Cassandra by Kerry Greenwood Read Free Book Online Page B

him.'
    I ignored this. `Go and get your tunic, lie him on his back with the tunic rolled up between his shoulder blades while I fetch my brother.'
    Hector, who was about to cast the spear, put it down again and followed me to where Siri lay whimpering. The stretched-out position strained all his displaced sinews, those strings which knit a muscle together. Hector leaned down and stroked the hair from the boy's sweating face.
    `It will stop hurting soon, little brother,' he said soothingly. `Maeron, sit beside him and hold him still while I pull. No, grab the other shoulder and brace yourself.'
    `Hector, Hector, let me,' I begged, hauling on his elbow. `Thithone said I had to do this before I can see the mystery.'
    Hector looked at me sternly. `A warrior must not be left unattended because of the healer's private purposes,' he said. `But you may give me orders, Cassandra, if you do so right away.'
    When my brother called me Cassandra like that he was seriously displeased and I quaked. But I knew the procedure and ordered, `Take his wrist in your hand, brother, and put your foot under his arm pit. Now pull gently until the arm goes back into the socket.'
    I had seen this several times. It was always fascinating. As Hector pulled on the arm, the shoulder joint moved under my hand, from an ugly displaced lump to the shape of the boy's proper shoulder. All medicine, said Tithone, was restoring the body to its proper shape and condition. There was a click, Siri bit back a cry, and Hector laid the restored arm across the boy's chest.
    Hector looked at me. I remembered what remained to be done.
    `Wriggle your fingers, Siri,' I ordered. `Can you feel your hand?'
    `Yes, Princess. Thank you.' Maeron was holding Siri close and I perceived that they were lovers. I blushed to think that I had just ordered poor Maeron about, as though he was a dog, when he must have been worried about Siri. And Hector was angry with me. This healing was more difficult than it looked. It involved people; mere knowledge of methods of healing did not begin to cover it.
    `Now, Cassandra, what next?' asked Hector. Luckily, I knew.
    `I bandage his arm to his side and send him off the field to rest, taking broth and marshleaf infusion to soothe the inflammation, and he is not to move his shoulder for three days. I can apply oil of mint to cool the joint and reduce the swelling and he must be watched for fever,' I parroted, making a bandage from Maeron's tunic. Hector bent his head in approval I watched Maeron help his friend to his feet and they limped off the field, passing into the city through the Scamander Gate, which was nearest to Siri's house.
    `Now, Cassandra, we must talk. Or rather, you will talk to me while Eleni goes with Polites to practise the use of the spear thrower.'
    `Eleni went, glancing back at me in compassion. Hector was very seldom angry with us but when he was he did not rage or slap. Rather he was sad and measured and his every word sank into the heart and stung like a thorn.
    `Oh, Hector, I am so sorry...' I began.
    Instead of hugging me, he asked gravely, `Why are you sorry?'
    `I shouldn't have thought of Siri as a task I had to do in order to see childbirth. I'm fond of Siri, but I treated him like a thing.'
    `You want to be a healer, don't you?'
    `Yes.'
    `Then you must know that all your patients are people, and you have to love them. Not all the time, Cassandra, and not for ever. But while they are in your care then they must have your whole heart. Otherwise you will never heal them.'
    `But Hector...' I ventured closer to him and took his hand, `that can't be right.'
    `Why not?' he was relenting enough to argue and I felt instantly better. We began to walk back towards the city of Troy. The walls shone white in the morning, the walls, the height of three men, built by Heracles the hero in recompense for his massacre of my grandfather and his sons.
    `The best healer of these sorts of injuries is Myrine the Amazon,' I stated.
    `Yes,'