The Healing Wars: Book III: Darkfall (16 page)

“We’ll need Healers if we’re taking on the Duke.”

“We’re not staying,” Aylin said quickly. “
We’re
not taking on anything.”

“But
she
came here to fight.” Danello went to the bag and pulled out the pouch of jewels. He picked out a small gem and slipped it into a pocket. “If we’re leaving, we can at least give the resistance Lanelle.”

Some trade. Us for her. “Then let’s go get her.”

One of the girls Saama fetched ran off to find someone who could take us to Ipstan. The other took us to the bridge to the looters’ isle. Tali stayed with Saama. I hated to leave her behind, but she was safer inside than out where she might attack someone again.

The streets weren’t so quiet anymore. People ran back and forth, some carrying baskets, others with old rapiers and bits of armor that needed a good polishing. Preparing for war.

Ten people guarded the bridge now, and four had several knife sheathes on their belts. They’d moved fast as fright to get defenses in place against the Undying. A good sign.

“These folks need to pay a ransom,” the girl said as we approached the guards.

“You’re her?” one of them asked me, his face full of hope. “You’re the one who stopped the Undying?”

“Him too.” I pointed to Danello. “We’ve all fought them before.”

The bridge guards stared at me, but no one came close. It was almost … reverent.

Danello cleared his throat. “How do we get back the people the looters kidnapped?”

“We’ll ask for an exchange,” one of the men said. “We’ve done it a few times already.”

He walked to the middle of the bridge and called out. A man from the other side appeared from behind the barricade and took a few steps onto the bridge. He kept his sword ready. They spoke, then both returned.

“He’s getting someone,” the guard said. “A man named Optel is in charge over there. Sometimes he comes, sometimes he sends a thug.”

After a few minutes, two men appeared and walked to the middle of the bridge. One was obviously the thug, big and stocky, a heavy sword in his hands. The other wore fancy clothes that didn’t fit him well. Probably weren’t even his.

“Lucky you, you earned the boss himself,” the guard said. “Come on.”

We followed him across the bridge. More guards came out and stood behind Optel. One for each of us.

“Who do we have that you want?” Optel asked with a smile. His brown hair had blond streaks through it, and his hands were rough and callused. Fisherman probably. Not husky enough for a farmer.

“A girl about my age,” I said. “Brown hair, bad attitude.”

Optel grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck. “I know that one. I can sell her to you for”—he looked us over, but something in his gaze said he wasn’t guessing what we could afford—“say one hundred oppas.”

“You’ve got to be kidding?” our bridge guard said. I hid my relief. It would have been a lot more if they’d known she was a Healer. At least she’d been smart enough to stay quiet about that.

“She’s not worth that much,” Aylin said. Soek nodded emphatically behind her.

Danello handed me the gem. It was worth more than one hundred oppas, but we didn’t have anything smaller. “Bring her to us.”

Optel’s eyes gleamed when he spotted the gem, but he got his excitement hidden again. He muttered something to one of his guards and he ran off.

“Looks like I’m getting the good side of the deal here,” he said.

Optel’s guard came back with Lanelle, her hands tied in front of her. Bruises covered her jaw, and one eye was swollen shut. She seemed shocked that I’d come for her. I felt only a little guilty that I’d debated against it.

Optel smiled and held out his hand. “One final detail and the transaction is compete.”

I handed him the gem. Lanelle darted between us. I cut her bindings, checked her injuries. Banged up, but nothing serious.

“Thank you for doing business with Optel’s Supply and Demand. Let us know if we can be of further service in the future.” He laughed and turned away, his guards closing in behind him.

“I should have let you bring some pynvium,” Danello muttered, hands tight on his rapier.

“Trust me, I wish I had.” But satisfying as it would have been, we’d need all the weapons we could get for the Duke and his blue-boys.

I glanced at Aylin.

No,
they’d
need all the weapons they could get. We’d be gone way before then.

Shrieks reverberated in the stairwell of Danello’s apartment building.

Tali’s shrieks.

I raced up the stairs, my heart thudding. People stood in the halls, looking worried, but not scared enough for more soldiers to be there. I grabbed the door latch to Saama’s apartment, but it was locked.

“Tali!”

The door flew open. Saama waved a hand inside, her face pale. “She just went crazy!”

Another shriek. Tali darted around the room. She sobbed between shrieks, shaking her head, muttering, though I couldn’t make out the words.

“What happened?’ Danello asked.

“She just went after him!”

The Undying lay on the floor, a knife hilt sticking out of his eye. He was still tied to the chair.

“Sweet Saea, Tali, what did you do?” Fear and fresh anger surged through me. They’d done this to her. Made her this way.

“She
killed
him?” Lanelle said.

“He started talking about how we were all dead. He got real descriptive about it too.” Saama shuddered. “Kept saying what the Duke would do to us. She just went for the knife and then for him.”

Everyone spoke at once, words falling over each other. Tali pressed her hands against her ears and squeezed her eyes shut.

“Quiet, all of you.” I stepped farther into the room, hands up. “It’s okay, Tali, you’re safe.” I scanned the kitchen. Two other knives stuck out of a block on the counter. One slot was empty.
So that’s where she got it.

“Hurt,” she said, still not looking at me.

“Do you hurt?”

“Hurt,”
she said again. Her hands were clenched. One had blood on it.

“Do you
want
to hurt someone?” I prayed not, but that’s what the Undying did. She didn’t have the armor anymore, but maybe she still felt like one of the Undying. I shivered.

“Hurt.” She barely whispered it this time, a sob coming right after. She pressed her fists against her eyes and sank to the floor.

I went to her, though Danello and Aylin and even Lanelle whisper-yelled for me not to. I sat beside her. Harder for her to attack me from the side.

“I’m here, Tali. You had to do it—I understand. He was a bad person. He killed people.”

She cried, tears rolling out from under her fists, but didn’t say anything. I scooted closer. Put one arm around her. A quiet hiss came from the doorway as if lots of breaths were being held.

She leaned toward me, just a little. I wrapped the other arm around her and hugged her close. She sagged against me and her hands fell into her lap. No hug back, but it was a start. I fought back my own tears and stroked her hair.

“You’re going to be okay, Tali. I promise.”

“Don’t want to hurt.”

“We’ll find a way to make it stop.”

“Saints, she really
is
back,” a boy said. The voice sounded familiar.

“Kione?” Lanelle gasped.

I was just as shocked to see him and more than a little worried what Tali might do when
she
did. He’d been a guard at the Healers’ League, had even protected the door to the spire room Tali and the other apprentices had been kept in—the same room where Lanelle had worked. He’d grudgingly let me smuggle in pynvium chunks to save Tali and kept Lanelle out at breakfast long enough for me to heal her. He’d been even more hurt by Lanelle’s treachery. I suspected for him it had been a far more personal betrayal.

Kione’s eyes narrowed and his hand went for the rapier on his hip. “What is
she
doing here?”

“I’m here to help,” Lanelle said softly, real sadness on her face.

“Help who? The Duke?”

Lanelle choked back a cry. “No! I want him dead as much as you do. Probably more.”

That I didn’t doubt.

Kione turned away from Lanelle, but I caught a flicker of pain in his eyes. “We heard folks saying the Shifter was here, that she killed some Undying.” He leaned in a little more and stared into Saama’s bedroom. “I guess more than one?”

“Tali killed him,” Lanelle said. I cringed. Not information I wanted folks to know.

“Tali?”

Lanelle nodded. “She was—”

“Hurt badly by the Duke’s men,” I said quickly, shooting her a keep-your-mouth-shut look. “She’s pretty upset.”

Kione nodded, but he didn’t look like he believed me. Or cared that I wasn’t telling him the truth. “Yeah, well, the general wants to see you right away.”

“Give me a minute to calm her down.” Tali had stopped crying, but she still trembled.

“I’m sorry, but we don’t have time. You’re needed now.”

Doubtful. If they knew I was here already, then they also knew why. Hard to imagine my being back was a bigger rumor than the Duke’s army being on the way.

“Tali?” I pushed her curls away from her face. Still red, but her natural blond was starting to grow back, same as mine. “We have to go see someone, okay? Can you stand up?”

“Um, Nya,” said Danello. “Maybe you should leave her here.”

Saama shook her head. “Oh no, she’s better off with her sister. Safer for everyone.”

I helped Tali to her feet, biting back my anger. She’d only tried to hurt those who had hurt her or were trying to hurt us. She wasn’t dangerous. Just confused and scared.

Are you willing to risk Saama’s life on that?

“Where are we going?’

Kione glanced at Lanelle. “I’ll take you. But not her.”

“That’s not fair!” she said.

“I’m not putting a known ally of the Duke’s in the same room with the general. You’re lucky I haven’t arrested you already.”

Aylin smirked. Neither Soek nor Danello came to her defense. I couldn’t fault Kione for the decision.

“Stay here and rest,” I told her. “You’ve had a rough night.”

“Nya, I can be trusted, I really can.” She seemed so genuine, I almost believed her.

“We’ll see. For now, wait here.”

We followed Kione out. Like before, people were running around with purpose in their steps. Cover nooks were being built at intersections, places where folks could hide and ambush any soldiers who got past the bridge guards.

“They got organized fast,” Danello said.

Soek huffed. “I’d move fast too if the Undying were after me.”

There might be enough people to fight the leftover garrison, but not the fifteen thousand soldiers the Duke was bringing. I just didn’t see a way to defend against that.

We crossed the bridge to tradesmen’s corner, and I spotted the hull of an overturned skiff cresting the water at the end of it, blocking the canal. The docks beyond it were well-guarded.

Tradesmen’s corner had people working as well, mostly at critical shops like the butcher’s and the carpenter’s. Half the buildings here were brick, safer from a fire attack, but so many others would burn. Even some made of brick had wooden upper stories where the shop owner lived. Those wouldn’t last long.

Kione cut across a trampled park where some women tended a large cookfire at the center. Folks were already starting to gather around, bowls in hand, though I didn’t smell any food yet. Heads turned toward us—then came the quick double takes I’d grown to hate. Fingers were pointed, words whispered.
Look, it’s the Shifter!

Curse Vyand and her reward posters. If only she hadn’t nailed them up all over Geveg. Everyone seemed to recognize me. How foolish to think that just the people who wanted the bounty would remember my face.

Kione stopped at the blacksmith’s. The bay doors were open, the
tink-tink clang!
of the hammers rolling out with the heat from the forge. Just a regular one, though. The League had the only pynvium forge on the isles.

We slipped inside and headed up the stairs. Windows lit the upper floor, open now to the midmorning breeze. Several tables had been pushed together, with mismatched chairs around them. One wall had maps of the city pinned to it.

So this was Ipstan’s war room. Jeatar had had one like it, but with nicer furniture.

A corner door opened and a man walked in. Tall, broad shouldered, a way of moving that clearly said he was in charge and knew it. Familiar, though I couldn’t quite place the face. Kione stood a little taller.

Danello leaned closer. “Doesn’t he own Three Hooks Fishers?”

Of course! I’d hauled fish for his boats once or twice. He owned several and didn’t sell to Baseeri. He was one of the few Gevegian businesses still
in
business and the closest thing we had to an aristocrat these days.

“So you’re Nya,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

I bet he had, and most of it was probably bad. “Don’t believe every rumor you hear.”

Ipstan chuckled. “The rumors I ignore, but what I hear from those I trust I believe. We heard what you did in Baseer. We know what you did here at the League. We need someone like you.”

Two things I hadn’t done on purpose. And two things I’d prefer never to do again.