The headman came to her.
This was the part that mattered. She understood it as soon as she saw him walking up the path toward Inang Cora's house — a man in his fifties, well-dressed by village standards, moving with the deliberate pace of someone whose back hurt and who had decided to come anyway.
In any place with a working social order, the headman did not go to people. People went to the headman. That was what the title meant, among other things.
He was coming to her.
This was the part that mattered. She registered it and waited.
Sulpicio introduced himself at the door with the slightly formal courtesy of a man who took his position seriously without being inflated by it. He was broader than he looked from a distance — the build of someone who had spent decades on boats before moving to an administrative role, the kind of muscle that didn't entirely leave even when the work changed.
"I've heard you've been treating people," he said.
"I have," Maricel said.
"May I come in?"
She stepped back from the door.
Inang Cora brought tea without being asked and then found something to do in the herb garden, which meant she was listening from outside the window. Maricel did not comment on this.
Sulpicio sat with the careful lowering of a man whose lower back had strong opinions about certain angles. She watched him settle and noted the way he shifted to the right once he was down — distributing weight away from one side.
"Which side?" she asked.
He looked at her. "I'm sorry?"
"The pain. Which side of your back."
A pause. He hadn't mentioned his back.
"Left," he said. "How did you know."
"The way you sat down."
He looked at her for a moment with the expression of someone recalibrating something. Then he said: "Is it serious?"
"Probably not. Probably chronic. Probably boats." She set down her own cup. "If you sit forward a few inches and put your weight on your feet rather than leaning back, it will be less bad for the next hour. And I can give you a preparation before you leave that will help with the inflammation." She paused. "Now or after you say what you came to say."
He looked at her for another moment.
"After," he said. But he adjusted his position.
"The village has been without a healer for eight months," he said.
"I know."
"Before Mang Crispin died, people came to him. Coughs, fevers, cuts, broken things, difficult births." He turned his cup in his hands. "After, they went to Siyang. The nearest healer there is two days from here. Some of them went and came back. Some didn't."
Maricel was quiet.
"I petitioned the Datu three times," Sulpicio continued. "For a replacement. A trained healer, or at least someone with training. Three letters. Three months apart."
"What did they say?"
"They said they would look into it." His voice was even. "Which means they didn't."
She'd expected that. A small fishing village on the outer coast wasn't high on any administrator's priority list. It didn't produce enough in tax or trade to make its problems urgent. The people who lived here were real, but the paperwork representing them was minor.
"The people you lost," she said. "The ones who went to Siyang and didn't come back. What were they going for?"
"Elmo had a fever that didn't break for five days. His family took him in by boat." He paused. "He didn't make it past the second day. They said the travel made things worse."
"It probably did. A five-day fever that severe shouldn't travel."
"We didn't know."
"No. You didn't have anyone here to tell you."
He looked at her.
She said: "Who else?"
"A pregnant woman. Third child. The birth went wrong and by the time they got to Siyang it was too late for both of them."
Maricel was quiet for a moment.
She thought about the pregnant woman she'd seen a few weeks earlier — third pregnancy, baby positioned low. She'd told her to trust her midwife. She'd meant it.
But midwives had limits. And when those limits were reached, there was nowhere here to go.
"You want me to stay," she said.
"I'm asking if you would."
"Those are different things."
He considered this. "Yes," he said. "I'm asking."
"What does staying look like?" she said. "Practically."
He'd come prepared for gratitude, probably. Or at least for a softer kind of questioning. She watched him adjust to the version of the conversation she was offering instead.
"We don't have much," he said. "The village isn't wealthy. I can't pay you what a guild healer in Siyang earns."
"I'm not asking what you can pay me. I'm asking what you have that I can use."
A pause. "There's the old grain store. East end of the settlement, close to the well. It's been empty since the blight took the last harvest. It's not large, but it's a building." He turned his cup again. "My household can supply labor to make it usable. Some materials."
"What kind of condition is it in?"
"Structurally sound. Needs cleaning. The roof held through the last wet season." He paused. "It's not much."
"I'm not looking for much. I'm looking for something that works." She thought through it quickly. Location near the well was correct — water access was the single most important variable she could control. A separate building meant she could establish protocols that her living space didn't compromise.
"What authority would I have over how I practice?" she said.
He frowned slightly. "Authority?"
"If I say a patient needs to do something, or stop doing something, or not travel — who decides? Me, or someone in your household, or a consensus of the village?"
"You," he said. "For medical matters."
"And if someone comes to you and says they don't like my methods."
He was quiet for a moment. "I've been told you put your ear to Tandoy's back."
"I did."
"His wife said it worked."
"His wife is correct."
"Then I would tell them Tandoy's wife said it worked." He looked at her steadily. "I'm a practical man. I care about outcomes."
She believed him.
Not because he was particularly warm or persuasive. Because the whole conversation had the quality of a man who had lost two people from his settlement in the last eight months and was sitting across from someone he thought might stop that from happening again, and was being honest about what he had to offer because he couldn't afford to waste her time with things that weren't true.
"I'll think about it," she said.
She mixed the preparation for his back while he finished his tea.
Topical. Anti-inflammatory compounds from three plants she now had in adequate supply. She explained what it was and how to apply it and that it would need to be used consistently to do any lasting good — once when the pain was bad was less useful than twice a day whether or not it hurt.
He listened to this with the focused attention of someone taking notes in their head.
"You said you petitioned the Datu," she said while she worked.
"Three times, yes."
"And the reply was that they would look into it."
"The exact words were that they would consider the needs of all the coastal settlements in the coming administrative review."
She kept her eyes on what she was doing. "That means never."
"That's what it means." He wasn't bitter about it. Just accurate. "The coastal settlements are all the same to them from that distance. Small numbers. Small tax. Small problems."
"What changes that?"
He looked at her. "Usually someone important enough to notice them. A datu, a maharlika family. Someone who makes the small problem into a problem worth solving."
"Or the settlement becoming valuable enough to notice on its own."
"That too. Slower."
She handed him the small wrapped package of preparation. "Left side, low on the spine, morning and evening. Come back in ten days and tell me whether it's helping."
He took it. Stood up with the same careful management as before, but she noticed he'd shifted his weight correctly after adjusting his position earlier and the rise was slightly easier than the sit-down had been.
He noticed that she noticed.
"Thank you," he said.
"Come back in ten days," she said.
After he left she stood in the doorway for a moment.
Inang Cora drifted back from the garden with the unhurried timing of someone who had definitely been listening the whole time.
"What will you tell him?" she asked.
"What I said. That I'll think about it."
"And?"
"And I already know."
The old woman looked at her for a long moment and then went back inside without saying anything else.
The grain store was at the east end of the settlement, close enough to the well path that she could see the well from the door when she opened it.
Sulpicio had been accurate about the condition.
Small. Dark. The roof had held but the interior hadn't been touched in months and the smell of the last rotted harvest still lived in the walls. One window, shuttered. A packed-dirt floor that had absorbed years of spillage. Shelving along one wall, old, but the brackets were solid.
She stood in the center of it.
Roughly five paces by eight. She walked them off. The window faced east, which meant morning light — good. The door opened outward, which was right for moving patients in. The shelving wall was on the north side, which kept it cooler.
She looked at the corner where the spillage had been worst. Packed down enough that she could work with it. She looked at the shelving and thought about weight distribution. She looked at the window and thought about airflow.
She thought about where a worktable would go, and where she'd want the preparation area, and how far from the patient space the two needed to be to keep one from contaminating the other.
The smell was the first problem.
The light was the second.
The floor was the third, but the floor was solvable.
She stood there in the dark grain store and built it out in her head — what it needed to be, in what order, with what available to her. The list was long. The resources were thin.
She'd worked with less.
She pulled the door shut behind her and walked back through the village toward Inang Cora's house.
She was going to need a very good knife.
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