.
A few hundred stabs with needles, and they would know just what was and wasn't
broken. And I'd be spotted with hun-dreds of tiny sores that would heal
indecently slowly. Therapeutic magic is never for the comfort of the patient.
I was surprised when Tebol balanced the beam holding the bags on the
spearpoint. It bowed a trifle, then started to slip off until Tebol adjusted
the center.
His magician's bag provided a covered ramekin, a clean brush, and a pair of
silver scissors; he uncovered the ram-ekin, revealing a dark goo, then dipped
the brush and touched it to each of the ten pulse points, first cutting
through the clothing over my elbows, armpits, and crotch.
The goo was green and somewhat translucent. I tried to hold my breath against
the stench I was certain it gave off, but finally had to breathe in. It really
didn't smell bad. The odor was thick and sickly sweet, to be sure, but held
over-tones of perook, patchouli, and eucalyptus that would have been very
agreeable under other circumstances, and were even kind of pleasant now. Maybe
even a bit of mint?
Tebol muttered a few words I didn't quite catch, and made a gesture with his
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long, aristocratic fingers that looked more like somebody flicking away a fly
than any-thing else. The goo flashed momentarily, painlessly into a silent
green flame and the balanced bags pivoted neatly on the spearpoint, one
swinging toward me, one away.
"Amazing," Narantir said. "Nothing broken."
"No bones," Tebol corrected, running the little finger of his left hand up the
side of my calf. It twitched, as though from palsy. "But there's torn muscle
and tendon in here," he said, dipping a finger into an inkpot and touching it
lightly to my flesh in two places. "And& here."
Narantir's brow furrowed. "How?"
"Eh?"
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