Kismet's Kiss: A Fantasy Romance (Alaia Chronicles)

by Cate Rowan

  The Healer’s outlandish skirts swirled around her as she moved toward nearest pallet and touched the patient’s hand. Sohad crossed to the other side of the pallet, away from her. He clasped his hands behind his back and did his best to look, and feel, uninvolved.

  Ferran’s portly jowls jiggled when he opened his eyes and saw Varene. He withdrew his hand in surprise. “Who are you?” he gasped, clearly hoarse and in pain.

  “A Royal Healer. I’ve come to help you, if I can.”

  She looked in control, Sohad grudgingly noted.

  “A physician?” Ferran asked, bewildered.

  “Something like that,” she said. “Healers and physicians work a bit differently, but we have the same goal: your recovery.”

  As if the man’s body decided to illustrate what a task that recovery would be, a coughing fit racked him. He grabbed a handkerchief that lay by his side.

  “No blood on the kerchief,” she observed. “That’s good. Has that been the case throughout your illness?”

  “Yes.” Ferran’s jowls quivered again in unease.

  Sohad spoke reluctantly. “With those who’ve passed on… toward the end, there was often blood.” A pain built behind his eyes at the memories.

  “So I’ve been told,” she murmured. Ferran lay back on the pallet and Varene took his hand.

  Again he pulled it from her. “You’re a woman!”

  She grasped his wrist gently and turned it over. “Where I come from, it’s not unusual for women to be Healers.” She pinched up a fold of his skin, checking its elasticity. Ferran’s eyes widened, and he glanced at Sohad.

  Sohad wanted to shrug, disclaiming responsibility, but the uncertainty in the man’s eyes—and Varene’s watchful gaze—drove him to nod in reassurance.

  “Your skin tells me you’re feeling dry inside and out, aren’t you?” Varene asked the patient.

  Ferran’s small eyes crinkled mournfully and he tapped fat fingers on his throat. “Hurts to swallow.”

  “I’m sure. But you must still drink. Your body needs fluids to help fight the sickness. You want to get better, of course?”

  He shifted his head to eye her sidelong, but gave a nod.

  “Good. And I can aid you with that sore throat, if you’d like.”

  Ferran’s eyes narrowed. “How?”

  Bedcoverings rustled on the pallet behind Sohad, and its sharp-nosed occupant bore his usual sour expression. “Healers,” the man said, glaring at the woman. “Pah. I know where your kind is from.”

  She gave him a mild look. “Do you, now?”

  “Where’s that, Nipun?” said Ferran.

  “Teganne!” said Nipun triumphantly. “She’ll magic the life right out of you. Suck you dry!”

  An amused smile curved Varene’s lips. “Is that what the gossips say these days? Don’t worry. I have no need of your lives, any of you. I’m living an interesting one of my own. Too much so,” she added in an undertone, turning back to Ferran.

  “Now then.” She patted his wrist to get his attention since he was still staring at Nipun with alarm. “I’ll be happy to numb that raw throat for you. I can do it the fast and simple way, with no painful swallowing. Or, I can search for some herbs to brew. But you’ll have to drink a great deal—with a lot of swallowing—before your throat would feel relief. Even then, the effect wouldn’t be immediate. It’s your decision.” She turned to Nipun. “If you’ve a sore throat too, you have the same choice.” She leaned back on her heels as if she hadn’t a care in the world.

  “I’ll take fast and simple, please,” came a whisper from the other side of the room.

  Jubayr, a servant child of ten or so years, was sitting up on his pallet, swaying a little. A shock of dark hair hung over bloodshot eyes, and he impatiently tugged it back behind ears that had somehow caught a growth spurt before the rest of his head.

  “You’re braver than they are, I see.” She gave the child an approving smile and crossed the room to his side. Sohad trailed behind her.

  Jubayr’s large brown eyes mirrored his suffering. For the past three days, Sohad had found the boy’s gaze hard to meet. He looked too much like Sohad’s youngest brother, whose spirit had long since been sleeping at Naaz’s feet. Jubayr’s spirit seemed likely to follow.

  Varene washed once more at the washbasin along the short wall. Clearly some sort of Tegannese religious ritual, Sohad decided.

  When the Healer returned, she murmured, “Lie back, please.” Jubayr obeyed, arms stiff and tight against his sides. “It’s all right, you can relax.” She laid a hand lightly on his arm. “I promise this won’t hurt. Afterwards, perhaps we can find something cool and soothing for you to eat.” She glanced at Sohad for confirmation.

  The boy hesitated. “Maybe…orange sherbet?” His eyes bulged in anticipation.

  Sohad’s lips rose. “I think we can handle that request.”

  With a rapturous expression, the boy sank back into the pallet.

  The Healer wrapped one of his hands in her own and placed her other on his throat. As her fingers touched his neck he glanced up at her, worried, but she smiled and waited for him to trust her again. “Close your eyes, if you like. I’m going to.” She winked and did just that. Jubayr followed suit.

  Unwillingly impressed by her gentleness, Sohad held his breath and inched closer to the pair.

  The Healer held deeply still. For a moment, Sohad caught the sound of a faint harmony, and wondered if traveling musicians were passing under the windows or through the outer halls. But soon Jubayr took a deep breath, swallowed experimentally, and cracked a joyful smile. White little teeth poked out giddily as he sat up, propped on his elbows.

  “See?” Varene laughed. “Just as I told you. Unfortunately, the numbing’s only temporary, but it’s a help. Now your job is to drink a lot of water. Enough so that you are passing your own water, and often.” She gave Jubayr a stern look.

  “Yes’m!” he responded, and smiled again. “I’ll be all better soon?” He swung his legs toward the pallet’s edge, but she stopped him with a hand on his chest.

  “Hold it, young sir. Stay abed a while yet. You’ve some recovering to do, and I have a cure to find. Your sherbet will come to you, all right?”

  “But what about the pigs?”

  Varene leaned closer. “Pigs?”

  “With neither of us there to look after them…” He gestured at the sleeping boy on the pallet beside him.

  “Healer,” Sohad broke in, “Jubayr and Essam are apprentices to the palace swinekeepers.”

  “Since last summer,” Jubayr added before Sohad could continue. “We can’t lose our positions—” A violent coughing fit attacked him, a fit soon echoed by Nipun across the room.

  “Never mind your job,” Varene said firmly, laying a hand on Jubayr’s shaking shoulder. “I may have a little influence with someone who has the final word on it. And I’ll make sure someone’s keeping an eye on your…pigs.” She raised a brow as if she couldn’t quite believe she’d said that. “But you must rest and let your body fight the illness. Have we a deal?”

  “Yes’m. But could you do that for both of us?” He tilted his chin in the direction of Essam.

  “Certainly. I’ll help his throat, as well.” She cleansed her hands again, then eased the sleeping boy’s soreness as she’d done with Jubayr. Again, Sohad wondered where the faint melody was coming from, but set his mind to more consequential matters: How was she healing them? Jubayr’s evident relief proved her method worked, but all she’d done was lay her hands on him—no herbs, no cutting, no leeches or emetics. Magic. Sorcery. A sin against the gods’ way. And yet…

  Varene washed again and turned back toward the men on the pallets. “Gentlemen, shall I ease your throats as I have these children?”

  “Keep your Teg hands away from me,” Nipun snapped. “I’ll take a draught. And only from him.” He jerked his head at Sohad.

  “Fine.” The Healer’s tone stayed even. “I’ll discuss appropriate herbs with
Sohad in a while.” She turned to the jowled patient. “And you, Ferran?”

  “Are you Tegannese, like he says?” He eyed her dubiously.

  “I am.”

  Ferran looked across at the young swinekeepers, then meekly up at the Healer. “I’d like what you’ve done for them.”

  To Sohad’s surprise, he found himself relieved. As much as he agreed with Nipun’s sentiments, he’d have been ashamed if Nipun’s bitter spouting had persuaded Ferran.

  “My pleasure,” said the Healer. And when she was finished, Ferran’s delighted smile made Nipun look even surlier by contrast.

  “Oh!” Ferran began. “You’ve—How did you remove the pain with just your hand?”

  “Magic, you fat fool!” rasped Nipun. “It’s against Naaz’s ways and the very laws of nature. You’ve let this sorceress blind you to your Kaddite principles. Shame!”

  Ferran turned away with dignity, nose tilted high in the air. “Well, at least I feel better.”

  Varene’s mouth quirked as she washed again, but she didn’t comment. “Ferran,” she said over her shoulder, “are you employed here at the palace?”

  His head rose higher on his wattled neck and he answered in rolling tones. “I am the Master Baker.”

  “Master Traitor, more like,” said his neighbor.

  Ferran cast the insulter a quelling glance. “Have respect. Being on our deathbeds doesn’t reduce our responsibility to be civil.”

  “Pah!” was Nipun’s only answer, and he lay back on his pallet as if determined to ignore them all.

  “Nipun,” she asked, returning to the two patients, “what do you do in the palace?” He scowled and rolled away from her question.

  Ferran answered instead. “He’s the Master Fowlkeeper.” The slightest of wrinkles at the top of Ferran’s nose showed how he felt about that.

  “Hmm. Fowl, and baking, and pigs… Are the fowl housed near the stables?”

  Sohad raised his brows. Why would a Healer care about such a thing? “They’re close, but not adjacent.”

  “I see. And Ferran, do you have much cause to go to either area?”

  “None at all.”

  She looked disappointed.

  “You’re trying to find a connection?” Sohad asked. “A reason they all became ill?”

  She grimaced her frustration. “The sultan said everyone who contracted the malady is connected to at least one of the others in some way, so I need to learn why it developed and how. Have you any clues?”

  Sohad spread his hands. “None. Nor have the physicians. I’m sure Yaman would have discovered the answer if he’d lived, but…” He closed his eyes.

  When he looked up again, Varene’s gaze had softened. “I lost my master, too, Sohad. Decades ago, but I remember it keenly. He passed away long before I was ready to say goodbye.”

  It was an unexpected kindness from this foreigner, this woman wielding her sorcery in the palace of the sultan. The grudge Sohad had brandished began to crumble in his grasp.

  Varene pointed behind him to the far wall of the room. “The patient over there—has he the same sickness?”

  “No, a dog bite. Yaman was preparing to tend to him when he slipped in the man’s blood, then hit his head on the corner of the table. Soon convulsions took him.”

  Varene exhaled. “I’d wondered what had happened. How is the bite victim now?”

  “I sewed his wound closed, packed with mir leaves. He sleeps.”

  “Would you mind if I examined him?”

  “Of course not.” But as the Healer strode toward the undercook’s pallet, misgivings galloped back toward Sohad. What would the magic-wielder think of his skills? He hurried up behind her.

  She raised the bandages around the man’s wound and checked it with careful fingers. “Your stitching’s well done. The wound is clean and should heal well. I’m impressed.” She flashed a smile.

  Under her praise, a question flooded from Sohad before he could halt it. “How would you have healed this?”

  “The same way, in the initial stages.”

  “You’d have sewn him up, too? You wouldn’t just…lay your hands on him?”

  She shook her head. “I can heal, but I’m not a mage. Only the most powerful mages can do what you’re thinking, and even then only after specific training. The healing I do speeds the body’s own processes. I encourage patients’ bodies much like the right words encourage their minds. But no Healer can cure all the injuries and diseases people face. Nor can we revive the dead.” Her pale face turned melancholy and she looked down at the undercook. “But at least here is something I can do.”

  She laid her fingers on the wound and took a deep breath. As before, Sohad heard the faintest strains of a tune, this time more clearly drum and lute—but they were lost in his shock as the wound’s edges mellowed from a raw and angry red to the palest pink in mere seconds.

  Sohad’s heart quickened just watching it. A week’s worth of recovery in less time than it would take to thread a needle! Was it possible? Had he really seen it?

  Deep inside him, beneath all reason and sense, formed a craving—an illicit craving to do as she did. To see his patients recover before his eyes. To see Time, Kismet’s Time, obey his command just as it obeyed hers.

  His world tilted in that moment, shifting. The beliefs that had supported it melted and drained into desert sand.

  He backed away, first one foot, then the other. He pushed away from the patient, from the sorcery, from the sorceress.

  As she glanced up with startled eyes, he pivoted around and marched from the room.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “They have arrived, O Lord, as you predicted.” The steward Hamar gave the sultan a half-bow.

  “How unfortunate that I was right.” Kuramos scowled down at the prayer rug on which he’d been trying, unsuccessfully, to meditate. He uncoiled himself and rose, glancing once more at the dagger in front of which he’d placed the rug. He’d hoped the relic of his family’s history would serve as a conduit to the goddess’s heart. Naaz, please allow me, your unworthy servant, to be blessed by Your grace again. For my family, which is Your own as well…

  He strode through the palace halls with Hamar a pace behind. Hamar’s silence pleased him; Kuramos preferred to keep his own counsel, and Hamar had proven he knew when to seal his own lips.

  As Kuramos had planned, two of his most fearsome-looking guards flanked the wide doorway of the private consultation room. He noted he was taller than either guard, and quashed a prideful twitch of his lips. They stood at attention as he neared, then turned in unison and led the way into the room of dark wood and imposing murals of the goddess and gods.

  Five men seated on cushions sprang to their feet. Kuramos saw in a quick, raking glance that they were but hired messengers—terrified ones, at that. His lip curled in distaste at the discourtesy of those who had sent these lowly pawns, these mere children on this mission.

  “O Great Sultan,” stammered the one on the farthest left, after a sweeping bow that had nose touching shins, “my master, the pasha Nabil, begs certain…information from you, if your Lordship deems him fit to receive it.”

  Kuramos doubted very much that those words had been the verbatim commandment from the pasha, but messengers were well-trained in the art of diplomatic translation.

  “And do your masters,” Kuramos said, glancing at the other men, “have the same wish?” Low murmurs indicated their affirmation.

  It galled him to stand before men whose masters were too cowardly to seek audience themselves. But his presence—living, healthy, and intimidating—would be crucial to what would come next.

  “I take it,” Kuramos drawled, closing in on the first messenger, “that Nabil would like to know the nature of the illness mentioned in My court today.”

  The messenger, a good half a head shorter than Kuramos, quivered on his legs as his sultan neared. His gaze darted away, toward the innocuous carpet. “Y…Yes, O Lord.”

  Kuramos fou
nd no pleasure in this bullying, but closed in on the messenger until the man seemed close to wetting himself.

  Then he moved a few feet to the right, to the next messenger. “Does your master Akram,” and he flicked the insignia pinned to the man’s shoulder, “fear that this illness might be contagious?”

  The messenger swallowed, gave a minute nod, and pinned his gaze on the hand the sultan had casually placed on his ever-present scimitar. Kuramos made sure his hot breaths wafted over the man, and prayed that Varene’s instinct was right.

  The lives of these men depended on it. No physician in Kad would have dared give an answer based on instinct, but the sorceress from Teganne had done just that. Nor had he become ill, though he’d held Tahir in his arms, stayed by Dabir and then his wives’ bedsides for hours, visited each of the others who had taken to their pallets with the fevers. His own gut now told him to trust Varene’s.

  He moved to the third man, whose head was already lowered, and spoke in a voice as quiet as a scimitar being unsheathed. “And do you believe I would be here among you, infecting you, if the illness were so?”

  “N-no, O Lord.” The man collapsed to his knees and bowed his head to the rug.

  “And you?” He gestured toward the fourth messenger, who merely followed his neighbor’s example, slithering to the floor in a quivering mass. Kuramos stepped to his prostrate form, settling one sandaled foot firmly beside the man’s outspread hands, and continued in silky tones. “I do hope the House of Chiman doesn’t wish for any harm to come to mine. That your master isn’t sniffing like a jackal, hoping to scavenge from my House’s dead carcass, hmm?”

  The man emitted the faintest of moans in response.

  Kuramos turned, finally, to the last man. “And Ubaid from the House of Faysal.”

  “O Great Sultan,” Ubaid answered, and raised his gaze to the eyes of his sovereign.

  Kuramos sensed the man’s composure. He was the only one of the five who now possessed any. And as their gazes met, Kuramos knew he was seeing a man pure of faith. The only such man in the room.