Practice. Reiter thought of blood pouring from a gaping wound in pale skin and wondered how the emperor would have the Healer-mage practice on disease.
“My physician told me that going to a Healer-mage is equivalent to drinking one of the those vile herbal teas old women force on you. I believed him, of course, because he’s a man of science, but I now begin to think that’s just because he’s never seen an actual Healer-mage in action. I’d bring him in to see mine, but he’d most likely die of professional jealousy, unimaginative old coot.” He giggled and Reiter was glad to be behind the emperor’s shoulder because he really hated grown men who giggled and he doubted he’d survive the emperor seeing his expression. “What we need to do now is determine parameters…and I’m an idiot! I should have timed the healing! I don’t suppose you checked your watch as it began and ended?”
Reiter schooled his expression as the emperor turned. “Sorry, Majesty, but no.”
“I forgot, so I’m not surprised you did. Perhaps Adeline Curtin noted the time. She used to be the matron in Darkbin.”
“The women’s prison?”
“Yes, that’s the place. Horrible in there, they tell me, but then it’s a prison, so horrible is rather the point, I expect. The more relevant point is that she doesn’t want to go back which is good because it’s surprisingly difficult to find an Aydori-speaking midwife whose loyalty you can count on. Although, between you and me, I find her mildly disquieting.”
She’d taken a scalpel and cut a woman under her care. Reiter found the idea of her as a midwife in a women’s prison more than mildly disquieting.
“Ah, well, if we didn’t record a time today, we have to make sure we record one the next time. And I’ve just now thought of a way we can use your background to our advantage. Write up a list for me, Captain, of all the various injuries you’ve seen on a battlefield.” At the tapestry, he waited for Reiter to lift the fabric, and murmured as he passed, “I wonder what would happen if we cut a finger off? Would a Healer-mage be able to regrow it?”
“Majesty, a page brought this from the north wing.” Outside in the larger corridor, Tavert offered the emperor the fork. The emperor redirected it to Reiter.
“See that gets put away safely, Captain.”
“Yes, Majesty.” As he walked away, he heard Tavert reminding the emperor of a tailor’s appointment. Apparently Her Imperial Majesty wanted him in a new jacket for the upcoming public festival.
It was funny how everything inside the palace was connected to everything else. Until today, Reiter had never realized that fresh blood soaking into blue fabric created Imperial purple.
Curled on the floor, pressed tight to the crack under her door, Danika rubbed at the thin scar on her chest and took long, careful breaths. Inhaled slowly. Exhaled slowly. Fought the urge to pant. To whine. To keep screaming. She knew she’d lived a fairly sheltered life. Everyone she knew had lived a fairly sheltered life. Before Aydori was attacked, even the soldiers in her family or among her extended acquaintance were more about showing off their uniforms for pretty girls than they were about danger and pain. Her brother had fallen off the roof when he was ten and broken his arm, and the more dominant members of the Pack had scars, but she’d gone from being a slightly bored schoolgirl, to excelling at the university, to a loving marriage without ever being hurt badly enough for her to remember it now.
Kirstin had heard her scream. Her words on the air had not only been frantic but forceful enough to reach all of the others, and the net had clamped down. She was probably in more pain now than Danika, who had only the memory of pain.
Murmuring comfort to the others, Danika made plans. They had to find out if Adeline Curtin was the keeper of the second artifact and, if not, where it was kept. Stina had to finish freeing the hinges on her door. And they had to escape before Leopald took his testing to its logical conclusion and injured one of them—injured her—in a way Jesine couldn’t heal.
“Well, you’ll never fucking fit in his, but I might be able to help.”
Mirian stopped trying to lay words onto the breeze—she’d been practicing all day, and couldn’t figure out how Lady Hagen had made it seem so effortless—and waited to see if Jake would speak again. Gryham and Tomas had gone out hunting, disdaining the downpour that had held them at the cottage for a second day, and she’d been told to remember anything Jake said.
“What did you See?” she asked when he picked another potato out of the basket she’d matured and began to peel it.
He raised his head, gaze unfocused, and Mirian realized he still stared into the future. “Hurry.”
The knife slipped and he swore, back in the present as blood dripped on the floor.
“So, Captain Reiter, is it true there’s captured Aydori mages in the north wing?”
Reiter turned, surprising the woman seated next to him, who’d been leaning in, her breath warm and wine-scented against his cheek.
Her name was Onnyle Cobb. Her family was minor nobility. She did something at the treasury and wanted to do something more important. He had no idea who most of the people sitting down every evening at the formal dinner were, but over the last few days, he’d managed a reasonably thorough threat assessment of those he ate with.
Ate beside.
Over the last four meals, there’d been a bare exchange of common civility—he still wore his old dress uniform, making him the only one in the room except the guard not in court dress—but it seemed he’d been assessed in turn.
Cobb waited for him to answer, still pressed a little too close, her eyes lying about how interesting she found him. Reiter found himself suddenly thinking of pale gray eyes, narrowed in scorn, and how he preferred their honesty.
He turned his attention back to his chicken. He’d never been told not to speak of the mages, but, given that he alone accompanied the emperor to his observation booth, it didn’t take a genius to realize that the Aydori mages weren’t common knowledge. In order for a thing to remain uncommon knowledge, those who knew of it had to keep their mouths shut.
“Is it true, Captain?”
Ignoring her didn’t seem to be an option. “I can’t say.”
A warm hand closed around his arm. “Ah, but rumor says you accompany His Imperial Majesty when he goes to visit them.”
Most of the men who’d been sent into Aydori had been reassigned to the other divisions. No surprise that one of them had bragged about a successful mission before he’d left Karis. Less surprise if it had been Lieutenant Lord Geurin; that ass would brag about taking a successful shit.
“People talk about you, you know. You were Seen by the Soothsayers. That’s impressive. Important. And now, because of the Soothsayers, you have the ear of the emperor.”
Reiter considered telling her that the emperor had his ear, that the emperor talked and he listened, but that would only extend the conversation, so he cut to the chase. “What do you want?”
She started but recovered quickly, allowing the flirtation to become business. “I’m wasted where I am. I have ideas that could revolutionize tax collecting. I want you to put a word in the Imperial ear.”