Against the Empire: The Dominion and Michian (35 page)

Rief placed her hand on the door knob, then turned to face Alec, with an expression that was wistful or something else Alec couldn’t comprehend. He heard her murmur something to herself, then the handle clicked, the door opened, and as she entered the room a bright flash took place.

“I can’t see, healer!” she said in distress. Alec waited two seconds, then stepped into the room with her and placed his hand on her shoulder. “Neither could I for the first few seconds,” he comforted her. “Just wait for it to pass.”

“Oh,” she said moments later, “I can see again.” She walked forward, and together she and Alec looked out the window at the breathtaking sunset scenery that was visible from their lofty elevation.

“It’s an inspiring view, isn’t?” John Mark said conversationally from behind them. “Now, are you ready to go on your third journey?”

Alec looked at Rief, as she drank in the new visionary power she had. He’d come to take it for granted, he realized. “In just a moment,” he replied to the prophet, letting Rief have a moment more of wonder.

The prophet walked over to stand beside them, and handed Alec another small jar. “Here is your way back to this cave. When you return, it will be the morning after you first arrived here Alec, and your horse will still be tied to a branch down near the river. Are you ready to go?”

Rief stood next to Alec, and put her arms around him. “What are we going to do? Where are we going?” he asked quickly as John Mark backed away.

“You will know when you see the person you are supposed to bring back here with you,” he answered, and the cave around them disappeared.

Chapter 34 – Arrival in Frame

They were standing in an alley, in the late afternoon, in a busy town. There was traffic on a street a short distance away. “Where are we healer?” Rief asked Alec immediately.

“I don’t know, healer,” he replied with a smile.

“Oh,” she grinned at the new application of the title. “I’ll have to call you something else. Shall I call you Alec, as everyone else in the Dominion does?”

“Call me whatever your heart desires,” Alec said, focusing more on the people walking past the alley entrance. “Come on, let’s go,” he pulled her behind him. Where were they this time, he wondered? It wasn’t a lacertii city, he could see, but whether it was the Dominion or Michian or some other strange society, he wasn’t about to predict.

They stopped on the street, and Alec grabbed Rief’s hand to firmly hold her as pedestrians walked past in heavy numbers. “Let’s go this way,” he urged, following the flow of traffic. He tried to evaluate all the information he could find. They were in a dirty section of the city, and the people were mostly working class or lower, it appeared. He and Rief still wore robes, which stood out among the dresses and pants everyone else wore. The air had a smell he could not identify, but which triggered his mind, and his unconscious mulled it as he kept swiveling his head to look in all directions.

“Tanneries,” Alec said suddenly.

“What?” Rief asked.

“I smell tanneries. Do you small that?” he asked.

“That bad smell?” Rief asked.

“Yes. We surely aren’t in Frame, are we?” he asked out loud. “Follow me,” and he began to pick up the pace of travel, heading towards a major intersection. When he arrived there he looked left and right. “We are in Frame,” he said. “That building down there,” he pointed at a far-away bell tower, “is the cathedral. And the tanneries are down this way by the river,” he pointed. “Let’s go see,” he commanded, and Rief was dragged along in his wake.

“Here,” he said ten minutes later. They were within sight of the river. “This building is a tannery. When I left the orphanage, I worked here for months. It was an awful place to work. I ran away to join a carnival, and that’s what took me to the Pale Mountains,” he explained, looking up at the grim brick walls while Rief looked at him.

“Where is the orphanage?” she asked. “Is it here as well, in this city?”

“This city is Frame, and yes, it is here,” he answered.

“May we go visit it?” she asked.

Alec looked away from the building to look at the girl.

“It’s going to be night soon. Why don’t we go to the bank to get some money, then go to an inn to get a room for the night, and to get something to eat? The orphanage will still be there, and we can not only go visit, but you and I can heal the children,” he suggested to her.

At the mention of food her stomach rumbled loudly, and she smiled. “You can go to a bank here? If you are the king of this land, why not go to a palace?”

“Well, I’m not the king, I’m just supposed to protect the crown, and the king doesn’t have a palace here. But I do have money in the bank,” he pulled her arm, and she started walking with him. “And once we have money, we can buy some clothes too, so we don’t stand out so much,” he added.

Rief looked at the other people they passed, examining their clothes. “Come in here,” he told her minutes later, as they arrived in a nicer part of town.

“What is this place?” she asked.

“This is the Pierpont Bank,” he explained, and began talking to a teller, who called over a manager, who took Alec and Rief to an office, where she asked several questions as she looked over papers. Soon they had enough money to satisfy Alec, and he asked a question before they departed. “What is the nicest hotel in town?”

“That would be the Golden Bough Inn, down the street on the main square,” the manager replied.

“We’d like two rooms,” Alec told the desk clerk at the Golden Bough a few minutes later.

“We only have one room available sir, but it’s quite spacious,” the clerk politely responded.

Alec looked at Rief. “It’s not like we haven’t been sharing a room?” she said as she shrugged her shoulders, and he placed coins on the counter to take the room. “We’d like to buy some new clothes,” Alec mentioned to the clerk. “Where can we go to buy some?”

“Around the square, and a block north, there are two nice tailor shops,” the man replied, as he handed Alec his key. “They will still be open a little while. If you hurry, you can get service tonight,” he seemed to think their attire called for prompt replacement.

With that they were out the door, and crossing the square. Minutes later, Bethany entered the inn, and picked up her key. “Madam Ingenaire, how was your day today?” the clerk asked, always eager to speak to the pretty ingenaire.

“We finally got started on some real work today,” Bethany said cheerfully. Her project had been put on hold for three days as the population celebrated the reports of a great victory by the Dominion armies. Goldenfields was safe from lacertii invasion, and though Frame was not a particular ally of Goldenfields, the city had contributed soldiers to the crown protector’s army that had fought the lacertii far out in the eastern wilderness.

Bethany was glad for the victory, fond as she was of Goldenfields and many people there. Though her heart had broken in Goldenfields when Alec had seemingly abandoned her, she held no grudge against the city. She hoped that Imelda and all the soldiers and ingenairii fighting for the Duke were safe, and she hoped even more that Alec was safe as well. The very dim dream of some type of reconciliation with him continued to reside in the recesses of her mind.

“I’ll have an early dinner tonight, I think. Working has worn me out a little, and I think I’ll go to bed early,” she said, before she passed through the lobby to enter the dining room. She had a quiet meal, then retired to her room to write notes.

She had received nothing yet from Tritos, which she explained away by the uncertainty of shipping carrying mail upstream. She wrote a note to him, her second such note, short and superficial to some degree, for he didn’t share many of her interests.

Next she wrote a note to Allisma, who she had thought of a great deal since hearing of the great victory in battle. Allisma had gone with the army, travelled with Alec and his band, and then stopped writing after they left Goldenfields. She’d written that Alec seemed lonely and detached, which Bethany had been interested to know.

Although Allisma had not written in weeks now, Bethany wrote because she could share so much with her friend. She told her about the work she was doing, the terrible conditions she found, the people she met, the random thoughts that popped into her head, and the questions she had about a future with Tritos. And she knew that Allisma would understand and respect it all without judging her too harshly.

Chapter 35 – Rief Makes a Friend

“What would you like to look at?” a lady asked Rief as Alec stood beside her. He had chosen two pairs of pants and a few shirts from the men’s shop next door, and then they had walked through the internal door to this sister shop.

Rief, unfamiliar with the attire women wore in the Dominion, looked at Alec for advice. And Alec, not a strong observer of fashion, offered no help. “What would you suggest?” he asked the seamstress.

When she asked questions to determine what Rief needed, she took measurements, and suggested they return in two days for several outfits. “Do you have anything I could wear for the next two days?” Rief asked, a hint of forlornness in her voice. The lady found a skirt and blouse outfit on the shelves, and they were soon out of the shop, carrying their robes under their arms and wearing their inconspicuous new clothing.

“Let’s go eat; I’m starving,” Rief demanded, and Alec was happy to submit.

They returned to the inn after their prolonged visit to the tailor shops, and found a quiet table by the front window, where they ate and talked. “We can walk to the orphanage from here and visit the children. You’ll enjoy healing, and I can show you how some of our talent works. I’ve gone to this orphanage before as a healer, so they won’t be caught off-guard.

“And Rief, for now, please don’t tell people that we are healers or that we have ingenairii powers. I don’t know exactly who we are supposed to find, or what they will do for us. The way John Mark has sent us through time, I don’t really even know the date, now that I think of it,” he spoke in a manner that drifted into thinking out loud.

“We can tell the orphanage we are healers, but after that we don’t need to tell others,” he repeated.

“What do we tell them, if anyone asks?” she responded.

“Tell them we’re a small trading family,” Alec answered.

They finished their meal, and casually strolled out the door. “When will I have a bag of herbs like yours?” Rief asked as they walked.

“As soon as you want,” he replied. “The markets will probably be open tomorrow morning, and we can get your kit together.” They soon arrived at the gates of the orphanage.

“We have closed the gates for the evening,” a mature woman’s voice answered their knock at the gate.

“We are healers, who have come to offer our service to your children, if we may,” Alec explained. “Is Sister Mary Alice available?”

“I will ask the sister, if you don’t mind waiting here,” the voice answered.

“This is where you grew up? How young were you when you came here?” Rief asked.

“I came here as just an infant. One sister gave me a chain with a jeweled letter “T” on it. She said it belonged to my mother. That’s all I had,” Alec answered.

“What happened to it?” Rief pressed.

“It was taken from me when Mooreen held me captive in her prison,” Alec explained.