Page 2 of The Shattered King
My youngest siblings cried as I left, despite my promises of a swift return.
They cried, and it might have been an omen, but I was determined.
I hugged them fiercely. Colt acted like he didn’t care, but his running nose gave him away.
I kissed the top of his head when he refused an embrace.
Leaned into Dan and asked him to remember what we’d spoken of: that he was the man of the house now, that he would need to work hours outside his apprenticeship to help supplement income.
That he would need to talk Lissel down when her nerves got the better of her.
I kissed Lissel last. Held her as she sobbed into the collar of my dress.
Pulled back and stared into her gray eyes that so matched mine and reminded her, “Only for a short while. Check the bees. Don’t forget market day.
Do not accept any sales offers from anyone, even if you know them.
Don’t entertain any men over the age of fourteen.
” Lissel was kindhearted, more so than I ever could be, but it made her more susceptible to being taken advantage of. “I’ll be back soon.”
She nodded, tears flowing. Hugged me again tight enough to hurt, but I let her. In truth, we both needed it.
I started my journey on foot, carrying a single bag of provisions. We’d scraped enough together for a ship ride across the Canseren Sea, which would cut my travel time in half. The rest depended on my own two legs.
For nearly twenty years Queen Winvrin Noblewight had demanded healers’ aid, magical and otherwise, to repair her bedridden and ailing child, third in line to the throne.
So desperate was she to have his health restored that, shortly after his birth, she’d lifted the centuries-long ban on craftlock healers.
Other craftlock—mindreading and soulbinding—was still punishable by death, of course.
Or I supposed it would be until the royal family determined they had a personal use for it.
I wondered if it would not be a mercy for all of us if she simply let her son die.
I knew it to be a cruel thought the moment it crossed my mind, but was it not fair to impart cruelty for cruelty?
We have survived worse, I told myself when I passed the city of Grot—the farthest I’d ever traveled from home. You’ve survived worse, I reminded myself several miles later, all while cursing the royal family and the god Hem, who oversaw them.
A traveling merchant family offered to share their fire with me, for I could not afford an inn on a beekeeper’s income, and healing only brought in so much.
Despite its legalization, many still feared what I could do.
Craftlock healing was just like any other healing—I could get it wrong and ultimately cause more harm than good, though the magic’s natural tendency was to heal.
I’d never tried to use it for anything else.
The following day, I found someone willing to let me sit in the back of their wagon and take me as far as Stays, where I spent all my savings on a ticket to board a ship.
It was a monstrous vessel with three masts and a dozen sails.
I feared the wooden beast, for I’d never stepped foot on anything larger than a canoe all my life, but my sea legs proved a natural part of me, and I managed well.
I noticed quickly that many of the ship’s occupants wore red-and-black military uniforms—soldiers, perhaps transferring.
I searched among the faces for Brien, but my brother had journeyed north to report, not east. I asked one of the soldiers anyway.
He did not know a Brien Tallowax, and seemed unsure why Sesta attacked our borders.
He shrugged, obviously not wishing to engage in conversation.
I felt bad for him, for the amount of red on his uniform, covering his shoulders and slashing down his torso. Lower ranks wore more red than higher, making them easier targets for enemy soldiers. Just another way noblemen marked the rest of us as fodder.
An image of my parents peeked behind my eyelids, and I banished it.
As I walked farther onto the deck, calculating how I could possibly afford a meal after docking, I spied a man about twice my age bent over the bulwark, looking green and gaunt.
Other passengers gave him a wide berth, two women whispering something about a rat plague to each other, but to my eyes, the fellow suffered only from the movements of the vessel.
His companion offered him food and water, which the sick man declined.
I noted they both wore simple green cinctures tied through the loops of their trousers.
Green was the color for Evat, god of forests, agriculture, and fauna.
Perhaps they were farmers. Both had the leather cords of wedding pendants peeking from beneath their collars.
I gauged the cut of their clothes: middle class.
Likely not farmers. Horticulturists? Arborists?
But it didn’t matter. Surely they could afford a few copper merits for relief, though if they were superstitious, they wouldn’t want my services at all.
I determined to meet them in the middle with a discount.
“I can help, if you’d like. I’ll charge only a copper merit.”
The companion glanced up at me; the sick man was too busy worshipping Salm’s sea with his stomach acid to pay me any real notice. The setting sun cast orange light over the ship, making our shadows long. “The ship’s doctor says nothing can be done until we get to port.”
“I can heal him.”
He scrutinized me a moment before his brows lifted in understanding. Discomfort tightened his eyes. “I don’t think—”
The sick man lifted his hand and grabbed his companion’s sleeve. “Anything,” he begged, more to him than to me. “Please, I’ll pay it.”
Inwardly, I chided myself. I should have charged more.
Stepping forward, I placed a gentle hand on the man’s back and eased him from the railing and to the floor, so he was sitting up, while his friend pulled a copper merit from his wallet.
I took the coin and squirreled it away, then touched my fingertips lightly to the underside of the stranger’s jaw.
I always dowsed this way. I had to touch bare skin, and people rarely covered their underjaw with fabric or jewelry.
That, and it helped me steady the ill and keep them from breaking contact with me before I had finished.
Relaxing my shoulders, I let my eyes unfocus and entered his lumis.
The lumis is a strange concept; every crafter of body magic—called healers—knew it well, but it proved difficult to explain to those who could not see it for themselves.
Each person had a different lumis, which is essentially a wall-less space, metaphorically and yet not, occupied by something that represented their person, be it a painting, a puzzle, or something else entirely.
That representation of them sported all the ailments of the body, and as a healer, I could enter this room and correct what was broken.
This man’s lumis was not complex; his was something like a brick wall, albeit with the bricks fashioned in different sizes, with slight variation in shape and color.
I approached the wall, examining it closely, looking for imperfections.
He was in good health; there were only faint death lines, nothing I could do horribly wrong.
The seasickness proved easy to spot; his metaphorical mortar dribbled out from the center of the wall.
I noticed a crack near the foundation as well, and through the magic sensed it was a bad knee of his.
It reminded me of the stone wall around the south side of my house, where we used to raise sheep, but now kept beehives.
My father had built the wall by hand, with me beside him, watching how he picked through a pile of stones to find those that might best fit together with as little mortar as possible, to make the wall strong.
Focusing first on the mortar, I pulled on the magic and willed it—I don’t know how else to describe it—to thicken, and with motions of my hands scraped it back where it belonged until it settled and dried.
Then, turning to the crack, I summoned more magical mortar and caked it carefully in, smoothing it down until the wall stood in good repair.
All of this took me less than a minute. I “stepped” back into reality, the orange-cast image of the ship and the sea blinking into my eyes as I pulled my hands from the man’s face.
His color had returned, and he drew in a deep breath. “I’ve never ... I’ve never had a healer before.” He laughed, ignoring the unease of his companion. “Thank you, miss.” Then, to his companion, “I could eat a horse.”
Nodding, I stepped away. Two women watched me, both wearing large violet-braided bracelets to denote devotion to Zia, the only goddess in the pantheon.
All women wore her color—even I had, before age and labor had worn through my simply woven band.
I’d never bothered replacing it. I avoided their stares, not wishing to know if my work invoked awe or fear, and not caring, besides.
They could do nothing to me, not until the royal brat was one day cured and the Noblewights again determined my kind was, somehow, dangerous, and made the decree to slaughter us all.
It took me ten days to reach Rove.
My nerves and temper were at their limit, filling me with a deep exhaustion no magic could heal.
I admit, the landscape was breathtaking.
I had pictured a looming fortress on the edge of some daunting cliff, daring outsiders to try to claim it, emphasized by gray storm clouds, lightning, and a malnourished wolf or three.