Page 21 of The Shattered King

I marveled. “You work as a healer, then?” I glanced to Sarra and Fil. “You all do?”

But the latter two shook their heads.

“I do. I have for twenty years. But”—Brekk leaned back, withdrawing his limbs like a spider hunkering into a nest—“each time, I have been unable to make a change.”

It made no sense. All I did was piece two bits of glass together, and that had been more than any healer before me .

.. How? It must have been happenstance.

Other healers shifting things around so that I would notice two bits of a bauble that happened to fit together.

Surely my eye was not sharper than so many.

Surely the extra power gifted me did not make such a difference.

I sighed. “I have been able to repair a great deal of His Highness health, but not all of it. The repairs are ... fragile. I was hoping I might learn a new technique from you all.” I looked to Brekk. “Since you’ve so much experience as a healer, could you share some of your more extreme cases?”

He glowered.

“Leave out mine,” I offered.

He breathed deeply, then began a series of anecdotes.

Healing a crushed arm, the rat plague, a half-drowned boy.

But all his administrations sounded exactly like what I would do—find the broken part of the lumis and bid the magic heal it, however creatively he chose.

Sarra and Fil occasionally offered an opinion, but it always centered on the creative options as a healer—patching a wall with mortar versus a new stone versus paint, for instance.

As long as the wall was repaired, the patient would heal.

None of them had anything to offer me.

“ Think of it as simpler than you thought, ” Ursa suggested as Fil and Sarra left. “ If it’s so rote, it must be simple. ”

I agreed with her, if only to make the both of us feel better.

Brekk lingered at the door. I didn’t realize how very tall he was until I stood and had to crane to look at him.

Very quietly, not quite meeting my eyes, he said, “There is something ... different about the prince. Not just in his breaking.”

I nodded. “I’ve sensed that, too. It’s ... hard to put into words.”

It must have been difficult to state for him as well, for he said nothing else before departing.

I watched Whitestone and the other physicians carefully when they worked with Renn, thinking I might learn some new tricks to try magically.

Wondering whether, if I did have more of a medical background, my services would be more .

.. useful. If nothing else, the time I heeded the physicians allowed me to strategize about what I might try next, which would increase my efficiency.

But while Prince Renn had given back my evenings, I still had not garnered permission to leave the castle grounds.

Were I away when the prince relapsed, it could be devastating.

Still, nothing had killed him yet.

I thought of this two weeks after my second trip to the dungeon while at the castle training grounds.

Renn had become more and more active, working on building up the strength a life of illness and injury had leeched from him, so much so that he’d joined the swordmaster in the sparring ring, now for his fourth day in a row.

I liked Thom, the swordmaster; he was a surprisingly posh man who wore lace even in combat, his thin hair always plastered with oil to his nearly bald pate.

On the street, no one would ever have guessed him dangerous, and yet I believed he could best anyone in Rove in combat.

While several bouts were ongoing in the fenced-off space, Thom was presently occupied with the elder prince, Adrinn.

Prince Adrinn, who was a year my senior, had stripped down to just his shirtsleeves and gave the battle more effort than I thought he had in him.

He bore a physique any man would be proud of, and I was plenty sure he was proud of it, too.

He kept pace with Thom, their bout lasting longer than most, but after a couple of minutes, the swordmaster feinted to the right and took out Prince Adrinn’s legs, sending him to the churned soil.

I covered my mouth with a fist and bit down on a laugh. Oh yes, I quite liked Thom. On occasion, the gods were good.

Prince Adrinn rose swiftly to his feet and shook dirt from his dark hair. Peered over at me. I lowered my hand, but did not hide my smile. What would he do about it? Throw me in the dungeon for being content?

Of course, I did not attend these bouts to revel in the humbling of nobles.

I was here for Prince Renn, standing at the ready to ease away rising sickness and growing bruises, which Thom often remarked was highly unfair, but always with a grin on his face.

Whitestone had come two days out of the four, but I did not see him today.

Hopefully he was off attending the other two hundred residents within the castle’s walls.

Prince Renn sparred with two thirteen-year-old boys, one who was of a height with him.

He did surprisingly well for a newcomer, but I supposed he’d watched enough bouts, or perhaps read every published book on them, to have some idea of how to handle himself.

He ran through drills between the two boys, wooden blades executing mirrored, rehearsed dances.

Sweat glistened on the prince’s temples and wet the back of his shirt, but he kept up, and the pleasure of the fact radiated so much from him he seemed to glow.

I had to smile at all he had accomplished, and even felt grateful—though I would never admit it—to have been part of it.

Thom blew a whistle, signaling the time for combat.

One of the boys stepped aside and let the taller one spar with Prince Renn.

They started staring at one another, one hand behind their backs, dominant hand holding forth the sword.

The prince made the first move, knocking his opponent’s blade aside, then blocking the next strike.

They danced back and forth like this for about twenty seconds.

I watched their footwork, thinking how upon our first meeting, the prince had been awed that he could move his toe.

Now his feet moved in sync with the boy’s, quick and capable and—

I saw his foot slip and looked up just in time to see the boy’s wooden sword collide hard with the prince’s shoulder, sending him into the dirt.

The boy dropped to his knees immediately in apology, and I jumped the two log rails of the fence separating me from the training grounds, running to the prince’s side.

“—all right, it’s all right,” he was saying as I neared, wincing but with a wide smile on his face. It lit up his whole countenance, that smile. Like his features had been carved specifically to hold light.

I reached for him, but he waved my hand away.

“Your Highness?” I asked.

“I’m fine. Sore”—he winced again—“but fine.”

I nodded. “But I can—”

He held his hand out to his opponent. “It’s part of the process, isn’t it, Nym? I have to get better on my own, just like with danerin.”

His opponent clasped his hand and helped the prince to his feet.

I marveled at him, impressed at the ...

maturity of the statement. And, for a brief moment, wondered what he might have been like had he lived a normal childhood and adolescence, without sickness and injury holding him back.

Would he be arrogant like his brother, soft-spoken like his sister, or earnest as he was now, so desperate to please and to fit in, and yet kind to those most would see as beneath him?

He had not been so kind, before, I thought as I walked back to the fence. Then again, I had not known the prince well, before. I don’t think he really knew himself, either.

I supposed we were both getting to know Renn Reshua Noblewight better, bit by bit, day by day.

I was kneeling on the sofa the next day, dowsing as I did, when I heard the prince’s voice echo through the not-walls of his lumis, as though speaking to me through a closed door.

“What are you doing in there?”

I paused, but did not break the connections. Through all the many hours of healing, this was the first time the prince had ever tried to converse with me during it. “I, uh ... I’m stringing baubles.”

“Stringing baubles?” he replied distantly. “Like for the winter holidays?”

I rolled my eyes and put some webbing over another broken bauble, which was actually three separate pieces I’d already glued together. “Why don’t you come in here, and I’ll show you?”

“Show me how. Maybe I’ve been a healer all this time.”

I barked a laugh. “I highly doubt that.”

“What does it look like?”

I set the bauble aside and picked through a small pile of blue pieces. “It looks like someone trying to focus and being interrupted.”

He didn’t speak again for about a minute.

“I ... am painfully bored,” he admitted.

“Read a book.”

“I am tired of books. I’ve been reading all day.”

“Sounds truly terrible.” I did not bother pulling back the sarcasm in my voice. Watch it be just my luck that the queen walked in right as I spoke. Fortunately, she hadn’t.

“What is your clinic like, back in Fount?”

I spread out the blue pieces to better see their edges. Turned a few over to study them anew. “What?”

“Your clinic. Where you heal people. What does it look like?”

This truly was distracting. I picked up a few pieces, trying to gauge them by weight, and separated them into two piles of lighter and heavier. “I don’t have a clinic. I only make occasional house calls.”

He mulled this over. “Then your brother in the army, he ... farmed? And your other one, is his apprenticeship paid?”

I snorted. The tanner was a cheap, drunken man, but the apprenticeship would provide Dan with a good occupation and a good wage once he finished. “No.”

“Then how—”

“I’m a beekeeper.”

He laughed. Paused. “Wait, are you really?”

“You’re distracting me.”

“You milk bees?”