Healers (30 page)

The guards on the palace grounds, however, they were only doing their duty. Killing them would be… Just pondering it gave him a sick feeling in his stomach. He couldn’t leave Eva his mother in this prison, but he surely hoped he wouldn’t have to kill one of the guards to get her free.

Getting the keys out of the guard room posed a huge problem. He couldn’t imagine how he could get the keys without killing a lot of the guards.

Tarc had been daydreaming, but suddenly realized he was passing a hardware shop which had some locks in its display window. He ducked inside and meandered the aisles. He stopped to look at some padlocks. They weren’t as big as the one holding Eva, but he imagined they worked on the same principles.

The key was tied to the lock, so he was able to look at it while his ghost felt the parts inside the lock in three dimensions. He quickly understood the blade of the key had to have a certain shape. Without notches in a couple of places, it would be blocked from turning, but without protuberances in three other locations, it wouldn’t lift the three pawls that released the lock.

However, it was
easy
for his ghost to simply lift the three pawls.

He paused and, without looking around, sent his ghost out to make sure no one in the store was close enough to see what he was doing. Assured the coast was clear, he lifted the pawls with his ghost and pulled on the hasp. The lock fell open. Immediately closing it, he proceeded to wander around the store a little more in case someone was watching him. In another section, he found some door locks. Again, they weren’t as heavy as the one in the prison, but their mechanisms turned out to be very similar to the one in the padlock. His ghost easily unlatched one of those as well.

He felt a great sense of relief. After wandering around the store a little longer, he bought some nails and went to find his sister.

“Dauss.”

Daussie looked up at her brother, surprised she hadn’t noticed him approaching. Her mind had been flailing uselessly at the problem of her mother’s imprisonment. She felt guilty for talking Tarc out of trying to rescue their mother the previous night. She’d thought it would be hard to get Eva free then, but it seemed infinitely worse now. It seemed so hopeless that her thoughts spent most of their time cycling through useless self-reproachment and only occasionally managed to focus on possible solutions. Tearing her attention from this useless sequence and turning to Tarc, she said, “What?”

“I’m trying to work out our options for breaking Mom out.”

“Breaking her out?! But that’s
impossible
now! Surely your ghost has shown you the locks and chains they’ve got on her? You were right—we should have tried to get her out last night like you said!”

Tarc shrugged, “Turns out I can open locks with my talent. I’m assuming you could probably break them if you had to.”

Daussie gave him a stunned look, “I could?!”

“Well, yeah. I stopped in a hardware store that had locks and studied them with my ghost. It turns out that, at least the locks they had, have little catches in them like the pawls on a ratchet. The pawls keep you from turning the latch. I can lift the pawls with my talent, but I’ll bet you can just teleport the catches right off the pawls. Without the hooks on the pawls it would essentially be unlocked. Even if that didn’t work, you
could
just punch a bunch of holes in the hasp of the lock and then break it.”

Daussie said, “You think I can punch holes in
steel
?!”

“I don’t know. I’m thinking it might not be any harder than punching holes in soft things. Here, I brought you a big nail. Try it.”

Daussie took the nail. It was huge, with a shaft nearly a quarter of an inch in diameter. Focusing on it, she tried punching out a small piece. A three millimeter ball of steel fell from underneath it, leaving a little hole inside it. A few seconds later she had punched a cluster of holes across its diameter. She grabbed the mail with both hands and easily broke it in half. Suddenly she sobbed and buried her head in her hands, “Dammit!”

“Hey! What’s the matter?” Tarc asked, gently resting a hand on her shoulder.

“I
could
have punched holes in the rope that son of a bitch had tied me up with! Why didn’t
I
think of that?! It’s
so
obvious!”

“Some things are only obvious after they’ve been pointed out.”

“Well, I wish someone had pointed
this
out before that bastard carried me off!”

“Me too. I just now thought of it while I was thinking about how to get Mom free. Actually, the first thing I thought of was…” He paused, thinking.

“What?”

“Well, say we’re captured by some guards while we’re trying to get Mom out. While they’re holding us, before we tried to escape again, you could punch a row of holes through the blades of their knives and swords. Then, if they attacked us during the escape, their weapons would break.”

“That’d only work if I got really close to them.”

Tarc shrugged, “Yeah, a lot of things to do with our talent depend on our getting close. But, we still have a lot of advantages.”

“Yeah,” Daussie sighed, “but I’m not sure they’re enough.”

***

Eva’s shoulders were slumped. She couldn’t believe she’d let her temper get the best of her while talking to a
king
of all people. Certainly this particular king was evil in a disgusting and depraved sort of way, but yelling at him like she had! It was like poking a sleeping tiger with a sharp stick!

The blacksmith had only riveted the shackles around her ankles that afternoon, but her skin
already
hurt from chafing against the heavy steel. The heavy but short chain between her ankles attached to the bolt in the floor with an enormous padlock.

She snorted at herself. She hadn’t wanted her children to try to break in and free her because of the risks involved. But now, her behavior in the king’s chamber had ensured that, even if they did break in, they wouldn’t be able to free her.

Eva’s guilt over dragging the Ropers into her problems had overwhelmed her for a while. She’d apologized to them repeatedly and Haley Roper had pointed out that Eva shouldn’t be held responsible for someone else’s evil deeds. Henry though, had mentioned that he knew Eva’d been
told
not to work as a healer in Realth. Eva had the impression they didn’t hold her to account for King Philip’s deeds, but they did think treating patients in Philip’s kingdom had been terribly irresponsible.

Worse than the chafing of her ankles was the indignation of having the Ropers service her with a chamber pot. At dinnertime Haley Roper had retrieved a bowl of unappetizing mush for her. She’d scooped it from a large pot which had been wheeled by their door by some of the guards. They hadn’t given them spoons, so Eva had to eat the pasty sludge with her fingers.

Lying on a thin mattress under a ragged blanket, Eva once again tried to shift into a position where the manacles didn’t irritate her ankles so. In her ear she heard Tarc’s whisper. He sounded amused, “So, ‘Woman who yells at Kings,’ how’re you doing?”

Eva rolled onto her side and tucked her head in under her blanket so she could whisper back without the Ropers hearing. “Yeah, sorry. I got a little carried away.”

Tarc chuckled, “Well, you wouldn’t be our Mom if you weren’t ‘uppity’ to vile kings.”

Eva sighed, “I’ve been thinking about how to dig myself out of this situation I’ve gotten myself into. I’m going to have to be on my best behavior for a
long
time before they’ll let me out of these shackles. Once they do that I’ll have some chance to escape. I’m thinking you guys should take the wagon someplace far from here. Somewhere you think you can do business without the caravan.”

Tarc interrupted her, “We’re
not
leaving you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. They have me
chained
to the floor with heavy shackles. Even if you could break in here, you couldn’t get me free! The only reasonable plan is for you to come back with both horses in about a month. Hopefully, by then I’ll have remained meek, been on my best behavior, and proved my worth to the king. I’ll no longer be in shackles and I’ll have convinced him that I must to be taken out shopping regularly at the apothecaries so I can find the best medications for his ‘crotch rot.’”

“Oh,
that
sounds like a plan!” Tarc managed to sound like he was biting his lip to keep from laughing. This despite the fact that he was generating the sound of his voice with his talent, which meant any struggles to avoid laughing shouldn’t really have affected it.

Irritated, Eva said, “Of course it’s not
perfect
. I’m completely aware things probably won’t work out just as I’ve outlined them. We’ll have to improvise when the time comes, but it’s as good as we can do right now!”

A hand shook Eva’s shoulder and Haley Roper’s voice came from behind her, “Eva, are you okay?! You’re mumbling—are you having a bad dream?”

Eva realized with some embarrassment she had spoken a little louder than she should have when she’d gotten frustrated with Tarc. “No,” she pulled back the blanket and looked into Haley’s worried eyes. “No, sorry. Sometimes I talk to myself when I’ve done something particularly stupid.” She gave Haley a weak grin, “I’ll try to chastise myself a little more quietly from here on out.”

Haley produced a sad smile and patted her gently on the shoulder. “Try not to be too hard on yourself. We all make mistakes sometimes. At least you screwed up while trying to do good things for other people.”

“There
is
that,” Eva said with a sigh. “Again, my apologies.” She pulled the blanket back up over her head. “Tarc?” she whispered.

Tarc didn’t respond. After a bit, Eva called his name again, then reached up behind her back to scratch it, but he never got back to her. She worried because he’d never actually agreed to her plan.
I hope he’s not about to do something stupid.

***

Tarc wanted to be rested for the night, but eventually just couldn’t nap anymore. Daussie still slept, so he tried to rise quietly. She rolled over and squinted up at him, “What’re you doing?”

“Going out for a walk. I’ll lock the door behind me.”

“I shouldn’t stay in this awful place without you,” she said, rising to an elbow, “but
I’m
still tired. If we’re going to be up all night, I’m gonna get some more sleep.”

“I’d like to sleep a little longer myself, just can’t seem to do it.” Boots on, he stepped through the door, closed it, and reached back through the door with his ghost to throw the latch.

He headed down the stairs and out into the street where he began wandering aimlessly. He halfheartedly hoped for another idea like he’d had at the hardware store.

“Tarc!” he heard from behind him.

Tarc turned, “Lizeth!

“I barely recognized you!” she said, walking across the street toward him. She stared, “What’d you do to your hair?”

“Bootblack,” he snorted. “I constantly have to remind myself not to touch it so I don’t get my hands dirty”

Lizeth stepped close and put her arms around Tarc. She smirked up at him, “So I shouldn’t try to run my fingers through your hair?”

He gave her a lopsided grin, “It’d be okay with me.”

Her eyes twinkled, for a moment, then she said, “Are you gonna kiss me or not?”

Stunned, Tarc wondered whether it was okay to kiss a girl in broad daylight. Then he decided that, even if it wasn’t okay, he really wanted to. He bent his head and their lips met.

After a minute she pulled back and frowned, “So, you think I’m the kind of woman you can just kiss on a public street?!”

Tarc panicked for a moment, thinking he’d done something horribly wrong, but then he realized she was teasing him. He shrugged, “I guess so.”

She let go, drew back, and mock glared at him, “Well, I’m going to try to ignore the fact you’re impugning my pristine reputation. Are you up to date on what happened to the Ropers?” somehow Tarc found himself walking down the street the same direction he’d been going, but she’d slipped her hand into his.

“Um,” Tarc paused, realizing he
shouldn’t
know everything he did know about the Ropers’ situation. “I saw the guardia bringing them into the palace here.”

“Yeah. The guardia arrested them, just because they were in the wagon behind yours! The troop came down to find you Hyllises, and when they couldn’t, they took the Ropers instead! Made no sense at all. Norton’s really pissed, so the caravan’s getting ready to pull out. Norton says the caravan isn’t going to do business where they treat people like this.”

“You aren’t going with them?”

She shook her head, “I told Norton I needed to figure out what was going on with Eva, then I’d catch up to them.

“What’ll happen to the Ropers’ wagon?”

“Norton’s going to have the older Cantor boy drive it. He’ll leave a message with Roper’s friend Lee about where they’re going.”

“What about the Ropers themselves?!”