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  “Oh, Mother would have needed a ship full of smelling salts if one of us even got near mud. No, it was tutors, manners and governesses all the time for my sister and me.”

  “Well, obviously you need to make up for lost time. Once we solve this thing in Whitestrand, I insist we go frolic in a field and make a mud pie. I’m sorry to break it to you, but your pristine clothes will get filthy.”

  Jules turned his emerald gaze on her and gave her a lopsided grin. “Is that a promise?”

  Was it? Did she want to be with him as a friend … or more? Her stomach flip-flopped at the thought. Pretending to love someone for years was one thing. But everything between them had changed. The man she’d dreamed about was now her partner. They’d Healed, fought, made up and—perhaps—even become friends together. Is all this a prelude of things to come? I have no bloody idea.

  Natalie turned to Jules and nodded, managing to swallow past the lump in her throat. “I promise.”

  Chapter 9

  R

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  umors of the horrors awaiting them did nothing but increase along the way to Whitestrand.

  “I hear the carts removing the dead from houses aren’t big enough to carry all the dead,” said one barkeep.

  “I hear the whole city smells like death,” responded one of his patrons.

  “Aye, well it already smelt o’ fish. How would you tell the diff’rence?” said another customer, well into his cups.

  The stories grew and changed at each inn, and both Natalie and Jules found themselves reminding each other rumors would not help them solve anything in advance. Despite this reassurance, Natalie often spent her nights, stomach in knots, poring over her Healing diary, searching for clues based on the scanty information she had and trying to find all the notes she’d ever taken about epidemics. None of her research seemed to fit and sleep often eluded her until the early hours of the morning.

  Four days after leaving the Abbey, Natalie and Jules arrived at the cape above Whitestrand. Natalie followed Jules as he scouted for a campsite. He eventually found a rock outcropping surrounded by tall grass that would give them shelter from the sea winds.

  “Let’s get our campsite set up and something to eat. That way we’ll be prepared for what we find in town,” Jules looked down at his hand. “I’m going to need your help pitching the tent.”

  Natalie shrugged. “Just tell me what to do.”

  It took several attempts and a lot of swearing, but between the two of them, they got the tent set up.

  “I used to be able to do this by myself in four minutes,” Jules grumbled, reaching for his bedroll. Not for the first time, Natalie wished she could see his demons and remove them the way she removed shrapnel from her battle-wounded patients.

  As they tossed their bedrolls inside the tent, Natalie’s stomach danced when she imagined sleeping with Jules, his warm body so close to hers. Does he snore? Do I snore? Should I stay as far away from him as I can or if I’m cold, should I … could we get … closer? She concentrated on keeping a straight face and prayed it didn’t blush.

  They ate a simple lunch of dried meat and fruit washed down with water from their waterskins. They ate without speaking, each lost in their own thoughts. Natalie missed Jake’s comforting presence, but for his own safety, she’d left him with Em.

  She could barely eat her food; swallowing was like trying to eat a pulpfish whole. She gave it up as a bad job, shoved the food into her pack and dusted her hands on her pants. She grabbed her herb satchel and checked its contents for the umpteenth time. Her Healing diary was there, and she’d remembered to add a kerchief to tie around her face in case the mystery disease was transmitted by air. She secured the satchel to her pony, Benji. She triple-checked his tack, ensuring every single buckle and strap lay precisely in place. At least Benji was ready; she wished she could say the same.

  They rode down the steep road to Whitestrand, the first sea winds blowing against her face. Natalie wrinkled her nose. The air did smell of fish—and something more insidious. Whitestrand was a port town, its buildings built of out of the plentiful gray stone that made up the cliffs and capes towering for miles over this part of Ismereld’s coastline. Its buildings sat huddled together along streets paved with the same stone. The stone construction had stood the town well over centuries of vicious sea storms.

  It was not a long road down the cape, and they soon encountered the campsite of the Royal Guard maintaining the quarantine on the town.

  One guard, a burly, whiskered fellow, stepped into the road. “Halt,” he bellowed.

  Jules’s horse, Elric, tossed his head imperiously when Jules halted him. Jules scrutinized the guard. “Healers Rayvenwood and Desmond from Bridhe of the Isles Abbey. You’ve been expecting us.”

  The guard raised his eyebrows, nodded and removed himself from their path. “I’m glad I’m not you, meself,” he shook his head. “I wouldn’t set a foot in that town if you paid me fifty gold coins.”

  Just past the quarantine campsite, they entered the town proper. An ominous silence filled the streets. The horrible smell became so overwhelming that both Natalie and Jules tied kerchiefs over their faces. Every once in a while, flakes resembling snow fell from the gray sky, even though it was summer.

  Natalie peered at Jules. “Do you know where the center of town is?”

  He nodded. “Near the Temple of the Five Mages. We’re heading that way now.”

  They spoke in whispers. It was as if a powerful vengeful spirit had wiped the town’s people right off the earth.

  Natalie despaired of finding anyone on the grim march through the twists and turns of Whitestrand’s gray streets, until one turn revealed the Temple. They spotted a young boy, no more than twelve, walking with buckets of water toward the Temple doors. He spotted them at the same time.

  “Healers!” he almost dropped his water. “Greatmother! Greatmother! More Healers have come,” he shouted, running into the Temple.

  Natalie raised her eyebrows at Jules. They tethered the horses outside the Temple, gathered their supplies, double-checked their kerchiefs, and entered the large, gray building. Natalie clenched her teeth together to stop her jaw from dropping. Sick people lay upon rows and rows of pallets in Whitestrand’s enormous temple. Several elderly folk tended to the sick, doling out water, changing bedding and wiping brows. High fevers reddened the faces of most of the ill. Several patients sweated profusely, their pallets soaking wet. She spotted the boy from the street speaking with one of the elder women who she assumed was his greatmother.

  The boy tugged his greatmother toward them. “See, Greatmother, I told you.”

  Natalie extended her hand. “Healer Natalie Desmond, and this is Healer Juliers Rayvenwood.”

  “Simona Halis. We are so grateful you are here.” She shook Jules’s hand as well. “However, I’m afraid there aren’t many of us left for you to Heal.”

  “You’ve not become ill yourself?” Jules pulled out their journal, a quill and inkpot.

  “No, only some of the elderly and young have. And when they do, for the most part, they survive.” She dabbed her eyes with her apron. “We’ve—we’ve had to set up an orphanage in the town hall for the time being. You see, this sweating sickness affects only grown folk in the prime of life. Have you heard of such a thing?”

  “It doesn’t sound familiar as yet, but we’ll know more once we examine the patients. Is there anything else you can tell us? How it’s transmitted? When it started?” Natalie asked.

  Simona bunched her apron in her fists. “I don’t know how it’s transmitted—nothing makes sense. If it were sneezing or touch, I’d have it by now, wouldn’t I? And it started about four weeks ago when the weather turned warm. So many have died. We’ve … we’ve been holding mass funerals down on the beaches near the docks, burning the bodies.”

  Natalie suppressed a shudder recalling the mysterious snow-like flakes falling on her during the ride into town. It had
not been snow; it had been ash. She put her arm around Simona’s shoulders. “All right, we’re going to examine patients. Why don’t you get some rest and something to eat? We will let you know what we find.”

  Simona nodded, tears flowing freely now. “Be careful. The first two Healers died soon after they got here.”

  Natalie managed a weak smile beneath her kerchief. “We will.”

  Natalie and Jules sat on either side of the first patient they selected.

  “Simona says her name is Ella. She’s nineteen and she was just brought in a few hours ago. Her headache started at breakfast, the fever and vomiting half an hour later.” Natalie observed Ella between them struggling to draw breath and sweating profusely.

  Jules’s quill scratched across the page. “Any sign of a rash? Or bruising?”

  Natalie placed her hand gently on Ella’s arm. “Ella? My name is Healer Natalie. I’m going to check under your clothes for a rash, all right?” Natalie lifted Ella’s shirt and checked her torso and chest for a rash. Rocking her from side to side, she checked her back. Ella groaned. “No rash. No bruising.” Natalie wiped Ella’s brow with a cool cloth. Ella muttered incoherent words and her eyes couldn’t quite focus on any one thing. “Add delirium to the list of symptoms. Though whether it’s from the fever or the illness itself, I don’t know.”

  Jules nodded. “Any swollen glands?”

  Natalie gently pressed under Ella’s chin and along her neck. “No.”

  Jules set the log down. “We’ve got to do the Naming.”

  They grasped hands across Ella’s prostrate form. Natalie took several breaths to calm herself; Jules’s energy flowing in her and within her, anchoring her to the ley lines of Ismereld, comforted her like an old friend. Her heart rate slowed and her anxiety dissipated. When she was ready, she caught Jules’s glance. He gave her a nod, his emerald eyes encouraging over the kerchief covering his nose and mouth, and she placed her free hand on Ella, sending their energy inward along the bones, ligaments, tendons, nerves, blood vessels and tissues of the patient’s body.

  Natalie closed her eyes and focused as she never had before.

  “Her lungs,” Jules muttered.

  Natalie’s eyes flew open. “Yes. Almost like pneumonia. But it can’t be pneumonia because—”

  “—Simona said the elderly survive the disease for the most part.” Jules finished her sentence.

  “And pneumonia takes a lot longer to kill. So what acts similar to pneumonia but kills in a day or less and ignores children and elder folk?”

  “Damned if I know,” Jules whispered. “And how are we going to find out? We didn’t bring the Abbey library with us. Do you remember anything similar to this from your diary?”

  “No. I’d give anything to stop and read it right now, but if I do, we’ll lose a lot more patients.” Natalie surveyed the full Temple-turned-sick ward. “Let’s start with tanyaroot tea. Perhaps what helps people overcome pneumonia will help them survive this.”

  For the rest of the day, Natalie and Jules labored in the Temple. Jules made a list of all the patients in the building, while Natalie enlisted Simona’s help preparing the tanyaroot tea. To be certain, they performed Naming on each patient they treated, but the results were the same each time. Natalie recorded in their log when patients got a dose of tea and left a space to record any observations.

  “Tanyaroot tea helps pneumonia patients within a few hours,” she told Simona whilst helping one patient drink his dose.

  Simona frowned. “Well, we’ll soon know for sure, won’t we? Folk until now have either died or gotten better in just a few hours’ time. And I can’t tell you why they got better, either.”

  “Could you give us the names of some of the people who’ve gotten better? So we can talk to them?” Natalie asked. Simona nodded and gave the names to Jules.

  They toiled well into the night. Much to Natalie’s dismay, the tanyaroot tea helped patients breathe easier but they died nonetheless. Simona Halis and the group of people working with her went home for some much needed rest, and a new group of people arrived, led by a wonderful old gentleman named Jarvis Humphrey.

  Jarvis rested a hand on both Natalie and Jules when he found them, heads bowed, over a newly deceased patient. “Healers, you’ve done what you can for today. Go, get some rest. You cannot take care of us if you are not taking care of yourselves first.”

  Jules nodded. “Our campsite is just past the quarantine, up the road and to the right. Send a rider to the guards and have the guards fetch us if you need us.”

  They gathered their belongings and Jarvis gave them a lantern to take along the road. Natalie’s legs shook as she mounted Benji. She was certain the trip to the campsite took five days, though in reality, it only took about twenty minutes. When they passed by the quarantine camp, only one guard was awake; he raised the bottle he was drinking from to cheerily toast them as they passed, tripping over his own feet as he did. Anger boiled in Natalie’s chest at his carelessness. The rest of Ismereld depended on maintaining this quarantine, and the guards, it would seem, could care less. Natalie thought she just might have some energy left to dismount and shove the bottle someplace from where he’d require a surgeon’s services to remove it. But that would leave the road unguarded. Such as it was.

  Once at the campsite, they tethered and untacked the horses. Natalie sniffed her cloak. Her nose scrunched; she literally smelled like death.

  They took turns bathing in a nearby pond. Natalie stepped in, clothes and all, wanting to get everything clean. It disconcerted her, stepping into a dark pond in the middle of the night. She managed not to shriek when something slithered around her ankle. She shivered, despite the warmth of the water, and finished her ablutions quickly.

  After donning a change of clothes, she entered the tent first and sat on her bedroll, knees to her chest and arms hugging her legs. As she listened to Jules splash around in the pond, uncertainty crept up and sank its claws into her. The specter of Healer Aldworth saying not to let him down rose before her. The frustration of Naming the disease grated on her nerves. She—well, they—Named every patient in the Temple properly. Right? But how could they Name a disease they’d never seen? So many people had died today. Aldworth would be so disappointed.

  A few moments later, Jules came in with the lantern. Carefully avoiding stepping on her—no small feat considering how far he had to bend over—he got into his own bedroll. He noticed her distress right away. “Are you all right?”

  Did her tears have to start now? “No, I mean, yes. Yes, we did all right today. I mean, I think. We did, right?” Her death grip on her legs increased as she turned to him. “Did we miss anything? Think back to the Naming, what you saw. Did we miss anything? It’s nothing we’ve ever seen, right? Should we go back and double-check?”

  Jules crawled over, sat in front of her and rested his hand on her shoulder. “Natalie. It’s an epidemic unlike anything I’ve ever seen. We did our very best. What’s going on?”

  Natalie bit her lip. “I … I always get this way after I Heal someone.” She stared at the green tent wall. “My third time out as a full-fledged Healer was for a boy who fell and hit his head. His name was Aaron, the same name as my brother. I Named his injuries, I gave him all the right herbs. And … and he went into a coma and is now paralyzed.” Tears flowed down her face and she wiped her nose on her sleeve. “The Council of Healers reviewed my actions and found I’d done nothing wrong. But I must have missed something. If I’d been as good a Namer as you are, I would have seen it. He’d be just fine—”

  “Hey,” Jules slowly cupped her face with his hand and stroked her damp cheek with his thumb. “You are more than capable. You were one of my best students and you are one of the best Healers now. What happened was terrible, but it wasn’t your fault.” Natalie turned her head away, trying to swallow the tears. Hesitantly, Jules put one arm around her, then the other, and then rested his dark head on top of her brown one. />
  Her tears dried on the soft fabric of Jules’s shirt as she closed her eyes. His heart beat against her ear. It seemed to resonate in her head and settle within her soul. She drew her lips into a smile and inhaled deeply, attempting to memorize Jules’s smell—the sweet tang of his shirt, the faint smell of horse. She let the breath out slowly, savoring every moment.

  “Head wounds will always be tricky, for the best of Healers,” he whispered. He ran his forearms from her shoulders down to her elbows, pushed her away gently and looked into her eyes. “And I wouldn’t want to work with anyone else at the Abbey, got it?”

  Natalie half laughed and half sobbed. “Got it.” She wiped her nose on her sleeve again. “Thank you.”

  He stroked her cheek again with the utmost gentleness. The compassion in his eyes made her breath hitch. “No, you must allow me to thank you. I came back broken. I wanted to quit and leave. Despite my pushing you away, you persisted and—well, I’m not whole, but I’m starting to find the pieces again. Because of you. Now, lie down and get some sleep.”

  She obeyed, climbing into her bedroll, a thrill running up her spine as Jules tenderly pulled a blanket over her and said good night.

  Before succumbing to exhaustion, it occurred to her that she was falling in love with the man. Again.

  Chapter 10

  R

  T

  he next morning, Natalie drifted awake, eyes still closed, and relished how comfortable she was. Odd, considering she’d slept on the ground in a bedroll in a tent. She knew a room full of dying people awaited her, but for the moment, she mentally shoved that to the side. Just a bit of breeze shifted through the tent, bringing with it the salt scent of the sea. The early morning sunlight filtered by the canvas of the tent rested on her eyelids. Lying on her right side, snuggled under her bedroll with her head nestled against Jules’s shoulder, she was cozy and warm. Wait—