Healers (28 page)

Tarc squatted between them and said, “Just in case you’re having a hard time recognizing me, I’m the guy the barkeep sent you to rob. I trust you’ve learned your lesson?”

The two men grunted in the affirmative. “Good, I wouldn’t want to have to do this again.” Tarc, rifled their clothing, took their knives, stood and continued down the street with Daussie, turning toward the palace a couple of blocks further on.

“Mom,” Tarc’s voice spoke in Eva’s ear. “Any new developments?”

Eva whispered resignedly, “I suppose I can’t convince you to hit the road like I told you?”

“No.”

She sighed, “My two patients are doing pretty well. I haven’t heard anything further from the king. Where’s the rest of our family?”

“Daussie’s here with me. We’ve been walking around the walls tonight, getting the layout of the palace. Dad and Kazy are with the wagon, part way to Clancy Vail, the next town on the caravan’s route. Where’re your two patients?”

“The patients are two rooms down that way,” Eva said, pointing. “I’ve resigned myself to the fact I can’t keep you guys from hanging around here. But don’t do anything crazy! Even if they decide to keep me, I’m sure I’ll be able to get away from here after a bit. I’ll just lull them by cooperating for a while.”

“Sounds good,” Tarc said, “but I have a feeling you’d do just as well, trying to lull an alligator by massaging its tongue with your foot.”

Eva gave a despairing little laugh. “Maybe, but I think we should give them the benefit of the doubt.”

Tarc didn’t continue that conversation, instead saying, “Daussie says to tell you she’s sending her love.”

Tarc passed a couple of more messages for Daussie before they headed back to the tavern.

When they’d gotten halfway back to the tavern, Tarc stopped. “Daussie, I have a feeling we should try to break her out tonight.”

Tarc could feel her eyes on him even in the darkness. “She doesn’t want us to! Besides, how do you think we’d even do it?”

He turned and looked back toward the palace. “I could climb the wall…”

“It’s rough, but not that rough! Besides, the guards in those little cupolas would see you.”

Sounding a little frustrated, Tarc said, “Well, what’s your great idea? If they don’t turn her loose we’re going to have to get in somehow.”

Daussie turned and looked toward the palace herself. “Seems to me like we need some rope.” She turned to Tarc, “If we got a light rope, couldn’t you use your talent to guide it up to loop through two of the shooting notches? Then you could pull up a bigger rope.”

Tarc stared at her, embarrassed to admit he hadn’t given it enough thought to even consider the crenellations. “Where’re we going to get rope at this time of night?!”

“We’re
not
. We’ll buy some tomorrow if they don’t let her go. Can you think of any other supplies we might need?”

When Tarc and Daussie entered the door of the tavern he immediately saw the two men who’d tried to rob them. First a few, then many eyes turned to focus on Tarc and Daussie. For a moment he quailed, then deciding a bold approach would be best, Tarc strode over to the men who’d tried to rob them. Staring down at the leader of the pair, he said, “Hey!”

The man kept his eyes down in his beer. His friends at the table stared at the thief. None of them looked up at Tarc.

Tarc reached down and pulled up on the thief’s chin, “Hey!”

The man lifted frightened eyes, “Yeah?”

Tarc narrowed an eye at him and waited.

A few seconds passed; then the man said, “Yes sir?”

His friends glanced at one another in surprise.

Tarc said, “Did you tell your friend the bartender to make sure nobody messed with us?” he turned his eyes to stare at the man serving beer. Tarc’s head was facing left, but his ghost told him the muscles of the very large burly man just to his right were bunching in preparation to stand. Tarc focused his ghost on the man’s semicircular canals.

The thief said, “Um, no.”

The burly man began to rise from his seat, saying, “You ain’t…” Tarc backhand slapped him on the forehead while spinning the fluid in his canals. The big man continued to rise for another moment, but began leaning back and to his right. His chair went over. With a few stumbling steps the big guy pitched into the next table, knocking the drinks off of it, sprawling over a couple of men and landing on the floor in a familiar spread eagled pose. His head twitched a couple of times; then he puked.

Tarc’s icy blue eyes flashed as they swept the room, “Anyone else want to try it?!”

Startled eyes looked back at him, occasionally darting down to the huge man twitching on the floor. No one said anything

Finally, one said hoarsely, “How’d you
do
that?!”

Tarc put a sneer on his face, “
I’ve
been trained in the fighting arts of the
ancients
.” When no one else spoke, Tarc’s eyes went back to the thief, “You want to pass a message on to your friend the barkeep?”

“Um…” The thief’s eyes turned to the bartender, “Um, make sure no one messes with these two.”

Tarc now targeted the bartender with his gaze, “Got that?!”

“Um, yes sir.”

Tarc stepped toward him. The barkeep drew back a little, his expression apprehensive. Tarc said, “I’d imagine you aren’t going to charge us for the night, since you tried to have us robbed?”

The barkeep swallowed, “No sir.”

Tarc and Daussie turned for the stairs.

The room remained silent until they’d ascended.

Up in their room, Daussie said, “How did
you
get to be so intimidating?”

Tarc let out a long shuddering breath, “Seemed like the situation
called
for intimidating.” He sat hard on the edge of the bed, then flopped limply back.

“Yeah,” Daussie snorted, “
intimidating
. Well, at least I won’t be very worried
those
guys’ll try to sneak up the stairs after us tonight.”

Tarc sighed, “You’d think, as tough as the law is here in Realth, we wouldn’t find a whole tavern full of criminals.”

“The law’s only tough if you get caught. I have a feeling the guardia’s a lot better at catching drunks than they are at catching robbers…”

***

The next morning, Tarc and Daussie arrived at the palace wall early. They immediately sent their ghosts in to check on Eva’s patients. Neither of the men was feverish, though their wounds were somewhat warm. Without being able to assess the redness or tenderness it was hard to be sure how the men were doing, but neither had a collection of pus in their wound.

After speaking a few words to Eva, Tarc and Daussie wandered away. They didn’t want to spend the day loitering next to the palace wall so they began taking turns leaning up against a building nearly a block away where their ghosts could tell them when Eva or the prisoners were moved.

In late morning, a squad of four guards came to get the two prisoners, but they didn’t take Eva with them. Tarc wandered over and slowly strolled along the wall of the palace as he followed the two prisoners being moved across the palace to the same courtyard where Eva had first treated them.

When they arrived in the courtyard, the king sat eating breakfast again. Tarc sent his ghost in to listen.

“How do they look?” the king asked, apparently speaking to one of the guards.

The head guard shrugged and said, “Better than I expected.” He chuckled, “The way that gross shit smelled when it came out of his leg the other day, I thought this one would be dead by now.”

Tarc sensed the obese king getting up and wandering over to look at the two prisoners, “Turn around,” he said.

The two men slowly turned around. The king grunted then turned to the head guard. “All right. Lock them back up and send a squad out to the caravan to bring in the healer’s family.”

“Do we arrest them Sir King?”

“Not unless they refuse to come.
Invite
them. Tell them I’d like to
hire
the woman as a healer and would like to have them here for the negotiations.” He shrugged, “
Then
, if they refuse to come, arrest them and drag them in.”

One of the other men who’d been attending the King spoke up, “Sir King, are you sure you want to be treated by a healer whom you’ve coerced? It would be awfully easy for your healer to poison you.”

He grunted, “Not if she knows that when I die, she dies.
And
that I’ll cut off one of her children’s fingers if I even get sick.”

The man shrugged, “Granted.”

The king wandered back over and picked up another tidbit off his table. He and the other man began discussing taxes.

Tarc started angrily back around the palace to tell Eva and Daussie what the king had said.

“I
knew
we should have broken Mom out last night!”

Daussie regarded her brother for a moment. “You didn’t
know
! And, we
didn’t
have the equipment. You need to be figuring out how we’re going to get her out
tonight
, not complaining about how we should have done it last night!”

A muscle twitched in Tarc’s jaw for a moment, then all the tension drained out of him. “You’re right. Sorry. We need rope, what else?”

Daussie leaned against the rail, just around the corner from the palace. Her better sensitivity made her the obvious choice to spy on the king. Besides, even dressed as a man and speaking in as deep a voice as she could, she wouldn’t be a good choice to go around buying the supplies they thought they needed.

She’d checked on their horses and made sure they’d gotten some oats before coming back to the palace. Then she’d started monitoring the king, easy to recognize among the denizens of the palace because of his size and weight. The man turned to one of his sycophants and said, “It’s been quite a while since that troop of soldiers went down to get the healer’s family. What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure, Sir King. Do you want me to send someone after them?”

“No, bring me those two new girls. If the squad’s not back by the time I’m done, then we’ll worry about it.”

A sick feeling settled into Daussie’s stomach. Despite the fact the girls’ fate would be the same, whether or not Daussie’s ghost observed, watching whatever the king was about to do to them without intervening seemed horribly wrong.

Yet, what could she do?

Her mind raced.

A few minutes later her ghost sensed a couple of young women being pulled into the room where the king sat. She briefly hoped they’d been brought to the king for some innocent purpose, but then one of the girls cringed away from the king. A guard held her there. The other girl fought frantically to get away from her guard. He managed to hold her, though with some effort.

Daussie got up and started walking towards the palace wall.

David hated this part of his job. He’d joined the guardia for the pay and for an opportunity to right some of the wrongs he’d seen perpetrated by the guardia in the past. Unfortunately, at present he was merely a guard first class, subject to orders. So far he didn’t have the power to change any of the things the guardia did. He told himself that, for now, he had to follow orders no matter how despicable. If he obeyed orders and rose in the ranks, then someday, he
would
change things.

Being chosen to serve at the palace had seemed a great boon at first. He’d thought he would just be guarding the king and the palace grounds. He wouldn’t have to participate in some of the terrible things the guardia often inflicted on the common people out in the city.

Then he found out the rumors about their King and the young women the guardia seemed to arrest so often on mere trivialities were really true. The king claimed he was only exercising something he called his “droit du seigneur.” This was the second time David himself had been ordered to bring some of the young female prisoners before the king. The girl he’d brought into the king’s room was thrashing about and fighting hard. David found it difficult just keeping her from escaping. Worse though, was the girl Herman had brought into the room. Her family lived near David’s family out in the city. She’d sunk to the floor in despair, tears trickling down her cheeks and her eyes focused on David. The pleading in her eyes was breaking his heart.

I’ve
got
to do this now.
David reminded himself, looking away from the girl.
Someday! Someday I’ll be promoted to a position where I can change things…

Suddenly, the king bellowed. At first, David’s spine stiffened in fear.
Is he mad I can’t seem to control the girl I’m supposed to be holding?

He turned. The other guard had the girl’s shift pulled up. He was holding her down and the king had been pulling his pants down and getting into position. The king wasn’t looking at David and David wasn’t sure why the king was yelling.