The Medicine
Cassandra was perfectly calm and composed.
She didn't act arrogant or conceited, despite the Head Accountant's expectations. Just like Evin before him, the man was starting to understand she didn't belong to any of the usual types of Concubine. He had already been quite surprised that the Commander-in-Chief actually brought a woman here, but now, she was going around the camp trying to take care of the men? What was wrong with this woman?
He had noted that she was a slave from her collar, but that only made him think she was uneducated and stupid. So why was he now caught in some negotiation with her?
"What kind of slave knows about medicine?" he asked, frowning.
Medicine was a very precious and rare teaching in the Dragon Empire. There were no medical schools, and very few documents to pass the ancient techniques along Most of the time, doctors would take a handful of apprentices and select the best, to learn from them. Even so, the techniques of each doctor were kept a secret most of the time, as they were afraid it would spread to commoners and make the prices of common medicine drop. Hence, being a doctor in the Empire was seen as one of the top and highest paid professions certainly not something within a slave's reach.
"I know enough. But the Dragon Empire's medical techniques are rudimentary, barbaric, and old. Your healing techniques don't travel enough to be improved on, even in a few years time, and those are not the ones I know of." Evin was, once again, surprised and impressed. Cassandra had a point. Because the doctors of this Empire were so set on keeping their techniques to themselves, it was rather known that the same methods were used for centuries, and any kind of innovation was seen as a break-through.
The head accountant frowned. He was a very educated and wise man, despite his lack of natural empathy. From hearing Cassandra, he had to admit she wasn't talking like an ignorant slave or a willful concubine.
"Where did you...supposedly, learn medicine? he asked.
"The Rain Tribe."
The Head Accountant stayed silent for a while, but he was thinking. The name itself was unheard of, but he clearly remembered having studied about some south barbarians, people living in tribes beyond the border of the Dragon Empire. The scholars didn't have much knowledge of those people, considered like any barbaric populations who didn't have material wealth: uninteresting. However, their information clearly mentioned those people's strangely high life expectancies, despite them actually living in swamps, and in dire conditions. Could this woman's words be of some truth?
The Head Accountant thought long and hard, but no matter what, he couldn't really refuse nor give into her request. Those injured soldiers were still a problem among his reports, and if something could be done about them... If anything arose, he could always blame it on this woman. The Commander-in-Chief probably wouldn't scold his own woman, and even if he did, it wouldn't be the accountant's problem.
"Fine. A hundred men. Once you send a hundred men back on the field, I will..."
"Fifty."
"Excuse me?"
"I can send back fifty men within ten days, with my current stock of herbs. But a hundred would be too much, I don't have enough medicine or volunteers yet."
The Head Accountant nodded, pretending to think. He had actually intended to give her a full month's time.
Could she really do what she said within ten days? He was still doubtful, but it was worth letting her try. Those men would die anyway. If she made things worse, she would at least save them a few days' worth of food for his reports.
