The Prison Healer

by Lynette Noni

  Gritting her teeth, Kiva sought distraction in her work. If she didn’t find a way to treat the stomach illness, there was a high possibility that she herself would get sick. If that happened . . . well, at least she wouldn’t have to worry about the Trials anymore. Nor would she need a rescue.

  With that grim thought, she pushed all her concerns aside and focused on her task.

  Hours went by as she prepared for and began dosing the rats, mixing small amounts of what she’d collected into her own food rations and dropping the offerings into the pen. While Kiva didn’t like testing live animals, she knew these rats were living on borrowed time. If Boots didn’t catch and eat them, then starved prisoners would. Either way, their fate was sealed.

  “What now?” Naari asked when Kiva had made sure all of the rats had eaten a traceable amount.

  “Now we wait.”

  The guard looked as if she wanted to ask more, but at that moment, Jaren walked into the infirmary, stealing their attention.

  Doing a double-take, Kiva demanded, “What happened to you?”

  Jaren raised his hand to his face, as if doing so would hide the impressive bruise darkening his eye. Or the graze on his forehead. Or his split lip.

  “Nothing,” Jaren answered. “How’d you go today?”

  Naari stepped closer and jabbed a finger toward Jaren’s wounds. “Your healer asked you a question.”

  “And I said it’s nothing.” Jaren strode by Tipp, playfully messing up the young boy’s hair as he passed, and then stopped when he was before Kiva. He looked down at the rats briefly before asking, “No problems getting your quarry samples?”

  Kiva studied his injuries, deciding that if he was capable of risking his life by brushing off the guard, he must not be too badly hurt. But given their environment, he would still need treating. “I’ll make you a deal,” she said. “You let me clean you up, and I’ll answer your questions.”

  Jaren cocked his head to the side. “Any questions?”

  “Just those two.”

  His teeth flashed in a quick smile. “That’s hardly an incentive. I have lots of questions. And you’re rarely in an answering mood.”

  “I’m not in an answering mood now.”

  When Jaren just continued looking steadily at her, Kiva weighed up how hard it would be to wrestle him into submission, and finally said, “Fine. But only if I get to ask questions, too.”

  His smile was wider this time. “I’ve never withheld answers from you before. You’re terrible at negotiating.”

  In response, Kiva simply pointed to the nearest metal bench. “Sit.”

  Jaren chuckled but did as ordered. Naari, however, looked about a second away from shaking an explanation out of him. The dark look on her face . . . Kiva couldn’t help wondering if maybe Naari did have feelings for Jaren, but her own code of ethics wouldn’t allow her to act on them. Or perhaps that same code of ethics meant she was still new enough at Zalindov to struggle with the brutality heaped on the prisoners, and seeing the evidence on Jaren’s face was enough to distress her. If so, she would need to grow a tougher skin, fast, or she wouldn’t survive much longer at the prison.

  Whatever the reason, Kiva knew an intervention was needed, so she quickly asked Tipp, “Can you go and tell Mot we won’t need him tonight, but I could still use his help tomorrow?” When the young boy nodded eagerly, Kiva turned to Naari and added, “Would you mind going with him? It’s getting late, and I don’t want him wandering on his own.”

  It was a poor excuse, as Tipp often walked around the prison alone, regardless of the hour. But given the attitudes of the guards lately and the growing dissent among the inmates in the wake of Tilda’s arrival—especially the rebels, who already had Tipp in their scopes—what Kiva had said was true, and Naari of all people knew that. The guard nodded her agreement, if stiffly. But that was likely also because she caught Kiva’s subtle wink, a signal that she would try and get Jaren to talk. Even so, Naari’s features remained tight as she left the infirmary with Tipp in tow.

  “And here I was thinking you were avoiding me.”

  Kiva turned to meet Jaren’s mirthful eyes. “Pardon?”

  “You. Me,” he said, waving a hand between them, lest there be any confusion. “We’re rarely alone. I figured that was your doing.”

  Inwardly kicking herself for sending away her two buffers, Kiva said, “We’re not alone now,” and looked to where Tilda slept on the far side of the room.

  Jaren followed her gaze. “Any improvement with her?”

  Kiva knew he wasn’t asking because he cared about Tilda. He’d made his feelings toward the Rebel Queen and her cause abundantly clear. But he did care about Kiva, and he knew that, for whatever illogical-to-him reason, she cared about Tilda. That it even meant anything to him—that she even meant anything to him—had her fighting to ignore the warmth spreading throughout her veins.

  “Is that your first question?” Kiva asked, knowing it wasn’t but also wanting to avoid admitting how concerned she was about Tilda’s lack of improvement. She’d hoped time would help, but the ill woman had been under Kiva’s care for three and a half weeks now, with little to show for it.

  Jaren studied her for a long moment, seeing everything she wished he couldn’t. As if knowing exactly what she needed him to say, he sent her a grin and replied, “Only if that’s yours.”

  Kiva turned away so that he wouldn’t see her lips curling up at the edges, and busied herself by collecting her medical supplies. When she returned to stand in front of where he sat perched on the bench, she reached for his chin and said, “Want to tell me how this happened?”

  “Uh-uh-uh,” he tutted. “I get to start.”

  “It’s usually ladies first,” Kiva said, turning his face to the side.

  “I took you as more of a liberal woman, the kind who’d scoff if I went all gentlemanly on you.”

  Kiva snorted. “Nice try.”

  “And besides,” Jaren continued jovially, “I’ve already asked my first questions.”

  Since Kiva had agreed to those, she dunked her cloth in salted water and said, “This’ll sting,” before pressing it to Jaren’s cut lip. While he was wincing away the pain, she told him about her day at the quarry, and how she’d actually enjoyed being in Naari’s company. He didn’t show any reaction to that—nothing to indicate his own feelings toward the guard—so Kiva went on to share how they’d come back and she’d begun testing Tipp’s rats.

  “How long will it take before they start to show symptoms?” Jaren asked, looking at the makeshift pen.

  “If they do,” Kiva corrected, since there was no guarantee the sickness originated in the quarry. “I’m not sure, but I’m hoping Mot can help me speed up the process tomorrow. He knows a lot more than me when it comes to experimental testing.”

  “Because he’s older?”

  Kiva shook her head, dunking her cloth again. “It’s always the case with apothecaries and healers. Apothecaries know so many different remedies, while healers know the bodies those remedies go into.” Seeing the furrow in Jaren’s brow, she tried to explain better. “If someone sick comes to a healer, we diagnose and then treat them with medicine, but rarely do we make it ourselves—a lot of what we use comes from an apothecary, or it’s an assortment of ingredients that we mix together based off an apothecary’s recipe. Their role is to make medicine, ours is to decide which treatment is needed and administer it.”

  That would be true in the outside world. Things were different in Zalindov, and Kiva often had to make do with what she had, creating her own remedies using the small medicinal garden behind the infirmary and whatever other supplies she could scrounge up.

  “So you’re saying that healers are the hands, and apothecaries are the brains?”

  Kiva scrunched her nose at his analogy, but said, “Close enough.” She began cleaning the graze on his forehead and added, somewhat musingly, “This is all common knowledge. I’m surprised you don’t know it already.”


  “I didn’t have much of a chance to learn about this kind of thing in my childhood.” Jaren shrugged. “My medicine always came directly from a healer, so I just assumed they made it themselves.” He gestured toward the workbench. “Like you do here.”

  His answer wasn’t surprising, since any good healer maintained a healthy stockpile of supplies. Kiva’s father had always kept more than he’d ever needed on hand, and was careful to do a regular inventory to avoid the risk of running out. That was something he’d repeatedly emphasized when she’d started under his tutelage: Better to be overprepared than underprepared, little mouse. If you get an influx of patients, it can mean the difference between life or death, so best to stock up whenever you can.

  What was surprising was Jaren’s lack of what Kiva considered general life knowledge, and she debated pressing for more details, but was unsure what to ask. She’d assumed for some time that he’d come from a wealthy upper-class family, but now she wondered if she’d been wrong. Perhaps the opposite was true, especially if his parents hadn’t hired a tutor to teach him such things. Maybe they hadn’t been able to afford one.

  “Well, now you know,” Kiva said in an upbeat voice, not wanting to make him uncomfortable. People—especially men—could react poorly if they thought their intelligence was being criticized.

  Setting down her cloth, she reached for her small pot of ballico sap and, without thinking, scraped some onto her finger and leaned forward to dab it onto his cut lip.

  Jaren sucked in a startled breath, and Kiva’s eyes jumped up to meet his.

  They were so close, her fingertip frozen on his lip.

  She had a split second to decide what to do. Part of her wanted to leap backwards and put as much distance between them as possible, but she knew how that would look, how he might perceive such an action, how telling it would be that she was so affected by him. So despite her entire nervous system being hyperaware of how—and where—she was touching him, she continued applying the healing sap to his wound with unhurried ease, willing the heat from her cheeks and praying to anyone who would listen that she looked more relaxed than she felt.

  “This isn’t too bad, so it should be better within a couple of days,” Kiva said, her voice half a note higher than usual. She cleared her throat quietly and was finally able to move her hand from his mouth, reaching toward his forehead. “This graze nearly touches the scar you got the day you arrived, but you’re luckier this time—it’s shallow and should heal without leaving a mark.” She gently smeared sap over the wound and, remembering the two dead men who had been delivered to Zalindov with him, added, “You never did tell me what happened. Or how you came to be here.”

  There was a small pause before Jaren answered, “I thought you said it was rude to ask people what led to their imprisonment?”

  His tone was joking, but there was a seriousness to his eyes, a warning that Kiva, despite her curiosity, decided to heed.

  “Fair enough. But what about today? Ready to tell me what happened?”

  She rinsed her sticky hand in the salted water and then walked over to the workbench under the guise of collecting some aloeweed gel. In truth, she needed a moment away from him, but she turned back again when he started talking.

  “I had a run-in with another prisoner at dinner, someone who claimed to be an old acquaintance of yours,” Jaren said, almost too casually. “I didn’t like the way she was talking about you, and her friends didn’t like when I asked her to stop. Things escalated until we were no longer speaking with words.”

  Kiva had been walking back toward Jaren when he’d begun speaking, but she’d frozen midstep halfway through his answer. “Please tell me you’re kidding,” she croaked out.

  Jaren pointed to his face. “Does it look like I’m kidding?”

  In a flat voice, Kiva stated, “It was Cresta, wasn’t it.”

  “Red hair? Snake tattoo?” Jaren asked. When Kiva nodded, he said, “That’s her. She likes to talk big but isn’t a fan of sticking around once the action starts.”

  Kiva already knew that much. Cresta was notorious for stirring up trouble and then letting others finish her dirty work, scrambling away before seeing any consequences herself. It was a miracle that Jaren and whomever he’d ended up in a fistfight with hadn’t been dragged away by the guards and sent to the Abyss for punishment. Or the gallows.

  “You’re such a fool,” Kiva hissed, stomping the rest of the way over to him. It took all of her healer training to keep her fingers gentle as she applied aloeweed gel to his bruised eye, being extra careful around the parts that were already beginning to swell.

  “Is that the thanks I get for defending your honor?” Jaren shot back, sounding indignant. “You should have heard what she was calling you.”

  “Zalindov’s Bitch? The Heartless Carver? The Princess of Death? The Healer Whore? The Prison Pus—”

  “Yes,” Jaren interrupted tightly, a muscle ticking in his cheek. “Among others.”

  “Trust me, I’ve heard them all,” Kiva said, applying more gel. “But you don’t see me getting in fights over them. Especially with the prison rebels. Gods, what were you thinking?”

  “The prison—” Jaren broke off with a curse. “Are you serious?”

  “As serious as death,” Kiva said flatly. “Which you need to prepare for, if they decide to paint a target on your back.”

  In a low tone, Jaren said, “I didn’t realize who they were.”

  “Cresta is their leader in here,” Kiva said, prompting  Jaren to swear again. Her gaze traveled over to Tilda, and she added, “You’re lucky they have bigger concerns than you right now, or your next stop would be the morgue.”

  A strained moment passed before Jaren quietly asked, “Doesn’t it bother you, what they say? Not just Cresta, but everyone? Doesn’t it hurt?”

  “They’re just words,” Kiva said, ignoring the pang in her heart. Of course it hurt. No one wanted to be known as a bitch or a whore or any of the other names that had been slung at her over the last decade.

  “They’re not just words,” Jaren argued. “They’re mean, untrue slanderings said by disrespectful bullies, and you don’t deserve to be treated like that. You’re losing sleep trying to help all these people, including Cresta. The least they can do is not publicly insult you.”

  Finishing with the gel, Kiva stepped back and said, “Shouldn’t that be for me to decide?”

  Jaren frowned. “What?”

  Kiva pointed a finger to her chest. “They’re saying those things about me. Shouldn’t I get to decide whether or not to punish them? Or do you think I’d have chosen to have you slam your fist into their faces just to prove an object lesson?”

  The gold in Jaren’s eyes blazed angrily against the blue. “You weren’t there.”

  “And you weren’t there for the last ten years of this happening,” Kiva snapped back at him. “You think I don’t know how to handle this by now? You think I haven’t tried retaliating and learned firsthand just how much worse that makes it?”

  Jaren had the decency to look ashamed, so Kiva made an effort to gentle her tone as she went on, “I’m touched that you were upset by what you heard, but I don’t need you fighting my battles for me. I’ve been here long enough to know that the best thing I can do is ignore it and act like it doesn’t affect me. They can say whatever they want—and nine times out of ten, they end up apologizing anyway, usually when they’re sick or hurt and realize I’m the only one who can help them. Not,” she added with emphasis, “that I would withhold treatment if they didn’t show remorse. Just that when they experience for themselves that I actually do care about them, they no longer take out their anger on me. Because that’s all it is, Jaren. They’re angry and upset and frustrated and helpless, like all of us in here. They just vent their emotions in the wrong ways.”

  Jaren said nothing for a long moment, but then jumped down from the bench as he asked, “I’m guessing Cresta isn’t one of the nine in ten?”

&nbs
p; Kiva didn’t need to confirm, though she did warn, “She’s dangerous. If you value anything I say, stay away from her.”

  “I value everything you say, Kiva.”

  The words were quiet, serious, and they caused Kiva’s eyes to lock on his, finding him looking back at her steadily, solemnly.

  Silence descended upon them as they stared at each other, both processing what the other had said. It was Jaren who broke it first, his voice filled with apology.

  “I’m sorry I acted like such a brute. It won’t happen again.” He didn’t break their locked gazes as he went on, “And just so you know, I don’t see you as some kind of damsel who needs rescuing. I’ve never met anyone stronger than you—not just because you’ve survived a decade in this gods-awful place, but because you’ve sacrificed your own needs over and over again to serve those around you, even—and especially—those who don’t want your help. So you’re right, you don’t need me fighting your battles.” He moved a step closer, his tone husky as he finished, “But . . . if you’ll let me, I’d like to be standing beside you as you fight them.”

  Kiva’s pulse was thrumming loudly in her ears. Butterflies swarmed in her stomach, bolts of electricity tingled her flesh. She didn’t know how to respond, could barely think over her physical reaction to his declaration.

  Careful. Careful. Careful.

  The words weren’t her father’s or her mother’s or anyone else’s. They weren’t from a memory; they were from Kiva to herself. Her one and only rule at Zalindov was to not make any friends, because she would almost always lose them. With Jaren . . . she wasn’t sure if it was friendship he was asking for or more than that, but either way, it was a line she could not—and would not—cross. No matter how her heart was beating, no matter how he was looking at her right now, waiting for her response, she couldn’t make any exceptions.

  “I—”

  I’m sorry, I can’t was what she’d been about to say, the words already forming on her lips. But before she could utter them, Tipp bounced back into the infirmary, followed closely by Naari, and Kiva lurched away from Jaren, dragging trembling fingers through her hair as she walked on wobbly legs toward the workbench.