16Kementari, I will. Enjoy the school hols, and the not-having-exams.
Kayden, thanks for reviewing yet again. For some really odd reason, you're the only one who regularly reviews my fic. I think my so-called friends don't like me anymore *dramatic sniff*.
Anyway, enjoy your long chappie. It's over 2000 words long!
Chapter 5
Awake
Raine woke up with a sore back, feeling drained of energy. She was lying on something soft- a bed. A bed with a really soft mattress. It had been years since she had slept in a bed at all.
She carefully, slowly, tried to sit up. Pain shot through her back, and she groaned.
"Careful," a male voice warned her gently. "You don't want to undo the healers' good work."
"What happened?" Raine asked. "I just remember falling. fainting."
"That would explain it," he said.
"That would explain what?"
"Why you didn't try to heal yourself. You didn't realise someone had stabbed you."
Raine twisted around to see who she was talking to. He looked about her age, fourteen, with coppery brown hair and pale brown eyes flecked with green. There was something mouselike about him, the feeling that he usually watched and listened, but said little.
"Someone stabbed me in the back?" she repeated dumbly. An image of a man who could have been just anyone hitting her hard in the back floated the surface of her mind.
"The healers were worried you wouldn't survive the night. Lady Kel was also asking about you."
Raine sank back into the bed. She honestly never thought that Lady Keladry would agree to help her, but she needed someone powerful to protect her from her master and if she didn't ask, she wouldn't have had that chance. She would have had to hide in the streets, where she could be easily found.
" 'The healers?' " Raine noticed. "Wouldn't you be an apprentice or something? You have the Gift."
He sighed. "I'm only here to keep things clean and to look after patients." Raine could detect frustration in his voice.
"What's your name?" she asked.
"Aaran. Common born and bred," he added.
"I'm Raine. Just Raine."
"You told me last night," Aaran told her. "Don't you remember?"
Raine searched her memory for something- anything- that happened between the time she blacked out and the time she woke up.
"No, I guess I don't," she said after she had given up on her search. Then the memory hit her.
"You have the Gift," she repeated. "I remember your voice. We talked," she recalled the images as if they were from a dully remembered dream. "Something happened. Something. went wrong? You- your Gift. It's pale blue. It." she scoured the faint memory harder for the details. "It kept me away from that dark, miserable place." She took a second to rearrange the sounds and images into something that made sense in the real world.
"You saved my life."
"I couldn't hold you for long. I had to wait until the Baron came back. Luckily he came back pretty soon."
"Thanks."
"Anyone else in the same position would have done the same," he said truthfully. "When you have a healing Gift, it doesn't look very good to have someone die when you're looking after them."
"Oh," Raine said, slightly disappointed.
"I wouldn't be very happy with myself either," Aaran added quickly. "No one would want to lose the person you're meant to be looking after."
"No. That would be awful."
"Luckily it hasn't happened to me yet," he lied. "That would be awful."
They sat staring at each other for a few second, unsure what to say.
"I guess I should go now. They asked me to tell them when you woke up."
"Tell who?"
"My boss, mostly. And Lady Kel."
* ~ * ~ *
Amei huddled in a corner of the Dancing Dove. She badly wanted to get so drunk she wouldn't remember anything between then and sunrise the next morning, but alcohol dulls the reflexes as well as the pain, and she didn't want to be caught off guard by the provost's men. They'd know what she looked like by now, and would be sending patrols out for her, but the mages probably wouldn't start probing for a few-
A throbbing headache appeared out of nothing, making Amei want to scream in pain. Then a thick fog shrouded her thoughts, and the panic started. They were tracking her. She had to get out. Now.
She ran out through the door, knocking over a chair, and down the street faster than she thought she could run. The dim thought that she'd just done something very stupid occurred to her, but she couldn't figure out why it was stupid. She could hear them running after her, three or four of them.
Amei ran around the corner, scrambled up a pile of crates and jumped down the other side with the guards close behind. She climbed up a pile of grina sacks, and pulled herself onto the roof. She heard one of the guards behind her curse at the mere thought of climbing up onto the rooftops.
The clouds that fogged her brain subsided, and Amei knew she had to stop and fight. If she kept running she might not lose them, and would have to face them when she wasn't as fresh as she was now. She'd prefer it if it she didn't have the headache, as it was extremely distracting, but she didn't have the luxury of choice.
Amei pulled her daggers out of her boots and crouched into her ready position. Two guards climbed onto the roof tops after her. She allowed them to ready themselves and to draw their weapons before launching an attack.
The daggers she held, each thin bladed with a hand guard which bent upwards on each side so they looked like a pair of forks, were specially made for fighting swordsmen. They weren't the most expensive daggers she had, but they were her favourite. She never went anywhere without them.
Amei slashed the first guard across the chest and followed it with an upward stroke. Neither had drawn blood, but the guard had been unnerved by Amei's speed and accuracy. He sideswiped at her warily, being careful to keep his guard up. She blocked each attack with the blade of her dagger.
She heard the other guard creeping up behind her. Her battle sight told her he was going to cleave her left shoulder. She caught the strike in one dagger while fending off attacks from the front. One in front, one behind.
A challenge. Cool.
Amei blocked in back, lunged at the guard in front. She could almost hear the Shang Phoenix shouting warnings and hints at her from somewhere in her memory. She turned sideways and struck to the back, keeping her guard at the front up. Each of the guards was a good fighter, but the two of them were no match for Amei's Shang training and her battle sight, a part of her Gift that let her see what an opponent would do before he did it. Sometimes it waned her that a battle was about to take place by turning itself on, heightening Amei's senses.
Amei warded off every attack from both sides, moving as if she could read their minds. The guard behind her caught his sword on Amei's forked dagger and twisted her wrist wrenching the sword out of its holder's grasp. Amei picked up the sword and sheathed her dagger.
"If you want to continue, I'm afraid I'll have to kill you," Amei said, pointing the sword at the unarmed guard.
"Do you think I would back down from a fight with such a treacherous villain as you, girl?" the guard spat. "You will get what's coming to you."
The other guard swung his sword at Amei. She half turned to block the swing, then stabbed the guard with the sword. He fell forward, ripping the sword out of Amei's hand.
"I'm sorry," Amei whispered.
"I bet you are," the other guard said angrily. He turned his workmate over onto his back, pulled the sword out of his belly, checked his breathing, checked his pulse. Amei tried to help but the guard pushed her aside.
"I don't need any help from you, traitor."
Amei shook her head in disbelief. "I could call a healer. I could help take him off the roof."
"If you don't wanna get caught, girl, you better run."
"No," Amei insisted. "It's my fault. I want to help."
He slowly, menacingly, turned towards her. "You don't understand, do you?" He stabbed a dagger into Amei's chest.
"He's dead. He's dead, and you killed him."
Amei staggered back in shock. She didn't mean to, she never wanted to, and yet she always managed to get someone killed. She hated it. Sure, when she was desperate, when she had no money for food, she would kill someone: she would always use poison so she didn't have to watch them die. She knew it was cowardly, that she owed it to them to see what she'd done and take responsibility, but it was easier to pretend they were just meaningless dots to her.
The street rat didn't realise that she had been hurt until she jumped off the roof and hit the ground. Pain jolted through the left side of her chest. She looked down and saw the dagger protruding from her rib cage, just below her breast. Her vision blurred and her world swayed.
"Not now," she moaned. She carefully lowered herself behind a pile of boxes, and lay down.
Amei shuddered. She had no idea how badly she was hurt. If she pulled the knife out now, it could cut further into her body, and it could kill her, piercing her lung or her heart. It was even possible she had been mortally wounded and hadn't realised it yet. The second her heart stopped racing from battle, she would be able to check the Giftless way. If the guards came looking for her, she would shroud herself in her Gift, becoming invisible.
Her breathing did not slow as her heart rate did. When she breathed in, the air in her chest seemed to bubble, and it was harder to get the air in each time she breathed. She coughed hard, and spat the liquid she'd coughed up into her hands. Red droplets dotted her palms.
"I'm dead," she breathed to herself. The dagger had pierced her lung. If she did not find a healer, she would die.
Amei grasped the dagger firmly with both hands, and quickly pulled it out. She cried out in pain. It could find its way to her heart if she walked around with it in her chest. She slowly stood up, carefully climbed back over the crates, walked down the street holding her side as she made her way to the nearest healer's house. Sirra's house.
* ~ * ~ *
Kel entered to find Baron Whiteshaw and the teenaged boy sitting with Raine. The healer was trying to make inane conversation with the girl, but she was more interested in talking to the boy.
"Raine," Kel said, startling the other three people in the room. "How are you?" She sat down in the empty chair beside the bed.
Raine was surprised that the Lady Knight would ask her directly rather than ask the healer. The Baron looked surprised too, but he didn't say anything.
"I'm fine, milady. Ready to start work on your rooms the second you ask me to."
Kel shook her head. "Not 'milady', just Kel."
"As you say, Lady Keladry."
"Don't call me 'Lady Keladry' either. Just Kel."
Raine rolled onto her side, propping herself up with an elbow. "Begging your pardon, milady, but if I stop calling you by title, I may one day forget to call another noble by title, who may not react as kindly as you, Lady Knight."
"Point taken." Kel leaned forward slightly in her chair, in a businesslike fashion. "So, did you see who stabbed you?"
Raine froze. She couldn't tell the Lady Knight; not now, not ever. Even though he had wronged her, she had wronged him first, and if asked him why he tried to kill her they would give her back to him, to do with as he pleased.
"No, I didn't." She turned her eyes away from Kel.
"Are you sure?" Kel asked, noticing the way her eyes flickered away, the way she answered a little too quickly.
"Yes."
Kel leant in close to Raine, and talked so quietly that no one else could hear her.
"Why did you come to the palace, go through all the trouble of lying to the guards, waking me up in the middle of the night, ask to be my maid, just to run away from someone you didn't see?"
Raine looked up at her fearfully. This would be the end of it. She would be sent back into the streets, and he would find her. She could hide for a while, maybe scrounge up enough money to leave the city and her master behind if she was lucky; if not, wait for the inevitable.
"I guess I'll just leave as soon as the healer says I am fit to go," Raine said quietly. "I will survive."
Something in her tone gave Kel a clue as to why the girl came to the palace seeking her protection. "He will kill you if he finds you, won't he?" Kel whispered.
The look on Raine face more than answered her question.
"Don't worry Raine. I'll help you."
* ~ * ~ *
"Amei, you should be more careful," the blonde healer said, cutting of the flow of her baby pink Gift into closing the wound in Amei's chest. "You need to stop taking on jobs that attract the attention of the Lord Provost. Next time they'll catch you for sure."
"I should have just melted instead of running away, but my brain can't handle the tracking spells. I just panic an than I can't think properly."
"You melt?" the healer asked.
"I become see-through. Melt into the background, like that." Amei stretched, arching her back against the wooden table she was lying on. "Don't worry, Sirra. This is the last time. I've given him the most valuable jewel this side of the Roof of the World, and he'll give me the freedom I want in return."
The girl with the long blonde hair was a few years older than Amei, and in some ways had seen more of life than the orphaned girl. "Have you thought about what profession you'll take when you have your freedom? I didn't think you'd want to marry."
Amei thought for a second. This was something she'd overlooked.
"I'm not sure. Odds and ends for anyone who asks, I guess."
"You won't earn enough. You might want to learn another skill. If you found someone to train your Gift, you could sell spells and potions," the healer suggested.
"I'll just see what happens when it happens, okay?" Amei snapped as she sat up and got down off the table. "Can I go now? I've got something that needs to be delivered to the river at sunset."
Sirra gave her a harsh look. "If you must, be careful. I don't want to see you again any time soon."
"If you insist."
* ~ * ~ *
A whole 2,530 words, which is about eight and a half A4 pages. No wonder why it took a week after the exams to get it typed up.
As usual, review me and I'll review you. I'll try not to take so long with the next chapter.