Sivve // pre-search
Koran arrived a few days later. The drudges who were carrying him looked annoyed, and the young boy who was carrying his belongings looked half-dead with fright. And with good reason too.

"You dimglows!" the jockey bellowed as the drudges tried to put him down by his bed. "You know I can barely walk! Lay me in my bed, not a klick away from it!" Once he was safely in bed, he turned on the boy. "Would you quit hovering boy? Put down my stuff and leave!"

All three took their que and left, sending sympathetic glances Sivve's way as they fled. "Merry meet, Koran, I am Sivve, and I will be your healer," Sivve introduced herself with an outstretched hand.

Koran looked disdainfully at the hand. "They assigned a journeywoman to help me? Not even a Master?" he scoffed. "And a journeywoman too, not even a man."

"Senior journeywoman, jockey," Sivve reminded him sternly. "Just one step under a Master. And if you'd like a man, I can assign you to one of the apprentices, though I am a respected healer in my field."

Koran gave her another disdainful look. "Well, Terre did say you were the best, and the best is all I will accept. So I suppose I will have to make do."

"There's an apprentice who could easily be moved from mixing numbweed to caring for you, Koran, so you'd better appreciate the attention you're getting," Sivve warned.

"I can get attention from elsewhere," Koran reminded her with a grin. "But I think, though you're a bit strong for my taste, a pretty face will make being confined to this run down shack a bit easier."

"Flirting will get you nowhere, Koran," Sivve told him.

"It has gotten me many places in the past," Koran corrected her. "And it will continue to as soon as I get back on my feet."

Sivve smiled sweetly. "I'm afraid that is a long, long time in the future, Koran."

Sivve wasn't lying. Koran had taken a nasty fall, one that could have killed him had he landed in a different way. As it was, he had torn too many muscles to name precisely and had a broken arm and leg. Both arm and leg had been set hastily and would need to be rebroken and reset before they could heal properly. That alone would take at least six sevendays, maybe four if she rushed, and then he would need time for rehab. All in all, he would not be riding anytime soon.

When Koran was told this, he exploded. "Six sevendays?" he bellowed in disbelief. "Are you a dimglow? I can't be laid up for six sevenday! I have a very important race to ride in four!"

"You shouldn't have been riding so recklessly if you wanted to stay well," Sivve reminded him serenely. "Now, you have a few choices: you can either be a difficult patient and make your life and everyone else's miserable, or you can be patient and obedient and I might have you ready in five sevendays."

"I will ride again in four," Koran told her, "even if I have to tie my broken arm to my side and my broken leg to my runner."

"If you try, you'll be a cripple for your entire life," Sivve told him. "Is it really worth it, Koran? Would you rather ride one race, with no guaruntee of winning, and be a cripple for the rest of your life, or miss a race and ride the rest of your life."

"Look, I've been injured plenty of times," Koran snarled, "and I've always gotten right back up from each and every one of them and ridden the next race. And I'm not a cripple yet! Why would this race be any different?"

"You're a lucky dimglow," Sivve told him. "And while you're under my care, you will be a quiet dimglow. You will stay in bed, you will rest your body, and you will not ride in four weeks. If you give me trouble, I just might make it a whole turn."

"Once my leg is healed, what's to stop me?" Koran challenged, eyes flicking to the door.

"We'll tie you to your bed," Sivve replied with a shrug. "I've done it before, so don't test me."

"No woman will ever control me," Koran growled. "As soon as I'm well, I'll be out of bed and racing again."

Sivve smiled sweetly. "When you're well depends on when I say you are, Koran."

Koran raised one eyebrow. "Is that a threat, journeywoman?"

"Don't think of it as a threat," Sivve advised him. "Think of it as very good advice to follow."

Koran pretended not to hear her and turned on Imsky, who had been hovering fearfully. "What are you looking at?" he demanded.

Imsky, however, was not as intimidated as the jockey thought. "Not much," she scoffed and, tossing him a bittersweet smile, whirled away.

"Can't even control you're apprentices, can you?" Koran chuckled.

Sivve didn't reply to the question with words. Her response was to press a cup of fellis juice to his lips. Koran opened his mouth to protest but that only let the fellis in, and he had to swallow. Within a few minutes, he was dead to the world.

"He's actually cute when his mouth is shut," Imsky observed.

"If only he'd try it more often," Sivve sighed. "Would you try to start undoing whatever that healer did to his arm? I'm going to get some stronger fellis and we can start fixing him up."

Imsky looked at her patient with disgust. "Would it make much of a difference if we left him the way he is?"

Sivve shrugged. "Probably not mentally, but physically he has to be back on runner back as soon as possible, so we have a job to do."

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