Chapter Eight

 

 

She had just been about to go to the well to start dragging up water when there was a knock on her door. Knowing what such a knock meant caused fear to trickle into her belly and spread from there to her limbs.

Danya opened the door to her home and was all but pushed aside by her cousin, Rewel. The man went straight for the sick room, off the main room, carrying a limp form in his arms.

She swore under her breath and followed Rewel into the sick room as she protested loudly enough for him to hear.

“I told you, never again.”

“And I told you, if the village dies, we die. I don’t go looking for them, Danya, you know that. They find us. None of them would ever be noticed as missing, none of them had families.”

No, none of them had families. Not that she told Rewel that much. There had been several over the years that Danya had told lies for, saving them from Rewel by having them sent on their way once more for fear of someone coming out to find them.

“This one’s palace blood,” Rewel continued. “Her bridle has the raised raven’s head. They don’t allow anyone but palace blood to have that bridle.”

“You also said they always come looking for palace blood.”

“Something tells me they aren’t going to come looking for blood that’s barely strong enough to be noticed,” Rewel snarled back at Danya. “Fix her, or she’ll die.”

“It’d be a mercy on her.”

“We follow her, if you don’t.”

“It’d be a mercy on me,” Danya said sternly.

“You’re a healer damn it, heal her!”

Danya simply stared at Rewel. While it was true she could heal some things, most of the time that work really only involved her reminding the body that it had once been whole. It was not proper healing magic, because it used the victim’s magic to set things right.

Whatever magic Danya had been born to had been used, and was still being used, to keep her alive. Something had gone terribly wrong during her birth, and she had almost died. Only being a healer, Rewel had said, had saved her.

“Now, Danya!”

Gritting her teeth, Danya moved to the woman’s side. She took the limp hand in her own, determined to at least look as if she were doing something of value. Anything to make Rewel stop shouting at her.

Magic flowed into her hand, captured by some invisible force, but there for anyone who knew how to tap into.

Danya removed her hand and stared at the unconscious woman. Young, barely old enough to be a woman, thin in a sickly way, with dirtied hair and wearing only a shirt and thin pants. From the outside the woman appeared to have no magic. She was a queen, that much Danya was certain of, but almost no magic escaped whatever force was around her, catching every spare drop.

Rewel had touched the woman, but likely hadn’t touched her skin. He thought that if he touched the skin of a queen, she might gain access to his body somehow.

“Where did you find her?” Danya asked Rewel, looking up at the man.

Her cousin frowned, his features shifting for a moment, then settling back to the middle-aged man he was. “In the woods.”

“Like this?” Danya asked.

“Yes.”

“Where’s her cloak?”

“There wasn’t one, only the one horse.”

“You found a woman, in the woods? Like this?” Danya asked. “And you don’t find that odd?”

“You think she’s a trap?”

A well-laid one.

Rewel often ranted and raved about how anyone who knew about the village would set a trap and destroy the pair of them slowly.

Danya didn’t believe the world outside the village still remembered that they existed. She believed that the palace had forgotten about them long ago, along with the other lands that had once fought over the village’s territory.

“You’re an idiot. She’s not weak, nor is she dying. Though she should be, given her dress and where you found her, and the cold and snow from last night alone should have done the deed.”

She took the woman’s hand in her own once more, finding it much warmed. It was no longer the deathly chill, but that of a living, breathing, healthy person. Danya dared stretch her senses through the woman’s body, searching for anything out of place. Blood flowed as it should have, heart beat strong despite the weakness the cold might have caused.

There were many scars along the bloodlines inside the woman. Danya wasn’t certain, her training had not exactly been traditional, but she thought she recalled that meaning there had been many bruises.

The woman had known a man, and at that, jealousy flared in Danya, but she put a stop to it almost immediately. It was not the woman’s fault that Danya had only ever lived around cousins and the Others.

Only because she knew Rewel would ask, did Danya check the woman’s fertility.

Not barren, but especially devoid of life.

Danya snatched her hand away, not needing to read a book to know what that meant.

“What is it?”

“She was pregnant recently, but lost the child.”

“Will that be a complication?” Rewel asked.

“No.” Danya shook her head and wondered at the father. “It was a fresh pregnancy. It may change the timing of her flow, but that is all.”

“Then don’t look so sorrowful. She’s a young woman, she may yet live to bear another. Maybe this one of stronger blood that it would actually keep.”

“I don’t… think… that she lost it because it was bad blood, I think she lost it for the same reason there is magic laced throughout her body,” Danya said quickly, standing as she watched Rewel, wondering why the man was suddenly so unaware of the queen he had brought into her home. “You said there was a horse, I’m guessing it’s dead?”

“Yes.”

“How?” Danya asked.

“I’ve no idea, no mark on it.”

“No foam around the mouth?”

“No,” Rewel said, then frowned at Danya. “What, you think she teleported here?”

“Or something of that sort, something which would stop the heart of a horse and yet leave not a mark on her,” Danya said quietly.

“Teleportation is only possible through the direct linking into the throne and the river of magic produced by the throne, an act whose skill has long been lost, a link that has been weak to say the best, and a river that has not been seen in over a thousand years. It’s not possible.”

“Then she flew.”

“Flying requires—”

“I don’t give a damn, Rewel!” Danya shouted at him. “This woman did not come to this village by natural means and you would do well to remember that!”

“All that matters is whether or not she has people and whether or not they are coming to find her.”

How could she make him see what she was trying to say?

The woman wasn’t weak, she was stronger than any of the others who had come before her. Through that touch of magic she could feel the influence of the magic of several others. Queens who had linked to this one. That rank only linked through trust and respect, one had to trust that another was not going to abuse the link between them. Yet there was too much magic around the young woman to say that she was linked properly to the others. Magic was obviously coming to her, but it wasn’t getting back out again.

She was an untapped well.

It could have meant two things: that the woman had been broken and actually was a well for some bastard lord who would no doubt come looking for his property.

Or, she had been pushed halfway to breaking and had fled palace grounds to get away from her abusers.

Of the two, the latter option was the worst. If the woman had fled the palace of her own volition it meant that she had not broken, that she had held onto her independence, but barely so. The cost to her mind and spirit, to survive such abuse, could not be measured in words, only in a feeling.

It made the woman dangerous in ways that only Danya’s instincts could warn her about.

It made her a powerful weapon.

Yet at the same time Danya’s instincts nagged at her. She wanted to scream at Rewel—to lie, even—and tell him that obviously someone was coming. Going with the first option would be a good way to be rid of Rewel, to get rid of the woman once she awoke.

But the woman likely wouldn’t survive another trip into the wilderness, and Danya hadn’t had company besides Rewel in almost a year. That was only for a few days before Rewel forbid her from speaking to the woman.

“I will find out if she has anyone coming for her.”

“And you will tell me if someone is coming for her.”

Danya gritted her teeth. It hurt to say it, but she managed to lie.

“I will tell you if she has someone coming for her.”

“You will also tell me if she poses any problems for us.”

“She is absolutely no threat to me,” Danya said.

Even in the dim light of the sick room, Danya saw Rewel pale.

“Is she a threat to me?” Rewel asked finally.

“Everyone is a threat to you. Including me.”

Rewel couldn’t hide the shudder, though she knew he tried. The man was silent a moment longer before he turned towards the door.

“Call me when she awakes,” he said over his shoulder.