41: OF ALDS AND MILP

In a flashback set five and a half years ago, young apprentice-surgeon was assisting his father when a hunting accident brings two injured lighteyes to their surgery: the highlord of the town and his son. As they treat the wounds, the father must make the grim choice of saving the survivable patient while administering mercy drugs to the doomed one. The chapter explores the moral cost of that choice through a conversation between father and son afterward.

The chapter opens with chaos in the surgery as two victims of a whitespine hunting accident arrive: young nobleman Lord's son and his father, highborn lord of the town. Both have been pierced by the beast's tusks. As they work, the father surgeon—despite the father's pleas—determines that the younger man's injuries, particularly a devastating eye wound and crushed leg with severed tendons, are beyond recovery. The surgeon explains his three guidelines to triage patients, and deliberately chooses to treat the survivable father while administering dazewater to the dying son as a mercy. The younger man dies during their work. Later, sitting on the steps as the sun sets, the surgeon tells his young apprentice son that he could not have murdered the patient, even though doing so would have solved many family problems. He insists that someone must choose to do what is right simply because it is right, regardless of circumstances. The apprentice reflects afterward that he discovers a troubling truth about himself: unlike his father's belief in his incapacity for killing, he realizes he could kill if necessary—and that the knowledge both shocks and frightens him.