Jesse, Merideth probably knew more about them and the city than Snake did. Snake had always had to take the stories about Center on faith alone; the idea of offworlders was hard to accept for someone who lived in a land where the stars were seldom visible.
“They might even be able to heal her in the city,” Snake said. “How should I know? The people who live there won’t talk to us. They keep us cut off out here — and as for offworlders, I’ve never even met anyone who claims to have seen one.”
“Jesse has.”
“Would they help her?”
“Her family is powerful. They might be able to make the offworlders take her where she could be healed.”
“The Center people and the offworlders are jealous of their knowledge, Merideth,“ Snake said. ”At least they’ve never offered to share any of it.“
Merideth scowled and turned away.
“I’m not saying we shouldn’t try. It could give her hope—”
“And if they refuse, her hope is broken again.”
“She needs the time.”
Merideth thought, and finally replied. “And you’ll come, to help us?”
It was Snake who hesitated now. She had already set herself to return to the healers’ station and accept the verdict of her teachers when she told them of her errors. She had prepared herself to go to the valley. But she put her mind to a different journey, and realized what a difficult task Merideth proposed. They would badly need someone who knew what care Jesse required.
“Healer?”
“All right. I’ll come.”
“Then let’s ask Jesse.”
They returned to the tent. Snake was surprised to find herself feeling optimistic; she was smiling, truly encouraged, for what seemed the first time in a long while.
Inside, Alex sat beside Jesse. He glared at Snake when she entered.
“Jesse,” Merideth said, “we have a plan.”
They had turned her again, carefully following Snake’s orders. Jesse looked up tiredly, aged by deep lines in her forehead and around her mouth.
Merideth explained with excited gestures. Jesse listened impassively. Alex’s expression hardened into disbelief.
“You’re out of your mind,” he said when Merideth had finished.
“I’m not! Why do you say that when it’s a chance?”
Snake looked at Jesse. “Are we?”
“I think so,” Jesse said, but she spoke very slowly, very thoughtfully.
“If we got you to Center,” Snake said, “could your people help you?”
Jesse hesitated. “My cousins have some techniques. They could cure very bad wounds. But the spine? Maybe. I don’t know. And there’s no reason for them to help me. Not anymore.”
“You always told me how important blood ties are among the city’s families,” Merideth said. “You’re their kin—”
“I left them,” Jesse said. “I broke the ties. Why should they take me back? Do you want me to go and beg them?”
“Yes.”
Jesse looked down at her long strong useless legs. Alex glared, first at Merideth, then at Snake.
“Jesse, I can’t stand to see you as you’ve been, I can’t bear watching you want to die.”
“They’re very proud,” Jesse said. “I hurt my family’s pride by renouncing them.”
“Then they’d understand what it took you to ask for their help.”
“We’d be crazy to try it,” Jesse said.
Chapter 3
They planned to break camp that evening and cross the lava flow in darkness. Snake would have preferred to wait a few more days before moving Jesse at all, but there was no choice. Jesse’s spirits were too readily changeable to keep her here any longer. She knew the partnership had already overstayed its time in the desert. Alex and Merideth could not hide the fact that the water was running low, that they and the horses were going thirsty so she could be cleaned and bathed. A few more days in the canyon, living in the sour stench that would collect because nothing could be properly washed, would push her down into depression and disgust.
And they had no time to waste. They had a long way to journey: up and across the lava, then east to the central mountains that separated the black desert into its western half, where they were now, and its eastern portion, where the city lay. The road cutting through the west and east ranges of the central mountains was a good one, but after the pass the travelers would enter the desert again, and head southeast, for Center. They had to hurry. Once the storms of winter began, no one could cross the desert; the city would be isolated. Already the summer was fading in stinging dust devils and windblown eddies of sand.
They would not take down the tent or load the horses until twilight, but they packed all they could before it became too hot to work, stacking the baggage beside Jesse’s sacks of ore. Snake’s hand limbered up with the heavy work. The bruise was finally fading and the punctures had healed to bright pink scars. Soon the sand viper bite would match all the other scars on her hands, and she would forget which one it was. She wished now that she had captured one of the ugly serpents to take home with her. It was a species she had never seen before. Even if it had turned out not to be useful to the healers, she could have made an antidote to its venom for Arevin’s people. If she ever saw Arevin’s people again.
Snake wrestled the last pack into the pile and wiped her hands on her pants and her face on her sleeve. Nearby, Merideth and Alex hoisted the stretcher they had built and adjusted the makeshift harnesses until it rode level between a tandem pair of horses. Snake went over to watch.
It was the most peculiar conveyance she had ever seen, but it looked like it would work. In the desert everything had to be carried or dragged; wheeled carts would bog down in the sand or break in rocky country. As long as the horses did not shy or bolt, the stretcher would give Jesse a more tolerable ride than a travois. The big gray between the front shafts stood calm and steady as a stone; apart from a sidelong glance as it was led between the back shafts, the second horse, a piebald, showed no fear.
Jesse
“Jesse says we’ll start a fashion among rich merchants wherever we go,” Merideth said.
“She’s right,” Alex said. He unfastened a strap and they let the stretcher fall to the ground. “But they’ll be lucky not to get kicked apart, the way most of them break horses.” He slapped the placid gray’s neck fondly and led both horses back to the corral.
“I wish she’d been riding one of them before,” Snake said to Merideth.
“They weren’t like that when she got them. She buys crazy horses. She can’t bear to see them mistreated. The colt was one of her strays — she had him calmed but he hadn’t found his balance yet.“
They started back toward the tent to get out of the sun as it crept across the afternoon. The tent sagged on one side where two poles had been removed for the stretcher. Merideth yawned widely. “Best to sleep while we have the chance. We can’t afford to still be on the lava when the sun comes up.”
But Snake was filled with a restless uncertain energy; she sat in the tent, grateful for the shade but wide-awake, wondering how the whole mad plan could work. She reached for the leather case to check on her serpents, but Jesse woke as she opened Sand’s compartment. She closed the catch again and moved closer to the pallet. Jesse looked up at her.
“Jesse… about what I said…” She wanted to explain but could not think how to start.
“What upset you so? Am I the first you’ve helped who might have died?”
“No. I’ve seen people die. I’ve helped them die.”
“Everything was so hopeless just a little while ago,” Jesse said. “A pleasant end would have been easy. You must always have to guard against… the simplicity of death.”
“Death can be a gift,” Snake said. “But in one way or another it always means failure. That’s the guard against it. It’s enough.”
A faint breeze whispered through the heat, making Snake feel almost cool.
“What’s wrong, healer?”
“I was afraid,” Snake said. “I was afraid you might be dying. If you were, you had the right to ask my help. I have the obligation to give it. But I can’t.”
“I don’t understand.”
“When my training ended my teachers gave me my own serpents. Two of them can be drugged for medicines. The third was the dream-giver. He was killed.”
Jesse reached out instinctively and took Snake’s hand, a reaction to her sadness. Snake accepted Jesse’s quiet sympathy gratefully, taking comfort in the sturdy touch.
“You’re crippled too,” Jesse said abruptly. “As crippled in your work as I.”
Jesse’s generosity in comparing them that way embarrassed Snake. Jesse was in pain, helpless, her only chance of recovery so small that Snake stood in awe of her spirits and her renewed grasp on life. “Thank you for saying that.”
“So I’m going back to my family to ask for help — and you were going back to yours?”
“Yes.”
“They’ll give you another,” Jesse said with certainty.
“I hope so.”
“Is there any question?”
