Their home was across the road and along it for hundred steps or so, yet the distance seemed enormous. It would have been ridiculous to ask the stable workers to hitch a horse to the cart for such a short journey, but she was so tired she wished someone had. Her father’s shoe clipped a stone and she tucked an arm round his to steady him, her other hand gripping the handle of his bag. It felt heavier than it ever had before, even though most of the bandages and a substantial amount of the medicines usually contained within it were now wrapped around or applied to various parts of the Sachakan slave’s body.

That poor man. Her father had cut him open in order to remove the broken piece of rib from his lung and sew up the hole. Such drastic surgery should have killed the fellow, but somehow he had continued to breathe and live. Her father had said it was pure luck the incision he’d made hadn’t severed a major pulse path.

He’d made the cut as small as possible, and worked mostly by feel, his fingers deep within the man’s body. It had been incredible to watch.

Coming to the door of their house, Tessia stepped forward to open it. But as she reached out for the handle, the door swung inward. Her mother drew them inside, her face lined with worry.

“Cannia said you were treating a Sachakan. I thought at first she meant him. I thought, “How could a magician be that badly injured?” but she told me it was the slave. Is he alive?”

“Yes,” Tessia’s father said.

“Will he stay so?”

“It’s unlikely. He’s a tough one, though.”

“Didn’t hardly yell at all,” Tessia agreed. “Though I suspect that’s because he was afraid of attracting his master’s attention.”

Her mother turned to regard her. She opened her mouth, then closed it again and shook her head.

“Did they feed you?” she asked.

Her father looked thoughtful.

“Keron brought some food,” Tessia answered for him, “but we didn’t have time to eat it.”