Healer's Touch

by Amy Raby

  From an ethical standpoint, he had no quarrel with anything she’d done, but legally it was a mess. Lucien might straighten it out, if he could be persuaded to do so. But first she had to agree to meet with Lucien, which she’d refused to do.

  On the second day of her disappearance, he’d tried to track her down again by locating Rory at the fruit stand and following him. But Rory no longer worked at the Chelani Corner Market, nor did he seem to work at any other fruit stand in the harbor district. On a whim, Marius took a gander at the gutted-out buildings that had once been the gunpowder factory. Carpenters were rebuilding them, but there was no factory there now.

  He’d heard the Sardossians hid underground. Was that really true?

  On his next Sage’s Day visit, he confessed to Emperor Lucien the sad tale and asked for help. He’d worried that Lucien might be unsympathetic—after all, the emperor had never wanted this particular marriage to take place. Furthermore, Isolda’s confession of fraud with the apparitor and her disappearance afterward seemed to confirm every worst stereotype about Sardossians. But the emperor seemed genuinely sorry that Marius’s proposal had met with disappointment.

  “I don’t know where the Sardossians hide,” said Lucien from across his desk in the imperial office. “We deported most of them. But you might ask Vitala. She’s got her ear to the ground on such matters.”

  Marius scheduled a meeting with the empress. She’d been out all morning and then had to meet with someone over lunch, but she agreed to see him later that afternoon.

  He found her in the gymnasium, watching over a training session. Three pairs of combatants clashed with rapiers, dancing back and forth across the polished marble floor. Marius looked around for his younger sister, but did not see her.

  Vitala waved him over, and he joined her by the wall.

  “Where’s Laelia?” he asked.

  “She fought this morning,” said Vitala.

  “How’d she do?”

  “I wasn’t there,” said Vitala. “You could ask Horatius.” She nodded toward the trainer who was following the action of one pair, calling out corrections. At one point, he stuck out his training stick, and a trainee tripped over it, landing in a heap on the ground. “Stance,” murmured Vitala. When Marius didn’t leave, she asked, “Is there something else I can do for you?”

  “I was wondering if you know where the Sardossian refugees hide.”

  She turned to him with a raised brow. “Why?”

  “Did Lucien tell you I was going to propose marriage to a Sardossian woman?”

  “He mentioned it. Are congratulations in order?”

  “No,” said Marius. “At first, she accepted. But when I told her I was Lucien’s cousin, and that she’d have to meet him, she panicked and fled back to wherever her people hide. And now I can’t find her.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “She’s afraid of Lucien—after all, he deported most of her people. And there are legal complications having to do with her citizenship and a prior marriage.”

  Vitala nodded.

  “I need to find her,” said Marius. “Do you know where she might be hiding?”

  “I might have a lead for you,” said Vitala. “Riat’s history is rather interesting; have you studied it?”

  Marius dug back in his mind to those sessions, years ago, with his history tutor. “It’s always been the seat of the empire,” he offered. “Kjall was originally a small province, which conquered its neighbors to the north and east—”

  “I’m talking about the city itself,” said Vitala. “Its structure. The harbor district is the oldest district of Riat. It was built on filled-in tidelands, and it often flooded, leading to sanitation problems. After a city fire in which a great many buildings were destroyed, the king at the time—this was before we became an empire—ordered that the city be rebuilt above sea level. Have you noticed that at the docks and all of Riat’s beaches, you have to take a stairway down to the water?”

  Marius blinked. That was true, although he’d never paid much attention to it. Riat was the first and only coastal city he’d lived in. “But how did they raise the city above sea level?”

  “Concrete, mainly,” said Vitala. “The old city, what was left of it, remained where it was. Now it sits below the new one, abandoned and derelict, rather like the hypocaust beneath the imperial palace.”

  “You believe the Sardossians live underground among this...concrete? In the old city?”

  “That’s what my sources suggest. Not just Sardossians, but ruffians, exiles, and the desperately poor. Anyone who can’t afford housing.”

  How odd that the Riat City Guard didn’t seem to know. “You haven’t tried to drive them out?”

  “I’ve got more important things to do than chase the desperately poor from their hiding spots,” said Vitala.

  Marius smiled. He’d always liked the empress. “Do you know how to enter this underground city?”

  “I don’t,” said Vitala. “The entrance would seem logically to be in the harbor district, but let me caution you about seeking it out. This woman—Isolda?—left for a reason.”

  “She’s convinced that Lucien will hate her. And she thinks I’m upset about her fraudulent divorce, which I’m not.”

  “Perhaps she’s just a little intimidated,” said Vitala. “But you might give her some time to come to terms with her feelings. Will she not come back on her own if you give her a chance?”

  “She might.” But he hated the idea of her and Rory being alone in hostile Riat with the writ expiring. Especially if they shared their living quarters with ruffians.

  “Just give it some consideration before you go looking,” said Vitala. “And remember that you, as a wealthy Kjallan, may not be welcomed by the denizens of the underground.”

  “I understand,” said Marius.

  ∞

  Isolda’s new job at Velox Marine Shipping was working out well. The pay was less than what she’d earned at the surgery, but it was enough to be satisfactory. And while her co-workers were not especially stimulating—for the most part, she worked alone in an office—that was, in her case, probably a good thing.

  Her overseer was patient and businesslike, nothing like Twitchy Fingers. He was tolerant of her bringing Rory to work as long as the boy was quiet. So she’d set Rory to reading in a corner of her office. He needed to begin studying if he was going to do well at the university someday. They could forgo his small income for a while, and it was necessary she keep him away from the fruit stand temporarily, so that Marius couldn’t use him as a means of locating her.

  Caz also worked for Velox Marine. While she did bookkeeping in an office, he loaded and unloaded ships. At the end of the work day, he escorted her and Rory home, which she appreciated. The harbor district was rowdier than Marius’s south hills district.

  She made her last notation in the ledger and closed the book for the day. This was her first experience working for a company that didn’t deal directly with customers but instead acted as a middleman between merchants. She’d had no idea there was so much profit in marine shipping. The margins were enormous compared to what she was used to, but then shipping was a risky business. While a good haul brought in hefty profits, a ship lost at sea could be disastrous to the bottom line.

  Caz loitered outside her office, chatting with a friend. He seemed to have a lot of friends, far more than she’d been able to acquire since coming to Kjall. Perhaps it was because she was so focused on her work and her plans for Rory; she didn’t have time for much else. She could count her friends in Kjall on one hand: Caz, Marius, maybe Drusus. All of them men. She used to have Emari, but Emari had been deported. Now there was Vora, who’d moved into Emari’s old place in the underground, but Isolda barely knew her and considered her an acquaintance.

  She needed more friends, especially more women friends. Her experience with her older sisters and then with Chari had made her skittish of other women, but that was unfair: most women were not l
ike Chari. Maybe she should ask Vora sometime if they could get dinner together. There was safety in numbers, and since leaving Marius she’d been lonely.

  “Time to go,” she called to Rory.

  The boy closed his book and rose obediently to his feet.

  Outside, Caz was clasping wrists, saying goodbye to his friend. His yellow hair was spiky and his bare, muscled arms shone with sweat. He was an attractive man, Caz. She’d have been interested in him if she hadn’t been so fixated on Marius, but she was certain the interest wasn’t mutual.

  “Ready?” asked Caz.

  “Thank you for walking us home.”

  He grinned. “Anything for a lady.”

  As they passed through the harbor district, Caz chatted about the ship he’d been loading that afternoon. It was bound for Mosar, and they’d loaded it mostly with timber. “They haven’t any real forests on Mosar,” he said. “Can you imagine? They send us luxury goods like coffee and silk and lemons, and we send them raw timber.”

  “Don’t lemons grow on trees?” she asked

  “Do they?” said Caz. “I never thought about it.”

  They’d reached the Drunken Wind Taproom, Isolda’s usual breakfast and dinner spot, and also her gateway to the Riat Underground. Sometimes Caz had dinner with her and Rory before heading underground, and sometimes he had friends to meet at another tavern. Tonight he seemed to have no other obligation and sat with them for a brief, unappetizing dinner of potato hash. When they were finished, they headed into the kitchen, where the workers gave them a friendly nod, and down the stairs. Caz pulled back the false door, and they headed into the dripping halls of the old city.

  The underground smelled of sewage and rot. Shot through with concrete beams, it was also a bit of a maze. Caz lived in an old inn three blocks away. The building Isolda called home was down a concrete aisle not far from the Drunken Wind. It was a two-room dwelling, of which only one of the rooms was habitable. She and Rory used to share it with Emari. Now they shared it with Vora and a sickly old man. She had no idea what the place had originally been called—there was no official sign—but someone had chalked the word kodon on the door: Sardossian for “home.”

  Though it was a little out of his way, Caz accompanied her to the kodon.

  Vora stood by the door. “There’s a man come to see you. He’s waiting inside.”

  Isolda stopped short. “A man?”

  “He said he’s been looking all over town for you.”

  Rory tugged at her sleeve. “Mom, it’s Marius.”

  How had Marius found her? She thought she’d taken every precaution this time.

  “Want me to go in with you?” asked Caz.

  “No.” Strange how her heart fluttered at the thought of speaking to Marius again. She’d wanted to stay away—it pained her too much to think about what he’d offered, and how she’d had to turn it all down. But now that he was here, she wanted very much to talk to him. “I think this conversation needs to be private.”

  “No privacy in the underground,” said Caz.

  “We’ll go somewhere.” If Marius was here, he must have something of significance to say. Maybe the situation had changed. Maybe she didn’t have to meet with the emperor after all.

  Caz gave her a wink. “Good luck.”

  She clasped his wrist.

  Inside the kodon, she worked her way around the fallen rafters and the puddle of seawater in the corner. The place smelled of mildew, and from the bedroom she could hear the old man’s raspy cough. How shameful, that Marius should see the awful place she lived. The Kjallans called her people sewer rats, and they were not far wrong.

  She crossed the crooked doorframe into the bedroom and stopped short.

  The man waiting for her was not Marius.

  It was Jauld.

  Chapter 29

  Not since his days of eating at Lev’s Inn and Tavern had Marius encountered a beef stew as bad as this one. He raised his spoon and examined its contents. “Do you think this is actually beef?”

  Drusus, who’d already cleaned his bowl, grunted something noncommittal.

  It appeared to be meat, but it had tubes running through it. “You want the rest of mine?”

  “Sure.”

  Marius handed it over. It didn’t matter that the food was bad; he was finally making some progress at locating the underground city. For several days now, after putting in his workday at the surgery, he’d gone to the harbor district and tried to surreptitiously follow any Sardossians he spotted. His tailing skills were untrained and clumsy. His targets often noticed him, became alarmed, and slipped away.

  But he was desperate enough to keep trying, and one thing he’d noticed was that while many Sardossians entered the Sage House Tavern on Fisher Street, not as many seemed to leave it. So he’d tried an experiment. He watched a particular Sardossian enter the tavern. Then he waited fifteen minutes and went inside to look for that person. He couldn’t find him.

  Marius suspected the Sage House was an entry point to the underground city. Somehow, Sardossians were entering the tavern and, instead of coming back out again, were heading to their evening quarters underground. Tonight, he and Drusus had stepped inside the tavern to have dinner so that they could see the place and perhaps observe the route the Sardossians were using.

  “I think it’s through the kitchen,” murmured Drusus. “See there?”

  Marius followed his bodyguard’s gaze. A pair of Sardossians were walking around the corner into the kitchen. They paused at the entrance to speak to someone, and then disappeared.

  “Now we see if they come back out,” said Drusus.

  Marius gnawed on a hard, tasteless roll while he watched the spot where they’d disappeared. A minute passed. Then five. “I think they’re gone.”

  “Shall we go over there and have a look?”

  “As long as you don’t think it’s dangerous,” asked Marius.

  “Shouldn’t be,” said Drusus with a shrug. “Sardossian refugees don’t seem much inclined to violence.”

  Marius rose from the table, took a final sip of his ale, and headed toward the kitchen. He tried to look casual, though his heart was thumping.

  Drusus fell in behind him.

  When Marius turned the corner, he saw an ordinary kitchen. A mechanized roasting-jack, the type that a cook cranked up and left to unspool, turned a roast over the fire. A boy was washing up, covered in suds, and two men balanced a cask between them as they poured its contents into a smaller container. Marius had been so certain he’d see something exciting—a hidden passageway, a stairway leading into darkness—that this mundane scene was a disappointment.

  “Hey,” said one of the men with the cask. “You can’t come in here.”

  Marius ignored him. Looking closer, he discovered that there was a stairway, half hidden behind the fire and the spit. It might lead to an ordinary cellar. Or it might lead somewhere else.

  The man released his grip on the cask, leaving the other to shoulder the burden, and came at them, waving his arms to shoo them away. “No customers back here.”

  Though his eyes never left that mysterious stairway, Marius allowed himself to be backed out of the room. He had no legal right to force his way through. But how did the Sardossians routinely get past these men? Was there a password, or was it just that Sardossians were allowed in and Kjallans weren’t?

  “I think that was the entrance,” said Drusus at his shoulder as they left the tavern. “Did you see the stairway?”

  “I saw it,” said Marius. “Might be a root cellar.”

  “Those Sardossians we saw had to go somewhere, and there was no other way out.”

  Marius nodded.

  “So what now?” asked Drusus. “Your cousin wouldn’t like it if we forced our way in. I suppose you could ask for another writ.”

  Marius didn’t feel that a writ was justified, and he certainly didn’t want to bother Lucien again. He looked up at the darkening sky. “It’s late. Let’s go home for n
ow. When we come back tomorrow, we can see what a bribe will accomplish.”

  ∞

  Staring at her onetime husband in the Riat Underground, Isolda felt she must be dreaming, and it wasn’t a good dream. This didn’t seem possible. Her ex-husband occupied one sphere of her life, the life she’d left behind in Sardos. He was not present in the other. How could these spheres have merged? Jauld could not be here, and yet he was.

  “Three gods, Isolda, it’s really you.” Jauld leaned in to peer at her face and clothes.

  Something about her ex-husband always made Isolda feel self-conscious. What was he seeing when he looked at her? She was dressed to blend, in a cheap Kjallan syrtos, and she’d tied her hair back in a braid to keep it out of her face. She imagined she looked rather plain. Back in Sardos, she’d tried face paint, but when it didn’t seem to improve Jauld’s opinion of her, she’d given it up. Too much trouble and expense.

  Never mind what he thought. She didn’t care anymore. “How did you get here?”

  Jauld ignored her question. “So you live in a moldering sewer.”

  That didn’t deserve a reply. He looked different than when she’d last seen him, thinner and grayer. Was food becoming scarce in Sardos?

  “Three gods.” Jauld’s gaze shifted to a spot beside her. “Is that Rory?”

  Rory, oh gods! In the shock of seeing Jauld, she’d forgotten about her son. She turned to see how he was taking this. The boy had come in after her, but was now backing away, wide-eyed. He showed no sign of recognizing his father. She wasn’t sure if Rory had any memory of Jauld, since he’d been only four years old when they left, and she never talked about him.