Alec’s face must have displayed his dismay to Caitlen. “Here, sit down and eat before this food gets cold,” she said with a severe tone, pulling a pastry out of the bag on her lap. Gingerly Alec sat down on the mattress and took the proffered food. It was warm and heavy, and filled the great emptiness he realized existed in his stomach.
Caitlen wolfed her food down too, although she ate with more delicacy than Alec. “Would you like something to drink?” she asked as she pulled a flask out of the bag. Alec looked at how flat the bag had grown.
“After you,” he said.
“What after me?” Caitlen failed to understand.
“Since there’s just one flask for the two of us, I’ll drink from it after you,” Alec said with exaggerated patience.
“We’re going to share this? We’ll drink from the same bottle?” she replied, clearly horrified by the concept.
Alec took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Caitlen, I know you’re a lady of the court from the palace, and I know that I am just scum, a foreigner who is far beneath you, but you’re going to have to adjust to a new life while we try to take the princess to safety. Our journey is going to require a lot of discomfort and rough life, and most of all cooperation and trust. If you don’t think you can make this trip, then you need to stay here when the rest of us leave tomorrow.”
He slid down off the mattress onto the floor, and pulled one of the blankets over his body. He felt sorry for the girl, who he was sure had never experienced anything like today’s adventure. But he also considered it a favor to her to leave her behind as opposed to taking her on the long journey into the mountains that surrounded Black Crag.
After a moment, she blew out the candle, and Alec heard the stopper come out of the flask. The liquid in the bottle swirled, and then Caitlen gasped and choked. “This isn’t water!” she sputtered.
Alec sat up and took the flask from her, and gingerly lifted it to his lips. After a bare swig, he sharply inhaled. “That’s some powerful brew,” he said.
“Did you drink it all?” Caitlen asked. “I’m still thirsty.”
Alec silently handed the flask back to her hand, then laid back down on the floor. Despite the blanket and the uniform he still wore, the cold floor left him nearly shivering.
Caitlen took another drink, then laid down. A few minutes later, they both heard laughter coming from the room next door.
“Are you cold, Alec?” Caitlen asked a few seconds later.
“Yes,” he told her. “It’s going to be cold for most of this journey. I have to get used to it.”
“Would you come up here and sleep with me?” Caitlen asked. “I’m very cold. I thought we could share body heat.
“Don’t try anything though. I will give you this one more chance; I expect you to be a gentleman. Don’t try to touch me like you did down in the tunnel!”
With mixed feelings, Alec rose to the bed, and re-arranged the blankets to give both of them maximum cover. The mattress was narrow, and Alec felt Caitlen’s body against his. “I can be tough,” Caitlen said. “I’m tougher than you think, Alec,” she said a second later, louder.
“I broke my hip when I fell from a horse. That’s why I limp. And I didn’t cry when the doctor treated me,” she told him. Her face was close to his, and he could smell the alcohol on her breath.
“I could heal your leg for you, so that you wouldn’t limp anymore,” Alec responded.
“You said that before. Nobody can heal my leg now. I know it. I’ll never get to dance in a ball again,” she moaned.
Impetuously, Alec moved his hand and placed it on her thigh. He began to use his health vision, studying her leg bones and muscles, examining the problems. Her hip had been broken, and it would be an involved procedure to correct it, but he was confident he could do it.
“Well, I do declare! You’re quite a forward boy, aren’t you? Didn’t I just tell you no funny business up here?” she told him, and made a cursory move to push his hand away.
Alec placed his other hand on her forehead, and induced sleep. The girl was fascinating in many ways. She was not nearly as heavy as she appeared. The mystery of her light weight was clear; as he had used his health vision it became clear that her dress was stuffed full of cloth and material that gave her much more girth than she actually carried. Why she wanted to look so much heavier than she really was puzzled him, but he set that aside as she slumbered, and focused on the thigh and hip.
The healing procedure reminded him of healing Cassie back in Goldenfields, and his mind wandered momentarily as he thought about the girl he had found in the fishing hut. He hoped she was happy, living in Goldenfields with Appel, providing healer services to the people of the city.
He called his attention back to the matter at hand, and began to shift the mis-healed bones, altering the hard calcium, re-aligning them, then stretching the muscles to better serve their proper actions. He took a short break after a long session, feeling sweat on his scalp even in the cold room. As he paused and examined his work he realized he had inadvertently lengthened Caitlen’s thigh by an inch. With a determined sigh he focused his attention on her left thigh, stroking his hands up and down the good leg, expressing his energy to make the bones and the muscles and the skin stretch out to match the right leg. She’d be a little taller now, he told himself, but she wouldn’t hate him to any greater degree for that.
Hours passed before he had achieved what he wanted to. Alec was exhausted, and laid back on the narrow mattress. He threw the cover off him to relieve himself of the warmth he had felt from the tension of the work, and closed his eyes, letting out a deep breath.
He awoke to feel the blanket being spread over him by Caitlen. “Sssh,” she quieted him. “You were shivering so much you woke me up,” she told him, and he fell asleep again.
He awoke again to sounds coming from the neighboring room, and Caitlen’s arm draped over him, her body pressed against his. How would she react, he wondered. Had he been too forward in just imposing the procedure upon her without her permission? She would be a much more capable traveler, he fretted with second thoughts, but would she feel that he had violated her? Would she be right? Would she even believe that he had done it?
Alec drifted back into a light, uneasy sleep. There was a gentle tap on the door, but he did not answer, and the tap was not repeated. He lay still, semi-conscious, and heard a throaty murmur from behind him, then Caitlen’s arm squeezed him tight. She released the grip and rolled slightly away, and he felt the mattress sag as she sat up and then stood up. She gave a gentle burp, and Alec could tell she had a hangover.
She edged around the mattress to the door, then looked at Alec with sleepy eyes. “Where’s the, you know, the loo?” she asked.
Alec extended an arm and gingerly felt beneath the bed, then pulled out a chamber pot that he raised above the mattress.
“You can’t be serious!” Caitlen exclaimed, awakening as her situation became clear.
Her eyes grew wide, and she absently took the pot from Alec as she stared down at her hip. “My leg feels different; my limp is gone,” she said softly to herself.
“My limp is gone,” she repeated to the room, then turned her face towards Alec. “My limp is gone. Last night, what did you say? What did you do?” Her voice quavered as her stomach flipped from the alcohol, and Alec reached out a hand, pressed it against her belly, and calmed the unpleasant feelings in her midsection, then raised his hand carefully to her cheek, and released another gentle jolt of healing power to take away the headache that was growing in her awareness.
Caitlen dropped the chamber pot, stood and backed away from the bed, stepping back just a step in the tiny room before her back was against the door.
“What did you do? What are you?” she asked. “Please stay away from me,” she whispered.
Alec swung his legs out from under the blanket, and watched her shrink further into the door. “Here,” he picked up the pot. “I’m going downstairs to see what’s what,�
� he slung his mostly empty bandolier over his shoulder. “You can have some privacy to use the pot. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.” He knew he had frightened her, and he suspected that he would be just as unsettled if he were in her situation. He wondered if she would still be in the room when he returned
Downstairs there was a single cook working in the kitchen, one who Alec had not seen the night before. Alec went into the main room of the tavern and looked out the window, watching the unfortunate working people who huddled in upon themselves as they walked through the cold air, many carrying bundles. He’d never been in such a cold climate before, and he wasn’t enjoying it. In the Dominion there were small cities and town in the north, but no large rivers carried people or goods from that region to the great cities along the Carmen River. He doubted that even Stronghold or Sturgeon ever were wrapped in such cold weather.
There was a clatter in the kitchen, followed by a string of oaths as the cook dropped something. Alec stirred from his revere and returned to the kitchen, where he grabbed an unwatched loaf of bread and slowly climbed the stairs.
He cautiously opened the door. Caitlen was inside, holding the bundle of clothing he had received the night before. “Here, put these on,” she commanded, apparently reconciled to the situation by some internal reckoning that showed a strength of character Alec found impressive. “We’ll need to get moving soon to go to Black Crag.”
Alec accepted the clothes, bemused by her apparent change of attitude. “Turn around,” he told her, and began to change. As he stretched his arms in the narrow room to pull his stolen uniform shirt off, his hand bumped the back of Caitlen’s head.
“Ouch! Creep! What do you want?” Caitlen turned, and saw Alec, bare-chested. She blushed, and quickly began to swivel her head, but her eyes caught sight of the jewel-like marks on Alec’s arms. “Those are lovely? How did you get those?” she reached out and grabbed his arm, pulling it directly in front of her face, then reached out and grabbed the other arm to see the marks on it as well.
“They’re so sparkling!” she marveled, and she raised her eyes to look at Alec, who she had pulled unexpectedly close to her. “But they seem to be right in the skin itself. What are they?”
Alec pulled his arms away from her and pulled the civilian shirt over his head and down his arms. “I’d rather not talk about that right now,” he told her flatly, and he watched the spark of curiosity in her eyes diminish. “Would you like to have some bread?” he offered her the loaf.
She took a small portion, leaving the majority in Alec’s hands. “Go see if the other two are ready to go,” she ordered Alec as she plopped down heavily onto the mattress. Her voice had an uncharacteristic tone of authority that he had heard once before. He was surprised that the serving girl seemed comfortable imposing her will so effectively.
Obediently, Alec stepped out to the landing and knocked on the other small door. “What?” a muffled reply from Nichols drifted through the door.
“Will you be ready to go soon?” Alec asked through the still shut door.
“Not right away,” Nichols said, as Esmere giggled in a very unprincess-like manner.
“We’ll want to get going this morning,” Alec took a last shot, and returned to his own room.
In contrast to the other space, his room was an unhappy room. Caitlen sat on the bed now, crying. Alec closed the door behind him, reluctantly, and stood uncomfortable and uncertain.
“Go away,” she said without lifting her face or her voice. Alec had no place to go, and felt too miserable about the girl’s misery to obey. Unaccountably, his memories jumped to the day he had been with Cassie in Goldenfields, trying to open up her ability to reach her healer powers. The process had intermingled their souls, allowing them to see secrets that each had hidden from the world, and from each other. The moments after that exposure had been painful, and their relationship had been strained, still was strained for that matter.
Here he was again, it seemed, in a room with a girl, and the atmosphere had a strangely similar strain. Although secrets hadn’t been revealed to each of them, nonetheless, Alec was plainly holding secrets back from the court maiden, just as he sensed that she was holding something, something meaningful, back from him.
“They don’t sound ready to leave yet,” Alec broke the silence. He laid back on the mattress, sideways, his feet on the floor on one side, and his head near Caitlen’s lap on the other.
“I will tell you about one of these marks, my favorite one,” he said to her. “And then you can tell me a secret if you want to.” The girl made no response, but didn’t offer any refusal or rebuttal.
“I come from a far away land, and how I got here is a mystery to me,” he began, and then he started to tell the story of being a no-account assistant in a carnival, being attacked by lacertii, and discovering an enchanted cave.
“And so I received the power to heal, and over time I began to understand it, I practiced it, I studied it, and now it feels like the one thing that makes me a worthwhile person; I think it’s the reason I was born, to be able to help others, to heal them and make them feel better,” he finished. “The way I healed your hip for you.”
“That’s quite a story you tell,” Caitlen answered after a silent interlude. “And then you became a healer and suddenly came here?”
“No, there’s a lot more to it than that. I healed a Duke. I met the king. I rescued the crown from usurpers,” he added significantly. There was another long pause, and then he found himself compelled to mention Bethany. “I met a girl who I love, and then I didn’t tell her how I felt, and I lost her to someone else.” For some reason he wanted this girl to believe that he had a heart, was capable of emotion and affection. “The last thing I remember is that I was in a prison cell in a city where I went to rescue another girl I knew. And since then I’ve awoken and only known life here in your land, working on a fishing ship, leaving Krimshelm and arriving in Vincennes.”
“But now you remember everything?” Caitlen asked.
“How can you tell what you don’t know?” Alec asked rhetorically, and heard a grunt of acknowledgement. “I have a feeling that there is more, but I don’t have any idea what.” He thought about the unknown marks that were on his arms. “So until I figure it out, I’ll do what I know I can do, what seems right. And healing always seems like a good thing to do.”
“So that’s why you touched my leg and mended my hip, and took away my limp? You think that a god has given you a commission to go around healing people?” Caitlen asked. Her tears and sobs had stopped during Alec’s story, and she had come to lay backwards across the bed in the opposite direction from Alec, so that their bodies were parallel, though with feet on the alternate sides of the bed.
“Yes,” Alec said. Then, unable to settle for the simple answer, he added, “And I thought it was good for you. I thought you would move better and feel better about yourself, and be better able to survive the trip we’re going to take.”
“I can almost see things your way and believe that it is as innocent as you say,” she replied. “Thank you for telling me.
“What about the other marks? Are they similar? Do they mean you have other fantastic powers?” she asked, and Alec could hear the smile in her voice.
“Yes,” he replied quietly. “Each of them represents some ability I possess.”
She remained silent, digesting a joke gone wrong. “So how did you get here? How far did you come? How will you go back, and when? You really don’t know any of those things?” she asked at length.
“I don’t know,” Alec whispered, afraid to admit his uncertain status. “I’m lost and alone and even a little scared and I don’t know any answers.”
There was a pounding on the door. “We’re ready to go,” Nichols called.
“We’re not,” Caitlen shot back. “Leave us alone. We’ll be out soon.”
There was silence from outside the door, and from within the room as well, as Alec laid quiet, surprised by Caitlen�
��s delay.
“Alec?” Nichols’ voice broke the silence. “Treat her with respect Alec.”
“That’s enough,” Caitlen spoke loudly again. “Leave us in peace. Go back to your room or go downstairs and wait for us.” Again she displayed that easy willingness to command, or perhaps to just be bossy.
The sound of feet descending the staircase followed.
“You have helped me; you’ve tried to help me by healing my limp. I will help you,” Caitlen told him when the sound of the steps disappeared.
“Thank you,” Alec said kindly, unable to imagine any real assistance the girl could give, but grateful for the new attitude.
“Now don’t look,” she ordered as she stood up.
“Why?” asked Alec.
“Because,” was the only muffled response. Alec heard a considerable rustling of material. “Okay, you can look,” Caitlen told him.
On the bed Alec saw Caitlen’s dress, stiff with the material of a great deal of padding stuffed into many parts. Next to the bed stood Caitlen, wearing a dress that appeared tailored to fit her, and much more revealing of her true thin, almost boyish body-type. Alec’s perception of the girl changed dramatically as he looked at her, and she, aware of the scrutiny he was giving her, felt herself start to blush.
“Go ahead and put your other dress back on,” he told her.
“What? Why?” Caitlen sputtered. “It’s as uncomfortable as wearing a heavy tent filled with hay around all the time. I don’t want to wear it any longer if I don’t need to hide my identity from you; I think I almost trust you now.”
“Your trust is appreciated, almost,” Alec told her in response. “But, that dress looks like it will keep you warm, with all that cloth,” Alec responded. “And it is going to be very cold on our way to Black Crag. You’ll be thankful for the physical protection it gives you.”
Rescuing the Captive: The Ingenairii Series Page 11
