Healer's Touch (15 page)

Marius nodded. “I am.” The prospect was frightening. Even so, he couldn’t wait to ask.

Chapter 16

“Have a seat, please,” Isolda told the bewhiskered man in the wool hat. The smell of alcohol wafted into the surgery with him. “What’s your name?”

He sank, loose-limbed, into the chair in front of her desk. “Name’s Basilius.”

Isolda consulted her list. “Basilius Stefanus?”

The man nodded.

“Sir, if you’ll just come back with me to the business office, we need to go over some paperwork.”

“Paperwork?” He sniffed, but followed her into the back office.

She closed the door for privacy and took a seat behind her desk. Basilius sat opposite her. “Sir, our records show that you’ve got an outstanding debt to the surgery of eight tetrals. Once you’ve arranged payment for the money owed, I can get you on the schedule for today.”

Basilius stared. “That’s why you called me back here? To hit me up for eight tetrals?”

“It’s surgery policy, sir.” And much as she disliked being alone with this man, it was also surgery policy not to embarrass clients by mentioning their unpaid debts in a public space.

He leaned back in his chair. “Don’t have eight tetrals.”

“I’m sorry, but the Healer is treating only paying patients today. If you’d like to come on our next Free Day, it’s five days from now—”

“Five days?” Basilius raised his leg, complete with its dirty boot, and plopped it onto her desk. Dried mud sprinkled her paperwork. “I’ve a broken knee here.”

Isolda doubted the knee was broken, given that he’d walked into the surgery on it. She eyed the mud on the desk. “Sir, you can either pay the eight tetrals you owe the surgery, or you can come back in five days.”

Basilius removed his foot from her desk and leaned forward.

Catching a whiff of his sour breath, she recoiled. It could have stopped a four-in-hand.

“What do you know about tetrals, rat bitch?” he snarled, raising a hand as if to strike her. “Go back to Sardos where you belong.”

Isolda’s pulse spiked. In the street, she dealt with hateful men by running away. But here in the surgery, acting as the business manager, she was trapped. “Sir, it’s—it’s the official policy of the surgery,” she stammered. She glanced at the door. Marius was not far away, and neither was Drusus. Should she call for help?

“Oh, fuck you and your piss-head friends.” Basilius wheeled around and stomped out of the office.

Isolda sat motionless in her chair for what seemed an eternity, terrified to return to the waiting room lest she find him still there. After a while, she rose and quietly peeked out. He seemed to be gone. The only other person in the waiting room—a matronly woman with an unspecified complaint she wouldn’t disclose to anyone but Marius—eyed her in an unfriendly way.

Marius’s office door opened, and Marius emerged with his patient, a man with sunken cheeks and thinning hair.

Marius clasped the man’s wrist. “The tincture tonight, and again tomorrow night. And tell your brother you need to rest—Healer’s orders.”

“Thank you,” the man rasped.

Marius glanced at Isolda and frowned a little. “Everything all right?”

Perhaps he could see the stiffness in her posture. But the incident was over; no need to bother him when he had other things on his mind. She nodded and indicated the matronly woman. “Flavia is next.”

Marius invited Flavia into his office.

Back at her waiting-room desk, Isolda made a notation on the book for Gracilis, the man who’d just left, and for Flavia, who was in Marius’s office now. The bell rang over the surgery door, and she glanced up.

Basilius was back—and in the company of a large, bearded man.

She scrambled up from her chair.

The bearded man stomped toward her. “My friend says some piss-head’s shaking him down for scurry.”

She backed away. “It’s not for me; it’s for the Healer. Basilius owes the surgery eight tetrals for previous visits.”

“You want eight dibs? I’ll give you eight dibs.” He grabbed for her.

She jumped out of reach just in time, feeling the scrape of his fingernails on her sleeve.

He circled around the desk toward her, and a knife flashed into his hand.

“Marius! Drusus!” she cried.

Basilius came at her from the other side. Pinned between the two of them, she retreated, and her back hit the wall. She glanced quickly from one man to the other. Basilius seemed the less scary of the two, so she ran at him, hoping to slip by. He grabbed her as she passed. She lashed out reflexively and felt her open hand connect with clothed flesh, but then something struck her shins, knocking her off balance. She hit the floor, and someone’s weight landed on top of her. The breath flew out of her lungs with a whoosh.

She lay stunned, awaiting the blow or knife cut that must follow.

Instead, she heard screaming, and the weight rolled off her.

She staggered to her feet. What she saw defied the imagination. Basilius and the bearded man were writhing on the floor, clutching at themselves all over as if they were being eaten alive by ants. But she saw no blood or any sign of injury.

Marius stood nearby, his teeth bared in fury. Drusus picked up the bearded man as if he were a bag of laundry and tossed him across the room into a chair, which toppled over. Then he tossed Basilius after him.

Isolda could hardly believe Drusus’s strength; it seemed inhuman.

She coughed and pounded her chest, and brushed off her clothes. Had the knife bitten her anywhere? She didn’t think so.

“What in the Sage’s name happened?” cried Marius. “Are you all right?”

“I think so.” She’d taken a crack to her elbow, and her back was sore. Not bad—certainly she could have been hurt a lot worse. She pointed at Basilius. “That man is one of your patients. He didn’t want to pay his bill—”

“And he attacked you?” Marius looked aghast.

“He left and brought a friend to do it.”

Marius stared at the pair on the floor. “How much does he owe?”

“Eight tetrals.”

“Why would anyone make such a fuss over eight tetrals? Three gods.”

“Because she’s Sardossian,” said Drusus.

Marius growled deep in his throat.

“He called me a rat bitch and said I should go home to Sardos,” said Isolda.

“Not much of a naturalist, is he?” observed Drusus. “A female rat is called a doe.”

“We’ll have to call the city guard,” said Marius. “I can’t have people coming in here and attacking my employees.”

“If you do that, they’ll arrest Isolda,” said Drusus.

“Three gods,” groaned Marius. “You’re right. We’ll send her to the villa and
then
call the guards—”

“But she’s the one who witnessed the crime,” said Drusus.

“I saw enough,” said Marius.

“Come outside for a moment,” said Drusus, glancing at the two groaning men. “We can leave them there for the time being.”

Isolda and Marius followed Drusus outside onto the street.

Drusus spoke in a low voice. “If you bring the guards here, those men will tell them about Isolda, and then it won’t matter whether you hide her at the villa. They’ll find her.”

“We can’t just ignore what they did.”

“Of course we can’t. We deal with it as a private matter,” said Drusus.

“Are you sure?”

While the men argued amongst themselves, Isolda puzzled over why Basilius and his friend had stopped fighting. Drusus had picked them up and thrown them, yes, but by the time he did that, they’d already been subdued. She’d never seen a man scream and twitch the way they had. And afterward, they’d lain docile on the floor, like mice in shock after being tormented by a cat. And yet neither Marius nor Drusus had even drawn a weapon.

“It’s the only way, given the circumstances,” said Drusus. “I’ll handle it.”

“All right,” said Marius. “I’ll escort Isolda to the villa.”

“What are you going to do?” Isolda asked Drusus. She wasn’t sure what they meant when they said they would deal with it as a private matter.

“Never mind.” Marius took her arm. “They won’t trouble you any further. Can you walk?”

Isolda nodded and let him lead her down the street. She felt jittery and strange. Everything looked foreign, as if she was seeing the neighborhood with different, sharper eyes.

Inside, Marius helped her to a chair in the sitting room. She collapsed in it.

“Are you all right?” asked Marius.

“Just tired.” She wasn’t sure why, since it was the middle of the day, but she could barely keep her eyes open.

“Sleep, then,” said Marius, and she obeyed.

∞

She awoke to someone’s hand on her arm, and started.

“Be easy,” said Marius. “Everything’s all right.”

Isolda yawned. She wasn’t sure why she’d slept so long, except she remembered being shaky and tired after the ordeal at the surgery. She glanced at the window and saw that it was dark out. “Have you seen Rory?”

“He’s in the kitchen,” said Marius. “He came by the surgery about an hour ago, and Drusus collected him.”

“What happened to Basilius and the other man?”

“They won’t be a problem anymore,” said Marius.

Isolda sat up in her chair. “Drusus didn’t kill them, I hope.”

“No, he just made it clear they’re not welcome at the surgery anymore.”

Isolda had a feeling the conversation between Drusus and the two men had involved more fists than words. But never mind. She couldn’t go to the city guard, and if rough justice was all that was available to her, she’d take it. It was a good thing she had friends like Marius and Drusus to look after her.

Marius moved his hand down her arm, searching for painful spots.

When he reached her elbow, she winced.

“A bit of trouble there?” He took her arm in the crook of his own to immobilize it. Moments later, pain stirred deep within her elbow joint. She hissed and stiffened, but after a moment, the pain eased, and she felt a sensation of heat in its place. Marius was using his healing magic on her. As strange as it felt, she forced herself to relax. “It’s warm.”

“Everybody says that,” said Marius. “And we don’t know why that happens. I think it’s the energy involved. You know how you get hot when you run, because your body is working hard? I’m asking your flesh to work hard right now.”

“Work hard at what?”

“Repairing itself.”

Isolda’s body eased back into the chair. The sensation of warmth was growing while the pain faded. Marius moved on to her shoulders, searching for other bruised areas. She directed him to her back, and sighed deeply as his magic diminished the pain there.

“Have I got all of it?” asked Marius.

She nodded. “Your magic is miraculous.”

“Praise the gods that they give us such gifts,” said Marius.

“Why did those two men fall down screaming when you came over to us?” she asked. “It was as if you did something to them—or Drusus did—but I never saw it happen.”

“You might as well know, now that you work with a Healer, that healing magic has an ugly side,” said Marius.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that just as I can knit the shards of a broken bone together, I could split that bone apart, creating a fracture with the touch of my hand. And that’s not all.” He leaned in and touched his hand to her chest. She tensed but did not protest—she knew she could trust Marius. “Do you feel your heart beating?”

She nodded.

“I could stop it,” said Marius. “It would take me only an instant. You would die, and there would be no mark on you. No one would ever know what had happened.”

Isolda shivered.

Marius removed his hand. “But don’t worry. There’s a profusion of laws forbidding that sort of thing. And most Healers can’t do it because it requires special training.”

“Which you’ve had?”

“My family insisted on it,” said Marius.

“The men fell down screaming because you...broke their bones?”

“No. I used a torture spell. It’s temporary and doesn’t cause any damage, but it puts the victim in so much pain that they can’t do anything. It will stop the strongest man in his tracks.”

She blinked. “How is it possible that someone can be in excruciating pain yet suffer no harm?”

“Nobody knows the mechanism by which it works,” said Marius.

Isolda was impressed but a little alarmed. Marius’s magic was more frightening than she’d realized. “It’s as if you have almost total control over another person’s body.”

“Not really. I can’t make people do things, as mind mages can.” He hesitated. “People ask me, sometimes, if healing magic can make a body move, make it act, as if it were an automaton. But it cannot. On rare occasions, someone will come into the surgery and ask me to...make someone attracted to them, you know, in a...” His cheeks flushed, and he cleared his throat. “In a romantic way. They go away disappointed because my magic can’t do that either. We Healers don’t traffic in love-philters or any other manipulations of will; that’s beyond our ability.”

“Oh.” She was glad Marius couldn’t use his magic to force someone to be sexually attracted to him. But he didn’t need magic for that. Not with her.

“It’s too late for you to be out in the streets,” said Marius, “so I’m going to insist that you and Rory stay at the villa overnight. I’ll have the servants draw you a bath so you can wash, and we’ll set you and Rory up in a guest room. Once you’re out of this syrtos, Arrod can launder and mend it.”

“Thank you.” It made sense that she should stay; she didn’t like the idea of walking the Riat streets at night, just herself and Rory. But it wasn’t going to be easy staying the night here either. She struggled enough working alongside Marius at the surgery, loving him and wanting him when she knew he was destined for someone else—someone prettier and more sophisticated, not to mention more Kjallan. Was it right for her to keep this job at all, given that she had no long-term future here? Certainly her presence was causing Marius and Drusus a great deal of trouble. It felt wrong to impose on them.

Yet she needed the money, and she loved the work. Gods curse her, she did not have the strength to leave.

Chapter 17