Healer's Touch (27 page)

“There’s a secret I’ve kept from you,” said Marius. “It’s a big one, and I hope you’ll forgive me for the longstanding lie of omission. All I can say in my defense is that I’ve been under direct orders not to tell anybody, but if we’re to marry, I must make an exception. My cousin is the emperor of Kjall.”

Isolda choked on the pella. “
What?
”

“It sounds hard to believe, I know, but I’m Emperor Lucien’s cousin. His father and my mother were brother and sister.”

“You’re the emperor’s
blood relative
?”

Marius nodded.

“The same emperor who deported my people?”

“Yes.”

Gods, he was probably in the line of succession. What a thought, her Marius a candidate for the imperial throne! It seemed unreal. She’d seen his family the night they’d come to the villa, all those people in the two carriages. “You said your cousin came to the villa that night. Are you saying that the man I saw with you was the emperor?”

“Yes, and the woman you met with, who called herself Kolta, was Empress Vitala.”

Isolda’s spoon clattered to the floor, and she collapsed against the back of her chair. All this seemed impossible, and yet it made perfect sense. It explained everything: Marius’s full-time bodyguard, his villa full of servants, his total lack of anxiety about money. Why had she not questioned his ability to walk into the guardhouse with a writ and free her from the Riat City Guard? No ordinary Kjallan citizen had that authority. The clues had been there all along, and she’d ignored them. Perhaps she hadn’t wanted to know. “Gods. It’s true, isn’t it?”

“It’s true,” said Marius softly.

She wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. “Your emperor hates my people. You really think he’ll let you marry me?”

“Let me be clear: I plan to marry you regardless of what he says. But I’d like his blessing for our union, and he’s asked to meet you.”

“
Meet me?
” The prospect filled her with terror. An illegal Sardossian refugee, meeting with the emperor of Kjall so that he could judge whether she was good enough for his cousin? Of course she wasn’t good enough. She wasn’t wealthy or connected. She wasn’t a legal citizen. She wasn’t even
pretty
. “He won’t like me.”

“He will once he gets to know you,” said Marius.

Such confidence, from a man who’d never had to struggle in life. She had a feeling it was not going to be so easy. “What if he hates me? Can he forbid you to marry me?”

“No, but he can deny you citizenship,” said Marius. “That’s the real issue. It’s why we need his blessing for this union.”

“His blessing,” she repeated numbly. Marius had dangled before her everything she wanted: marriage to the man she loved, a riftstone for her son, and Kjallan citizenship. But all of it was contingent upon the emperor approving her as a match for Marius. She could not imagine that happening. This was the man who had deported Emari, along with hundreds of other Sardossians. And speaking of fraudulent, there was a problem with her marital status.

“I need to ask something of you,” said Marius.

“Yes?” Her mind was racing as she thought through all the angles.

“The fact that I’m part of the imperial family is a closely guarded secret. Lucien has enemies who might do me harm if they knew I was here in Riat, so accessible to the public and with only one bodyguard. For safety’s sake, Isolda, you must tell no one who I am.”

“Not even Rory?”

“Rory can know once we’ve got the details sorted out, but nobody else. The emperor is concerned that you might spread this information to the Sardossian underground—”

“I would never do that,” said Isolda. “Your secret is safe.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Marius.

Isolda licked dry lips. Marius had probably told the emperor that she was a Sardossian war widow, but if the emperor looked into her background, he would discover the lie. She had a recent divorce recorded in the Kjallan public records. Anyone could look it up. She turned to Marius. He’d told her his big secret. Now it was time to tell him hers. “Marius, I’ve something to confess to you as well. But mine, unlike yours, is an ugly secret.”

A line appeared in the middle of his forehead. “What is it?”

She dropped her gaze, unable to meet his eyes. “I told you that my husband in Sardos was dead. But he’s not. He’s still alive. At least, he was when I last saw him.”

Marius gaped. “So you’re still married?”

“No,” she said quickly. “I got a divorce here in Riat.” But even that was tainted. As long as she was confessing, she might as well tell him everything. “The truth is that it may not be entirely legal. The apparitor wouldn’t grant me the divorce without Jauld’s permission. Of course I couldn’t get that with Jauld so far away, so I had a friend stand in and pretend to be him.”

Marius was silent for a moment, as if putting all the pieces together in his head. Then he let out a shaky breath. “I wish you’d told me earlier. This complicates matters.”

“I was afraid you’d hate me if you knew the truth.”

He reached across the table to squeeze her hand. “I’d never hate you.”

“The marriage isn’t going to work, is it?” said Isolda. “I stole from my husband—”

“You stole from him?”

“Yes—the money I’d earned at the store. It was the only way I could buy passage to Kjall. So I stole the money, abandoned my husband, and emigrated illegally to Kjall with his child. There I obtained a fraudulent divorce from an imperial apparitor. I don’t think your cousin the emperor is going to think highly of me.”

Marius swallowed. “None of this changes my opinion of you, or my desire to marry. We may have to work a little bit harder on Lucien, but—”

“The emperor wants better for you.” Isolda took a deep breath. “I would want better for you, too. Marius, I can’t accept your marriage proposal.”

Marius shot up from his chair. “Now hold on a moment, you already
said
—”

“I wasn’t thinking.” She stood and backed away, shaking her head. “I got caught up in the fantasy and believed in what I wanted to be true. I thought I could escape who I used to be, but I’ll never escape that, not even by running away to another continent. You needn’t worry about your secret; it will never escape my lips. But I cannot meet with your emperor.”

She didn’t want to put down the box with its black opal. If her life was tainted, Rory’s didn’t need to be; a child should not be punished for the sins of his mother. But the riftstone was a betrothal gift—at least it had been intended as one—and if she could not accept the marriage proposal, she could not keep the stone.

She laid the box on the table and walked out.

Chapter 28

A full week had passed since Marius had proposed to Isolda, and not only had she avoided the villa, she hadn’t even shown up for work. He had to conclude that she’d quit her job as his business manager. But where could she have gone? He hoped it wasn’t to another gunpowder factory

Back at the villa, with only Drusus for company, he’d had ample time to think about their conversation and where it had gone wrong. Her confession that her husband was still alive had shocked him at first, but on reflection he saw her actions as admirable. Rather than sit and suffer in a miserable situation and allow her child to suffer as well, she’d risked everything to seek a better life for both of them. As for stealing money that was supposedly Jauld’s, Isolda had earned the money. Why shouldn’t she benefit from it?

Her divorce and its questionable legality were more troublesome. He understood why she had seen fit to deceive the apparitor. Jauld was not physically present in Kjall to grant her the divorce, so it could not be accomplished any other way. And
of course
she should divorce Jauld. What justice would there be in her remaining married to a man who’d betrayed and mistreated her, and whom she would never see again? He recalled the “little detail” she’d insisted on taking care of before they slept together. That must have been the divorce. Isolda, despite her checkered past, was a principled woman. She would not sleep with another man while still married.

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.