Agna had looked forward to her overseas assignment for the last four years. It was just a side project on the way to taking over her father’s art agency, of course, but she eagerly awaited the opportunity to use her education and prove that studying to be a magical healer had been worthwhile.
Keifon never wanted to leave home. His choice was bleak: ship himself overseas, or be shut out by the man he loved. But he followed the gods’ will. He only wanted to spend some time alone, make himself useful to the foreigners as a medic, and make up for the things he’d done.
Two strangers, two years, one mission: Travel the back roads of an unfamiliar country and heal those who need to be healed. Including, perhaps, themselves.
The Healers’ Road
by S.E. Robertson
Cover art © RLSather. Cover titles by Emily C. Bua.
Published October 2014. Last update: January 2016.
Visit www.serobertsonfiction.com for updates and extras.
The Balance Academy Continuity:
The Healers’ Road
The Healers’ Home
For Jay, who always believed.
Part 1
Agna: Arrival
Agna stood outside a stranger’s door. She had brought along her old friend Rone’s most recent letter, slipped safely into an inside pocket. Now, as the lamps flared to life in the houses up and down the street, Agna decided that she had been childish to carry the letter along. She had come halfway around the world to serve her time as a charitable agent; she couldn’t indulge in silly things like carrying a letter like a talisman.
She was having quite a bit of trouble knocking.
The windows of this house were half-lit, as if by a lamp or two deeper inside the rooms. Rone must have been reading a novel or some philosophical text after dinner. Agna wished she were back in her dormitory room, reading after dinner. Even a quiet night back at the hotel would be an improvement over lingering on the street. Agna’s skin felt as though it had absorbed salt all through her weeks at sea, and she hadn’t been able to scrub it out.
She tapped her knuckles against the wood, then, noticing a brass knocker, gave it a couple of firm knocks. She remembered how to breathe. Rone had said he’d missed her, in his letters; he’d be as happy to see her as she was to see him.
The stranger’s door opened, and a stranger looked out. An adult – his chin was scruffed with the beginnings of a beard. The authority of the Academy shored up her nervousness. Standing up this straight, her head would have reached the stranger’s chin. “I am Agna Despana, healer of the Church of the Divine Balance,” she declared in carefully studied Kaveran. “Is this the residence of Rone Sidduji?”
The stranger’s mouth quirked. “Yeah. He’s working at the moment. You’re one of his little sisters?”
Agna felt her ears pink at the term. “Not literally, no. At the Academy, he was my mentor.”
“Right, that’s the one. Come on in if you like. Tea?”
Agna hesitated. She had received letters from this country for four years, but it still seemed as though Rone should live in the upperclassmen’s dormitory at the Academy, or in the Islander neighborhood with his parents. It seemed wrong that he lived in this bearded man’s house, where one could just invite a visitor in and make tea.
She thanked the stranger and followed him inside.
In the vestibule, she remembered to take off her shoes. The stranger had gone on ahead. She padded after him, her silk-clad feet slipping on the polished floorboards. The fireplace was unlit, leaving the room in the chill that seemed to pass for early spring in this country. The stranger – Rone’s friend, somehow – clanked around in an adjoining room, pumping water, lighting the stove. Agna clasped her hands behind her back, tried not to nod in exhaustion, and waited.
He’d said that Rone was working. So he’d taken the evening shift at a shrine. That was, as usual, selfless of him. She wondered whether she should drop by the shrine tonight, or come back here in the morning.
Agna cast a look around, gathering what she could about the state in which her friend lived. It was a humble city house, no more than three bedrooms. It had a modern kitchen with an indoor water pump, by the sound of the Kaveran’s preparations. There were bookshelves along most of the walls, and the floors were clean and polished. It wasn’t so different from Rone’s parents’ house in Murio: small and vicariously embarrassing, but safe.
Eventually, the bearded man came back with a pot of tea and two cups. “No doubt you’ve guessed already, but I’m Tenken Grim.” He set the pot on the table on one side of the room and waved at the chairs.
Agna took the seat that Tenken Grim did not claim for himself. “Yes. Rone mentioned you. Pleasure to meet you.” She thanked him for the tea and waited for it to steep. The scent of the leaves rolled up from the hot water – Kaveran tea, that dark, acrid stuff, not Nessinian herbal tea. They’d served it in the hotel, too.
“Do you take it with honey like he does?”
Agna’s throat constricted, remembering Rone’s over-honeyed cups of tea, crowding in with their textbooks and notes. Honeyed verbena tea for Rone, cold mint tea for Esirel, hot chamomile for Agna, at the last table along the right-hand wall in the Direzzo Café. Once a week for four years, the three of them had met to study, until Rone had graduated. And now Agna and Esirel were off in the world, too. It might be a long time until they all met again.
Agna found her voice and held it steady. “No, thank you.”
“Hm.” Tenken’s solid brown hands cradled the teacup, soaking up its heat. “Always wondered whether that might be a Nessinian thing, or just him.”
Agna’s laugh hurt a little. “Just him.”
Tenken seemed to lose himself in thought. Agna watched the drifting tea leaves. All she wanted was to ask about Rone, to make sure he was well, to grasp some sense of his life in this place. Yet asking might look desperate and immature. The thought of this stranger’s disapproval – or, worse, amusement – made her jaw tighten. She shouldn’t care. But she would rather ask her old friend personally. She knew she could trust him, and he was too noble to think ill of her.
She swallowed. “So... where is the shrine, if I might ask?”
“The shrine?” the Kaveran echoed. “Well, there’s one up in Prisa. Three days’ ride from here.”
Agna squinted, parsing the answer. “Does he travel back and forth, then?”
“Rone? No – well, he went up once for a festival.”
“I thought you said he was working.”
“Yeah. He works a lot of places. Three jobs right now, I think.”
“But...” She swallowed the rest of her protest. Rone was the greatest swordsman in his year, if not the greatest ever. He was dedicated to the service of his Church and its missions. That was why he’d come here originally, on his own assignment. Now that he was finished, why would he work all over the city, like a common ditch-digger? This foreigner didn’t understand. But the point was that Rone wasn’t here, and that she had come here for nothing. Here to this house, she reminded herself. Not here to this country. No need to jump to such conclusions yet.
She sipped her bitter tea. There was nothing she wanted from Tenken Grim but answers, and she hated her own sense of desperation. She was out on her own now; she was supposed to be an adult.
Agna turned her questions over and over in her mind until they seemed innocuous, smooth as river stones. “So… how long does Rone intend to stay here?”
Tenken shrugged. “Until he makes enough to move out on his own. Doesn’t bother me. Nice to have some company.”
Until he can move out on his own, Agna noted, not until he can go back to Nessiny. She intended to ask Rone about that in her next letter. Perhaps his new roommate was mist
aken.
“You’re the healer, then?”
She looked up and squared her shoulders. “Yes, healer second order of the Academy of the Divine Balance.”
“And the other one was a swordmaster, like him.”
Agna chose not to take offense at the other one, as though she and Esirel were somehow interchangeable. “Yes. Esirel Relaska was his other – little sister, as you put it. She’s on assignment in Achusa.” She took a deep breath and sipped more of her tea. Her assignment was almost manageable compared to Esirel’s. Esirel was closer to home, true, but her term was four times as long. And Agna didn’t have a sweetheart to leave behind, of course. As much as it grated on her soul to be overlooked her whole life, Agna could at least take solace in having missed the traditional graduation separation.
“Going to work in one of the hospitals here?” Tenken asked.
Agna turned her cup around on the saucer. “It depends on the Benevolent Union. I’ll leave it up to them.” Like he did, she finished silently.
“Ah.”
Tenken was quiet as he drank. Agna struggled to the bottom of her teacup in silence.
At the end of it, there was nothing else to say. “Thank you for your hospitality,” she said, scraping her chair back. “Please tell Rone that I will be in town for four more days. I’m staying at the Bluethorne Hotel.”
“All right,” Tenken allowed. He saw her to the door. “Good to meet you, then. Safe travels.”
Agna fled into the strange city alone.
Keifon: Exile
Keifon watched the sky turn gray and pink and blue from the window of his room in the Benevolent Union base. After a week in Vertal, he had learned the layout of the neighborhood, and the positions of the restaurants and bars and theaters. He did not trust himself outside. It had not been this hard in a long time.
He read his Kaveran phrasebook again, dusting off the words that he had learned in another life. He read his other two books when he tired of that one. The sacred texts and the medical terms slid through his brain in the same way.
One day, after he had managed to get some sleep, he ventured out to buy cooking equipment. Buoyed by this small victory, he practiced the nanbur that had lain neglected on a side table in his room. His fingers flexed around the notes of the scales. The strings were still sound in this southern climate. The nanbur was undamaged by its time on the ship, crammed in next to him on a narrow bunk alongside sacks of wheat and bolts of silk. That was something. He should have left it with Nachi, so that she might grow up to learn how to play it and remember him by it, but he had lost his nerve.
He sat at the table later that evening to write a letter to Nachi – or to her mother, as Nachi was still learning to read. He had to believe that Eri would read it to her. She had agreed to let him visit on his way out of the country, though her eyes had betrayed her worry. He had not broken down in front of Nachi. He had put on a brave front for the last time he would ever see his little girl.
Remember me, he wanted to write. I know you’ll be nine by the time I get back, and you’ll forget you ever had a father, and maybe that’s for the best. Maybe you’ll have a new father by then. But don’t forget me.
He didn’t waste the ink. Have fun in school, he wrote. Listen to your mother and your grandparents. I love you. Always.
Keifon couldn’t cry afterward. He could feel for Nachi; he could love her and miss her. The rest was blank.
He tried to pray instead. He remembered the right words and the proper placements of his hands. The prayers echoed through his head. The gods didn’t hear him. They couldn’t. If the gods loved him, he would not be here. Kazi would not have sent him away.
It doesn’t mean I don’t love you, he had said.
It’s for our own good, both of us, he had said.
I know it’s sooner than we expected, but this is a perfect opportunity for you, he had said.
Someday I’ll make enemies, if I haven’t already, he had said. I want you out of harm’s way.
Keifon did not feel out of harm’s way. He felt very much under harm’s boot. He counted hours and waited. Four years. He couldn’t see the end.
Agna: The Golden Caravan
The world headquarters of the Benevolent Union were unassuming from the outside. Agna had mistaken the building for an inn the first time she’d visited, following the address that she’d been given at the Academy. But she had noticed afterward that the Benevolent Union’s sigil was carved into the sign over the door, and stitched into the jacket of the receptionist at the desk. She returned on the appointed day, feeling like an expert.
“Name and affiliation?”
“Agna Despana, healer second class, Church of the Divine Balance. I have an appointment,” she added. “With Agent Harnal.”
“Mmhm. Down this hall, third door on the right.”
Agna inclined her head and hurried past him. She closed her hands in her skirt as if to lift it out of the way of her shoes, wicking the sweat from her palms.
The Benevolent Union was a well-established charitable organization. The Academy would not partner with it if it weren’t competent. Its agents would find a fitting assignment for her abilities, something that would serve the people of Kavera and the missions of the Benevolent Union and the Church. She would join the long line of Academy graduates who had gone before her in serving, as Rone had.
Agna paused and steadied herself with a hand against a doorframe. She took some deep breaths and murmured a prayer, as Rone would have. “Let my hands and my mind serve the world’s need.” Agna had never been particularly observant, but it couldn’t hurt.
The agent’s office was a small room, and three walls were lined with bookshelves loaded with logbooks and bound papers. The only other furnishings were a massive wooden desk, with one chair behind it – where the intake agent studied some papers – and two chairs in front of it. Behind the desk loomed a noticeboard, as big as a banquet table, plastered with paper notes. As Agna peered at it, the chaos resolved into order: the notes were sectioned into columns, with subheadings under that. Over the largest divisions, she made out some names – Vertal, Prisa, Laketon, and Wildern, all Kaveran cities. Most likely, the notes represented the Benevolent Union’s openings at each location. Agna stared at the board. There were hundreds of notes. All of this happened in a mostly modern country, in peacetime.
The agent, a middle-aged Kaveran man, looked up and motioned to the empty chairs. “Do have a seat.” He spoke her native Nessinian quite clearly, despite his accent.
Agna sank into one of the chairs, as the grandiose introduction she’d planned – citing her honors, insisting upon the best of assignments, expressing her displeasure with being made to wait for days – withered in her mind. A familiar voice replaced it. That’s why the Academy exists. That’s why they send us out. Rone had been so proud to go overseas, to do his duty as a graduate. He probably hadn’t thought about his own importance. He had probably looked at that board and said Let me work wherever the need is greatest. Agna felt selfish and small. For all her accomplishments, she was still inadequate.
The agent paged through the file on his desk for another minute as Agna regained her bearings.
“So, Healer. I’ve read the Academy’s report on you. We’re glad to have more of the Academy’s graduates working with us. And healers are always appreciated.” He consulted a nearby logbook and dipped a pen in his inkwell. “Now. Do you have any requests for your assignment?”
Agna swallowed. Part of her wanted to ask where Rone had been assigned. Part of her wanted to beg to go home. She revised her goals for the conversation: don’t cry in front of the intake agent. And remember what Rone would do.
“Wherever I can be of use, sir.”
The agent smiled. “Well then.” He turned to untack a note from the board behind him. “We have a need for medical workers on one of our more challenging assignments. The Benevolent Union runs a mobile clinic that travels with a merchants’ caravan.” He found an
other sheet of paper among the stacks on his desk and handed it to her. Agna stared at it: a map of Kavera with a path traced over it, crisscrossing the network of canals that fanned through the country like the veins of a leaf.
The agent went on. “Some of the areas that it visits don’t have resident doctors or healers of their own, so it’s important to our mission to supply these places with medical care.” He paused, and Agna nodded, looking up from the map. She was listening, whether or not she understood fully yet. “It’s not more dangerous than any of our other details – though it is difficult. But it’s needed, and greatly appreciated.”
Agna found her voice. She sounded meek and distant to herself. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“Well. The caravan doesn’t have top-notch accommodations. They have water and various other conveniences, and the trading company will supply guards and transportation. The Union supplies you with some camping equipment and the mobile clinic. When the caravan sets up shop, you and your partner will open the clinic and treat anyone who comes to it to the best of your ability. When the caravan comes back to Vertal, we will account for the fees you’ve collected, all applicable taxes, and the expenses that the Union owes to the trading company. You’ll be paid out of the remainder.”
Money was not interesting in the slightest. He was getting off track. Camping? The world-famous charitable organization resorted to camping? Agna throttled her initial reaction. “...I have some questions. Please.”
“Go ahead.”
“When the caravan comes back to Vertal, you said – how long is it on the road?”
“The circuit is a year long. If you want to be reassigned elsewhere for your – second year?”
“Yes.”
“When the caravan comes back around this time next year, if you want to be reassigned, we can arrange for that.”
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