Chapter 12: Silver

I sat on bed seven with the lamp and read the words until the oil ran low.

A healer's bare hand feels warm only to another healer.

To everyone else in the world it's just a hand.

Joris's sister had been a healer, lying in this bed with her wounds closed, and someone had sat beside her and held her hand.

Joris had told me himself who it was.

I didn't sleep.

At noon the whole guild was in the yard.

Hunters stood three deep along the walls and hung out of every window of the hall.

The cordless healers stood together by the infirmary door, and Daan stood in front of them with his arms folded.

The Guildmaster sat in a chair at the top of the hall's back steps with his left hand on his chest.

I couldn't stop looking at that hand.

Joris walked out into the middle of the yard with a lump of chalk.

He didn't look at me.

He marked off thirty paces across the flagstones and drew a line at each end.

"The challenge ends when one of you yields or can't go on," he said to the yard. "The holder named the weapon."

A guard handed me a crossbow and a quiver.

I had never fired one in my life.

I set it down on the flagstones beside my line and left it there.

At the other line Sander laughed and wound his crossbow back with the crank.

"Ready?" Joris asked.

"Ready," Sander said.

I nodded.

Joris stepped back to the wall and dropped his hand.

Sander lifted the crossbow and shot me in the left shoulder.