Healer's Touch (6 page)

Chapter 6

Marius preferred to ride up to the palace for his weekly visit with Lucien, even though the emperor had offered to send a carriage. This despite the fact that he was a terrible rider. Before coming to Riat, he’d never been on the back of a horse. He’d ridden a mule once, and it was an experience he did not care to repeat. But Lucien had insisted that he learn to ride. It was one of many skills Marius was receiving a rapid education in, along with reading, writing, mathematics, history, languages, and tumbling. That last was supposed to be swordplay, but so far there were no swords involved, just a lot of rolling and calisthenics and footwork.

Lucien had provided him with a quiet bay gelding named Gambler, who was now permanently stabled at the villa alongside Drusus’s gray stallion. Gambler, despite his name, was predictable and steady. His best feature was that he had a habit of stopping and waiting patiently when Marius lost his balance.

Marius and Drusus rode side by side up the never-ending switchbacks to the imperial palace. The higher they ascended, the more Marius’s stomach twisted. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Lucien and Vitala. He liked them a lot, and he appreciated the generosity they’d shown him. It was clear that they went out of their way to make him feel comfortable. No, it was the palace environment that bothered him. When he’d first arrived, Lucien had expected him to live within the palace, in a sort of suite, with servants at his beck and call. Apparently his sister Rhianne had grown up in such a suite, as had Lucien himself.

Marius had not lasted three days. He’d grown claustrophobic and stir-crazy. He simply could not feel at home amongst the berobed and bejeweled imperial courtiers. The servants made him nervous. He missed the simple comforts of village streets and small-town life.

But he still wanted the education Lucien had promised him. So he and the emperor had made a compromise: Marius would try living in the imperial city of Riat. The emperor purchased him a villa in a quiet part of town—at least, Lucien said it was quiet. Marius found it ten times more crowded, bustling, and noisy than what he was used to. Lucien also provided him with a bodyguard, and Marius took residence, with none of his neighbors the wiser that they shared a street with a cousin of the emperor. Riat was a big city, nothing at all like rural Osler, but Marius found he was better able to adapt to that environment than to the palace. And his parents had settled in Riat as well, at a comfortable but not too-comfortable distance of three miles across town.

When he and Drusus arrived at the palace gates, the horses were whisked away by grooms to be cooled out and rubbed down. Marius changed into his finery, since it would not do to appear before the emperor in a tunic and breeches, and they were escorted to the imperial gardens. There, the emperor and empress were waiting beneath an orange tree. A table had been carried out into the garden and a feast of fruits and cakes and sandwiches awaited them. It was more food than Marius could eat in a week.

Drusus saluted the imperial couple. Marius remembered his training and bowed in the way he’d been taught.

Then Vitala hugged him and Lucien clasped his wrist.

“We were worried about you,” said Vitala. “That explosion in town.”

“It was over a mile from the villa,” said Marius.

“Too close for comfort,” said Lucien. He gestured at the table. “Fill your plate and have a seat. I thought you might find the garden more comfortable than the palace.”

Marius did, in fact. This little picnic reminded him of the dozens of similar outdoor gatherings he’d been to in Osler—weddings, summer festivals, reconciliations, the Triferian. But the food was fancier and the surroundings more opulent. The company was stiffer too, although perhaps that was an unfair assessment. He was the one who stiffened up when he was at the palace, not Lucien or Vitala, or even Drusus.

Imperial food was a challenge for him. It tended to be highly spiced, with unusual flavors, and he preferred simpler fare. He picked out some of the plainer items: a mushroom tart, a couple of sandwiches, and a raspberry-flavored dessert. Raspberries were one of the few novel foods he’d been able to acquire a taste for since leaving Osler.

Lucien placed an apple tart on his own plate. “Did you know that for years I didn’t use this garden at all?”

“Why not?” Marius took his seat.

“Unpleasant memories,” said Lucien. “Of my father—your uncle, who practically lived out here. But over the years, I’ve gotten past that. There’s no need to blame the garden for the things Florian did, and it’s a wonderful place, don’t you think?”

“Indeed,” said Marius.

Lucien sat across from Marius, and Vitala took the spot next to Lucien. “How do your studies go?” asked Lucien.

Marius shrugged. “Well enough.” He didn’t like talking about his schooling; it was embarrassing to be so far behind others of his age. He took a bite of mushroom tart. It had a strange spice in its filling, and he wasn’t sure he liked it. “Do you know what caused that explosion at the harbor?”

Vitala answered. “I’ve got people looking into it. We feared it might be an act of sabotage, but so far we’re finding no signs of that. I believe it was a simple accident.”

“A common occurrence with gunpowder plants,” added Lucien.

Vitala nodded. “This is why we have regulations regarding the gunpowder trade. You can’t use metal shovels in gunpowder factories, only wooden ones, because metal ones might throw a spark. No boots with iron nails, no shod horses in the vicinity—”

“And even those regulations can’t eliminate the risks entirely,” said Lucien. “So the most important regulation is that gunpowder factories must be located well outside of town, away from population centers like Riat. That limits the damage they can do if there’s an accident.”

Marius nodded. “So Drusus told me.”

“He’s well-read, your bodyguard,” said Lucien. “The factory that exploded was illegal and in violation of regulations, but so far we don’t think they intended to cause trouble. They just wanted to make cheap gunpowder. Mind you, I’ll still arrest the lot of them if I find them.”

Marius recalled the injured Sardossians who had shown their heels when the city guards turned up. And Isolda, sketching herbs in his bed and smiling. Time for a change in subject. “How’s Laelia?”

Vitala grinned. “Talk about explosive. That girl is a pyrotechnic show in the battle room.”

His sister Laelia had taken to palace life more easily than Marius had. It wasn’t that she liked fancy food and fancy dresses—as far as he could tell, she was indifferent to them—but that she didn’t care what people thought of her. She saw the palace as a playground for her amusement. She’d enlisted Vitala and others to train her as a war mage.

Lucien sighed. “It’s supposed to be the
boys
who are war mages. The girls are supposed to be mind mages.”

“I want to be a Healer,” said Marius.

“And so you shall,” said Lucien. “Far be it from me to hew to tradition when your mother has already broken with it so dramatically. But I do wonder sometimes what will become of us.”

Marius said nothing. He doubted his becoming a Healer and his sister becoming a war mage would affect the imperial family in any way at all. They were side branches in the family tree, minimally involved in politics and palace life. Which was fine with him. He and Laelia were too uneducated and ignorant to be involved in political decisions. As far as Marius could tell, Lucien valued his presence simply because he loved family. Marius was something like fifth in the line of imperial succession, a fact that terrified him. But when Lucien died—an event that should be far in the future, since the emperor was young and healthy—the throne would almost certainly pass to one of Lucien’s two sons, and both of them were being trained traditionally as war mages.

Vitala laid her hand over the emperor’s. “Change isn’t always a bad thing, you know.”

The emperor looked into her eyes, suddenly moony, and Marius turned his attention to his mushroom tart.

After giving them a moment, he asked, “Why are there so many Sardossian refugees in Riat?”

“It’s a sad situation,” said Vitala.

“Eleven months ago, the First Heir of Sardos was assassinated,” said Lucien, “and his loss has left a power vacuum in that country.”

“Understand that the First Heir is actually the leader of Sardos,” said Vitala. “First Heir is just the title they use, implying that he is heir to the gods. His power is equivalent to Lucien’s.”

“Did he leave no successor?”

“He left hundreds of them, sired on dozens of wives,” said Lucien. “Sardos is polygynous, and because he feared a plot against his life, he never specified which son should be his heir. But the assassination happened anyway, and, as you might expect, half a dozen of those potential First Heirs are laying claim to the throne. The families are choosing sides, and there’s civil war.”

Now Marius understood. “And the people who want no part of that war are fleeing over the border.”

“Exactly,” said Lucien. “But Kjall hasn’t the resources to take them in. These refugees don’t speak the language, many of them have no skills, and we simply can’t accommodate them.”

Marius frowned. Isolda didn’t know the language, but he wouldn’t say she had no skills. She’d drawn a perfect vervain plant and known its purpose. He would bet she’d been an herbalist or apothecary in her former life. And he couldn’t blame her for not wanting to participate in a civil war to decide which of six half-brothers held the Sardossian throne. He wouldn’t want any part of that either. “Could we do something to help them? Find work for them, get them warded? They could learn the language.”

Lucien’s eyes went soft.

Marius tensed. “Did I say something wrong?”

“Not at all,” said Lucien. “It’s just that you remind me so much of Rhianne. I understand your desire to help the Sardossian refugees, but I’ve got Kjallans out of work, lots of them. How can I offer jobs to Sardossians when my own people need help? As for warding them, I’m all for it, but good luck getting them to come out from their hiding places.”

“They don’t come out because when they do, you ship them back home,” said Marius.

“I wish we could do more for them,” said Vitala. “But Kjall has to solve Kjall’s problems. And Sardos needs to solve Sardos’s problems.”

“If the Sardossians are here, they’ve
become
Kjall’s problem,” said Marius.

“Kjall has enough problems as it is,” said Lucien.

∞

Later, as they made their way back down the hill on horseback, Drusus said, “You’ve been thinking a lot about that Sardossian woman.”

“Yes,” said Marius. “Not just her, but all of the Sardossians. Can you imagine? They came all this way to live in a city where people call them sewer rats or piss-heads and throw things at them, sometimes beat them up in alleyways, or worse.” Last month, two Sardossian women had been raped and murdered. Their broken bodies had been hung from a street glow just five blocks from his villa.

“We can only assume conditions are worse in Sardos.”

Marius nodded. “They must be.” It was hard to imagine.

And yet the Sardossians were not entirely without guilt, not if they were working in illegal gunpowder factories that, in one case, had exploded and killed innocent bystanders. The regulations Lucien and Vitala had explained to him made sense; they prevented accidents and kept people safe. But what else could the Sardossians do? Legal jobs weren’t available to them, and it was dangerous for them even to be seen in some parts of the city. He wished there was something he could do to help them. Perhaps if he earned Isolda’s trust while she was staying with him, he could talk to her about the problems and learn more about what her people needed.

But when Marius and Drusus returned to the villa, Isolda was gone. The bed was neatly made, and the dishes she’d used had been washed. On the table was a note. It was written in Sardossian, and Drusus read it to him. It said, simply, “Thank you.”

PART TWO

Four Years Later

Chapter 7

Marius was measuring out powdered trigonella for his last patient of the day when the bell rang. He growled in frustration. So many people didn’t bother reading the surgery’s posted hours, or at least didn’t want to believe them. There were all-night facilities available in Riat, but his was not one of them. “Drusus, if it’s not an emergency—”

“I’ll handle it.” Drusus headed for the waiting room.

Marius scraped the measured amount into a bag and tied it neatly at the top. He’d thought his apothecary skills would become obsolete once he’d soulcasted and gained his healing magic, but he’d been wrong. There were some conditions, chronic ones especially, for which his healing magic could only help a little in the short term. In those cases, medicine sometimes extended the duration of his influence. As the only man in Riat who was both a licensed Healer and a licensed apothecary, he’d found himself popular since opening his surgery and dispensary. Too popular, sometimes.

He went from the dispensary back to his office and handed the trigonella to the aged man sitting on the cot. “The best way to make that cough go away would be to stop breathing so much sawdust.”

The man nodded listlessly.

Marius sighed. He understood; it was the man’s job. He was seeing a lot of this in Riat, more than he ever saw in Osler. Lungs damaged by breathing things that weren’t air, vision stunted by work underground, joints broken down by overwork—not excessive amounts of work, necessarily, but
repetitive
work, the same thing over and over with no variation. His healing magic was powerful, but it worked best against infectious diseases, rarely seen anymore because of near-universal warding in the big cities, and acute injuries such as cuts and broken bones. Chronic damage was less responsive. His magic could improve this man’s lungs a little bit, but healing magic worked by calling the flesh back to its natural, healthy state, and for that to happen, the flesh had to
remember
. When it had been damaged little by little, over the course of years, it ceased to remember its natural state. The abnormal had become normal.