Healer's Touch (17 page)

“Kiss me again,” she said. “And don’t ask.” If he asked, she might say no, and she didn’t want to say no. She wanted to hold this man, to take him deep into her body and never let him go. It would destroy her in the end, but gods, she couldn’t resist. He’d asked her what she wanted for herself, and she’d avoided the question, because she couldn’t tell him the truth: she wanted
him
.

His mouth descended on hers again, and her heart sang. He was gentle at first, but when an involuntary moan escaped her, he pressed harder, tightening his arms around her. Her troubles faded away, and her world became Marius, his hard body surrounding her, his lips plundering hers. Her body turned to jelly in his grasp.

Then the floor beneath them gave a jolt, and every window in the villa exploded.

∞

Isolda raised her head. Chari’s cries from the back bedroom were growing more agonized—perhaps the baby was crowning. It was customary in polygamous marriages for the senior wife to act as midwife to the junior, but Chari had seemed horrified at that idea and whispered in Jauld’s ear, “What if she hurts the baby?” Thus Isolda had been banished from the birthing room, and Chari’s sister had come to attend her instead.

Isolda sat at the kitchen table with Rory in her lap. The household was tumultuous these days, as was the entire nation of Sardos. Last month, the First Heir had been assassinated. It was said he’d named an heir beforehand by writing the name on a piece of paper and sealing it in a strongbox. But after his death, five separate men claimed that the name on the paper was theirs, and no conclusive evidence had arisen to prove one claim over the others.

Armies were massing, and violence seemed inevitable. A recruiter had swept through their village already, gathering the unmarried men as well as any boys over the age of ten—anyone who wasn’t an heir—and hauling them off in a wagon to gods knew where. They would end up fighting on behalf of one of the brothers; Isolda didn’t even know which one. Both of her clerks had been taken by the recruiters, leaving her to manage the store alone. She’d had to reduce the store’s hours, but unfortunately it made little difference. Sales had dropped below half of what they had been before.

Rory had been spared by the recruiters on account of his youth. But youth didn’t last forever, and while Isolda hoped the battle for the succession would be resolved quickly, the previous succession had dragged on for ten bloody years.

She’d told Jauld they needed to cut back on their household spending to survive the hard times ahead, but he wouldn’t listen. He’d recently bought a new phaeton and a pair of fancy carriage horses that he liked to drive to town and show off. But those horses were eating up their savings. She’d started fixing the books at the store a little and setting money aside—literally hiding it behind a brick in the storeroom—so that when Jauld ran through all their savings, they might still have something to survive on.

A tinny wail rose through the closed door of the birthing room.

Rory clutched her arm. “What’s that?”

“It’s a baby,” said Isolda.

“Oh.” He heaved a sigh. “It sounds like a monster.”

“Do you think you have a baby brother or a baby sister?”

“A baby brother.” That was Rory’s hope, because he liked the idea of having another boy to play with.

Isolda prayed for a sister.

Jauld emerged from the birthing room, smiling and misty-eyed, carrying a cloth-wrapped bundle. Isolda’s stomach clenched. She rose from her seat, and as he brought the bundle near, she peered at the squirming, naked infant. It was a boy.

Jauld stroked the baby’s face with a fingertip and beamed. “Isn’t he the most beautiful child you’ve ever seen?”

The baby’s face was squashed, and his head was cone-shaped, and he was red all over. Rory was the handsomer child by far, but she knew better than to be rude at a time like this. The baby would improve with age. “He’s lovely.”

“His name is Troi,” said Jauld. “And I’m making him my heir.”

Isolda’s gut went hollow. Her eyes snapped to his. “You can’t do that. He’s just a baby.”

“But I can,” he said. “It’s a father’s prerogative to select his heir.”

Her world was crashing down around her. Jauld knew nothing about this child, nothing at all. Only that he was a boy, and the son of himself and Chari. Isolda’s pulse throbbed hot in her ears. If Rory was no longer the heir, he could be taken by the army recruiters. She could spend the next eight years raising him only to see him die in a war which benefited nobody except some spoiled prince. “The store, the money that we have—I earned it! The wealth came from me. It should pass to
my
son, not to Chari’s.”

Jauld’s eyes narrowed. “The store has always been mine. I knew you were going to be difficult about this, but the decision is made. Troi is my heir.” He turned away.

Isolda set Rory on the ground—how horrifying that he was hearing this!—and trotted after Jauld. “You betrayed me once when you took the money I earned and used it to buy a second wife. But you will
not
betray me a second time. I won’t have it.”

He snorted. “You know perfectly well no one else would have offered for you. You should be happy to have a place here.”

“I wish you’d never offered for me. Better no husband at all than a worthless one.”

Jauld’s face contracted, and he delivered an open-handed slap across her face.

Isolda retreated a step. Her face stung where he’d struck her.

“You’re the one who’s worthless,” said Jauld. “And that’s why your brat will inherit nothing.” He turned and went into the birthing room, slamming the door behind him.

Someone was crying. As her panicking mind climbed down from the shock of Jauld’s assault, she realized it was Rory, back in the kitchen. She hurried to her child and scooped him up. “It’s all right, love, it’s all right,” she soothed.

But it wasn’t all right.

She had no choice. She must leave this place. If it killed her, she would leave—and she would take Rory with her.

Chapter 18

Glass glittered on the street. Marius stepped around it and stretched upward as if that might help him see beyond the three-story buildings that blocked his view of the harbor district. A roiling ball of black smoke took up half the visible sky.

“That’ll be at the harbor,” said Drusus.

Marius turned to Isolda. “It may have been your gunpowder factory.”

The moment the windows had blown, Isolda had run to the stable to fetch Rory. He was unharmed, and now she stood clutching him to her body and staring ashen-faced at the black cloud.

Marius didn’t know what to say. This was personal for Isolda. If the explosion was indeed the gunpowder factory where she used to work, many of her friends could have been injured or killed. He took her hand and squeezed.

Isolda took a step toward the smoke, pulling him with her. “I have to go there. Can Rory stay here with you?”

Glass crunched under Marius’s boots. “It’s not safe for you to go.”

“My friends are there. They may need help.”

He admired her determination, but what could she realistically accomplish?

“There is nothing you can do for them,” said Drusus, voicing Marius’s thoughts.

Isolda continued to move forward. “People might be trapped inside the building. I know my way around. I know where the passages lead—”

“Within minutes, the whole site will be swarming with guards,” said Drusus.

“I could go through the alley and in by the southern door—”

“The guards will surround the place,” said Marius. “If by some miracle they don’t find you, someone else will.” If anti-Sardossian sentiment had been bad before, it was only going to get worse in the wake of this explosion. The smartest thing Isolda could do right now was stay out of public view. “Of course you want to help, but somebody has to stay with Rory, and it can’t be me or Drusus. I’m a licensed Healer. I have to go to the site right away.”

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?”