by R. K. Hart
The Myrae trader was fierce-looking, stern and aloof, so Lida took her unwavering stare and mixed it with Maya’s warmth. Her cheekbones were as high and sharp as Lida’s own, so she stole those unchanged. The thin lips could not come - both she and Maya had full, plump smiles that had not come from Cathan - but the eyes were of a similar shape, almond and framed with thick lashes, so Lida used them, too, and transformed the irises into Maya’s piercing emerald.
She was so enthralled in the image she’d woven that when she stepped back, it was straight into something warm and sweating and far taller than she. She spun in surprise, and found herself caught up in a thick black messenger’s cloak. It clung to her as she fought to break free, and someone exclaimed crossly in Brinnican.
‘Sorry,’ she muttered, finally disentangling herself. ‘I didn’t see you.’
‘Clearly,’ the deep voice said, the lilt of an Erbidan accent heavy on the word.
For a moment, Lida thought Jorge had followed her, but when she looked up she saw the flushed face of a young Erbidan man of twenty-six or -seven. His black curls were dishevelled and he had bruise-like shadows under his dark eyes. She frowned.
He frowned back, straightening; something twisted deep in Lida’s chest, a tug underneath a rib. She stepped away, taking in the square leather letter bag slung across his body, and the golden cuff on his left wrist. He pulled his cloak back into place, hiding it. He studied Lida’s face, blinking rapidly.
‘Who are you?’ he demanded.
Lida’s lips twisted at his rudeness and she tried to walk away, but he mirrored her movements. She glowered at him. ‘Get out of my way.’
His hand snaked out to catch her wrist, his eyes darting to the woven bag that hung from her elbow, taking in her face and hair. ‘Who are you?’
She tried to wrench her arm away. He held it fast. ‘Don’t touch me!’
‘Why are you here?’ he said, his brows drawing closer together.
‘Let me go.’
He hissed through his teeth. ‘I do not have time for this.’
‘Then let go of me.’ She wrenched again, increasingly desperate, fear starting to creep up her spine. She rose onto the balls of her feet, ready to run if she could break free. ‘I’ll scream.’
‘I would prefer that you did not. Where do you live?’
‘As if I’d tell you,’ she spat, twisting and aiming a kick at his knee; he stepped away derisively, and his fingers tightened on her wrist.
So Lida did exactly what her father had taught her to do: feinted a jab to the stomach with her captured elbow, and slammed the heel of her palm up into the Erbidan man’s unprotected throat. He wheezed and let her go. For a moment, Lida stood still, stunned by what she’d done, before instinct kicked in and she darted away, straight into the enveloping crush of shoppers. Her dance through the crowd was far swifter this time, fuelled by fear; she did not look over her shoulder, nor anywhere but forward, and in a handful of minutes she found herself at the edge of the forum and in the gutter of the Southern Way. She sprinted up the main road breathlessly, darting in and out of the arches of the aqueduct, ignoring the sideways glances and exclamations of surprise, the honey and biscuits still hanging from her arm as she ran as fast as she could towards the hospice and her sister.
***
The hospice was a solid, practical structure, designed by the Kingstown guild of architects and made from the local sandstone, like most of the city. It was circular, a mirror to the temple of Eianna, which sat opposite on the edge of the Southern Way, one of the arterial roads of the capital. Though the hospice lacked the marble facade and famed frescoes of the goddess’ temple, it still boasted high, wide windows, a white slate tiled roof, and an internal atrium, open to the sky with one large fountain and a gentle, peaceful garden. Maya often took her patients there to sit or lie in the sun and listen to the water; she was sure that the calm of the place and the sun on their skin helped them to heal.
The hospice was a labyrinth for those who did not know their way, but Lida had been there so often with Maya that the way through was second nature. There were four main wards and a scattering of smaller rooms for isolation or surgeries. A considerable section of the building was richly furnished but empty, set aside specially for the Eilin King or Queen; to Lida’s knowledge it had never been used, at least in her lifetime. There was a birthing centre, too, but most Eilin women birthed at home, so it served mostly as a place of respite for new mothers, bringing their babies in for midwives to look after while they slept and escaped the demands of the rest of their families.
Lida never used the main double doors; there was a bell attached which echoed piercingly up the corridors when they opened, alerting the healers to a new patient. She entered through a small side door instead, flustered and sweating from her run, her stomach still clamping with panic. Being in the hospice did not help, as she never felt entirely comfortable there. Even though it was a welcoming place, the shadow of death always seemed a little too close, and Lida could still feel the grip of strong fingers around her wrist.
Maya worked in the women’s wards, so Lida checked them as quietly as she could, searching for her sister’s bright auburn braid. The ceilings were high and light streamed in through open windows; beds sheeted in flawless white and curtained in dark blue lined the walls. The whole place smelled fresh, a mix of sunlight and pine, and the floors were meticulously clean. The beds were mostly empty and there were no healers to be seen, so Lida headed for what Maya jokingly named the refuge instead.
The refuge was a comfortable sitting room attached to a small kitchen, overlooking the main doors. It was home to a number of long couches the physicians could sleep upon, and a secluded, screened corner where Maya had once told Lida they went to cry.
Maya and her mentor Jula were there, sitting at the small wooden kitchen table, their hands wrapped around mugs of tea. A third woman sat across from them; she looked up and frowned as Lida rushed in.
‘By Eianna, Lida!’ Maya exclaimed, jumping up. ‘Did you run here? What’s wrong?’
Lida tried to steady her breathing. Nothing had happened, not really, and she knew that if she told Maya her sister would insist on going back to the forum and calling for the city sentries. Lida thought she’d rather just forget the whole thing. She didn’t much feel like explaining that she’d just hit a stranger in the throat, and she wasn’t sure the sentries would think because I was scared was sufficient justification. ‘Nothing’s wrong, May, there were just too many people at the market,’ she said, forcing a crooked smile. She held up the black woven bag. ‘Jorge gave me honey biscuits and told me I should share.’
Maya studied her sister’s face closely, but smiled in return. ‘I can’t believe you listened to him.’ She gestured for Lida to sit and poured another cup of tea, adding milk and sugar, just as Lida liked it, and cramming one of the biscuits straight into her mouth as Lida took her place at the table. Jula nodded hello.
Maya’s mentor was a serious-looking Brinnican woman, tall and willowy and fair. Lida still didn’t feel entirely easy around her, despite having known Jula for over five years. Maya shared Jula’s practicality and matter-of-factness, but in Maya it was warm and often tempered by a laugh; it had taken Lida almost a year to see Jula smile. For all Jula’s reserve, Maya adored her, and Lida knew that Maya was lucky to have been chosen to apprentice. Jula did not mentor often, despite her skill.
‘Alida d’Cathan, this is Delia d’Artur,’ Maya said with her mouth half-full, nodding to the third, unfamiliar woman. Lida dutifully smiled and said hello, and Delia smiled in a return greeting.
She was a slight Eilin woman, as small as Lida herself, and Lida wondered how she managed to find the strength a healer needed - Maya’s curves hid the muscles of a warrior - until her thick brown hair shifted and Lida caught sight of the brooch pinned to Delia’s breast.
Lida stared, shivering, then realised what she was doing and looked at her hands instead. Delia was not a physician
, as Jula and Maya were; she was an illae-healer, marked by the golden cross fastened to her tunic.
By Eilin law, patients had the right to choose whether they were treated by a physician, using medicine, or by a gifted healer, using the power they named illae. Once, the hospice had been almost fully staffed by illae-healers, but their numbers had dwindled over the years, which made the choice simpler and put the skills of physicians in higher demand. Maya had told Lida about working with gifted healers, her voice full of awe and a hint of jealousy, but Lida had never actually met one of the gifted, so she sat quietly and pretended not to stare.
Lida knew a number of stories about them - she loved history, and the gifted were part of it. Her favourite tales were of the terrifying Lightning Mage, who’d led a doomed rebellion against an Eilin King, and his lover, the Sea Witch, whose power could send a shudder through the ocean. Despite the faery tales, Lida knew nothing of them as real people. In the past, the gifted and ungifted had lived side by side, bound by strict rules of conduct enforced by the Law of Tolerance, which protected the ungifted from the gifted and vice versa. The Law still existed, periodically pinned up as posters on sandstone city walls, but successive Kings and Queens had watered it down as the gift dwindled and it became less important. One of Lida’s teachers had dismissively told their class that the gifted were nothing more than a footnote in history and they needn’t waste their time learning the Law, so Lida had never actually bothered to read it.
The gift marked those that had it as other, and they were treated as such, cloaked in suspicion, living on the margins of cities and towns. Occasionally, the news criers would sing of a body washed up on the shores of the Lifeblood River, a golden cross pinned to its clothes. The sporadic murders continued a darker tradition of large-scale killings. The last purge had been just before Lida’s birth: over a hundred women and men had been thrown into bonfires in northern Eilan at the orders of the then-King Jonas. Eilan didn’t have a history of constant warfare, like Erbide and Brinnica: instead, it had a secretive, slow massacre of its own people. Lida tried not to think on it too often or too deeply, other than to hope that she never lived through another purge.
It bubbled to the front of her mind as she pretended not to study Delia, but it grew increasingly difficult to be surreptitious, as the woman was staring back openly, her brow drawn into a frown. Lida was used to this, as most people assumed that she was Myrae and wondered what she was doing so far from the sea. She tried not to take Delia’s stare personally, though her gaze was very close. Lida shivered as a breeze ran over her bare arms.
Delia opened her mouth to speak.
‘Patient!’
The scream came from outside the open window, and in a moment, all three healers were on their feet and hurrying towards the hospice doors, tea and biscuits forgotten. Lida followed them at a distance as a young woman was carried inside by two men, one at her shoulders and one at her feet. Blood followed them, dripping onto the tiled floor from a wound on the unconscious woman’s temple as they rushed her into a ward and settled her gently onto a bed.
Lida hovered in the doorway, not wanting to get too close. She knew she would be in the way, and even from a distance she could tell that the young woman was badly hurt: she could see exposed bone. Had it happened to an animal, Lida’s father would have advised a fast-acting poison of opium; as it was, Delia lay her hands on the patient’s cheeks and closed her eyes.
An odd pull came through the air; the hair on Lida’s arms and neck rose. She could feel the pull around her, but most unnervingly in her chest, as if a rope had wrapped around the deepest part of her and was dragging her inexorably forward. Her breath hitched as Delia’s hands began to glow. Lida blinked hard, certain that she was imagining it, and she took a step towards the bed, almost against her will.
‘Get away,’ the young woman slurred. Lida planted her feet, shocked. ‘Get away!’ The patient’s voice rose to a shriek. ‘Filthy sluah!’
Lida’s eyebrows rose at the slur: the bloodthirsty sluah were the worst of the fae, banished from the underground Seelie-Court and forced to wander across Eilan, living in the mists of peat bogs. It was one of the worst things you could call a person, and the one time Lida had said it Cathan had sent her to bed without dinner and not spoken to her for a full day.
Delia stepped away from the bed with a twist to her lips, wiping her hands on her apron. Jula and Maya worked on the woman, but there was clearly nothing they could do: for a while, Lida watched her sister pick slivers of bone from the wound and gently try to stem the steady flow of blood, but in the end Maya simply moved to the side and took the young woman’s hand, waiting.
Lida fled before the young woman died, retreating to the calm of the refuge. The biscuits lay waiting on the table, but she had no appetite. She had seen dying people before, but never witnessed someone so close to the moment of death. She felt surprisingly calm, if a little tired. She lit the oven and moved the kettle back onto the flame to make fresh tea, emptying and refilling the pot, taking comfort from the familiar movements.
Delia appeared in the doorway, smelling strongly of soap, a fresh apron covering her tunic and pants. Lida stared at the golden cross for a moment, then lifted her eyes.
‘She’s gone to Eianna,’ Delia said shortly. She sat and poured herself a mug of tea.
‘I am sorry,’ Lida said haltingly. ‘I’m sorry she said that.’
Delia shook her head. ‘No matter. I’m used to it.’
Lida looked out the window onto the wide, cobbled road. ‘Could you have saved her?’
‘Possibly. It was a very bad wound, but I might have made it better.’ Delia sighed. ‘Wounds to the temple, though … Even if she’d healed, she might not have been the same afterwards. I would have needed a reader’s help, and there are no readers in Kingstown.’
The sun was getting low; Lida turned her face up to the sky, not entirely sure what Delia meant. She hadn’t realised how late it was.
‘You should head home before the dark,’ Delia said, echoing Lida’s thought. ‘I will let Maya know. She will be some time yet.’
‘Thank you,’ Lida said. ‘Goodbye.’
Delia smiled. ‘See you soon, little one,’ she said, and Lida slipped out of the room.
***
Cathan Valson’s worn leather bag was sitting outside the back door when Lida arrived home. It was one of her favourite things, shaped like a small chest and lined with pockets full of glass vials, needles and threads, knives, herbs and whatever other miscellany her animal healer father required that day. When she was smaller, Lida used to sit on it when she went with her father to do his rounds, watching intently as he worked.
She crossed the small back garden - a modest patch of clipped green grass bounded by small flower and herb beds - and walked into the shade of the stable block. The dimness was a relief after the harsh afternoon sun, and Lida sniffed appreciatively, breathing in the scent of fresh hay and oats. She searched the stalls for her father, eventually hearing the shuffle of feet from the very last stable; she approached quietly, taking the pot of honey from the black woven bag.
‘Do you have it, love?’ her father said by way of greeting, not taking his eyes from the piglet he was ministering.
In answer, Lida handed over the pot and watched as Cathan unscrewed the lid and used a small spatula to smear the honey on the piglet’s neatly-stitched flank; it was no easy task, as the piglet was running around the stall happily, snuffling at the straw.
‘Marnie will be pleased,’ he said once he was done. Marnie owned the neighbouring farm and had done for as long as Lida could remember; she had two sons, one older than Lida, and one almost exactly her age, who Lida had spent rather a lot of time with behind the stable block and out of sight of both houses. Cathan turned from the piglet. ‘How was the market?’
Lida told him, leaving out the Myrae woman and the Erbidan stranger; the mention of the merchant women made his jaw clench and shoulders tense, and Lida thought
Cathan would not appreciate a stranger grabbing his daughter’s wrist and demanding to know her name. She followed her father as he washed his hands and started readying the nightly feed for the horses, measuring out chaff and adding molasses to buckets after he’d divided oats and sprinkled in some bran.
Cathan was a bear of a man, with broad shoulders and a height that Lida had never seen matched. His work kept him fit, but he also had a generous appreciation of food, and his strong bulk granted him an almost overwhelming sense of size. Lida thought that Siva must have been far more petite, as neither she nor Maya were tall nor wide. They had other parts of Cathan, though; much to Lida’s annoyance and envy, Maya had inherited his wavy waterfall of auburn hair, while Lida had his dark brown eyes and angular face. On her, the angles were almost too sharp; a wide-set jaw and cheekbones tempered Cathan’s angles into noticeable handsomeness, at least, Lida reflected, when he kept his beard trimmed.
He was young, to have two grown daughters, not more than forty-two summers. Despite his relative youth, he had never shown interest in remarrying, and other than his reluctance to speak about her dead mother, Lida knew that she didn’t have much to complain about when it came to her father. When her school friends were forced to spend a week each month at temple, learning to serve the gods, Lida and Maya went on rounds with Cathan, learning to stitch and splint and bandage and administer tonics and deliver foals. When the temple patriarchs knocked on the door after one had caught Maya climbing out a first-floor bedroom window, Cathan laughed in their faces and told them to mind their own beds or he’d take them before a Justice Sitting for harassing his daughter. Lida thought that holding her tongue when it came to Siva was a fair price to pay for a father who let his daughters run free.
