Healer's Touch (3 page)

Lucien’s brows rose. “Whose?”

“My parents’. So my mother can marry a prince or something.”

“Oh, gods, no.” Lucien laughed. “Has that been worrying you? The time for Sabina to make a political marriage is past, and there’s no longer any need. My sister has married into Inya and your sister into Mosar. We’ve alliances enough to last us until the next generation, and I have no quarrel with Anton. He’s been married to my aunt for over three decades, and they seem to still be in love, so why should I cause any more trouble? Obviously she chose the right man.”

Marius’s shoulders dropped in relief. He was sure his parents were angry about being forced to move to the Imperial Palace, and perhaps a bit frightened as well, but at least they would have each other. “What about me?”

“I thought you were single.”

“I am,” said Marius. “But will I be expected to make a political marriage?”

“Let’s put it this way,” said Lucien. “I would like you to make a marriage that befits your station. But I won’t force you into anything. I want to bring this family back together, not tear it apart.”

A marriage that befits your station.
What did that mean? What station did he possess, as a half-commoner, half-imperial with no education and no magic?

Never mind. He wouldn’t worry about that now.

At Lucien’s gesture, he climbed into the carriage. His mother and father were already within, sitting on the backward-facing seat. His mother looked furious and his father terrified. Laelia sat beside them, red-faced and teary-eyed, but there was no Gratian. Apparently her live-in lover had chosen not to come, or perhaps he was not invited. Laelia might be upset about that now, but Marius was secretly relieved. He had never liked Gratian, and his sister had changed a lot when she’d gone to live with him. She’d become quiet and distant, not the young firebrand he’d known all his life. Perhaps now the old Laelia would re-emerge.

The forward-facing seat was empty. That was presumably where Lucien would sit. Marius could sit with Lucien and make the numbers a little more even, or...

He sat beside his parents. Awkward as it was, it gave them solidarity. His mother reached over and squeezed his hand.

Lucien climbed into the carriage, eyed the four of them sitting together for a moment, and sighed as he sat alone on the opposite seat. “Found this,” he said, handing a box to Sabina. “Were you going to leave it behind?”

Sabina snatched it from him and placed it on her lap.

Marius had never seen the box before. “What’s in it?”

Sabina did not answer, but after a moment Lucien did. “It’s her riftstone. She’s a mind mage.”

“
What?
” Marius stared at his mother, whom he thought he’d known all these years and clearly hadn’t known at all. Not only was she educated, she was magical. And powerfully so.

His sister gasped as well. “You mean
all this time
...?” She did not finish her thought but shook her head and leaned back against the seat.

“Brace yourselves. We’re going to Riat.” Lucien knocked on the roof, and the carriage lurched into motion.

Chapter 3

Isolda repeated the code words in her head as she approached the dock at Cus, the Sardossian port city. They were her mantra, her magic words. Used properly, they could change her life.

Her legs shook with fatigue and more than a little fear. She’d never been this far from home, and she had no husband with her, no protection of any kind. A weight dragged at her shoulder, and the suddenness of it almost pulled her to the ground. Her four-year-old son, Rory, had collapsed on the wooden planking of the dock. She picked him up and heaved him into her arms.

“Wan’ go home,” he sobbed into her shirt. The boy was exhausted and out of sorts. If this day had been remotely normal, he’d have been in bed hours ago.

She said nothing; it was impossible to explain the situation to a child his age. He’d understand when he was older that they
had
to leave. Someday, she hoped, he would be grateful that she had undertaken this journey from Sardos to Kjall on his behalf. Rory had no future here. Few children did, now that the blood wars had begun. She was not going to see her only son recruited as a child soldier in some Heir-hopeful’s army and end up spitted on a bayonet.

A man guarded the ship’s gangway, and Isolda did not like the look of him. Dirty and rough, with uncombed hair and sun-darkened skin, he was clearly a stray, nothing at all like the respectable men at home. She hesitated, considering the many possible fates that could await her on the ship and beyond. Some of those imagined fates were worse than minding a shop for a husband who didn’t love her.

But for Rory’s sake, she stepped forward.

“Bright moons tonight,” she said to the stray.

It was a long time before he turned his head. He grunted at her dismissively. “Move along. I’ve no use for land beetles.”

“I’ve a letter to send to my great-aunt,” she said.

That was the code phrase, and it was clear he recognized it, since his brows rose a little. His eyes roamed over her body, lingering first on her breasts and hips, then on her face, and then on the exhausted child slumped on her shoulder. “Sorry, but we don’t take mail.”

“I thought that in this case...” She trailed off, not knowing what to say. The code phrase was supposed to grant her a hiding spot in the hold of the ship. She had not prepared for the possibility of his turning her down. Why would he do that, when she had money?

“Lady, do you know how many people come here wanting to send letters to their great-aunts, now that the blood wars have started? More’n I can count.”

“Yes, but...” She was at a loss. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

“We ain’t got the space. You understand? If this was an exceptional case...” His eyes skimmed her form again. “But it ain’t. You got nothing special, lady.”

His insult didn’t stab, but left only a dull ache, like scar tissue built up in a wound. At least she understood now what was going on. He thought she was buying passage to Kjall with the use of her body. No wonder he’d said no; her body wasn’t worth a tin slug. Even her husband didn’t want it. “You misunderstand. I can pay.”

“Not interested,” said the sailor.

She reached into her shirt and pulled out the pouch that contained everything she owned in the world. She withdrew several heavy coins and dropped them into the sailor’s hand. “Payment. And that’s all I’m paying. You understand?”

He gaped at the coins. “Where’d you get these?”

“I earned them.”

His brow furrowed with suspicion. She understood why. Sardossian women didn’t normally have money. In a legal sense, Isolda had stolen the money from her husband, but she didn’t feel guilty about her crime. The money was hers, ethically if not legally. She had earned it.

The stray looked her over again, mystified. Then he closed his hand, shrugged, and stepped aside. Coin was coin.

“The captain will show you where to put your letter,” he said.

Isolda heaved a slipping Rory back onto her shoulder and walked up the gangplank. She was still frightened, but on the inside she was also singing. She was on her way to a new country and a new life. If all went well, she and Rory would soon be far from home, in the Kjallan city of Riat.

∞

“Good news, Isolda,” her mother had said, stepping into her tiny bedroom. “A man has offered for you.”

Isolda gasped. She’d known something big had been in the offing when she’d been sent to her room without even a glimpse of the visiting stranger. But she had not expected this. As the youngest of three sisters, and the least pretty, she had believed she would never marry. Her older siblings had told her no man would pay a bride price for an ugly girl. Now they had flown the nest and started families of their own. Isolda had come to accept that she would not be a wife. Instead, she would be her father’s assistant in the apothecary and her mother’s assistant in the kitchen. Not a bad life, but it saddened her to think that she would never know love, never have a child to call her own.

Now it appeared that her sisters had been wrong, after all! Excitement rose in her, mixed with fear. Would she like the man who had offered for her? What sort of man offered for an ugly girl? She swallowed. Her parents had probably lowered the bride price. She understood how these things worked; it was supply and demand. Her husband-to-be would be a poor man, but that didn’t mean he was a bad person or in any way unlovable.

Isolda’s mother sat on the bed next to her and took her hand. “I want you to understand something. Jauld isn’t like your sisters’ husbands. He’s humble.”

Isolda nodded. “I understand.”

“You can’t expect too much.”

“I don’t.” Isolda’s cheeks heated as she said it. She knew better than to expect much, but that didn’t stop her from dreaming, in the privacy of her bedroom, of a husband who was kind, loving, handsome, and if not rich, at least self-sufficient. “What does he do?”

“He’s a shopkeeper. He owns a general store.”

That sounded acceptable. She could see herself helping out in a store, thinking about supply and demand, figuring out how to eke a little bit more profit from their modest stock. She would miss her father’s apothecary. But if Jauld were a good man and kind, she could imagine herself in the role of shopkeeper’s wife.

“Are you ready to meet him?”

Was a woman ever ready to meet the man she’d been sold to in marriage? “Yes.”

Isolda’s mother squeezed her hand. “Let’s go show you off.”

Isolda walked behind her mother, wanting to hide herself from view. She hadn’t asked how Jauld had learned about her. Had he seen her before? Was he aware she wasn’t pretty? Maybe he would change his mind when he saw her.

And then they were in the sitting room, and her mother was shoving her front and center, and the stranger—Jauld—was beaming at her. It seemed he did like her, after all.

Jauld wasn’t handsome, exactly. He was ordinary looking. A little plain, like her.

Isolda’s heart swelled with gratitude, appreciation, and a blossoming of love. She beamed back at him. This man liked her. He’d made an offer for her hand. He owned a general store, and he wanted to build a life with her. Neither she nor Jauld were beautiful, but what did it matter? They had each other. It would be she and Jauld against the world. She would love this man if she possibly could.

Chapter 4

FOUR MONTHS LATER

The explosion happened in two stages. The first was just sound, a bone-jarring boom. Marius crouched and covered his head, bracing for impact. But nothing happened. Everything was still. He lifted his head and saw a great fireball rising over the harbor, only a mile or two away.

Then the shock wave punched through, and every window on the street shattered at once.

When the rain of glass stopped, Marius raised his head. His bodyguard, Drusus, had moved in front of him. Past Drusus’s shoulder, the ball of fire had turned into a plume of black smoke that roiled upward, alive with shining white flashes of light, like a pyrotechnic display. “Look at that.”

Drusus nudged a shard of glass with his booted foot. “We should get you someplace safe.”

Marius was transfixed by the glittering smoke plume. “What do you suppose happened?”

“Gunpowder explosion, I’ll wager.”

“In the middle of town?” Marius shook his head. There were laws prohibiting the manufacture of gunpowder within city limits. Factories were supposed to be located in remote areas so that if a disaster did occur, no one would be harmed except those working in the factory.

Drusus frowned. “It’s illegal, but people set these shops up all the time. Easy to staff them without having to pay the slave taxes; just hire Sardossian sewer rats.”

Marius couldn’t imagine who would take a job in an illegal gunpowder factory, when a possible outcome was dying in an explosion like that one.

“Let’s get you home,” said Drusus. “No sense going to market now. It’s going to be chaos all over town.”

Marius had already forgotten about the market. “What about the injured people at the site? They’ll need help.” He wished he was finished with his training, but unfortunately he’d only made a beginning. Lucien had followed through with his promise of an education, supplying Marius with a small army of tutors who were teaching him not just book learning but the meditation and deep mental awareness techniques he would need to soulcast and claim his healing magic. It would be years before he was ready. But he
was
a trained apothecary, and Riat’s limited number of Healers would be overwhelmed by a disaster of this magnitude.

“Sir, your cousin would not want you to put yourself at risk—”

“He’ll have no objection to my helping his people.” Marius had initially resisted being assigned a bodyguard, believing that Lucien would use the guard to try to control his movements. But Lucien had addressed his concerns, assuring him that the Legaciatti were protectors rather than babysitters. While it was Drusus’s job to try to keep him out of dangerous situations, Marius should always be aware that he, not Drusus, was the one issuing the orders.

Drusus’s frown deepened. “Yes, sir.”

They’d only just left the villa, so Marius darted back inside to collect some supplies. The explosion had not spared his home. The first floor windows were all shattered, and broken glass littered his sitting room. Nothing he could do about it now; the servants would sweep it up. He stepped around the glass, collecting bandages and a few tinctures from his storeroom, and set out with Drusus toward the plume of blackening smoke.

Though the disaster site wasn’t far, their progress through the streets past crowds of townsfolk and broken glass and terrified horses was slow. It took them nearly half an hour to reach it. Between two dockside warehouses, a charred husk still flamed around the edges, and debris littered the streets. Marius covered his nose to dull the fishy smell, which mixed unpleasantly with the odors of sulfur and charred wood. The area teemed with gawkers, soot-stained survivors, and shouting city officials.