Children of the Healer

by Barbara Ann Wright

  Nettle touched her shoulder. “There is no need for sadness, Sa. Nush has been dead for fifty summers or more, and life continues.”

  Cordelia supposed that people as long-lived as the drushka had to be able to forget their pain. “And his father?”

  “Living. He has other children now. We knew ours would not be a long mating.” Her touch grazed Cordelia’s shoulder as if saying they had something different.

  Cordelia nodded, happy to think that. Nettle was her first real, mature love. She wanted to believe she fit that bill for Nettle, too, but Nettle had been alive over forty years longer than her. “And he was a long time ago, too?”

  “Just so,” Nettle said.

  “So, who is he?”

  Nettle gave her a flat look and said nothing.

  “What? I’m not going to do anything to him.”

  “I will not say.”

  “Why? Is he so badass that he’d kill me if I tried to start shit?”

  Nettle spread her hands. “Think on it and try to guess his name. Perhaps that will carry you through this trial.”

  As if to echo that thought, Cordelia’s leg throbbed, and she hissed through her teeth. Nettle watched her carefully, but Cordelia didn’t complain. There was nothing to be said. The ossor wasn’t big enough for both of them, and Nettle was more injured. Cordelia shivered again as the wind gusted, making her sodden clothes stick to her side. A feeling of light-headedness swept over her, and she shook her head, trying to balance. She ate a little dried fruit and limped on.

  “Do you have the name yet?” Nettle asked.

  Cordelia forced herself to think through the drushka. “It isn’t Smile, is it? He’s a little too carefree for you.”

  “Ahya, too carefree by far. And too young to be the one.”

  Cordelia ticked him off the list. One down. Several hundred to go.

  They walked for hours as the sun crawled across the sky. Cordelia named drushka. Nettle dismissed some and wouldn’t respond to others as she faded in and out of consciousness. The sun continued to pummel them, but Cordelia only got colder. She ripped her trousers open to look at her own wound. The flesh around the arrow was red and swollen, hot to the touch. Her mouth was as dry as geaver hide, but she feared drinking her fill because she knew she’d take all they had.

  “Just a little farther,” she said as she walked. How many hours had it been? The sun seemed to crawl across the sky, but they’d started before dawn. They had to be close. “A few more feet. They can’t be far now. Just over that ridge, probably.”

  “Sa,” Nettle said, doubt thick in her voice.

  “We’re almost there. Your old lover isn’t that short scout, is he? What’s his name? With the really long nose? He is the most unattractive drushka I’ve ever seen.”

  “Sa.”

  “If that’s him, I’m going to be embarrassed for you.”

  “Sa.” Nettle leaned closer, and Cordelia heard her bonds straining to keep her in the saddle. “You must leave me and ride for help.”

  “No.” She patted Nettle’s leg and made her straighten. “Don’t worry. We’re almost there.”

  “No, Sa. No.”

  “What do you know?” Cordelia felt more than a little drunk. Maybe she’d summoned too much of Liam’s spirit. Somewhere inside, she knew that line of thinking should have alarmed her, but the woozy feeling was a welcome respite. “You’ve been asleep most of the day, and I say we’re nearly there!” Her leg burned like fire, but that didn’t bother her much either. “One limp in front of the other.”

  “You must go, Sa. Bring help.”

  “I’d never find you again.”

  “Sa—”

  “No!” The shout threw her off balance, and she fell to her knees, jarring her leg and making her swear. She heard Nettle trying to undo the bonds. “Stay there. I’ll prove we’re almost there.” She pictured their route in her mind and tried to slip from her body. They’d ridden east with Fajir and then north, but from the Engali camp, she’d headed straight west, angling slightly south, a much more direct route to Gale.

  Cordelia strained but stayed inside her body. She couldn’t concentrate, but she pushed and called for Pool. She felt Nettle doing the same. She’d been doing it all day, but now Cordelia joined in desperation.

  When it didn’t work, Cordelia looked down at her legs and frowned. What the fuck was she doing on the ground? “Get up.” She smacked her uninjured thigh. “Get the fuck up.” When her legs obeyed at last, pushing her to her feet, she hobbled forward again. “Good leg. Legs. Medals for the both of you.”

  “Sa?”

  “I’m fine.” She went back to naming names but couldn’t remember who she’d already said. Nettle fell silent, head against her chest. She breathed, so Cordelia didn’t stop, knowing she couldn’t help. She just kept limping, following the line of the sun as it continued to ease across the sky, free as a bird. Maybe she should sing. Liam always sang when he was drunk, and it seemed to—

  When the grass rushed toward Cordelia’s face, she thought she must be imagining things. She’d drunk way too much.

  The air left her in a rush as her face connected with the ground. It didn’t hurt. Her arms were under her, her cheek pressed against a rock. It should have hurt. It should have worried her that it didn’t. “Get up,” she told her body.

  It told her to go fuck herself.

  “Is that so?” she mumbled. She spit out a few blades of grass and pushed up on her elbows. “Come on, you lazy fucker. Get up!”

  “Cordelia?”

  “Coming! I’m coming. Hang on.” She couldn’t help slurring her words. That was a bit worrying. How much had she had? She remembered drinking…nothing. And Liam wasn’t there. It was her and Nettle, and Nettle was…hurt. Right, she was hurt, and Nettle was hurt, and…

  “Cordelia Ross?”

  Nettle wanted her to leave. To get help. “I’m not gonna leave you here!” Cordelia shouted.

  A hand helped pull her up. That wasn’t right. Nettle should be in the saddle. Cordelia stumbled in a circle. “Get back on that ossor, Nettle! Right now!”

  But it wasn’t Nettle. A man in a broad-brimmed leather hat stood behind her. His face was as brown and lined as an old boot, and he was grinning. “It is you!”

  “The fuck?” She peered at him, but his face kept swimming in and out of focus. Then she had a crystal clear memory of sitting with this man at a campfire, passing around scuppi, a plains dweller liquor that would knock the unsuspecting flat on their asses. “Wuran?”

  He nodded. He was the chafa of the Uri, the clan Cordelia had spent the most time with on the plains, but what was he doing here? Maybe she had been drinking.

  No, his clan was near Gale, and she was going to Gale. She grinned and swayed. “I made it!”

  He grabbed her shoulders, steadying her and looking into her face. He pressed a hand to her forehead and frowned. “You’re burning up.”

  Right. She was hurt. She gestured toward her leg and then looked to the ossor, but a group of plains dwellers were already taking Nettle gently from the saddle. “We need help.” She licked her lips. “Water?”

  “Of course.” He fumbled with a water skin, but when the sky started to tilt, he grabbed hold of her again and shouted for someone to help.

  “I told you it was just a little farther,” she said as a group of hands lowered her to the ground. Her vision was fading around the edges, but she was happy. “Now who can go fuck herself, huh?”

  * * *

  Horace leaned over the well, Reach beside him. They’d hurried through the streets of Gale with the drushka, and Horace had kept his micro-psychokinetic abilities open for any more sick or injured people. So far, they’d been lucky. The marathon of healing the day before had saved everyone who could be saved.

  Even though people were still missing, it was hard not to beam with pride. Horace had never worked as hard as he had with Simon; he’d lent his power until darkness had fallen over him like a blanket, but
the exhaustion had been worth it. Even now, he sent a little telepathic tendril Simon’s way, just to make sure everything was all right.

  When he got a happy, loving feeling in return, he focused on the task at hand. They’d done a lot for Gale, but they weren’t done yet. He hauled on the rope that led into the well, bringing up a bucket.

  Reach sniffed the water carefully. “It smells off, shawness, not quite like the captives, but…” She stared into nothing, thinking. “The drushka we took on the plains said the people were poisoned, and you sensed a poison in two parts.” She pointed at the water. “This must be one.”

  Horace shook his head, his pride drowning in a tide of worry. “We need to check the other wells, but if the old drushka got to one, they probably poisoned all of them.”

  “And the second part of the poison?”

  “Maybe in the food?”

  Reach spread her hands. “Plants would be difficult to tamper with undetectably.”

  Horace let the bucket go. He put his hands to his back and stretched as he considered all the food sources in Gale. “We need to check the grain silos to make sure. And the food stored in the warehouses.”

  Reach sent some of her fellow drushka to check the silos and the other wells. She and Horace headed for the warehouse district, stopping at any food stores so Reach could poke her head inside.

  At one, she paused and breathed deep. “Here, shawness. Something is not right.”

  Horace glanced at the mounds of dried grass in the warehouse’s dark interior. They were at the edge of the district, near the hoshpi pens. “This isn’t people food. It’s for the hoshpis.”

  She crept closer to the dried grass, eyes roaming the floor. At one pile, she knelt and dug until she found a stalk with a few leaves attached. “These are spyralotus leaves.” She shifted more grass out of the way. “And here are more. The hoshpis do not normally eat so many. It grows high beyond their reach.”

  Horace watched her think. Simon was the plant expert, not him. He wouldn’t know spyralotus from any other leaf if it bit him. But even Simon didn’t know all the plants of the swamp.

  “Helpful for some ailments,” Reach said, turning the leaves over. “But if you were to eat it raw…” She glanced at the door. “A hoshpi might tolerate it, but a human? Shawness, I believe we have our answer.”

  She marched out the door and toward the hoshpi pens. Horace followed, eyeing the pen full of the large, bumbling insects. A few lay in heaps, still as brown boulders. More tottered, mewling, on their six legs.

  Reach pointed at the downed hoshpis. “See there, shawness? They have eaten enough spyralotus to affect them, but this behavior comes too late for the humans to notice. Their meat is no doubt saturated with poison, and the humans who ate it would be as well. But still that would not kill them.” She crushed the leaf in her hand. “The old drushka must have laced the wells with veira pollen, and that mixed with the spyralotus was enough to kill. A nasty trick indeed. The Shi must have consulted her shawnessi to think of an agent so insidious.”

  Horace looked to the hoshpis and focused. He’d helped heal one of the insects before, when traditional methods hadn’t been enough. He tried to remember how their bodies worked when they were healthy, the better to pinpoint the differences now. He worked slowly, methodically, until each hoshpi seemed healthy again.

  When he opened his eyes, they were all up and moving, rumbling and bumping into one another. And they’d all secreted several mounds of pinkish goo. Horace knew that the distillers would normally take those secretions and make mead, but he called to one of the drovers and told him to throw this goo out and to take care handling it.

  The hoshpis bumbled over to him, staring with watery brown eyes. Horace chuckled nervously, hoping he hadn’t just acquired his own devoted herd. Where in the world would he put them? “You’re welcome.”

  Reach inhaled deeply. “They smell right, shawness.” She clapped him on the shoulder. “And now we have some food.”

  He turned away. He couldn’t look at them any longer if they were going to be eaten. “There aren’t many.”

  “Enough to feed those in desperate need. The queen tells me she will go into the field and dig a clean well.”

  He nodded, trying to let pride reconquer his uneasy feelings. They could deal with this crisis. And maybe this would make all the Galeans welcome Pool’s drushka with open arms, though some were still angry. He couldn’t really blame them. They’d been poisoned, a few kidnapped, and many killed. They were looking for someone to blame. He’d heard muttering about how humans would be better off splitting from the drushka entirely. After all, the drushkan dispute was an internal one, and some thought they should work it out without bringing humans into it. Horace would argue they were already in it, had been in it since they’d first encountered drushka on Calamity. And the Shi wasn’t attacking humans just because they were Pool’s allies. According to the drushka, the Shi wanted to see all humans wiped out.

  Reach grabbed his arm. “Pool senses something in the plains, a call for help. We must go to her, shawness.” She started moving, keeping hold of him.

  “But we—”

  Reach made a slashing motion in the air, cutting him off. “Have your mouth speak to your legs and teach them to move!” She started running, and Horace had to give himself a boost to keep up. He sent out a telepathic call to Simon and found him being similarly dragged toward Pool’s massive tree with only the knowledge that they were needed.

  * * *

  By morning, everyone in the mining town called her Mistress Dué, and she didn’t have to bully anyone, not as Dillon would have done.

  Well, she didn’t have to bully them physically, anyway. Bert, the man in charge of the cookhouse and all its supplies, told everyone about her, and she’d hoped the conversion to her way of doing things would spread naturally. But people were more stubborn than she remembered, and she had flashbacks of trying to talk her way into places or positions on Earth. It had never worked right. Even when she’d been the right choice for a job, her words never seemed to be enough. She could never master charm. She had to work quickly, and hard, just to be noticed.

  So, even though she didn’t care for it, she tweaked the people of the mine with her power, making tiny alterations in their minds. She made herself keep it simple, and it turned out to be easier than she thought. Most people wanted to believe in someone grander than themselves; they wanted to worship. And she was powerful. This body was beautiful. Many of the miners considered her mismatched eyes exotic and her face radiant with the blush of youth, yet she had the wisdom of someone much older. How much better could a god be?

  When she’d heard there were two yafanai currently working in the mine, she knew she had to use her power there and quickly. But as she pounced on their minds, they proved as easy to twist. They were both macros, here to poke holes in the mountains, and they had no defense against telepathy. Easy peasy.

  Now Patricia had her pick of tables in the cookhouse; she had the best food. The mine foreman gave her his little house while he moved into a bunkhouse with the others. She made sure to thank him where everyone could see. She never wanted it said that she took her worshipers for granted. Not that anyone would say it, especially with Jonah watching them like a hawk.

  Wonderful, attentive Jonah. With Dillon Tracey’s expertise in the bedroom, he made a fabulous lover, and even if he didn’t have the inexhaustible energy of her young body, she could always help him with her power. Even thinking about his strong touch on her skin made her weak in the knees. She had to put off her tour of the mine to spend another hour alone with him in their little house.

  What could be better? Even if she had to use a little power to get it, she was having the best time of her life since she’d been with Jack on Earth. As she lay beside Jonah in their bed, both of them breathing hard and spent, she promised herself that from now on, she’d only use her powers when she had to.

  “Mistress,” Jonah said, voice filled w
ith love. “You are a wonder.”

  She laughed. “You’re not so bad yourself.” His admiration felt good, even if it had been put there by her. Naos had always craved linear emotions, cause and effect, but Patricia was happy to experience anything that was wholly her own. She glanced at Jonah, wondering if she’d ever tire of him.

  That question would break his heart if she said it. What would his face look like marred by that much pain? Would he weep? Beg her to keep him? She tried to shake the thought away. It didn’t matter. For now, she was happy. If she had to walk away from him someday, she’d deal with that when it happened.

  “Nah, you’ll never get over me,” he said.

  She sat up sharply, looking at him. He stared with confused eyes and tried a hesitant smile. “You desire more, Mistress?”

  He acted as if he hadn’t spoken, but she’d heard his voice clearly, just as she’d heard it in the cookhouse. But before he’d said anything, he’d worn a satisfied, Jonah-like expression. That other voice, though it sounded the same, carried an undercurrent of self-assuredness that she’d stripped from Jonah, a cocksure abrasiveness that had belonged to the body’s former owner.

  When Jonah tried to speak again, Patricia laid a finger over his lips.

  “Naos?” she whispered.

  Masculine laughter echoed through her mind, Dillon’s laughter. But she’d erased him. She’d taken his memories and his power, then put him down. Nothing existed of Dillon anymore except his body.

  Someone thought they were clever.

  “Lieutenant Christian?” she asked. But that didn’t make sense. He wouldn’t contact her without his counterpart, Marlowe. You didn’t get the Sun without the Moon. She put her hands to her head, searching for a telepathic signal.

  “Mistress?” Jonah asked. “Is it a mind attack?”

  She waved to quiet him and sent her telepathic power out in a spiral, reading minds and then passing them by, searching. She sensed some of the breachies from the Atlas in the hills, those who had elected to get far away from the rest of the satellite pantheon. None seemed focused on her, and she left them behind with barely a whisper of power. She didn’t want to send her power to Celeste or Gale. Not yet, not when she wasn’t sure.