Healer's Touch (35 page)

Even as Llew had the thought to test the other, Braph lunged to hold her in place.

“Chains! Get the chains!” he called, and Nilv dashed from the room as fast as his old, stiff body could move.

Braph slapped Llew’s free wrist back onto the chair and got a hold of the other as the leather stretched, before it broke. He pressed down on both arms with all his strength, his face barely more than an inch from Llew’s. They glared at one another.

Somehow Llew was succeeding against Braph too; she had lifted her arms about an inch. But Braph had the advantage as he leaned over her pressing down while she was seated pressing up, and eventually her muscles failed and her arms slapped down on the wooden chair arms.

Nilv returned, a length of heavy chain clinking in his grasp. He brought it to Braph, caught one end on a hook in the floor and started wrapping it around Llew. Braph took over once her first arm was secure. He didn’t break eye contact while he worked. Now and then his eyes narrowed. He connected the end of the chain to another hook, then he and Nilv conducted the spider devices in their dance again.

This time, Llew wore a dress from the selection Braph had provided for her. She pressed her thighs together against the probing of one device, but it clung to the top of her leg and plunged its long needle into a vein. Llew’s efforts to prevent it were completely ineffective. She didn’t want to satisfy Braph by crying out, thinking he might be just twisted enough to find pleasure in it, but she couldn’t help herself.

Nilv left the room again and returned minutes later, dragging a skinny lad behind him. He led the boy to the other chair on the raised platform and secured him with leather straps. The boy tugged listlessly at the restraints, but soon gave up the futile efforts.

Braph had been right, the thigh veins were good; the spiders filled quickly, scuttled off and were replaced by new, empty devices; within minutes Llew felt faint.

Turning a large cogged wheel, Nilv drove the boy’s hand out toward Llew, flipping levers and spinning wheels so that the chair’s arm itself extended and turned, bringing the boy’s hand to rest under Llew’s fingers.

“No!” She tried to protest, but struggled to take breath enough to project her voice. She was so
tired.
Her fingers twitched from the strain of trying to raise them, to twist them away from the boy’s hand, but they hardly moved: she was too weak. At the turn of another wheel, his hand rose until it touched hers and her fingers clenched around his. She had no power to fight the reflex, and could only look at the boy and mouth, “I’m sorry.”

At first he didn’t seem to understand, but as a warm tingling spread up Llew’s arms, shock and horror contorted his face. Blood flowed from Llew into the glass baubles on the spiders’ backs, but her body now replaced it at the same rate, if not a little faster. She watched the boy pale, his lips dried and began to crack and his body slumped with fatigue; when the light began to dull from his eyes she turned away. She was killing him. No, Braph was killing him, through her. It didn’t take much to realise that Braph would have felt no need to kill the boy if it wasn’t for Llew, though. Her power killed.

She used to think it was handy being able to heal a small scratch with ease. Sure, she’d been curious watching the other kids pick their scabs to make them bleed again, but that curiosity had never extended so far for Llew to allow her own wounds to scab. She had also seen kids sitting on the sidelines, unable to play because of this sprained ankle or that fractured wrist, worries Llew never had. But now she had worries a-plenty. She’d take all the sprains and fractures of all the kids she’d known not to be in Braph’s chair. Not to have killed that little Aghacian girl. Not to be killing this boy.

No wonder her father looked so haggard, if this was what he had been going through for the past six years. The guilt alone was too much. And while Llew had always assumed her healing power worked perfectly, despite its obvious downside, she now wondered if it took its own toll.

She hadn’t seen Nilv leave the room, but now he re-entered, this time with a girl.

Llew shook her head: one had been more than enough. Why couldn’t he just drain her and let her heal as she had the other day? It was only a matter of regenerating blood, she didn’t need to heal from others.

“No, no, no, no! Please don’t make me.” She clenched her fingers, and flinched as her skin stretched around multiple pin pricks. Blood dribbled from several holes, and another critter-like device scuttled over her, sucking up the trails so that no blood would be wasted.

“You really shouldn’t move while they’re doing their work.” Braph’s voice caressed her, one more horror; his voice was so silky smooth, it was sickening. “Think of it as doing Duffirk a favour,” Braph said as he wound the boy’s arm back in and unbuckled the pale, limp wrists. The spidery devices continued to climb over Llew, stick her with needles, fill, and scuttle away. “I’m sure you know how it is, Llew, having been a child of the streets yourself.” Braph dragged the boy’s body from the chair and dumped him on the floor then helped Nilv strap the struggling girl down. The girl had already seen enough to know what was coming. Her bare feet scrabbled for purchase on the stone floor, but between Braph and Nilv there was no escape. She screamed at them, a chilling sound surprisingly lacking in fear, yet loaded with hatred. Braph shut her up with a back-handed slap.

Llew already felt weak again, with her mind barely able to register that these were kids just like her, fighting to survive each day.

“You can’t . . . ” Her voice trailed off and she struggled to keep her eyes open. Her arms hardly moved when she called on them to fight against the restraints. She hated her body for being too weak to fight. She hated her power for being so destructive, yet so desirable to those who cared little for its negative consequences.
No room for self-pity, Llewella. It never gets you anywhere
. A snort escaped her. She wouldn’t be going anywhere, self-pity or no.

“In fact, you could think of it as helping the kids themselves,” Braph continued. “You know the misery they live day-in, day-out, after all.”

The squeal of metal on metal rang out over the background ticks and scrapes as the chair arm wound out again. This time Llew didn’t look at the girl,
couldn’t
look at her. This time, she wept. The girl’s ghi swept through Llew, feeding her tears.

She couldn’t live like this.

Something behind Llew made an incredible hiss and Braph walked back to it.

“Well, well,” he breathed.

“What is it, master?” Nilv asked from his post by the captives.

Llew sensed Braph step up beside her.

“Open your eyes and take a look at this,” he said.

Even if she had opened her eyes, Llew wouldn’t have seen much. Tears filled them and streamed down her face. But she wouldn’t look.

She wouldn’t live like this.

“It’s so dark, master.”

“Isn’t it?” Braph sounded annoyed. “Open your eyes. Open them!” His hot breath washed over Llew’s face as he leaned in close to her.

Llew blinked her eyes open, her vision blurred and streaky. Braph wiped a leather-clad thumb across one eye and her brain made the necessary adjustments to combine the two versions of the world before her: one clear, one smeared.

She hadn’t noticed, but the spiders had completed their task, and now not one clambered over or pricked her. Braph held a deep purple crystal clasped between the tips of a pair of metal tongs.

“That’s what you made today,” he said, as if she should be proud of herself. He held another crystal out between the gloved thumb and forefinger of his other hand. “This is what you made on your first day.”

Repulsed yet fascinated, Llew examined the two crystals. The one in the hand was purple, too, but it was slightly redder and paler than the freshly pressed one, which was the same hue as the one she had from her mother, though it still held its lustre. Why such different colours between the two crystals from herself?

The final breath hissed from the girl and Llew clamped her eyes shut, turned away and swallowed down her revulsion. She heard Nilv winding the girl’s arm back, but she didn’t open her eyes. She wanted to be sick.

“Not even curious as to why?” Braph asked from close by her ear.

“No,” she snapped. Of course she was, but she was afraid she’d already guessed right, and knew it would mean a repeat of this type of blood-letting session if the darker crystals gave Braph even more power.

“Your mother produced these for a while. Not quite as dark. They were . . . addictive.” Llew sensed Braph’s smile. “It’s okay, Llewella.” That made her turn to him, eyes open. How could he think any of this was okay? “Your mother took a while to get used to it, too.”

“Did she ever?”

Braph’s lips twitched, almost releasing the sneer. Llew’s mother would never have loved this man. He pocketed the crystals and Llew was returned to her room, the chain only removed when she was inside. The door closed and the lock clicked.

* * *

Llew read for a while until her brain suddenly clouded over and she had to put the book down. She didn’t even have the wherewithal to place it on her bedside table, she just let it fall beside her feather pillow. She closed her eyes and let out a deep sigh. She might as well sleep. There was little else to do.

A floorboard creaked in the hallway outside and Llew’s eyes snapped open. The house filled with a cat’s wail. No, not a cat, the baby – but it always sounded so cat-like at first. A woman’s voice, sharp and then soothing, but loud enough, trying to be heard over the ululation. But why would Braph have a child in the house? The sick thought entered her mind that it could have been Braph’s own child by her mother, but she clamped down on it. Besides, there was another woman in the house. She could just as easily be the mother.

Another creak. The door clicked. Llew couldn’t move.
Click
, and the door creaked open a little.

Llew’s head felt too heavy to lift, but angling her eyes down she caught the reflection of light off Braph’s eye. Braph pushed the door open, stepping into the room and coming to sit on the edge of the bed by her thigh. The soft bed sunk under his weight. Llew’s hip slid, braced by his backside. He smiled and reached a hand across to her other leg, sliding the hem of her dress to mid-thigh.

Llew’s skin tingled, initially from the pleasure of touch and then from revulsion at who was doing the touching. For the first time since entering the room, he looked directly at her. But, to Llew, it was like he wasn’t there at all. His mouth smiled at her while his eyes were empty, seeming to look past her, seeing something, or someone else entirely. In colour and shape, his eyes were almost identical to Jonas’, but when Jonas looked at Llew, he looked at her like no one before. He saw her, he accepted her, and he asked her to accept him.

Braph’s hand squeezed her thigh, bringing her abruptly back into the moment. She lifted her arm to brush his hand aside, but her arm didn’t, in fact, move. The fog had cleared from her head and settled, instead, in her muscles. Her shallow breathing quickened, and her heart raced. She knew why he was there.

“No.” But no matter how hard she thought about moving, her body wouldn’t obey.

Braph stood and bent over her to slip her underwear down her legs. She would never get used to the feel of the billowy knickerbockers, but she didn’t want to be without them, not now.

No. No. Stop.

He loosened his belt, the light rattle of the buckle assaulting Llew’s ears, filling her whole being with dread. Her face grew hot. She wanted to run. At the very least, she wanted to squeeze her thighs together, but her own body betrayed her, lying helplessly relaxed, as though waiting patiently.

Sweat shimmered on Braph’s forehead. Llew knew he was doing something to her, but that knowledge did nothing to help her fight it.

“Touch me and one of us is going to get hurt.” So, he’d opted to allow her speech. She’d make him regret it. “Traditionally, it’s not me.”

“I’ll be gentle.” His lips twitched and his eyes squinted briefly. In that moment he looked so much like Jonas that Llew had to turn her head, swallowing down the lump in her throat.
Damn it
. She felt so weak. She stared at the dark, bare timber wall, studied the knots in a couple of the planks, noticed how similarly shaped they were, and wondered if they came from the same tree. Likely so.

Braph pushed his trousers to the floor, the leather creaking and rasping over hairy legs, and again the belt buckle squeaked, metal-on-metal.

“If you’re smart, you won’t touch me at all.”

The planks that made up the wall were so straight. Llew didn’t think she’d seen wood cut quite so perfectly. She wished Braph had pictures on the wall. She would study his metal cogs right now, if he’d seen fit to decorate her walls. But evidently he didn’t trust her with such potential weapons.

She felt the bed tip as he clambered on hands and knees and slid her legs either side. She imagined herself grabbing a cog off the wall and slashing at him with it, maybe slicing his throat; that should do the job, though it would be messy. She could handle a little blood . . . But the wall was empty, and her body limp.

“Whatever you think you had with my mother, I’m not her.”