Surgery would normally be called for to stop Lott’s bleeding, but Anden was able to find the injury and seal the blood vessels with a few focused pulses of Channeling. He couldn’t help but feel strange treating the classmate he used to have feelings for as a teenager, and he couldn’t stop himself from noticing that even pale and injured—wavy hair damp with exertion, long-lashed eyes closed, sulky lips pressed together in pain—Lott was still attractive. He was also now one of the clan’s top Green Bones.
“You’re going to need to stay overnight, on an oxygen machine,” Anden told him, Channeling slowly and diffusely to raise the man’s circulation and speed healing. “You’re sure to recover fully, Lott-jen, but it’s going to take a few weeks.”
Lott nodded, eyes still closed. Anden got up to wash his hands at the sink. “It could’ve been you, Emery.” Lott spoke from behind him. “You were the best of our class at the Academy. I would’ve expected you to become First Fist, not me.”
Anden turned around. Lott had opened his eyes and was looking at Anden with the corners of his full mouth raised in a sarcastic smile. He gestured at his own situation, his bandaged body. “Are you sure you made the right choice? No regrets?”
Anden frowned as he dried his hands. “Who knows what rank I would’ve reached. Maybe I’d already be dead, by the Mountain or by the Itches. Fate makes assignments in the clan as much as merit does. Probably more.” That was true for Lott as well. Iyn Ro had been the one pegged for promotion to First Fist, until she’d been murdered by Tar. Thinking about that night made Anden shudder.
He could feel Lott’s eyes on him, the slow swirling of the man’s jade aura. Anden said, “I don’t think anyone can ever know if they made the right choices, but I don’t regret mine, so long as I’m still alive to be useful in other ways.” He sat down in the chair next to Lott’s bed, trying not to pay any attention to the man’s dark eyes or the shadow of stubble on his jaw. “What about you, Lott-jen?” he asked. “When we were in the Academy, you never wanted to take oaths to the clan as a jade warrior. Why did you?”
Lott’s expression hardened and his aura drew in. Anden assumed he wouldn’t answer, but then he said, “Everyone said my da was a top Fist, as green as they come. When I was young, I didn’t want to have anything in common with that bastard—let the gods recognize him.” Lott tried to take too deep of a breath and folded forward in discomfort. He leaned back against the raised head of the bed. “But after he died, it was the clan that was there, that took care of my ma and my siblings. Now, my sister’s graduated from college. My ma started a catering business. They never would’ve dreamed of doing that before. Why shouldn’t I rise to the highest rank I can? It’s the best thing I can do for them.” His eyes flashed defiantly, as if he expected Anden to argue with him. When he didn’t, Lott’s voice lost its defensive edge. “The Pillar was the first person in the clan who spoke to me like a man,” he admitted. “He expected me to be my own person, not just a poor copy of my da. He made me think it might be possible to be green without being cruel and angry.”
Anden said quietly, “I never thought of you as a copy of anyone. It seemed to me you were always your own person.” Impulsively, he reached a hand out toward Lott’s, but the other man pulled his arm away, not sharply or quickly, but obviously enough. Anden withdrew his reach, stung, his face hot with embarrassment.
“I’m glad to see you’re happy with your decisions,” Lott said, not unkindly, but looking away to pretend he didn’t see Anden’s discomfort. “Thanks for patching me up, keke. Now that I’m the First Fist, life’s more dangerous and I have further to fall if I’m unlucky. I can’t afford to be careless or to make any mistakes.”
_______
A voice message in Espenian was waiting for Anden on the answering machine when he returned to the small office he shared with two other doctors, both of them gone for the day. Anden checked the clock and did a quick time zone calculation. It would be morning in Adamont Capita. To avoid expensive long-distance charges showing up on the clinic’s phone bill, he used a calling card to reach Dr. Martgen, who answered on the second ring. “Thank the Seer I reached you,” said the Espenian doctor. “We’ve run up against a wall, I’m afraid.”
For the past six years, Dr. Martgen and a small number of passionate advocates in the Republic of Espenia, with discreet but considerable support from the No Peak clan, had been advocating for the legalization of bioenergetic jade in medical treatments based on Kekonese healing. A bill was now being debated in the National Assembly, but was being blocked by the Espenian Physicians Society. Martgen explained, “Not only is the EPS intent on killing the bill, they’re proposing stiffer criminal penalties on anyone who, in their words, uses bioenergetic jade to perform ‘unproven and potentially harmful medical procedures.’”