Healer's Touch

by Amy Raby

  His indifference made her wonder if anyone was currently managing the books. No matter; she would do it from now on. She was familiar with bookkeeping from her father’s apothecary. “I’ve got some ideas for organizing the place a little better. Do you mind if I move a few things around?”

  “Suit yourself,” said Jauld.

  Isolda put herself to work.

  Chapter 5

  Isolda woke in a soft bed, which right away told her something was wrong. Since her arrival in Kjall, comfort was no longer a part of her life. Gritting her teeth in apprehension, she opened her eyes. Light and fresh air poured in through tall, glassless windows on both sides of the room. She was in a bedroom, but she did not appear to be a prisoner. The double doors to the room were open, and she could see into the rest of the villa beyond. It was clean and spacious, though sparsely furnished. Where was she, some rich Kjallan’s home?

  She folded back the blankets and tried to pull herself into a sitting position. It was harder than she thought it would be, and she almost fainted as the blood rushed to her head.

  A young man hurried in from around the corner. “Na jeketh,” he said in Kjallan and pushed her gently downward on the bed.

  The gesture was clear enough; he wanted her to lie where she was. Was she a prisoner after all? Had she been assaulted?

  She didn’t think so. She wasn’t in fetters, and she wasn’t in pain, and those windows with no glass offered an easy escape route. How had she come here? She had a vague notion that something bad had happened. No, worse than bad—something terrible. She couldn’t remember what it was, but nothing about this man was helping her remember.

  Where was Rory?

  Oh, gods. Rory. She struggled upward.

  “Tey. Na jeketh,” said the young man, pushing her gently back down.

  He was Kjallan, of course—she could hardly fail to notice the dark hair and strong features that were characteristic of his people. His blue eyes were less typical. Masculine beauty had a way of transcending detail. Coloration and minor features such as the shape of one’s chin were accents, artistic touches painted by playful gods upon a scaffolding of the ideal human form, and this man, with his strong, firm body, possessed that form in full measure.

  He wore a soft tunic and breeches rather than the syrtos most Kjallans wore. Perhaps he was a servant. He was smiling, and he had kind eyes. But she had no idea why she was here, and why he wanted her to stay in bed. And given the way most Kjallans treated her, she was wary.

  “Where is Rory?” she asked, hoping he knew at least a few words of Sardossian. She’d been three months in Riat, but had spent most of it in hiding, among her own people. She wanted to learn Kjallan, but it was dangerous to mingle, and so far she possessed only a handful of words.

  He looked at her blankly. Then he turned and called, “Drusus.”

  Another man appeared from the next room, older than the first. This man wore a syrtos, so perhaps he was the master of the house. He spoke from the doorway in heavily accented Sardossian. “Do you understand me, miss?”

  It came as such a surprise, the Sardossian words coming from Kjallan lips, that at first she just blinked and stared. But then she stammered, “Yes. Where is my son, Rory?”

  “We have not seen him.” Drusus turned and rattled off some incomprehensible Kjallan to the younger man. The younger man spoke back, at length.

  Isolda’s heart beat faster. Why was she in this Kjallan villa, and where had she left Rory? Could her boy still be with Emari? She would have left him with Emari before going to work. If he was still with her, he would be safe. But how long ago had she left him? And how had she ended up here?

  The bigger man spoke, interrupting her thoughts. “My name is Drusus, and this is Marius. He doesn’t speak your language, but he wants to know how you’re feeling.”

  Marius spoke in Kjallan again and pointed at Isolda’s right side.

  She pulled the blankets closer. How long had she been here, and how much of her body had these men seen? “What do you mean, how I’m feeling?”

  “Marius helped you after the explosion. Do you not remember?” said Drusus.

  The explosion, gods above. The memories bowled her over like a rogue wave. The blast—she’d been standing at the mill when it happened. The force of it had flung her twenty feet. Then there had been the fire, and the screams of her friends and co-workers. She’d seen Tamlyn swallowed up by the flames. And the sound, gods, the sound. First an ear-shattering boom, and then nothing, nothing but silence for the horrors that followed.

  She trembled.

  Then there were hands on her, and the men were speaking in Kjallan. She heard urgency in their words, but saw only fire.

  “Tey, tey,” Marius was saying. He pressed a glass of something to her lips.

  She shook her head, and the fire was gone. She took a sip from the glass and tasted bitterness. She spat it out. Was that willow bark? She couldn’t drink willow bark; it upset her stomach.

  Marius said something in Kjallan.

  Drusus translated. “He says it tastes bad, but you need to drink it. It’s medicine that will quiet your mind and body.”

  Isolda looked curiously at Marius. Was she in the care of an apothecary? Perhaps she had mistaken the relationship between the two men; it seemed that Marius, the one in peasant clothes, was in charge, and the slightly bigger man in the syrtos was assisting him. She set the glass on a table next to the bed. Marius protested, but she spoke over him. “How long have I been here?”

  “Overnight,” said Drusus. “The explosion was yesterday. You were badly burned along your right side. Marius found you and brought you to a Healer. Your burns have been healed, but you were in shock, and you need to rest for a while.”

  Isolda let her breath out in relief. These were unusually kind and accepting Kjallans. If she’d been gone just overnight, Rory should be fine. Emari would have heard about the explosion and kept him with her, and Caz would look in on them both. The problem wasn’t that Rory wasn’t being looked after; it was that Rory and Emari might think she’d been killed by the blast. “I can’t stay. I have to go home to my son. He doesn’t know where I am.”

  Drusus turned to Marius, and they had a rapid-fire conversation in Kjallan.

  Isolda examined herself beneath the blanket. She’d been burned along her right side? The Healer must have been very skilled, because she could see no sign of injury at all. The skin was smooth and clean. In fact—gods, how could she be clean? After the explosion, she would have been covered in soot and filth. Somebody must have bathed her, perhaps these two men. Her cheeks flamed at the thought of that handsome young apothecary, and maybe Drusus as well, handling her naked body.

  But she didn’t think she’d been taken advantage of. These men seemed kind. Her heart twisted at the thought. Kind men such as this Marius would give her charity, because it was in their nature to do so, but not friendship. Not respect.

  Once again she tried to sit up, but her limbs shook.

  Marius scolded her. She may not have known the words, but his tone needed no translation.

  “He says you can’t get up yet,” said Drusus. “Your body needs to recover its strength.”

  She fell back to the pillow, exhausted. Perhaps she couldn’t return to Rory right away. Emari would take good care of him—she’d have to pay the girl extra, which would be painful because her Kjallan funds were limited and her Sardossian funds worthless since the war. Oh gods, now that the factory was blown up, she didn’t have a job anymore! Her goal of getting Rory a proper education was dwindling away.

  “Marius says we can get word to your family,” said Drusus. “They can come here and fetch you.”

  Isolda brightened. If Rory came here, that would solve the problem of his worrying about her, and of having to pay Emari extra. Except...no. She could not send these Kjallans into the places where her people hid; it was far too dangerous.

  Could this kindness toward her be a ruse, a means of finding her p
eople and abusing them, or sending them back to Sardos? Marius’s face was so open and honest. She didn’t want to believe he was a villain, but she knew she was too trusting. She’d been fooled before. Lowering her gaze, she said, “I can’t do that.”

  “He’s not going to call the guards on you,” said Drusus, “if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  She couldn’t take the risk. Rory would have to worry for a day or two, as long as it took her to get her strength back. His life was not easy in Riat, and neither was hers, but both of them were better off here than in Sardos.

  Marius spoke again, pointing at the willow bark tincture she’d set aside.

  “He says you need to be a good girl and take your medicine,” said Drusus.

  Isolda laughed. A good girl. She’d tried that before, and it had brought her nothing but grief. “Is that willow bark?”

  He blinked at her. “I’m sorry, I don’t know those Sardossian words.”

  Marius asked him something, and they had a conversation in Kjallan.

  She wished she could talk to Marius directly. He was the apothecary and would know what willow bark was. What role Drusus played, besides translator, she could not tell. “May I have some paper and a quill?”

  “It won’t help to write it down,” said Drusus. “I can’t read it any better than I can hear it.”

  “I want to draw you a picture.”

  Drusus and Marius spoke again. Then Drusus left and returned with several sheets of paper, an inkpot, and a quill.

  Isolda drew a willow tree. She was no artist, but the willow, with its drooping branches, was easy to draw.

  Marius leaned in to watch, and as her second set of inked branches reached the ground, he spoke excitedly in Kjallan. “Salcius, salcius.” He pointed first at the tree she’d drawn and then at the glass of medicine he’d given her.

  She grinned and repeated the foreign word. “Salcius?”

  He nodded. “Salcius.”

  “Willow bark,” she said in Sardossian.

  “Willow bark,” he repeated.

  She picked up her quill and began to draw again. Marius leaned in farther this time, resting some of his weight on the bed, which drew her toward him. Isolda didn’t mind. She rarely had the opportunity to be near such a handsome man, and he seemed kind as well, a rare combination. He couldn’t help it that he was Kjallan. Now she sketched the vervain plant, not bothering with shading or any attempt at realism, but trying simply to capture the distinctive pattern of its leaves and branching flowers.

  Marius peered at the paper. Then he tapped it with a finger. “Verbena.”

  “Vervain.” She drew a slash mark through the willow tree. Then she pointed at the vervain plant and at herself.

  He nodded. “Verbena.” Then he rose and left the room. When he returned, he was carrying a new glass. “Vervain,” he said, and handed it to her.

  She sipped. Marius had gotten it right. The new drink was indeed vervain. She grinned and raised the glass, as if toasting him.

  He grinned back.

  She drained the glass, taking her medicine like a good girl.

  ∞

  Marius was fascinated by the Sardossian woman lying in his bed. And it gave him satisfaction to have a patient to look after, one who was within his limited capabilities to restore to health. All she needed was rest, sustenance, and a little kindness, which he suspected these Sardossian “sewer rats” seldom received.

  Drusus had managed to get her name: Isolda. But though she was outgoing and friendly, she resisted all inquiries into her personal life. He understood her reasons. She was not a legal citizen, and she feared being harassed or abused or sent back to Sardos. But that aroused his curiosity most of all. What would drive a woman to come all this way, to a country in which she had no connections and didn’t even speak the language, to live as a “sewer rat” and have trash thrown at her by his less tolerant countrymen, to have to hide and to take dangerous jobs like the one she’d held at the gunpowder factory?

  She wouldn’t talk about that either.

  It occurred to him that he’d happened upon one of the few people in Riat who felt more out of place here than he did.

  But she would talk about plants and herbs, and for that he didn’t need Drusus to translate. He’d left his bodyguard slouched in a chair, lost in a treatise by Cinna, while he sat at Isolda’s bedside, taking turns with her at sketching plants and naming them. He was getting a rapid education in the Sardossian language, at least this limited piece of it, and he was teaching her a few words of Kjallan in return.

  Isolda’s yellow hair was tied back from her face in a simple plait—he and Drusus had washed it while she was unconscious—and she wore no face paint at all. He didn’t mind; he was used to that from Osler. In fact, the highly decorated women of Riat, especially at the palace, struck him as gaudy and artificial. But intrigued as he was by this Sardossian woman, he could not call her pretty, at least not in a traditional, knock-one-over-sideways sense. Her features were ordinary; some might call her plain. But when she smiled, her whole face lit up, and her eyes crinkled, kindling a warm glow in his chest. He would think it hard to make a woman smile when he did not speak her language, but with Isolda it was not hard. She smiled a lot.

  He’d seen her naked, when he and Drusus had bathed her, but that had been business. He had not touched her in an inappropriate way, and he would not think about her in that way either. Much as it tempted him, he would not.

  She was yawning. He glanced at Drusus. “Are we due at the palace soon?”

  Drusus set down his treatise and nodded. “We ought to go now, in case the roads are as bad as they were yesterday.”

  Marius reached for Isolda.

  She leaned back, alarmed, but he only touched her forehead to check for fever.

  It was cool. He removed his hand. “Drusus and I have to go out for a while. You get some sleep. I’ll leave food for you on the table, in case you get hungry.”

  Drusus translated the words into Sardossian and rose from his chair.

  Marius took one last look at Isolda as she lay back in bed. Her head sank into the pillow, and she pulled the blanket up to her chin. He fixed the image in his mind, for what reason he did not know, and headed for the stable.

  Chapter 6

  Marius preferred to ride up to the palace for his weekly visit with Lucien, even though the emperor had offered to send a carriage. This despite the fact that he was a terrible rider. Before coming to Riat, he’d never been on the back of a horse. He’d ridden a mule once, and it was an experience he did not care to repeat. But Lucien had insisted that he learn to ride. It was one of many skills Marius was receiving a rapid education in, along with reading, writing, mathematics, history, languages, and tumbling. That last was supposed to be swordplay, but so far there were no swords involved, just a lot of rolling and calisthenics and footwork.

  Lucien had provided him with a quiet bay gelding named Gambler, who was now permanently stabled at the villa alongside Drusus’s gray stallion. Gambler, despite his name, was predictable and steady. His best feature was that he had a habit of stopping and waiting patiently when Marius lost his balance.

  Marius and Drusus rode side by side up the never-ending switchbacks to the imperial palace. The higher they ascended, the more Marius’s stomach twisted. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Lucien and Vitala. He liked them a lot, and he appreciated the generosity they’d shown him. It was clear that they went out of their way to make him feel comfortable. No, it was the palace environment that bothered him. When he’d first arrived, Lucien had expected him to live within the palace, in a sort of suite, with servants at his beck and call. Apparently his sister Rhianne had grown up in such a suite, as had Lucien himself.

  Marius had not lasted three days. He’d grown claustrophobic and stir-crazy. He simply could not feel at home amongst the berobed and bejeweled imperial courtiers. The servants made him nervous. He missed the simple comforts of village streets and small-town
life.

  But he still wanted the education Lucien had promised him. So he and the emperor had made a compromise: Marius would try living in the imperial city of Riat. The emperor purchased him a villa in a quiet part of town—at least, Lucien said it was quiet. Marius found it ten times more crowded, bustling, and noisy than what he was used to. Lucien also provided him with a bodyguard, and Marius took residence, with none of his neighbors the wiser that they shared a street with a cousin of the emperor. Riat was a big city, nothing at all like rural Osler, but Marius found he was better able to adapt to that environment than to the palace. And his parents had settled in Riat as well, at a comfortable but not too-comfortable distance of three miles across town.

  When he and Drusus arrived at the palace gates, the horses were whisked away by grooms to be cooled out and rubbed down. Marius changed into his finery, since it would not do to appear before the emperor in a tunic and breeches, and they were escorted to the imperial gardens. There, the emperor and empress were waiting beneath an orange tree. A table had been carried out into the garden and a feast of fruits and cakes and sandwiches awaited them. It was more food than Marius could eat in a week.

  Drusus saluted the imperial couple. Marius remembered his training and bowed in the way he’d been taught.

  Then Vitala hugged him and Lucien clasped his wrist.

  “We were worried about you,” said Vitala. “That explosion in town.”

  “It was over a mile from the villa,” said Marius.

  “Too close for comfort,” said Lucien. He gestured at the table. “Fill your plate and have a seat. I thought you might find the garden more comfortable than the palace.”

  Marius did, in fact. This little picnic reminded him of the dozens of similar outdoor gatherings he’d been to in Osler—weddings, summer festivals, reconciliations, the Triferian. But the food was fancier and the surroundings more opulent. The company was stiffer too, although perhaps that was an unfair assessment. He was the one who stiffened up when he was at the palace, not Lucien or Vitala, or even Drusus.