The Serpent's Shadow by Mercedes Lackey

one?”
    â€œYou’d have paying patients enough,” Maya admitted, and took a sip of tea. “The Army surgeons are for the most part completely unsuited to treating women, and the military wives and daughters would be glad enough for a lady to confide in. There are high-caste women who cannot see a male physician by law and custom, though their lords and husbands are enlightened enough to value Western medicine, and those would pay you well indeed.”
    â€œHmm. Pay we certainly don’t find here, do we? Well, all but you, that is, and there aren’t too many of us bold enough to take your course.” Amelia tilted her head to the side. “Speaking of which, how is your practice?”
    â€œI believe I’m seeing every dancer, actress, and singer within walking distance of this office,” Maya told her, not troubling to conceal her amusement. “Not to mention that I’m starting to attend to the kept women and mistresses of—I presume—our lawyers, brokers, and merchants.” She said it without a blush. Amelia giggled, but her cheeks were red. “It probably won’t surprise you to know that I am introducing them all to the benefits of ... hmm ... limited births.”
    â€œGood,” Amelia said with emphasis. “It will trickle down to their servants, and from there into the street. If I see one more woman at the Fleet with nothing more wrong with her than being worn to death with birth after birth—”
    She snapped her mouth shut, but at Maya’s nod of agreement, relaxed. “You should know that I share your opinion, dear,” Maya said quietly. “Even though we’ve never discussed it before at length, I’m sure you’ve noticed that I make a point to educate my female patients at the Fleet—” She paused, and sighed. “The trouble is, of course, that begetting children costs nothing, but preventing them doesn’t.”
    â€œSadly true.” Amelia echoed her sigh, then took another scone, with an air of changing the subject. “So why did you leave India? I can tell that you are home-sick, more often than not, and what you’ve told me about needing lady doctors there goes for you as much as for me. And look at what you’ve done here! It’s India in miniature, surely.”
    Maya bent to add more tea and sugar to her cup, and gave Charan a second biscuit. “Not quite. The native ladies won’t see me, at least not the high-caste ones; I’m half-caste, and they are as prejudiced against my mixed blood as any bigot here.”
    â€œAnd being treated by our Colonial ladies as something a little below the invisible fellow who swings the punkah- fan rather than as a doctor would not be to my taste either,” Amelia filled in, with a grimace of distaste, and Maya nodded, pleased at her quick understanding.
    â€œIt wasn’t so bad when my parents were alive, but when I was alone, it got rather worse. My mother died in a cholera epidemic, despite all we could do for her, my father and I,” she said slowly. Was there something more to that than just a virulent disease? she wondered, as Amelia expressed her sympathies. Father never considered that—but Father didn’t believe in magic either . And when Mother wasn’t there to protect us anymore ....
    Surya had made enemies when she wedded a white man. There were as many Indians who felt she had committed the greatest and most heinous sin by marrying out of her race and caste as there were English who felt the same. More, actually—and at least one of them was a magician with powers equal to Surya’s; a magician who wasn’t averse to using those powers to take revenge on Surya, the man who had married her, and the daughter they had produced.
    â€œMy father didn’t live long after she died,” Maya continued, tight-lipped. “He was bitten by a snake. In our own bungalow.”
    Amelia’s cup