Kismet's Kiss: A Fantasy Romance (Alaia Chronicles) (12 page)

His mouth thinned, but instead of turning away, he said, “Certainly.” He walked toward another doorway, presumably the women’s wing.

Varene started after him, and saw his gaze alight on Priya as the servant’s slim form exited the room.

The Healer permitted herself a small, knowing smile. She saw Death all too often; the spark of attraction—of Life—was a fine change.

CHAPTER EIGHT

B
lessed are we mothers, Naaz, under Your life-giving sun. Blessed are the children, the images of Your glory, fruit of Your coupling with Idu, inheritors of the world You made. In this hour of my pain, of my suffering, I beg You to hear my prayers…

A knock at the door of the suite broke Sulya’s concentration. Frowning, she raised herself from the rug to sit on her heels. As her eyes grazed past the form in the bed, she realized the intrusion had woken Tahir.

“What is it?” she bit out, irritation coloring her tone.

“It’s Varene, the Royal Healer. May I enter?”

Sulya itched to say no, but Tahir’s needs came first. She unfolded her legs with conscious grace and stood, raising her rib cage to display herself properly. “Come in.”

The door swung in and Varene entered. Despite the deference of the woman’s words, she sensed none in Varene’s blue eyes—no obeisance, not even a hint of the submission she expected from those attending her.

“I’d like to examine your son again,” said the Healer. Behind her stood the whelp Sohad, who at least kept his eyes downcast in Sulya’s presence.

“Your knock woke him up.” Sulya withdrew from Tahir’s bedside, distancing herself from the visitors and their plans.

“I apologize,” Varene said, as if determined not to quarrel. Sulya was cheered by the effort that clearly took.

Varene moved to the bed and Sohad followed, carrying a large canvas pack. The Healer touched Tahir’s small hand and smiled down at him. “How are you?”

Tahir glanced up through sweaty bangs and returned the woman’s smile. Pride at her son’s politeness warred with disgruntlement that he must behave so to a foreign infidel who was toying with his life.

“You’re still very hot.” Varene gave a worried cluck. “How’s your throat?”

“Better,” he croaked, but grimaced.

There. If his throat still hurt only a couple of hours after the witch’s treatment, how much good had she really done?

“And have you had anything to drink?” the Healer asked.

Tahir shook his head, and Varene glanced at Sulya.

“He’s been sleeping since you left,” Sulya said defensively. “Bairam had told me to let him rest. I had a pitcher brought, as you can see, and—”

“Fine,” Varene interrupted. She poured a glass and spoke to Tahir. “You may not remember, but I helped to ease the soreness in your throat while you were sleeping. I’d like to do that again, so you can swallow and talk for a bit without it hurting so much.”

He listened gravely and nodded.

Sulya and Sohad stood in uneasy silence as the healer laid her hand on Tahir’s throat and performed the same ceremony as she had before. Sulya waited with a torn heart, half-hoping but skeptical, and shifted to eye the woman. As she stared, she became deeply puzzled.

Varene was a Royal Healer, much the equivalent of a Royal Physician, and thus held an exalted rank among the non-royal courtiers—yet no rubies or sapphires graced her neck or wrists, no diamonds dangled from her vulgarly exposed ears. Whether gems glittered from her ankles or toes, she could not tell, for they were covered by skirts that hung all the way to the floor. Most unladylike.

And instead of draping her long, thick blond curls enticingly around her shoulders and breasts like any woman with sense and confidence, the Healer had pulled her hair tightly back from her face, making her seem uglier than she was. In truth, her face was not unattractive, if pallid.

Sulya fingered her own glistening necklace of emeralds and pearls, each twice as big as her thumbnails, that draped down to her gold-wrapped ankles. With no jewels and gems to attract a man, to entice their eyes and bring them close enough to smell and hunger for her, how could this pale woman hope to marry or keep a man of power or wealth and secure her place as the mother to his heirs? This wench made herself as plain as a mule beside sleek mares.

In fact, Sulya thought, gathering her indignation around her, how could this woman be what she claimed, if she didn’t display the wealth of her rank? And if she was
not
what she claimed, how then could she be trusted with the sons and daughters of the blessed sultan? With Tahir, her own blessing?

The Healer removed her hands from Sulya’s son. “Is that better?”

“Yes!” he said. The joyous smile he gave Varene wrenched Sulya’s soul. She pressed herself back against the wall and kept her lips tightly shut.

“Excellent,” said Varene. “Now please sit up, and drink this. I’ll need your help with something.” She waited while Tahir raised himself against the pillows and grasped the tall glass thirstily in both hands, then turned to Sohad and nodded. He brought the canvas pack closer and loosened the mouth of it.

Varene knelt and rummaged through the bag. She removed several smaller sacks and laid them on the rug, then pulled something from each one of them. A leaf, a blade of long grass, a twig, a dried flower. Aghast, Sulya stared down at the bits and pieces of vegetation littering the floor. Leaves and sticks—these were supposed to heal her son?

Varene selected the skinny leaf. “Tahir, open—”

“You will address him as Prince Tahir!” Sulya snapped. “He is the son of the Great Sultan of Kad!”

Varene shot her a hard look, then turned a solemn face to her son. “My apologies, Prince Tahir.”

“They are accepted, Royal Healer,” he replied in a thoughtful voice. “What is it you need me to do?” He peered curiously at the leaf.

“Please hold your hand out toward me, palm up and open, and close your eyes.”

He did so, and Varene placed the leaf in it. She lowered her own palm until it was inches above his, facing down, as if her hand were a cap over the leaf.

After a few seconds, Tahir’s hand descended, as if weighted down. “What is happening?” he asked, opening his eyes again.

“I’m testing what will help you. Your body will tell me what you need, if you let it.”

“But…how does it know?”

Varene laughed. “Alas, even I can’t solve that age-old mystery. But I can enhance your body’s response, and it will show us what you need. It just knows. And it doesn’t want this.” She plucked the leaf from his palm and replaced it with the dried flower. “Shut your eyes again please, Prince Tahir.”

Once again, she placed her palm above his, and within a few moments, his arm was descending. “Not that, either,” she murmured, and changed the flower for the grass blade.

When the same thing happened, Sulya lost her patience. “What is this? Of course his arm will go down. That’s natural. Your method is nonsense, chicanery…”

Varene ignored her and put the twig in his hand. Tahir closed his eyes, and Varene held her palm in the air above his. Sohad, who’d been watching quietly, grew tense.

Tahir’s hand rose. “Oh!” He stared at it with shocked eyes.

Varene grinned. “Yes!” She turned to Sohad. “See? It matches. The body always knows.”

He shook his head as if trying to accept what he’d seen.

Sulya moved closer. “What do you mean, ‘it matches’?”

“The bodies of the others I’ve tested in this way have reacted the same. I hope, then, that this will heal them all.”

“A
twig
? A twig to cure a malady that has k—” She choked off her words. Tahir didn’t know that others had died, and she didn’t want him aware of his peril.

Varene’s eyes widened a fraction, showing she’d understood. “What I hope will cure him isn’t the sugarwort twig itself, but the decoction I’ll make from it. In fact, the dried buds may be even more effective…”

Appalled, Sulya grasped for reasons to dispute the woman’s claims. “Who? Who else have you tested this with?”

“So far, the surviving maidservant and the sultan’s Second, Fourth, and Fifth wives.”

“They all had the same reaction?” She looked not at Varene, but to Sohad for confirmation.

“All, Sultana,” he said crisply.

She rose tall, letting air fill her chest. “And how are Zahlia, Maitri and Taleen?”

“I’ve done what I can to make them more comfortable. Fortunately, the sultana Zahlia has a milder case, perhaps the least noxious of the ten living patients. She’s athletic and healthy, but that might not be the only reason.”

“And how is Maitri’s daughter?”

“Mishka is…forgive me,” the Healer said, eyes glittering. “I’m not certain of the proper honorific for her.”

“
Princess
will do,” Sulya answered in an arch tone.

“She seems to have avoided the illness so far.”

“I see.” Sulya didn’t want any of them to die, of course. Not really. Taleen and Maitri weren’t genuine threats, anyway, and certainly Maitri’s daughter wasn’t. A sultan of Kad would never let a daughter take the throne. Zahlia, though, had been a claw in Sulya’s side from the beginning. “But what is this illness? Why has it struck here, and now?”

“I’m not sure yet. Because the malady is…” Varene looked at Tahir and hesitated, “…a grave one, my priority now must be to heal as best and as fast as I can. Then I’ll search for more answers.” She gathered the rejected vegetation into a pile and tugged closed the drawstring on her sack. “I’m relieved there have been no new cases today. That’s a hopeful sign. I also don’t believe it is spread directly from one person to another. After all, you’ve not become sick, nor has the sultan, or Sohad.”

That was true. But Sulya had never feared for herself. Only for Tahir.

This was all ludicrous. Whether Tahir’s hand had raised or lowered—it was a magic trick, nothing real. The explanation of the body’s knowledge rang of superstition and lies designed to make the Healer sound superior.

Sulya’s family’s plans were getting pushed farther and farther aside while this presumptuous, arrogant witch was working her way into the sultan’s graces and gratitude.

That was something Sulya would never allow.

CHAPTER NINE

V
arene planted her hands on the infirmary table and stared down at the palace’s complete supply of sugarwort: two faded old twigs. “Is this all, Sohad? Surely there’s more in a storeroom somewhere.”

He shifted his weight and opened his palms in apology. “Yaman rarely purchased it. It’s just not something we normally use, and it doesn’t grow freely in Kad. But you brought your own stock, so surely—”

“It won’t be enough.” Sugarwort buds made good infusions, but they tended to be fragile in travel, and a powder made from the roots lost its efficacy quickly. Varene had brought twigs because they were sturdier…but she’d only brought four of them.

She cursed herself for not putting more into her canvas sack back in Teganne, but there had been no way to know which herb would work. If she had brought more sugarwort, she’d have been forced to leave another potential remedy behind. Still, she would need a good thirty twigs—recently harvested and properly dried—to treat ten patients. And Fate forbid anyone else became sick, or she’d need even more. Her storerooms at home held a plentiful supply, but she couldn’t access it. “Is there any way to get more? Now, today?”

“Yaman would have asked the herbalist, who was often able to get the more exotic requests.” Sohad shook his head regretfully. “But he’s not due back in the city for two more days, and even then, it might be days or weeks before he could acquire some.”

“We can’t wait, Sohad. We have only a matter of hours. You know it as well as I.” She drummed impatient fingers on the wood. “Is there a marketplace in the city? Any chance we could find some there?”

He blinked. “Possibly… But this is the royal palace, and vendors bring their best wares here. I don’t know what would be available among the tents and stalls there, or how much, and even then it may be of inferior quality.”

Varene pushed up from the table. “We don’t have options. Besides, I’d like to check the wares myself.” She shrugged. “Consider it a Healer’s prerogative, testing what she feels will best help her patients.”

She glanced into the men’s wing and checked the angle of the shafts of sun. “Nearing late afternoon already. If your markets work anything like ours, we’ll need to hurry or the vendors will be packing up soon.” She headed for the door.

“Wait!” he called out.

She twisted toward him. “What is it? I’ll need your help, you know.”

Sohad rubbed his lips worriedly. “We must do this for the patients’ sakes—on that we agree. The market is very close, just outside the palace’s South Gate, and I’m sure I can get money from the infirmary funds. But we cannot go alone, you and I.”

“Why not? It’s only a market.” Surely Kuramos wouldn’t allow the marketplace in his own capital city to be unsafe.

“It would not be…seemly, Healer. An unmarried woman and an unmarried man, together.”

She gave an impatient stomp. “Oh, come now, we’re professionals. For Fate’s sake, I’m 128 years old and far beyond curfews.”

His face reddened. “I am younger than you, but that’s not the point. It still wouldn’t be fitting—”