Emerald's Fracture Read online

  Her eyes flew open. Jules slept on his side, facing her. Natalie delicately maneuvered her body back little by little so they no longer touched. The early morning sun on his face made him seem younger, although the occasional scar and dark circles under his eyes were proof of his time in the army and the stress he’d been under. This close to his dark hair, she could see tiny copper highlights glint in the sun. He kept his hair cut short, but given its waviness, she thought it might be curly if he ever grew it out. Her fingers ached to thread through his hair and—

  “Am I very fascinating?” His deep voice startled her.

  Natalie found his emerald eyes looking at hers, crinkled at the edges, and a smile on his face.

  Blood rushed to her cheeks. “I … well, I …”

  He laughed. “Goddess, woman, you should see your face.”

  She punched him in the arm and flopped onto her back on her bedroll, only to have Jules’s face appear above hers.

  “What?” she demanded.

  “Well, it seems only fair,” he whispered, “since you had time to study my face, I should have time to study yours.”

  “Oh,” she said, her heart beating out of rhythm.

  His startling eyes studied her. He reached up and brushed a bit of her hair off to the side. Natalie swallowed, their energies connecting with that merest brush of skin. She wanted to close her eyes and arch against him like a cat, but she feared the moment would scatter like so many butterflies if she so much as moved.

  “Am I very fascinating?” she whispered.

  His eyes widened, hearing his own question repeated back to him. He closed his eyes, then ever so gently rested his forehead on hers. “Fascinating isn’t the word I would use,” He sighed.

  Natalie squeezed her eyes shut. What does he mean? We’re friends now—I think. Is he saying he wants more? Do I want more? His breath caressed her face and she relished the feeling of his forehead against hers. Oh, Goddess, yes. Yes, I want more. Now.

  One of the horses whinnied, shattering the moment. “Someone’s here.” Jules jumped up, grabbed something Natalie couldn’t see, darted to the tent doorway and peered out. “It’s one of the quarantine guards,” he said. He turned to her, a dagger clenched in his fist. Did he sleep with a dagger nearby? “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

  When he closed the tent flap behind him, she crept over to listen in. Apparently one of the illness survivors was an ale brewer asking if he could resume trade with the other cities on Ismereld.

  Natalie pinched the bridge of her nose. “Does he not know the meaning of the word ‘quarantine’?” she muttered. She began rolling up the bedrolls in her frustration.

  Jules denied the request and asked the name of the brewer so they might talk to him; he could prove useful in their efforts to heal others. Once the guard was on his way, the tent flap opened again. “Time to start the day, I suppose,” Jules said.

  “Way ahead of you.” Natalie nodded to his rolled bedroll and pretended nothing had happened between them that morning at all.

  On the way back into the city, Natalie lectured the quarantine guards that no one but she and Jules should enter or leave the city. Only they, as Healers, could lift the quarantine. The guards glowered through the entire lecture. Natalie glanced at them over her shoulder as she and Jules rode away. Surly she could handle; incompetent she could not.

  The situation at the Temple was no better. The fever had taken fifteen more patients overnight. Each loss was like a dagger to Natalie’s heart. Looking around the large room, she wondered just how much more her heart could take.

  Jules updated the patient log with the people who’d died. Natalie nearly burned herself brewing a large pot of tanyaroot tea, transfixed by the sight of him rubbing the stubble on his chin as he worked. Heat pooled in her stomach as visions filled her head of her face leaning in close to his, and the feel of his breath on her cheek. Stretching up on her tiptoes to finally explore the planes and textures of his face. Heat blossomed across her cheeks, and it was not from the steaming pot of tea she’d just finished preparing.

  Jules laid down his quill. “I think it’s time to talk to the survivors to see if we can spot what’s different about them.”

  Natalie shook her head and ordered herself to get it together. “I agree. Let’s start with that brewer who tried to break quarantine. I’d first like to help some of the people here, though. And I still need to find time to read my diary. Now that we know so much, I’ve got to see if I wrote down something about a disease similar to this one.”

  After administering herbs and elixirs to bring down fevers and loosen chest congestion, they were off to the home of one Briggs Morley, Brewer, who had recovered from the fever.

  Mr. Morley was well off. He had a large house in the finer part of town, and Natalie got the distinct impression if it hadn’t been for the epidemic, a servant, not Mr. Morley himself, would have answered the door. As it was, the door swung open and a large, beefy man with thick arms filled the doorframe.

  “Healers?” Morley said without preamble, “Have you come to tell me I can leave the city? As you see, I am quite well, and I don’t want to lose any more money. There’s no one here to buy my ale.”

  Natalie put her hands on her hips. “Have you been oversampling your own product, sir? Most of Whitestrand is dead, and you’re worried about profits.”

  Morley stepped into Natalie’s face and looked down upon her. “You’d best control your woman, Healer,” he said to Jules.

  Natalie opened her mouth to tell him off, but Jules beat her to it. “Actually, Mr. Morley, my fellow Healer—who happens to be a woman—made an excellent point. We have some important questions and, with your permission, we’d like to examine you. We must determine why some people survived this epidemic.”

  Natalie glared at Morley. “Think of it this way, Mr. Morley: any life you help save is the life of a potential customer. And make no mistake, sir—if you leave Whitestrand and take this epidemic with you to another town, those deaths will be on you.”

  Morley clenched his meaty fists. “Fine. Come in.”

  Jules and Natalie examined Morley from head to toe. The Naming revealed a slight weakness in his lungs leftover from his bout with the illness but that was it.

  Natalie wrote in the log while Jules asked questions. The last time he’d traveled to the main continent was three months ago. He did most of his trading within the Isles. No, he hadn’t eaten or drunk anything out of the ordinary. He had not had any other strange illnesses before this one. If he didn’t eat at his own house, he tended to patronize three of the more well-to-do pubs in Whitestrand. He didn’t know anyone who was ill before he became ill himself, and he had not taken any remedies for the illness when it came on; he simply got better.

  They thanked Mr. Morley for his time and barely missed being hit by his front door on the way out.

  Natalie glared back at his house. “What an insufferable man.” She kicked a rock in the empty street.

  Jules feigned offense. “I thought that was your nickname for me.”

  Natalie’s eyes grew wide and she gaped at him.

  Jules roared with laughter. “Goddess, woman, you should see your face,” he said for the second time that day.

  Natalie closed her eyes and regained her dignity. “It’s not my fault if you were being an insufferable ass. That, sir, is entirely upon you. I was merely being observant.”

  “True. I was quite insufferable when I got back. And an ass. I do apologize, my lady.”

  “Don’t ‘my lady’ me.” Natalie whacked him with their log. “You’re being insufferable right now.”

  He laughed. “At least things are better now.”

  Natalie gestured to the Temple, where they’d just arrived. “A Temple full of dying people and things are better?”

  “Better than what I saw in the war, I mean.” Jules rubbed the stump of his arm.

  “How so?”

 
Jules’s face darkened. “It’s difficult to explain. There’s a lot more going on in the war than people know about. It—they tried to—”

  The door opened behind them and Simona Halis poked her head out. “Oh good, you’re back. We need the extra hands.”

  What? Natalie longed to ask. What had they tried to do that had left Jules so broken?

  Inside the Temple, things hadn’t changed. Natalie treated patients until her legs turned to jelly and her back ached something fierce. All her herbs seemed to do was ease the people’s suffering as they died. It was a blessing but did nothing to cure people or stop the spread of the disease.

  She spoke words of kindness and comfort to her patients as she doled out tea and Activated the herbs within them. But behind her kind words and gentle touches, she was losing hope. She wanted to ask the Council of Healers if they’d sent her just to watch these people die. Or did they send her here to punish her for Malcolm Bartlett’s death? What did they expect her to learn from a disease as impossible to treat as this? That sometimes Healers end up in no-win situations?

  Stumbling to the stove to fix more tea, it was all she could do not to cover her ears to drown out the sound of moaning and vomiting. The smell of the Temple itself made her claustrophobic, and the urge to walk out the door welled up in her chest and nearly choked her. Anything to get away from the sweating, pain, helplessness and death. She grasped the wooden teapot handle and dug her fingernails into it. She must stay. She must.

  They received few new patients, though Natalie suspected that was due more to the epidemic having decimated Whitestrand’s population than anything else.

  Natalie and Jules worked late into the night, eating from their own packs and drinking from their own waterskins. Natalie was administering tanyaroot tea to one patient when the Temple doors burst open and one of the quarantine guards nearly fell in. Natalie rushed to him and Jules quickly got to his other side; the man had been beaten quite badly.

  As they tended his wounds, the guard grabbed Natalie’s hand. “’Twas Morley the brewer, it was. Came upon us in the dark with his wagon full o’ goods demanding to pass. When we said no, two lads came out o’ the wagon an’ them an’ Morley himself set upon us. He’s long gone.”

  Jules swore. Several of the Temple nurses shot him a look. “Did he say where he was headed?”

  “Said he was goin’ to Mistfell.”

  Natalie dropped the bandages she was holding. Her knees buckled. She fell, hard, into a sitting position on the ground. The room spun. A strange buzzing filled her ears.

  Mistfell.

  “Simona, can you send people to get the other injured guard and bring him here?”

  Was that Jules’s voice? She stared at her empty hands. Sounds floated in and out, competing with the buzzing.

  Through the static, a voice in the distance called out, “Natalie. Nat.”

  Two emerald eyes came into view, breaking contact with her useless hands. Hands that had failed her so far. Hands that had failed this town. Hands that would fail her family too.

  Her shoulders shook. “Natalie.” Jules was shaking her. He was talking to her now. His lips moved but what was he saying?

  Mother. Da. Aaron.

  Suddenly, the buzzing stopped. “Jules.” Her voice wasn’t at all raspy like she thought it would be. It was strong. Solid. Sure.

  Her shoulders stilled in his grip.

  “If Morley took the epidemic with him … my family. We’ve got to go to Mistfell.”

  Chapter 11

  R

  “N

  at, come on, let’s go outside and get some fresh air.” Jules helped her to her feet, put an arm around her shoulders, and helped her outside the Temple.

  “Fresh air. Fresh air?” She rounded on Jules and gestured to the nearby buildings. “This isn’t fresh air. This is air that smells like dead and burnt bodies. This whole town is dead and we couldn’t stop it. And now Mistfell will fall.”

  “You don’t know that. And what of the people here? The Council ordered us to this city. We have no orders to leave. We’ll face the inquiry of a lifetime if we abandon Whitestrand. We could even be stripped of our Healer status. Everything we’ve worked for our entire lives will be lost.”

  “The Abbey wants us to stop the epidemic, right? To have any chance of doing that, we’ll go to Mistfell,” Natalie countered.

  Jules threw his arms in the air. “We don’t know for sure Morley took it with him. We don’t know how this fever is transmitted. Maybe we carry the disease. Nat, if we follow Morley, what if we take the disease to Mistfell ourselves?”

  “Dammit,” Natalie turned on her heel and started pacing. “There hasn’t been any time for me to do my research.”

  “You’re sure the answer is in that little book you have?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but it’s the best resource we have.”

  Jules stroked his chin and started pacing. “Well, I’m not sure we have time to do research now, but I do think we have time to do a little process of elimination. What are the different methods of disease transmission?”

  Natalie counted off on her fingers. “People touching each other, bodily fluids, contaminated surfaces or objects, food or water, and insect bites.”

  Jules nodded. “Have we been able to eliminate any of those yet?”

  Natalie bit her thumbnail. “I’ve got a few bug bites and I’m not sick.”

  “Same. So that’s one method off the list. We’re down to five. Can we safely eliminate more before leaving for Mistfell?”

  Natalie’s head snapped up. “You … you think we should go?”

  Jules looked up at the night sky. “I stand by what I said earlier. We were ordered here. Leaving could be a terrible decision—professionally, that is. On the other hand, what will we do here? Raise orphans and care for the elderly? There’s what, forty patients left in that Temple? What can we do for them? You are right; we have to assume the disease is on its way to Mistfell. We have to put Mistfell in quarantine or the whole Isle stands to fall. And with a war going on, that would allow Lorelan easy access to all the other Isles. I think I will sleep better at night knowing we’re trying to save our home Isle. We’ll just have to deal with the council when they come for us. And they will.”

  Natalie nodded. “In that case, I have an idea how we can eliminate the other methods of disease transmission. But you’re not going to like it.”

  “Try me.”

  “Before we leave, we make sure the patients inside are comfortable. And I’ll take off my kerchief and won’t wash my hands. It’s two days between here and Mistfell. If I get sick, we know it’s person to person contact, bodily fluids, or contaminated surfaces.”

  Jules’s eyes narrowed. “Why just you? We should both do it.”

  Natalie raised her chin. “It’s my family. It’s my home. There’s no need for you to sacrifice yourself for them. Besides if I … if something happens, you’ll need to ride ahead to warn them about Morley. And set up the quarantine.”

  Jules reached for her, his hand cupping her face. “You don’t have to do this,” he whispered.

  His palm on her cheek shot frissons of warmth down the core of her body. Natalie gave in to one her greatest desires and stroked her fingers along the stubble on his cheek. “I do,” she said. “I can’t have the death of my family and hometown on my conscience.”

  Jules rested his forehead on hers. “I can’t let you do this. I can’t let you die.”

  Natalie huffed a small laugh. “Maybe I won’t die. You know me, I’m stubborn and hard to get rid of.”

  One side of Jules’s mouth curled up, and then he sighed. “I don’t like it. But it is a logical plan—and the only one we have.”

  Jules took her hand, and they walked into the Temple.

  “Jules? Before we leave, I want to visit the pyres on the beach and honor the people who were lost. The ones we couldn’t save.”

  Inside
the Temple, Natalie removed her kerchief, then set about ensuring each patient was as comfortable as possible. Not only did she give them the herbs to reduce their coughing and fevers, but she also placed her hands on their foreheads, not to Heal, but to apologize and say goodbye. Although no one had ever confirmed that dying or delirious patients could hear people talking, Natalie had always believed they could. She murmured in their ears all she wished she’d been able to do for them and all she planned to do in their memories. She would stop the disease at Mistfell. Somehow, she would find a way.

  They packed their belongings in the Temple, said a fond goodbye to Simona Halis and wished her well.

  Simona shook each of their hands warmly. “Thank you for all you’ve done for us. I hope you can stop Mistfell from suffering our fate.”

  Jules returned her handshake. “Thank you. We are so grateful for all your help. If we may, Mistress Halis, we’d like to pay our respects. Can you direct us to the pyres on the beach?”

  Dawn broke over Whitestrand as Natalie and Jules walked in silence toward the beach. The gray stone buildings of Whitestrand acted as a somber escort to the mass grave of its fallen citizens. As they approached, the stench of rotting and burning flesh overwhelmed their senses. Soon, they didn’t need Mistress Halis’s directions; they simply followed the column of smoke arcing toward the sky. As they came around the last turn, the sea winds blew in their faces, swirling the street with the ashes of the dead.

  Bile rose in Natalie’s throat and she broke out in a cold sweat. She whirled, ran back around the corner and emptied the contents of her stomach in the gutter. Jules held her hair back out of her face. When she was done, he held one of their waterskins out for her and she swished her mouth out.

  “Thank you.”

  He nodded and took the waterskin, tucking it under his cloak. Wordlessly, he continued toward their destination, gripping the stump of his right arm with his left hand as if it were the only thing holding him together.