Healer's Touch

by Deb E Howell

  HEALER’S TOUCH

  DEB E. HOWELL

  www.kristell-ink.com

  Copyright © 2012 by Deb E. Howell

  Deb E. Howell asserts her moral right to be identified as the author of this book

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-1-909845-07-7

  Cover art by Matt Donnici

  Maps by Evelinn Enoksen

  Kristell Ink

  An Imprint of Grimbold Books

  4 Woodhall Drive

  Banbury

  Oxfordshire

  OX16 9TY

  United Kingdom

  www.kristell-ink.com

  To my parents

  Robyn & Alan Thomson

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  Llew didn’t break stride as she kicked the empty glass bottle aside, barely giving it a thought. Litter was the least of the hazards in Cheer’s streets at night. She walked with her head down, hands thrust deep in the pockets of her coarse brown trousers, blending in with the evening’s wildlife. With hair in dire need of a trim, there was always a risk that the disguise wouldn’t hold – but it only had to hold until she got home. She would cut the offending locks in the morning.

  A commotion broke out up ahead at Camille’s Cathouse. Some john lacking the financial means to sate his desires by the looks and sounds of it. Perhaps he should have thought about that before buying such a large bottle of whisky. The town’s men hunted gold by day, oblivion and pussy by night, and sometimes the two nocturnal aims conflicted. Both could spell danger for Llew.

  She approached the still cussing man, stepping into the road to give him a wide berth. At this time of night at least one didn’t need to be so cautious about steaming piles in the middle of the dusty streets; all the horses were asleep in their stables or paddocks, or waiting lazily outside a bar or brothel.

  “Out for a good time, boy?” The old coot stepped in front of Llew, stopping her in her tracks. “I’ll share one wi’ yer.”

  Llew tried to side-step him, but he shadowed her movement.

  “It’s still five miras each. Two men, ten miras.” The half-dressed madam on the porch folded her arms across her chest and stared down at them.

  “You said five miras per girl. We only need the one.” His arm snaked across Llew’s shoulders drawing her in to him. If she hadn’t already been cursing staying out late with Kynas, she sure would have started now. “What d’you say? I’ll let you go first. I won’t even watch. Sure you won’t mind me listenin’, though.”

  Llew struggled to find her voice – her deeper, more boyish voice. She shook her head.

  “Five miras per . . . service.” The woman’s eyes narrowed. “You want cheap, Renny, you go down see Hedy’s girls. They’ll look after you real nice.”

  “Aw, but Hedy don’t have your wee Tamra.” Renny pulled Llew closer to his mouth. His breath reeked like it was coming from the other end of his body. “Wee Tamra’s my favourite,” he confided in a loud whisper.

  “Tamra’s busy, anyway. Now scoot.” Camille waved the back of her hand in a brushing motion at Renny, dismissing him. “And don’t come back till you’ve got some cash.”

  Still clutching Llew, Renny waved his bottle, miraculously not spilling any liquor.

  “Oh, you’re a hard woman, Cammy.”

  “Better a hard woman than a limp dick any day, Renny.” The woman flashed a gleaming white grin at them. “Maybe next time you’ll rethink the whisky. Or at least buy it here. Then maybe we can talk discounts. Loyalty is rewarded at Camille’s.”

  “Oh, aye.” He turned Llew with him to dawdle back the way she’d just come. “Women, eh? Never give nothin’ for free.”

  Llew didn’t know anyone who gave anything for free, and didn’t see why the brothel girls should be any different.

  “Well lad, shall we try Hedy’s?” Renny squeezed again.

  Llew tensed the second his step faltered.

  He regained his composure almost instantly and squeezed her shoulders once more, this time looking down at the way her shirt bunched across her chest. Two small but distinct peaks appeared as her shoulders rounded under the pressure.

  “Well, well. Looks like my luck’s on the up ’n up.” His arm reached around her shoulders so his hand could feel the soft flesh beneath Llew’s shirt. He sucked back a glob of spit, took a swig from his bottle, and tried to bring her around in front of him. Llew pushed back and ducked under his arm. But he was quick and grabbed the loose waist of her shirt.

  “Hey! We was just gettin’ to know each other.” He tugged and Llew bounced against his chest.

  She used the momentum to break free of his grasp, turned and ran. The whisky hadn’t kicked in as much as she thought, because he was soon on her heels. She focused on keeping her line straight down the middle of the road. A straggling group of men leaving Polly’s Bar farther down the road made no moves to let her pass, seeming to find the spectacle of a young boy running from an older man interesting verging on downright hilarious. Some of them reached out to slow Llew, but they didn’t go so far as to stop her. Fearing that the men would turn on her, Llew didn’t plead for their help but pumped her limbs even harder, and a few moments later she was past them. Unhindered by the group, Renny caught up to her, knocking her into a narrow alleyway between McNulty’s Bar and Barber Pierson’s.

  The crash of the half-full bottle against the wall rang out as Llew fell to the ground. Quickly regaining her feet, she found herself facing jagged glass and Renny looking pissed off.

  “That bottle cost me a night with wee Tamra. Come ’ere,” he said, flinging both arms out in some sort of drunken embrace. He missed, but the bottle swung dangerously close and Llew hopped back deeper into the alley. “You owe me the price of a bottle o’ whisky, girlie. And maybe a bit more.”

  “You broke it, you drunk bastard.” Llew dodged the man’s next lunge and made a pass for the alleyway’s entrance.

  He brandished the bottle at her. “That ain’t the language of no young lady.”

  “Who said anything about being a lady?”

  They danced side to side, Llew looking for a gap, Renny blocking.

  “Oh, you like playin’ at it like a boy, eh? Well, I ain’t picky. Turn around, we won’t even have to take them pants right off.” He paused to grab his crotch.

  “Fuck you.”

  Llew lunged and Renny blocked her path again, grabbing her and throwing her back on the ground. He scrabbled at her feverishly, trying to get her trousers undone. Llew kicked wildly, she punched, she clawed, and when he hit her back she grabbed his
face, digging her fingers close to his eyes and returning the pain. Renny slashed at her with the bottle, slicing her shoulder. Llew pressed her hand against his chin, pushing him up and closing her wound. He screamed and slashed again, cutting into her arm. Llew grabbed his wrist, healing this new scratch.

  Renny cried out again and now swung the bottle blindly, hysterically, cutting Llew’s cheek, neck, chest, forehead, shoulder, ear, nose, eye, throat . . .

  Somewhere in all the chaos, a strange peace overcame her. She relaxed and let it take her.

  ***

  Llew woke to the scent of blood, the jaunty tinkle of a piano being played nearby, light spilling across a wood-plank wall, and a heavy feeling in her chest. No. Not in her chest. It was on her chest, and it was sticky and damp.

  Smell of blood. Heavy thing. Sticky and damp.

  She pushed up. The corpse – she couldn’t feel any breathing other than her own – lifted, teetered, and then the strength in Llew’s arms failed. She fell back and the body dropped down with her. A shudder ran through her body. A glass bottle smacked to the ground and rolled across the ground, scraping the stones. Dim candlelight from the uncovered window above reflected from its shattered edge.

  A broken bottle. The dead man.

  Remembered pain flitted through Llew’s mind. He had attacked her and now he was dead. The events between those two points were a blank. Her shirt was wet, almost certainly with blood.

  Mustering all her strength, she wedged her hands under the man’s shoulders and heaved again, pushing higher on one side. His shoulder slid to the ground, easing the weight off her. Bracing herself on her elbows, she kicked and slid, freeing her legs. Clambering to her feet, Llew shook herself, trying to rid herself of the dead man’s touch. Her near-white shirt looked black in the low light. Foul. Only slightly less so with the knowledge that it was her own blood. She could just make out his face, frozen in an expression of horror, in the flickering candlelight from the window above. There was no outward sign of injury Llew could see – apart from all the blood, of course.

  She couldn’t be found there with the body. The Farries would hang her without question. She turned and ran from the alley, emerging alongside the front entrance of The Diamond Duster, the last of Cheer’s bars to close for the night, and even then usually only at the Farries’ specific request.

  “Bit of a rough one, there, lad?” someone called after her.

  Llew kept to the shadows; not that there were many Cheer locals out this late in the dark folds of night, but she had no way to explain her blood-soaked state if she did run into anyone.

  The distance back to her hovel by Big River seemed greater than normal, but finally dusty dirt road gave way to swathes of tussock punctuated by the occasional matagouri or lancewood. She pushed her way through long grasses and past branches heavy with yellow bell-shaped flowers, now grey in the early morning light, past her thatched, thigh-high hovel, before pulling off her shoes at the stony bank and wading straight into the water, not bothering to remove her clothing. To have any chance of washing the blood from them, she would have to soak them now.

  The swift current carried away the sensation of the man’s weight lying over her even as it lifted the blood from her skin and washed it away. It was her blood. It was all hers. He had killed her, and now he was dead.

  She had never killed before. Probably because she had never died before. Healing, yes, she’d done that. She knew what must have happened, and yet couldn’t bring herself to admit it. Surely she couldn’t do that: she couldn’t come back from the dead. No one came back from death.

  She pulled the shirt over her head, then squeezed it under the water, rubbing it and rinsing it and rubbing again. The cold glow of dawn crept across the sky. And the browned blood could not be washed from the garment. She had left Kynas’ late, but not that late. How long had she lain unconscious – or dead?

  Llew cursed and threw the shirt to shore. She only had one other shirt, and she was almost certain it was getting too small. She would have to spend a good deal of her earnings on a new one, or take the risk of stealing more than her usual quota. But she maintained a quota for a reason. After all, she only needed what she needed, and being greedy got you caught.

  Already half undressed, she fought with her trousers until they jerked free of her body. They, too, were stained with her blood. Damn it! Clothing wasn’t cheap. She could feed herself for free, but if she wanted to mingle with the general public she had to buy clothes. While she knew how to use a needle and thread, her skills in that department only went as far as basic repairs.

  She dug her hands into the river bed and then, with handfuls of sediment, scrubbed the last of the blood from her chest, her face and her arms. Now acclimatised to the water’s chill, she waded in a little farther and dunked herself under, emerging a few seconds later to wipe her eyes clear of water and slightly-too-long hair trailing over her face. She pressed her feet through the muddy sediment, feeling it erupt between her toes, and took the time to appreciate the warmth beneath its surface. Strange how that little bit of heat always remained, somehow not leached by the rushing water above. Like her own sense of worth, somehow not drained by living beneath the flow of Cheer’s society.

  Cheer. Named for the happiness the first settlers experienced when they started digging gold. The gold was gone. As was the cheer. But Cheer remained.

  She peered at her hands in the rippling water. A man had died at her hands. But she had died at his hands first. It was little consolation, but it made forgiving herself easier.

  Her fingers began to tingle and sting from the cold and she made her way back to shore, wiped herself down with handfuls of grass, returned to her little hovel and wrapped her woollen blanket about her. Despite having spent however many hours unconscious, she needed sleep. There were only a couple of hours before the market started. She drifted off, revelling in the aromas of dew-soaked grasses, damp stones, and thyme.

  ***

  The heat of the sun on her otherwise frozen toes woke her. Llew lay there a few more moments, pulling the blanket clear of her legs, savouring the heat and drinking in the perfumed air. There was little in her life she cherished, but moments like these almost made everything worth it.

  She dragged herself from her bed, pulled on her clean shirt – which was a little too tight across the shoulders and hinted at the breasts she preferred to keep hidden.

  She sharpened her knife on a river stone, grabbed tufts of hair in her other hand and began hacking. The fringe had grown to her eyebrows and the sides were nearly covering her ears. Too long. She cared little for the end result – the less pretty the better. By the time she finished, the sun was well up. The market would be in full swing.

  She struggled into the damp pants, fastened her belt, and headed for town, hoping brown stains on brown material would pass unnoticed.

  The monthly market was one of the few times the people of Cheer really mingled and paraded. Women displayed their curves with cinched-in waists below elegant necklines, and men wore pressed shirts, trousers hooked up by suspenders, and vests decorated with gold chains and pocket watches. They preened and swaggered, yet still shared the street with the others who had arrived in Cheer too late to make their fortune. The predominant colour was brown in all its shades, with splashes of red, blue or yellow marking either a woman of class or a girl prospecting for tricks.

  Llew was invisible among the finery and silent amid the propositions.

  She had already collected three purses when something caught her eye. Two things, but there was only one she would be taking with her. That was a knife. It hung from a belt slung across a pair of trousers filled in a most tantalising way by a fine arse. She watched the way the folds of material moved and shifted as the owner passed by stalls selling every variety of produce from meats to baked goods, hand-made crafts, and even entertainment in the form of song or dance. If she walked about with a knife like that slung from her hip, people would reconsider pushing her in
to alleyways. She was halfway certain the knife’s finely carved ivory, or bone, handle had drawn her eye down first. A knife like that made a statement.

  She needed that knife.

  Her eyes trailed the handle everywhere it went. Her feet followed, and the rest of her body weaved its way between people and stalls. The arse and knife stopped. So did another street kid thinking he was in with a shot, and anger flashed through Llew. The knife was hers!

  Whipping round so fast she barely saw him move, the man bared his teeth and growled at the would-be thief, frightening the desire for the weapon right out of him. Side-on, Llew could see the man’s vest. A leather vest, heavy with smaller knives. Not small knives, just smaller than the one on his hip. She nearly reconsidered her need for the knife, but was convinced she needed it more than the man did. He did, after all, have all those others at his disposal.

  The boy stammered out an apology. Released, he ran with absolutely no care for who he bumped into along the way. So unprofessional.

  The long-haired man in his dusty black, wide-brimmed hat turned and muttered something to his curly-haired companion. Both men laughed and turned their attention to a stall selling a range of meaty nibbles. Llew moved closer.

  It was hard to stay inconspicuous. People divided around her, she was like rock poking through water’s surface. While extra height had its advantages, it was beginning to get ridiculous. Llew was keeping pace with most of the boys she knew, and despite most girls her age having matured a couple of years earlier, she only seemed to be getting taller and a little broader. No worthwhile breasts, though, damn it, just enough to compromise her pose as a boy.

  As if to rub it in, a stylish dress with a tasteful neckline cupping two beautiful, rounded breasts, hooked Llew’s attention on its way past. It disappeared back into the crowd and she looked down at her own shirt that hung almost straight down – straight down enough, for nearly everyone to assume she was a boy; which was fine by Llew, really, it was. A girl her age, with no parents, was better off being seen as a boy in a place like Cheer. Still, it didn’t stop a small part of her coveting the chance to wear a pretty dress one day. One day. Not today, though. Dresses tended to lack pockets.