Trader's Honour

Chapter 3-2

Somewhere around midday, the emergency nurses brought into the ward an old man whom Mikandra had seen several times before. He was tall as her father but thin like a skeleton. He usually shaved his head—badly, because his scalp was marked with scabs from where he’d cut himself—but he had no army tattoos or other markings that gave him away as Nikala. On an earlier visit, he had given his name as Leitho. That was a typical Endri name, and he had both the build and the language to be of her class, but she’d checked and there was no Leitho in the Mirani register who was of the right age, and no Endri families admitting to having lost a family member of similar age who was now living on the streets.

This time he’d come in because he had scraped the skin off the top of his nose and cheekbone. A wound on his forehead oozed sticky fluid into his eye. The skin around it was tight and swollen.

In line with her determination to be cheerful, Mikandra forced a smile when she went to his bed. “Here you are again.”

“Ye—ye—yeah. ’M a bit clumsy in old age.” His lips were cracked with the dry air and flaky from frost exposure.

“It looks like you have a nasty fall on your face.”

“I fell down the stairs. You know, between the city office and the guard headquarters.”

Mikandra nodded. She knew the stairs. They got very slippery after frost. “Did you hurt anything else?”

“Just my head. On the railing.”

Was there a railing? She couldn’t remember. “It looks nasty.”

The wound above his right eyebrow looked at least several days old.

She got some warm water and disinfectant to wash the wound. Eydrina would have to glue the sides of the cut together.

While she washed his face, he constantly moved some part of his body. His arm shivered, his leg jiggled, he waggled his head from side to side and she had to tell him to keep still. Which he couldn’t.

When she had first come to the hospital, Eydrina had warned her about this. Don’t pay any attention to all the old guys constantly waggling and jiggling or it will drive you crazy. The cause of the jiggling was pretty obvious from the smell of him.

His foul body odour was laced with the distinctive sweetness of menisha brew. The orange tinge of the whites of his eyes confirmed the buildup of poison in his body. His arms had withered to sticks, covered with paper-thin skin with irregular red blotching that would flake in dry frosty weather. Late stage menisha poisoning. He would probably not see the end of low-winter.

She poured water into a glass and added a spoonful of powder that would help his body rid itself of some of the poisons, although a proper detoxification would take days and days of drinking a weak solution every day.

Annoyingly, his addiction also meant that she could not use menisha extract to help kill his infection. It was one of the few medicines still available without restriction; the fungus grew in the gorges region of the Mirani highlands and needed no import permits.

She mixed the powder in the glass. The fluid went milky. “Before I send you to the surgeon, I want you to drink this for me.” She held up the glass.

His face showed disgust. “I don’t need that. My head needs fixing. I am doing fine everywhere else.”

“You have to drink this before the surgeon can fix your head.”

He pushed himself sideways on the bed, trying to climb out. “If you’re going to be like that, I’m leaving. I don’t want that stuff.”

“Your wound is infected and needs to be stitched before the infection gets any worse and you get seriously sick or worse.”

“Why does everyone tell me I’ll die?” His voice rose into a squeak.

“You will, if you don’t stop drinking. Your body is breaking down because of the poison. Your eyes are orange. You’re smart enough to know what that means.”

He did not meet her eyes, but did not protest either. He took the glass in trembling hands, glancing at the tray next to his bed. “You’ll bring the bowl?” The fluid in the glass sloshed around with his jiggling.

“All here.”

He brought the cup carefully to his mouth, but experienced a shaking attack halfway and spilled some of the medicine on his disgusting shirt. He took a careful sip and winced. “This stuff makes me see things, you know?”

“That’s why we keep you here while you drink it.” Yes, she knew. The hallucinations were caused by withdrawal from the menisha poison. Incidentally, Endri suffered much worse with both the drunkenness and withdrawal from menisha poisoning.

She sat with him until he’d finished the concoction, then dragged a screen curtain around his bed and gave him the bowl. By the time she rose from the bed, he had already pissed out a quantity of bright orange fluid.

“It burns,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. His eyes were wide and definitely more orange than they had been during his last visit.

“It burns, it burns!”

“I know. You should try to—”

He gasped. “Like evil. We’re surrounded by evil. Listen to me. The people running this city are evil. They hold us as prisoners. They know the ancestors’ secrets, but they are keeping the secrets from us. You’re a girl from one of the Endri. The council will listen to you. You must go to the council and demand that we be freed. Some of us have gone over to the other side.”

“Sure, I will do that.” She patted his hand.

Always agree with them, Eydrina had instructed her. The men were bound to become violent if caught in an argument while having hallucinations, and there were already enough fights in the wards without deliberately adding to them.

“You must free me. They come at night and take me to the room with the glass vials. They will pour ice over me. They stick things in me. You must help me.”

“Yes, I will help you. That’s what I’m for.”

He grabbed her arm. “Listen to me. Promise me.”

“Yes, I promise to help you.”

She felt sorry for him and hoped he found the strength to fight whatever demons inhabited his mind. This vile drink ruined so many lives. Why had no one banned it yet?

Mikandra pushed the curtain aside to leave him alone in his agony and continued with the other patients.

And all the while, her forced cheerfulness couldn’t stop her mind churning over the choice she must make soon, and every time she thought about it, she changed her mind. She was selfish to accept, because, awful as this place was, people needed her here.

But she wanted to be useful to Miran, and while being in the hospital looked useful and a good thing to do, all they did in the wards was treat recurring problems that would simply go away if only these people could afford to heat their homes. Heating required money, and money required a job. Traders needed an office and support staff. They provided a lot of employment in the city. They provided goods. They made huge financial contributions to the council. And the Mirani Traders were the top of the Trader Guild. They were the lifeblood of a city like Miran, and had always been. Miran needed Traders. The Trader Guild considered the Miran chapter of its organisation too old-fashioned and quaint. So the Mirani chapter had accepted her, a nontraditional choice, a sign that they were willing to make changes. She should act on the trust that the Guild wanted to put in her.

But Liseyo . . .

And so her mind went around and around in circles.