What was your childhood like?

My father raised sheep. My brothers helped with the shepherding and shearing while my sister and I helped my mother process the wool, cleaning it, carding it, and spinning it into yarn. I had four brothers and one sister. One brother was older, and he is the sibling I was closest to. My sister was the youngest, and the other three brothers ranged between her and me.

What was your family like?

Hard-working and practical. Typical family dynamics. Mother was loving and kind. Father was gone a lot, but was involved when he was home. I helped raise my younger siblings. My sister and youngest brother were very close. My third brother was a bully, but the rest of us got along.

When he was nine, my second brother got lost in the woods while looking for a stray ewe. My father had given him a few sheep to care for specifically, and my brother was terrified of how father would react when he discovered one was lost. This was before the Rüddan’s curfew became law. Father was away, overnighting in a far pasture when it happened, or he would have looked for the ewe. Mother told my brother not to go: he was too young, and a storm was coming, but my brother snuck away. A blizzard hit that night. When my father returned two days later, my brother and his ewe were found in the woods, frozen. Father started bringing the sheep closer after that, making sure he and the flock were home every night.

What was married life like?

Good. My husband was a good man. Gruff but kind. We had three children: two boys and a girl. We might have had more, but my husband got kicked by a horse. He was the village blacksmith, and the only one who could shoe horses. He got kicked in the groin by a beast of an animal that got spooked while my husband was working on a rear leg. He had a rough time after that, but he survived. Eventually, the coal dust from his forge got to be too much for his lungs. He died from consumption.

I adored my children, and they got along well. My oldest son disappeared when he was seven. My youngest son was cut down by a Rüddan. My daughter married, but her husband was imprisoned by the Tower for suspicious activity and died in there. No one ever discovered what he was accused of having done; the Rüddan just took him. I often wonder if they just took my oldest son, too. It would explain how he vanished for no reason.

My daughter was pregnant when her husband was imprisoned, but she miscarried shortly after his arrest. She became inconsolable and pined away to her death.

Why did the Rüddan kill your youngest son?

He had become a blacksmith, like his father. He took charge of the shop after his father died. He was a hot-head who loved a girl pursued by someone else, the butcher’s son. The girl chose my boy, and they planned to marry, but the other young man tried to sabotage them. His father was butchering some cows, and needed some of their biggest knives sharpened. He brought them to my son’s shop then told the Rüddan my son was forging weapons. It was a foolish accusation, of course. No one can reasonably mistake a butchering knife for a sword. But when the Rüddan came to investigate, my son lost his temper. They killed him right there beside his forge.

Why did you become a healer?

Because of my third brother. I hated that he bullied the rest of us, or at least tried. He had no right to be so mean, especially to our younger siblings. They couldn’t stand up against him like my older brother and I could, so I spent a lot of time protecting them from him, which is how I learned to fight for others. It’s horrible to say, but he reminded me of the Rüddan a lot. His methods and goals were different, but he took great pleasure in tormenting others simply because he could. When I noticed how much the healers at that time helped everyone, I was intrigued. Plus, I was getting tired of sheep. Their wool is oily at shearing. It kind-of stinks, and the oil gets everywhere. Anyway, I equated healing with helping people and sort of saw it as a way to protect them from the Rüddan. Not actively, of course, but by encouraging them and being uplifting whenever we came in contact. I don’t know how much good it did, but I had to do something.

Is that why you accepted the invitation to join the healer’s Inner Circle?

*smiles and nods slowly as eyes glaze with memory*

Yes. My oldest brother took over the care of the flocks after father’s death. He loved it, and he flourished. Even as my mother’s chaperone, with the added costs of caring for her in addition to the family of his own that he was building. His exceptional success was clear to everyone. So clear that the Rüddan took notice. They came to commandeer some of his flock as their gift-tithe, but they demanded too much. Their goal was to hurt him, to take so many sheep that he would barely manage to support everyone under his care. We all knew this — it had recently become common practice among the Rüddan, and we had seen it happen to others. Even so, he resisted. The fool.

That was all the excuse they needed. They beat him so violently that it took the combined efforts of every healer in Khapor to keep him alive.

There were three of us at the time, me and a set of twins who mentored me. At first they wouldn’t let me help, but they needed me. As we worked, I ranted about how someone should do something and about what I could try. I think they worried that I would launch a direct assault on the Tower. I like to believe I knew better than to do that, but I’m almost certain the invitation to the Inner Circle was a distraction. It gave me a way to resist the Rüddan without getting killed. It was slow, and they warned that I might never see any results, but it was active opposition, and it was something I could actually do, so of course I said yes.

They saved my brother’s life that day. It’s very possible they saved mine, too.