Last First Snow Read Online Free PDF

Temoc, and upon the stretcher lay a girl. Fallen in a dance, they said. She breathed, her heart beat, but she could not speak, or even move save when convulsions wracked her.
    They set her at Temoc’s feet, and Temoc looked down. Elayne recognized his fear only because she’d seen it before, in battle. He doubted he could heal this girl, and he did not want to try and fail. Beneath that doubt she saw anger, too: at his own hesitation, at her friends for not bringing her earlier, at the girl for falling, at Elayne for standing witness.
    So it may have been sympathy that made her say, “I’ll do it.”
    Elayne approached, but the dancers clustered around their fallen friend like dogs at bay. They said nothing, but she saw witch in the set of that young woman’s jaw, and that boy’s white-knuckled grip on the fallen girl’s arm. Of course she seemed an enemy, briefcase-bearing, pinstripe-clad, shod in patent leather: portrait of a monster in her early fifties.
    The girl trembled.
    â€œPlease,” Elayne said. “I can help.”
    The dancers did not move.
    â€œLet her,” Temoc said.
    They drew back, a knotted muscle unclenching.
    Elayne knelt by the stretcher. Lines of time clung to her as spiderwebs—the moment thick with hagiography, each observer trapping Elayne and Temoc and the girl in a tale. Forget history, though. Forget politics, and focus on the patient.
    Elayne closed her eyes.
    A good doctor could describe the girl’s ailment with a glance at the tangle of her being. A good doctor could fix her problem permanently, or recommend preventative drugs and exercises.
    All Elayne could do was reach inside the girl’s head with fingers finer than the edge of broken glass, grasp the snarled threads within, and restore them to their proper course.
    Which looked impressive enough.
    She opened her eyes. The sun had gained the high ground against the earth. The girl breathed deep. Her pupils dilated. She squinted against the light, and spoke. “I see.” She did not say what she saw. Her friends embraced her.
    Elayne shook with the cold her Craft left behind. Temoc offered her a hand up. For the second time that day she accepted, and for the first she did not begrudge the offer.
    â€œThank you,” he said when they found a private space in the crowd. “For her.”
    She didn’t reply at first. She’d come here to find evidence of inconsistence, weaknesses to exploit. She remembered the dancers’ fear, and the sacrifice weeping, and sour breath through a reed and the tarry stink of hunters’ torch-smoke. She wasn’t sure how to say, you’re welcome.
    A cry interrupted her search for the proper words. “Temoc!” Chel’s voice: the woman came running. “There’s trouble.”

 
    5
    They heard the argument from halfway across the Square.
    â€œRotten meat!” a man cried. Temoc forced through the crowd, and for once Elayne followed: if the priest gig didn’t pan out some navy could hire the big man for an icebreaker. They approached what she judged, from the smoke and the smell of singed pork, to be a cook tent. The shouting continued: “My daughter and my son are puking up their guts from rotten meat you served!”
    â€œThere’s nothing wrong with our food,” a woman answered, firm, angry.
    â€œYou’re a fraud, Kemal, you and your husband both, frauds and poisoners.” When they pushed to the front of the crowd Elayne surveyed the tableau: the woman, evidently Ms. Kemal, with cleaver and blood-spattered apron, blocked the cook tent’s entrance. A pale-skinned sous chef stood by her side. The shouting man before them had a voice meant for the stage, and a smolder that would have impressed the hells out of a jury. Classic case of missed calling. Bright eyes bulged from a lean hungry face, and his teeth were yellow. “You take our souls and poison us in return.”
    A