Page 59 of The Prison Healer

“It’s usually ladies first,” Kiva said, turning his face to the side.

“I took you as more of a liberal woman, the kind who’d scoff if I went all gentlemanly on you.”

Kiva snorted. “Nice try.”

“And besides,” Jaren continued jovially, “I’ve already asked my first questions.”

Since Kivahadagreed to those, she dunked her cloth in salted water and said, “This’ll sting,” before pressing it to Jaren’s cut lip. While he was wincing away the pain, she told him about her day at the quarry, and how she’d actually enjoyed being in Naari’s company. He didn’t show any reaction to that—nothing to indicate his own feelings toward the guard—so Kiva went on to share how they’d come back and she’d begun testing Tipp’s rats.

“How long will it take before they start to show symptoms?” Jaren asked, looking at the makeshift pen.

“Ifthey do,” Kiva corrected, since there was no guarantee the sickness originated in the quarry. “I’m not sure, but I’m hoping Mot can help me speed up the process tomorrow. He knows a lot more than me when it comes to experimental testing.”

“Because he’s older?”

Kiva shook her head, dunking her cloth again. “It’s always the case with apothecaries and healers. Apothecaries know so many different remedies, while healers know the bodies those remedies go into.” Seeing the furrow in Jaren’s brow, she tried to explain better. “If someone sick comes to a healer, we diagnose and then treat them with medicine, but rarely do we make it ourselves—a lot of what we use comes from an apothecary, or it’s an assortment of ingredients that we mix together based off an apothecary’s recipe. Their role is to make medicine, ours is to decide which treatment is needed and administer it.”

That would be true in the outside world. Things were different in Zalindov, and Kiva often had to make do with what she had, creating her own remedies using the small medicinal garden behind the infirmary and whatever other supplies she could scrounge up.

“So you’re saying that healers are the hands, and apothecaries are the brains?”

Kiva scrunched her nose at his analogy, but said, “Close enough.” She began cleaning the graze on his forehead and added, somewhat musingly, “This is all common knowledge. I’m surprised you don’t know it already.”

“I didn’t have much of a chance to learn about this kind of thing in my childhood.” Jaren shrugged. “My medicine always came directly from a healer, so I just assumed they made it themselves.” He gestured toward the workbench. “Like you do here.”

His answer wasn’t surprising, since any good healer maintained a healthy stockpile of supplies. Kiva’s father had always kept more than he’d ever needed on hand, and was careful to do a regular inventory to avoid the risk of running out. That was something he’d repeatedly emphasized when she’d started under his tutelage:Better to be overprepared than underprepared, little mouse. If you get an influx of patients, it can mean the difference between life or death, so best to stock up whenever you can.

Whatwassurprising was Jaren’s lack of what Kiva considered general life knowledge, and she debated pressing for more details, but was unsure what to ask. She’d assumed for some time that he’d come from a wealthy upper-class family, but now she wondered if she’d been wrong. Perhaps the opposite was true, especially if his parents hadn’t hired a tutor to teach him such things. Maybe they hadn’t been able to afford one.

“Well, now you know,” Kiva said in an upbeat voice, not wanting to make him uncomfortable. People—especially men—could react poorly if they thought their intelligence was being criticized.

Setting down her cloth, she reached for her small pot of ballico sap and, without thinking, scraped some onto her finger and leaned forward to dab it onto his cut lip.

Jaren sucked in a startled breath, and Kiva’s eyes jumped up to meet his.

They were so close, her fingertip frozen on his lip.

She had a split second to decide what to do. Part of her wanted to leap backwards and put as much distance between them as possible, but she knew how that would look, how he might perceive such an action, how telling it would be that she was so affected by him. So despite her entire nervous system being hyperaware of how—andwhere—she was touching him, she continued applying the healing sap to his wound with unhurried ease, willing the heat from her cheeks and praying to anyone who would listen that she looked more relaxed than she felt.

“This isn’t too bad, so it should be better within a couple of days,” Kiva said, her voice half a note higher than usual. She cleared her throat quietly and was finally able to move her hand from his mouth, reaching toward his forehead. “This graze nearly touches the scar you got the day you arrived, but you’re luckier this time—it’s shallow and should heal without leaving a mark.” She gently smeared sap over the wound and, remembering the two dead men who had been delivered to Zalindov with him, added, “You never did tell me what happened. Or how you came to be here.”

There was a small pause before Jaren answered, “I thought you said it was rude to ask people what led to their imprisonment?”

His tone was joking, but there was a seriousness to his eyes, a warning that Kiva, despite her curiosity, decided to heed.

“Fair enough. But what about today? Ready to tell me what happened?”

She rinsed her sticky hand in the salted water and then walked over to the workbench under the guise of collecting some aloeweed gel. In truth, she needed a moment away from him, but she turned back again when he started talking.

“I had a run-in with another prisoner at dinner, someone who claimed to be an old acquaintance of yours,” Jaren said, almost too casually. “I didn’t like the way she was talking about you, and her friends didn’t like when I asked her to stop. Things escalated until we were no longer speaking with words.”

Kiva had been walking back toward Jaren when he’d begun speaking, but she’d frozen midstep halfway through his answer. “Please tell me you’re kidding,” she croaked out.

Jaren pointed to his face. “Does it look like I’m kidding?”

In a flat voice, Kiva stated, “It was Cresta, wasn’t it.”

“Red hair? Snake tattoo?” Jaren asked. When Kiva nodded, he said, “That’s her. She likes to talk big but isn’t a fan of sticking around once the action starts.”

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