Healer's Touch

by Amy Raby

  His maid, exhibiting perfect timing, trotted out of the villa, carrying his formal syrtos, the green one with the double white belts that marked him as one of the city’s Healers. Marius took it and shrugged it on over his tunic.

  Isolda’s eyes barely focused as she watched him dress. “You’re right. You have to go. You’ll do more good there than I would.”

  “I’ll bring back news as soon as I can. And Isolda—I don’t think the neighborhood is entirely safe for you and Rory.” Now was not the time to talk about the dead rat they’d found hanging on the door. “I want you to lock the place up tight.” He turned to his maid. “You hear? Lock up. Nobody goes in or out.”

  The maid nodded.

  Marius headed off in the direction of the harbor, trailed by Drusus.

  ∞

  The scene at the disaster site was as chaotic as it had been the last time. One building was a blown-out husk that belched black smoke. Nothing was left of that one to salvage, but fire mages were working to put out the flames that had jumped to neighboring buildings.

  Thick smoke settled over the harbor, cutting visibility to no farther than ten feet. The air smelled of sulfur and charred wood. People flickered like shadows through the gray. On his right, in the distance, someone screamed for help. Marius turned to move in that direction and spotted a red coat shining through the haze—a city guardsman.

  Five minutes later, the guards had cordoned off a bit of street space for him and assigned him a fourteen-year-old boy to act as his assistant.

  “Bring me whoever needs help,” Marius instructed the boy. “Kjallan, Sardossian—I don’t care who they are or where they’re from.”

  The first patient delivered to him was a Sardossian woman with burnt yellow hair and blackened skin on her arm. Her jaw clenched in a rictus of pain. She could have been Isolda, thought Marius.

  Burns, though grievously painful and horrifying to behold, were easier to heal than most injuries. Laying hands on her, he called to his magic.

  Half an hour later, he heaved a sigh, fatigued from continuous healing. In a short space of time, the scene had changed utterly. He’d gone from a single patient to having dozens stack up outside the cordoned-off space. He’d healed his burn patient only halfway because someone more critical had turned up, and he’d had to switch. He hadn’t had the chance to get back to her yet. Drusus was playing both triage and defense, pushing away the onlookers who cried out to Marius and grabbed at his clothes, wanting help. Apparently there were a lot more wounded than there were Healers.

  His burn patient was trying to tell him something in Sardossian. Isolda could have translated, but she was back at the villa.

  “I’ll get back to you, I promise,” said Marius. He might be here all night—or longer.

  Her gaze darted over his shoulder. Distractedly, Marius wondered why. Then a red-coated city guardsman stepped up and took the woman by the arm.

  “Hey,” said Marius. “She’s my patient. Leave her alone.”

  “Aren’t you finished with her?” asked the guardsman.

  “No. Can’t you see I’m busy?” He’d removed a spike that was impaled in a man’s chest, and now he had to control the bleeding.

  The guardsman let her go. “Orders have come down from the palace. All Sardossians in the area are to be taken into custody. You can heal them first, but they can’t go free.”

  “Orders from the palace?” said Marius. His own cousin had ordered the Sardossians to be detained? He supposed the political pressure on Lucien must be enormous—and now he really wasn’t looking forward to telling the emperor about Isolda. At least she was home at the villa and safe from this detainment order. “You’re saying I’m supposed to heal these people and then hand them over to you to be deported?”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” said the guardsman.

  Marius growled under his breath and shook the blood from his hands. He couldn’t countermand his cousin’s orders. He could decline to heal the Sardossians under these ridiculous conditions, but what good would that do? Then they might be thrown on the boat still injured and in pain.

  His assistant arrived with a helper, bearing a groaning Sardossian man on a makeshift stretcher. The ghastly tip of a broken femur poked out of the man’s leg.

  “We’ll do that one next,” Marius said to his assistant.

  All he could think to do right now was to keep working.

  ∞

  It was late when Marius finally headed home, so late that he half expected the sun to rise before he reached the villa. Riat’s harbor district, normally quiet after the pubs and bawdy-houses closed their doors for the night, had never gone to sleep. The fires had been doused, the smoke had blown away, and most of the injured had been treated, but the city guards were still at work rounding up Sardossians for deportation.

  He’d heard there was rioting on the east side of the harbor, and he’d treated several people—two Sardossians and a Kjallan—who’d been injured in the violence.

  As he and Drusus crossed from the harbor district into the south hills district, the disorder quieted, and he began to feel reassured that Isolda had avoided the worst of the trouble.

  Inside the villa, Marius found her asleep in a chair.

  She awoke with a start at his touch. “Marius!” she cried, pressing her hand to her chest. “Gods—I don’t know when I dropped off. For the longest time I couldn’t sleep at all—”

  He knelt beside her chair, laying his hand over hers. “I’m glad you finally did.”

  “What time is it? Look at you, absolutely covered in soot. Was it very bad? Were there many killed?”

  “There were a lot of survivors,” he said, trying to focus on the positive.

  She rose from the chair. “I should go. It’s over now—I can talk to my friends at home, find out who got away and who didn’t—”

  “Isolda,” he said, rising with her, “you can’t go, not just yet. The city guards are rounding up Sardossians for deportation.”

  She stared at him. “The survivors are being deported?”

  “I’m afraid so,” he said. “It was the emperor’s direct order. Nothing I could do to stop it.” At least she didn’t know the emperor was his own cousin.

  She let out a shaky breath. “I’m sorry. It’s not your fault.”

  “I know this is hard—” he began.

  “I have to go home.”

  Marius shook his head. “Eventually, yes, but not now. There’s rioting in the harbor district, and the guards are still rounding up your people. You want to be sent back to Sardos? You and Rory?”

  “No.” Her body drooped.

  He wrapped an arm around her waist and led her toward the guest bedroom. “Stay here tonight. Stay as long as you need, until Riat loses interest in this and moves on to something else. You need sleep.”

  “You’re the one who needs sleep,” she said. “You look pale. Healing takes a lot out of you, and this was supposed to be your day to rest.”

  “I’ll sleep easier knowing you’re safe in the guest room next door,” said Marius.

  “Then I’ll be there,” said Isolda.

  Chapter 19

  Isolda felt strange walking to the surgery the next morning, as if it were just another day, when only yesterday the gunpowder factory had exploded and any number of people she knew could have been killed. Of course there was nothing she could do to stop a tragedy that had already happened. She’d only be putting herself and Rory at risk if she rushed home right now, and yet she could hardly stand not knowing who had survived and who hadn’t.

  Luck alone had spared her, her luck in being noticed by Marius. If he hadn’t hired her to work in his surgery last month, she’d have been in that factory when it blew. She felt guilty somehow, as if she’d betrayed her own people.

  But life had a way of soldiering on. She had work to attend to, a living to make.

  Rory had already left for the fruit stand. She worried about him being on his own in a city so craz
ed with anti-Sardossian sentiment, but it would be suspicious for him to miss work right after the explosion. Rory had no accent, and his boss took him for Riorcan. That was an illusion worth maintaining.

  Marius, walking ahead of her, halted just short of the surgery.

  “Is something wrong?” She peered around him, looking for a patrolling guardsman, but her eyes fell instead on crude black lettering painted across the surgery door: “PISS HEAD GO HOME.”

  Her scalp prickled, and her hand went to her head, checking for the bonnet that covered her yellow hair. Marius and Drusus were looking at the door, not at her, and yet she felt stared at, naked and exposed. Certainly they were both thinking about her right now.

  Drusus swept a finger across the writing. “Paint’s still wet.”

  “Not giving up, are they?” said Marius.

  “You think it’s Basilius?” asked Isolda.

  “Him or his friends,” said Drusus.

  Isolda swallowed. Marius had told her the problem was taken care of, that Drusus had carried out some sort of rough justice on the two men. Apparently it hadn’t worked. But she couldn’t blame Marius or Drusus for that.

  “I meant to tell you yesterday, but then the gunpowder factory blew, and I got sidetracked,” said Marius. “This is not the first incident. Someone hung a dead rat on the door to the villa yesterday morning.”

  “Oh gods, I’m sorry.” Isolda blinked rapidly. Once again, she was causing trouble for Marius, who didn’t deserve to be exposed to this sort of ugliness. “I’ll leave.”

  “Whatever for?” asked Marius.

  Such an adorable man, and brave, too. Isolda forced her words past the lump in her throat. “I don’t want this to happen to your wonderful surgery. I’ll find work elsewhere.” Forcing her leaden feet to move, she turned to go.

  “Don’t be silly.” Marius took her by the arm. “You can’t let those sapskulls win.”

  “But they’re going to keep at it—”

  “The paint on the door is nothing,” said Marius. “I’ll hire someone to wash it off or paint over it. From this point forward, Drusus can handle the patients who owe the surgery money. What a sapskull I was not to set it up that way in the first place! It doesn’t make sense to put you in that role when you’re so vulnerable, both as a woman and as a Sardossian. Nobody’s going to pull a knife on Drusus—”

  “I really don’t like causing you all this trouble.”

  “You’re not causing trouble.” Marius led her firmly back to the surgery door. “Basilius is. You are wanted here, and he is not.”

  Isolda wiped her eyes. She loved this job and she loved Marius; she wanted to stay. Still, her conscience nagged at her.

  “I think Drusus and I should escort you to and from work for a while,” added Marius. “Until the trouble blows over.”

  “Oh—thank you, but you can’t do that.” It wasn’t just a matter of inconveniencing him. She couldn’t let him escort her home because if she led a Kjallan to where she and her fellow Sardossians hid, her people would be furious, and they might not let her stay anymore. If there were any of them left to be furious, after what had happened yesterday.

  “I don’t mind,” said Marius. “You know I need the exercise.”

  Isolda smiled. While it was true Marius didn’t exercise much, he was young, and he looked perfectly fit. “It’s not a matter of putting you out, it’s just that my people are in hiding, and I can’t give away their hiding places.”

  “Oh.” Marius’s brows rose. “Well, perhaps if we escorted you part of the way, just far enough to discourage men like Basilius.”

  That would solve the problem, but Marius was missing the bigger issue. “I don’t think you understand. This isn’t something that’s going to blow over. I deal with this sort of harassment all the time. It’s not going to be a couple of incidents and then we’re done with it. It’s likely to be over and over again, not just Basilius but other people, and it will keep happening as long as I’m working here. That’s why I’m saying I have to leave. Do you see? It’s not going to go away!”

  Marius’s smile faded. “I admit, that’s...sobering. Is it really that bad?”

  Isolda nodded.

  “Then we’ll deal with it for years on end if we have to,” said Marius. “Come, let’s open the surgery. We can put a canvas over the door until it’s fixed.”

  She let Marius lead her through the door, astonished that he could so easily commit to taking on a problem of this magnitude, one that had never been his to begin with.

  Drusus took the ruined door off its hinges, and they opened for business with the surgery exposed to the open air. Drusus took Isolda’s place in the waiting room, screening patients, and she removed to the back office to catch up on bookkeeping.

  With relief, she dove into the world of numbers. Numbers were objective and safe. They didn’t care about your accent or the color of your hair. And this week, the numbers were uncommonly good. An hour’s work turned up the happy news that despite the negative effect of the Free Days and the distraction of Basilius, business was up and so were the surgery’s profits. Marius would be pleased with her report at the end of the day.

  Isolda cocked her head. Something was going on in the waiting room. An argument? She stopped scratching her quill against the paper. Drusus was using his low voice, the dangerous one that meant business. Did someone else owe the surgery money? She heard another male voice besides Drusus’s, one that was unfamiliar.

  Then a third voice joined in: Marius. He sounded upset. She raised her head.

  Footsteps sounded, moving in her direction. As the men neared, she began to make out what they were saying.

  “You have no authority to do this, none at all,” said Marius.

  “Our orders come from the emperor,” said the man she didn’t know.

  Three gods. Was this the city guard, come for her? She scrambled up from her chair, looking around the windowless room. Nowhere she could run to.

  “I’ll wager you were sent here by Basilius,” said Marius. “He’s a common thug who’s vandalized my property and harassed my workers. It’s him you should be taking, not her.”

  “By imperial writ, all Sardossians are to be taken into custody.”

  “Not this one,” said Marius. “She works for me and had nothing to do with the explosion. She was with me when it happened, far from the harbor district.”

  “If you have a grievance with my carrying out this order, you can take it up with the emperor,” said the guardsman.

  “He will,” said Drusus. “You can count on that.”

  The door to the back room opened to reveal two uniformed men from the Riat City Guard. Without preamble, one of them stepped inside and grabbed Isolda by the arm.

  “You saw my bodyguard’s insignia,” Marius was saying.

  “An insignia doesn’t countermand my orders,” said the guardsman.

  Marius turned to Isolda. “Please don’t be frightened. I can’t stop him from taking you, but I’m going to get you out, I promise.”

  “How long before the Sardossians are deported?” asked Drusus.

  The guardsman shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  Isolda, looking at the open door, wrenched her arm, hoping to take the guardsman by surprise and dart away. She had every confidence that Marius would try to help her, but none whatsoever that he had the power to do so. Better to escape if she could. For a moment she felt the guard’s grip slipping, but then he tightened it and twisted her arm.

  “You want me to put you in shackles, piss-head?” snarled the guardsman.

  “Don’t you hurt her,” said Marius. “It will be your head if you do.”

  “Remember the insignia,” added Drusus.

  The guardsman’s hand loosened on her arm just enough to ease the pain.

  “Go quietly, Isolda, for your own sake,” said Marius. “I’ll get you out.”

  Gods, if she was in custody, what was going to happen to Rory? She couldn’t say anything
to Marius about him directly, lest she tip off the guards, but perhaps she could drop a hint. “I didn’t get to the fruit market today. I hope that’s all right.”

  Marius blinked. Message received. “Perfectly all right.”

  Gritting her teeth, she let the guardsman lead her out the surgery door.

  ∞

  “Shove over,” called the guard into the crowded holding cell as he pushed Isolda into it. The cell looked like it was built to hold five to eight people, but nearly thirty Sardossians were crammed inside. Most of them sat on the floor, wedged together like ill-fitting puzzle pieces, while a few around the edges stood, trading tired legs for breathing room.

  As the door clanged shut behind her, Isolda looked over her cell-mates. She recognized several, all of them people she’d seen around the factory or in the underground and knew vaguely.

  Then her eyes lit on someone she knew well. “Emari.”

  The young woman looked up, and her soot-stained face crinkled into a smile. “Isolda.”

  Emari was at the far end of the holding cell, and while the sea of humanity between them seemed impassable, Isolda was determined to get there. She waded her way across, ignoring the grumbling, and apologizing for stepped-on fingers. When she arrived, Emari persuaded the others to clear a little space for her.

  “Were you in the factory when it blew?” asked Isolda.

  Emari nodded. “It was the storeroom that went. The millers nearest that direction—I don’t think they made it.”

  Isolda mentally catalogued the millers she knew and their usual stations. “Did Rill get out?”

  “I didn’t see her. Doesn’t mean she’s dead, though. The scene was chaos.”

  “This isn’t the only holding cell for Sardossians, is it?”