Vella finished wrapping the ridge boy's ankle and sent the clinic cart toward the quarry village with Hajin holding the supply crates in place.
The village had cleared its grain store for her visit, moving the last sacks aside before laying six cots beneath the open shutters.
The headman had cleared the room with help from two older boys who kept watching the carts as if medicine itself might attract Flint eyes.
Two fever patients waited near the door, while a quarry miner occupied the rear cot with his left arm bound against a board.
His wife knelt beside him with both hands around a water cup, watching gray veins spread above the bandage as the man's fingers trembled.
"The quarry healer closed the cut," she said, moving aside as Vella approached. "The fever started before we even reached home that night."
Vella removed the bandage and exposed a sealed wound near the elbow, where something dark pressed beneath the skin.
