The healer — the real one, her name was Sable. She was the woman who had raised her stick and spoken the words, and up close she was smaller than she'd seemed in the moment, with deep-set eyes that held the particular quality of someone who had learned to look at things longer than was comfortable. I knew I had to talk to her.Wren was sitting on the low step outside the quarters we'd been given, her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands, watching the last of the crowd dissolve back into the ordinary movements of village life. She looked up when she heard me coming and the expression on her face — warm, private, the specific look she reserved for moments she'd decided were important — made something in me loosen."Set Heka," she said, soft and deliberate, tasting the sound of it."Don't.""I'm not teasing." She shifted to make room for me on the step, and I sat, and for a moment neither of us said anything. The evening was cooling, the long gold light of late afternoon stretch
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