Minh had smiled widely at her before he left, seemingly touched by the promise. The encounter had stirred a feeling inside her, not unlike her attachment to Lyshus, though with a human, she could never complete the bonding ritual of tribe to queen. She could not communicate with him telepathically, but that did not stop this feeling in her chest, that they had pledged themselves to each other. As Shi’a’na had collected many humans into her tribe, so Shiv felt connected to Minh, as if he was her tribe.
She tried to shake the feeling away as she went through the house lighting candles and lanterns. She took Little Paul and Lyshus to a long table near the front of the house and bade them sit and eat. She brought Evan’s bed to ensure all was well with him. Mila had already come to see him and told her Simon Lazlo was still at the temple. Shiv hoped he would be back before dark. His enemies could more easily hurt him in the night.
A worrisome thought. Shiv felt connected to him, too, but it seemed more personal than what she felt for Minh. Simon was connected to Shi’a’na, both in body and spirit. He was only a friend of Shiv’s body, though he also eased her mind. If she did not have the human children to look after, she would meet him, and they could keep a watchful eye together.
But his enemies might come here, too. If she had been alone, the thought would have excited her, but she remembered her anger at someone attacking Evan, her worry for Lyshus and Little Paul, and how hard it had been to carry all of them and her sapling. The house suddenly seemed too large, too dark. There were too many corners to hide in.
Feeling nervous, she called to her sapling and felt it totter forth from a bedroom upstairs.
Lyshus lifted his head from his meal and stared at her. The food was meager. He could not eat the breads and grains humans thrived on. Simon had gotten them some meat and plants, but not many.
“Soon, Lyshus,” she said. “There will be more meat.”
He wrinkled his nose, not understanding the words but appreciating the sentiment.
“I like pie,” Little Paul said. He had already eaten one of the sweet breads and reached for another.
She helped him take it. “It is good to be happy.” When he smiled, she knew she had done the right thing for him. “I must help my sapling down the stairs. I will return.”
Lyshus followed her, which meant Little Paul followed, too. Shiv sighed but thought on her earlier words. It was good to be happy, and if following her kept them happy, so be it. And Little Paul was human. Maybe thoughts of the wandering dead upset him as much as it did Minh, and he did not like to be alone. She mounted the steps to grasp the limbs of her tree. It slipped, and Shiv knelt to push it upright, not wanting it to fall. Lyshus darted under her, into the sapling’s path, and laid a palm upon the trunk.
“Lyshus!” Shiv said. “Back away. If it falls…” The words choked off as a new feeling raced through her, a jolt of energy that careened through her tree. The very air seemed to pulse, and the tree swelled under her hands, growing. Its branches creaked as it gained a full foot in height, becoming taller than her. With longer roots and branches, it steadied itself on the staircase and did not need her aid.
Shiv stared in wonder. The power had not come from her. She looked to Lyshus as he stood back, a grin on his lips that he turned on her, wrinkling his nose away. A shawness? Possible, but they did not show their powers until they could talk, could sing, and then other shawnessi taught them. Lyshus had not spoken a word. And she had never seen a shawness make a tree grow. She looked to Lyshus’s hair, still dyed, but she knew what lay underneath. He was a queen like her, but she could not make her tree grow through will alone.
But she was a queen born of another queen, and he was her tribe of one. There had to be a reason that even Shiv’s existence was counted as forbidden. Who knew what Lyshus could do with his will?
* * *
Simon had visited all the pregnant women in the temple again, making sure they were well. Thoughts of the one who’d died kept running through his head, but it hadn’t seemed right to ask her name, not from any pregnant women. He bet she was on all of their minds.
Pakesh followed him, looking bored, though he chatted from time to time with Jacobs. He’d been practicing keeping his own shields tight, putting Simon’s mind at ease while he focused on helping people. Night was beginning to fall, by the time Simon had checked on everyone; time to get home and relieve Shiv. He needed to look in on Victoria one more time.
Pakesh stopped him before he reached the door. “I smell smoke.”
Simon turned, and the acrid scent drifted across his nose, too.
“Cooking?” Jacobs asked.
“We’re a long way from the kitchen.” Maybe someone’s lantern had gotten away from them? Whatever the cause, Simon and the others knocked on everyone’s door as they went down the hall and told them to move toward the nearest exit.
“I need to make sure Victoria is all right.” Simon couldn’t stop thinking of the mother who’d died in childbirth. None of the others could die, not as long as he could help it. “Jacobs, Pakesh, maybe you should go.”
“Not leaving you, Doc,” she said.
Pakesh shook his head. Whether he didn’t want to abandon Simon or he was too afraid of his power getting loose, Simon couldn’t say, but he appreciated the company.
As they rushed, the smoke thickened, threading through the hall like wandering spirits. Simon pushed his sleeve to his nose and tried to fight down panic. He called for Miriam in his head, as loudly as he could, but he had no idea if he was getting through. He cursed his lack of telepathy, and not for the first time.
Jacobs called, “Fire!” as they broke into a jog. “Where is it coming from?”
Everywhere seemed the answer. A group of people were coming up behind them, all of them chattering in panic.
“Not this way!” Jacobs yelled. “We’re heading deeper in. Find a way out.”
“The entrance is on fire!”
“Damn,” Simon turned in a circle, trying to remember the way to the kitchens, the back door, but more people came down an intersecting hallway through a cloud of smoke.
“The kitchen is on fire!” someone yelled.
Both entrances blocked. Someone was trying to burn them alive. Simon’s stomach cramped, and he remembered the graffiti, the bottle.
“Go out the windows!” Jacobs yelled. “Wherever you can!”
Simon’s throat burned, and he coughed, using his powers to help himself, to help everyone. “Stay low!”
They opened doors and finally found a shuttered window. With a unified cry, a surge of people pressed toward it, but Simon spotted an orange glow around the edges and the smoke that billowed through the cracks. “Wait!”
Ignoring him, someone threw the shutters open, and fire billowed inside with a roar. The crowd staggered back, screaming. The courtyard was on fire, too.
“Enough!” Simon punched through the crowd with his power. Calming waves weren’t going to do the trick anymore. He interrupted them almost as much as he once had a group of attacking paladins, nearly shutting down their ability to produce and process fear.
“Everyone into the hall,” he shouted. “Macros, push away the smoke. Micros, use your power together to help everyone breathe. Telepaths, contact everyone you can find and tell them to look for a way out. If they can’t find one, come to us.”
Two people staggered out of the smoke ahead, Victoria and Miriam, supporting each other and a crying baby Evelyn. Simon cleansed their fatigue and the damage done from the smoke. They stood straighter and picked up speed, joining the crowd.
Simon breathed a sigh of relief. “Victoria, can you put this fire out?”
“All at once?” She shook her head. “But I can help as we go.”
Simon heard the flames outside crackling up the walls, blistering the paint, creeping inside. The group moved slowly as everyone moved in a huddle with the macros parting the smoke. More people joined them, called by the telepaths. Simon couldn’t see through the smoke, b
ut he thought they were shuffling toward the front door. A tongue of flame crept across the ceiling ahead, coming through the wall. Someone screamed, but the flame shrank until it disappeared.
“There’s more,” Victoria said. “I can sense it.”
With everyone sweating and panting, they kept moving. Simon pulled everyone away from the walls, not wanting anyone to get burned or lost in the tunnel of smoke. The air was flowing forward, away from them. They had to be getting close to the door.
They rounded a corner, and Simon had to hold in a cry. A sheet of flame clung to the wall like some great beast, as if they’d walked into a furnace. Several people staggered back, but Simon kept them from running down the hall, barely. Victoria narrowed her eyes and flexed her power. She moved her hands through the air as if she could guide the fire. The flames parted where she drew them and became two beasts, then three, then smaller and smaller until she could suffocate them one by one.
Simon bolstered her, though his power felt stretched in too many directions. This wasn’t like healing the populace, where he only had to focus on one thing. The crowd kept threatening to break through his calm. The micros were helping keep people on their feet, but they weren’t very powerful. At one point, Jacobs had taken Simon’s arm to help steer him along, and he hadn’t noticed. He spotted the door in the distance, but Victoria had to kill the flame slowly. The calm wouldn’t hold. He had to think of a way…
The ceiling cracked, and bits of flaming plaster rained down. Pakesh cried out along with many others, breaking through the soothing waves. Pakesh’s eyes were wide, terrified. His power strained against Simon’s bonds, but Simon couldn’t spare him anything else.
“Pakesh—”
Everyone pushed forward as the ceiling began to buckle. Pakesh’s power burst through Simon’s shields as easily as popping a balloon. Simon transferred more of his attention to Pakesh, and others cried out as their terror returned. Simon ignored them and tried to keep Pakesh from being caught up in the power. He helped focus a macro-psychokinetic blast that ripped down the hall, blowing the doors off their hinges and snuffing the flames like a fire extinguisher.
The crowd surged for the exit, carrying Simon along. He kept hold of Pakesh, trying to tamp down the power before Pakesh became lost in it. He’d lash out at everyone and everything if left unchecked and panicked. He could have blown them all back into the fire.
When everyone staggered free of the burning temple, breathing deep in the night air, Pakesh clutched Simon’s arm. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t…I…”
“It’s all right,” Simon said as he coughed. “You did fine. You’re all right.”
“I couldn’t stand it.” Pakesh hugged himself tightly.
“It’s all right. You did fine.”
People had formed bucket brigades, but the temple stood engulfed in flames, lighting the dusk around them. Jacobs was shouting, organizing people.
Simon quickly found Victoria. “Is there anything you can do?”
“Keep it from spreading. That’s all.”
“I’ll come with you,” Miriam said. She looked to Simon. “I sensed this…overwhelming hatred, and then the wall was on fire.”
He nodded. The fire wasn’t strong enough to melt the ice in his stomach. Overwhelming hatred. For Dillon’s children? For him? All pretenders would burn…
“Someone needs to check on Shiv,” Simon said.
Jacobs nodded. “I’ll send a patrol.”
Simon wandered among the crowd, helping anyone who’d been hurt, helping the bucket brigades by soothing overtired muscles. There didn’t seem to be many people unaccounted for. They might not have lost anyone. Jacobs soon reported that Shiv and the children were fine, and Simon’s relief nearly got lost in everything he had to do, in the swirl of emotions within him. Overwhelming hatred. It made him sad more than anything.
When next he noticed, night had fallen, and the temple had burned almost to its frame. But it hadn’t spread. Simon replenished Victoria and a fellow pyro who’d escaped. He healed Miriam, too, who looked as tired as everyone felt. Miriam and Victoria took turns holding little Evelyn, and Simon wondered if he’d see a firefighter hauling a newborn from flame to flame again.
“Looks like we’re out of a home,” Victoria said at last. She sounded as if the idea didn’t really bother her. Some of the yafanai were weeping in one another’s arms.
“Need a place to stay?” Miriam asked.
Victoria raised an eyebrow. “Are you offering one of the houses of your many friends?”
“I thought we could look together. I’m used to your smell by now.”
Victoria snorted a laugh. “Sounds good. I was lying about having friends I could stay with.”
“I know.”
Simon sighed and knew he was going to regret it, but the words came forth anyway. “Come stay with me.” When they both looked, he tried to seem nonchalant. “I just want free babysitting. I don’t actually care about either of you.”
When smiles broke out on their faces, he knew he’d taken the right tone.
“Are you going to put all of the yafanai up, or just we privileged two?” Miriam asked.
Simon turned to look at all the misplaced yafanai. Even the mayor’s house wouldn’t fit everyone. “I don’t think—”
“Don’t worry, Doc,” Jacobs said. “We’re working on it.”
He could have kissed her, but they were all covered in soot.
“I’m putting additional people on your house detail,” she said. “These assholes are more serious than I thought.”
“It might not have been about me,” he said. “The expectant mothers are going to need somewhere safe, too.”
Jacobs rubbed her chin. “Maybe I can get them to come to the keep. They’ll be safe, and it’s made of stone, so no one’s going to burn it down.”
As she faded into the crowd, Simon sighed, looking over everyone. He hadn’t set this fire, hadn’t asked for any animosity, but he still felt responsible. He had to stop himself from telling everyone he was sorry. All those who met his eye and recognized him offered him a smile. Everyone he healed or rejuvenated looked on him with a kindly eye. They weren’t bad people. All he had to do was convince whoever was against him that he wasn’t bad, either, that he didn’t want anything from them.
Or maybe once Horace returned, they should go somewhere else, take Evan with them so he’d be safe. They’d bring Pakesh and go see how Samira was getting on among the plains dwellers. He was pretty sure no one there would be upset about the fact that Dillon was dead.
But he couldn’t leave the rest of the mothers. Even without him, someone clearly wanted Dillon’s children for their own purpose. And he really wanted to see what Cordelia and Liam and all the rest would do with Gale now that it was free of Dillon. Once they stopped searching for a god to solve their problems, maybe everything could settle down.
He heard a nearby conversation wondering if it was drushka who set the fire. He started in that direction, hoping to quell that rumor, but someone punched him in the back. Simon turned.
Pakesh was a few steps away, staring at the fire. He hadn’t seemed to notice anything wrong. Simon turned again slowly, and the pain turned with him, traveling from one point up and down his back. “What the hell?” It wasn’t a punch. An ache spread through him, and he tried to heal it, but it resisted; something stuck in the wound.
A shadow moved and became a man with dark, frightened, angry eyes. “You shouldn’t have killed him,” the man whispered. He wiped at the spittle dotting his thin lips.
Simon felt behind him. Something trickled down his back. Blood? He tried to speak but suddenly couldn’t. His fingers brushed a hard edge. A knife? He couldn’t think straight, and the knife, if that was what it was, felt as if it was traveling through his torso, drilling through him. His knees went weak. He had to do something, had to call for help.
A host of telepaths stood nearby. Pakesh was one of them, a powerful
one, and just how powerful didn’t matter at the moment. Simon’s vision began to go fuzzy. He dropped the shields around Pakesh and thought, “Help.”
Pakesh whirled around. “Simon?”
The assassin took a step closer as Simon’s legs gave way, and he fell forward. He heard Pakesh’s yell, then felt a wave of air as the assassin went flying. Then everyone seemed to be crying out at once. He heard Jacob’s roar for the assassin to stay where he was, but someone else yelled, “He stabbed the healer!” and the noise of the crowd rose to a crescendo.
“Get it out, get it out,” Simon tried to say, but his breath had become a wheeze. His power flowed over the wound, but the feel of his flesh reknitting around the sharp blade was agony over and over, and he couldn’t push the blade free. At last, someone pulled it out. Simon grunted and grabbed frantically for his power, healing himself as quick as a thought. He took deep breaths as he lay still, inhaling smoke and dust and a thousand scents that had been ground into the stones.
Hands pulled him up. Pakesh. People were yelling, but now Jacobs was calling for everyone to give way. Simon thought she was trying to get to him, but then he saw the crowd, a tight fist of people, and in their center…
“Stop!” Simon could feel the strikes against the man in the center, the pain radiating from that one point. He sent his power out again, engulfing the crowd, interrupting them so they fell; not even their synapses could fire without his permission, but they weren’t what captured his attention.
The man who’d stabbed him was nothing more than a huddled, red-slicked lump. “Oh my God.” Simon staggered forward and knelt at his side, feeling for a flicker of life. Broken arms and ribs, a fractured skull, damaged liver and kidneys and lungs, and a thousand cuts and bruises, but there was a spark at his core. Simon nurtured it gently, healing layer upon layer, all the way out, until the man breathed again. He was still covered in blood, but he would live. He peered up at Simon with wonder instead of anger or fright, his sharp features scrunched together as if trying to figure out how and why he still lived.
Children of the Healer Page 27
