If things had only turned out differently, Marley thought to herself as she poured a shot of whiskey for the upcoming surgery. I'd be married to a famous lieutenant, and I wouldn't have to work another day in my life. She turned to Lina behind her. "Is the water boiling yet?" she asked.

"Almost," Lina said, stirring the pot with the huge wooden paddle.

"A nice rolling boil, remember. Put the cloths in then, and not a moment before."

"Yes ma'am," Lina agreed and went back to stirring the massive pot on the hearth.

The surgery looked much like a kitchen. In fact, Marley had two kitchens in her house. One for fixing food, the other for fixing people. This one, however, was in the back of her house, away from the prying eyes of passers-by.

If only she'd been born a man, she could do a respectable business of doctoring people, instead of hiding it off in some back corner somewhere, hiding from the world. Such was life.

She checked her needles and tools. She found them all to be sharp and clean, recently washed in lye, then boiled again today.

"Alright," she said, bursting from her kitchen-surgery and into the waiting room beyond. A handful of people gathered there, knowing she would perform a surgery on a moment's notice if that was what was necessary. "Who wants to be first this morning?" She put on her sweetest smile and batted her eyelashes, clasping her hands. They were all very womanly things to do, just to reassure the men in the room of their places in the power of this world.

"Now see here, madame!" one of them shouted anyway. "Women have no place in the surgery! This is men's work! I don't want you passing out of fright at--"

Marley would have said something scathing if she thought it would establish or solve anything. No, it would simply pick a fight. Thankfully, the man's wife hit him in the arm. The man turned to his wife.

"I'll not set foot in that butchery den!"

"Oh yes you will!" the man's wife exclaimed and pushed him through the door. "Else I'll be stitchin' you up, you great ninny!"

"Now see here!" the man continued to protest as Marley's girls lay him out on her long table. He stoppe complaining when theypoured the whiskey down his throat.

"He'd been bit by the dogs this mornin'," the wife explained, indicating the bloody arm the man held tightly across his chest.

"I'll have to cut the sleeve," Marley explained as the girls poured another shot of whiskey for the man.

The wife shrugged. "It's a ruined mess of a shirt anyway," she said. "Do what you must."

Marley nodded and took up her scissors, carefully cutting the sleeve above the bites. "Tie it off," she told her girls, who wrestled the arm free of the man's grip and applied a tourniquet.

As they worked, Lina wrang out a steaming hot cloth and passed it to Marley, who used it to loosen the clotting blood from the skin, to peel the shirt back. "Got bit by dogs, you said?" Marley asked, inspecting the wounds as they were freed from the cloth.

"Aye. Just the two, but they were in a right wicked temper."

"Didn't have the maddening, did they?"

When the woman didn't answer, Marley glanced over her shoulder at her. The woman looked a bit concerned.

"If they did," she replied at last, "they showed no sign. They weren't his dogs, anyway. They're the neighbors', but I never seen them turn on someone like that before."

"Danke, grind me up the herbs we use for the maddening," she said, turning to one of her girls, "just to be safe."

"Aye, ma'am," Danke agreed and exploded out of the room, tripping on her way, into the herb pantry.

Meanwhile, it looked more like the man had been bit by seven dogs, not just two, the way his arm was torn up. "Lina, another cloth, please." Lina passed her another wet cloth, which Marley used to clean off the wound as the man winced and whined, but didn't jerk away.

She examined the wounds. They were deep, but nothing a few stitches couldn't cure. Still, she wouldn't fix them until they had the herbs from Danke out here.

"Danke!" she called.

Danke hurried back in, still pounding the herbs together with the mortar and pestle. "Aye, ma'am?" she asked.

Marley looked into the mess. "A few drops of boiling water. Take it from the kitchen, not from Lina's pot."

"Aye, ma'am," Danke agreed and hurried out, hitting the door with her forehead on the way.

Lina sighed and shook her head. "That girl," she breathed.

"She's still growing," Marley said, waiting patiently. She continued to soak up the blood from the man's arm and wait. Then, she could conceiveably wait no longer. "Danke!" she shouted.

"Coming!" Danke called back, then exploded back into the room, the door slamming into the wall and rattling the pots hanging there. Marley and Lina winced. Danke hurried over, presenting the concoction to Marley.

"You used green engheim root?" Marley asked, examining it.

"Aye, ma'am."

"And silver lucite?"

"No, ma'am. Gold."

"Good girl, Danke."

Danke glowed with pride, and Marley pushed the solution into the wounds. The man bucked, and the girls threw themselves on top of his chest to hold him down. He screamed, and Marley quickly and efficiently threaded her needle with the suture wire and began stitching before the man could protest more.

It was grisley work, but someone had to do it, and do it right. The wife looked away, and Marley hurried while Lina mopped the blood away from the stitches and cut the line as it needed.

They would be finished in no time.

Eight horses for enough gossip and river-panned gold and small gems to feed them for three months. It was hard going, but Gershwin was not completely softened by his life with the Those That Stayed. He and Feivel made this trip regularly, at least three times a year, sometimes laden down with hundreds of pounds of supplies. The year when their horses had died from the shattertooth had been exceptionally difficult. That year, not only did they have to walk from the southernmost stretches of the plains to the Sanctuary, far north in the foothills of the Sierra Midgradias, but they did it pulling a sledge covered in leather from the hides of their mounts. It had been a sad time for them, but they had turned a profit at the very least.

Gershwin loped across the plains, heading ever westward. He brought with him four little birds peeping away as sacrifices for Fate. No one knew what she liked, since she never spoke to them. As such, Gershwin liked to give her something new every time he came to the sanctuary. Last time, he had given her a brass mirror. Feivel always left her flowers.

As he walked, the mountains swelled into view. They had been resting on the horizon for hours, but they began to blossom into the imposing black crags they really were. Their orange granite bases snaked and jutted through the dry brown-green foothills, errupting like bones in the back of an emaciated man.

And there, cared in the orange granite by some unknown artisan, perhaps even Fate herself, loomed the huge orange granite Hand of Fate. It was the constant reminder that life was forever at her mercy.

Gershwin felt his pulse quicken, his heart catch in his throat. He felt as if he were being crushed to death as he stepped into the shadow cast by that massive stone. It was still miles away, but in the evening light, it stretched far across the plains, a sign of its sheer size.

"I serve the Lady, deaf and dark and silent. Do not strike me down lest she wills it," he told the shadow, and immediately he felt the pressure leave his heart and the warmth strike him to the very core.

Welcome, Gershwin, he felt his heart sing, his bones chorus and rejoice. Our Lady, deaf and dark and silent, will send one out to find you. Rest now in my palm, and let me shelter you for a moment's respite.

Gershwin sank gratefully to his knees in the center of the shadow of the Hand of Fate.

No one could tell him that Fate was a false mistress.