The door to Tali’s dorm room was shut, but not soundproof. Shuffling feet and excited giggles drifted in as the other apprentices readied for class. Morning rounds were about to start and I had work to find if I wanted to eat today. Tali sneaked some food out for me when she could, but the League rationed it and they watched the wards and apprentices carefully at mealtimes—especially if they were Gevegian. Hungry or not, I wasn’t about to let her risk her apprenticeship for me any more than I had to, and I needed a bigger favour than breakfast.
“Are you on this morning?” I asked, wiggling my toes in the sunbeam.
Tali nodded, but didn’t look at me. I think stealing the heals scared her more than stealing food, though getting caught in the dining hall was a lot more likely.
“Could you?” I lifted my aching hands. The pain from the night guard’s knuckleburn made me useless for all but hauling and I couldn’t carry enough on my back to be worth the money.
“Sure, come here.”
I scooted over and she took my hands. Heat blossomed and the ache vanished, tucked safely in Tali’s knuckles. She’d keep it there until some aristocrat paid the League to get rid of their own pain, then dump both into the Slab. It was risky sneaking the pain past the League Seniors, but I couldn’t dump my pain into the Slab even if I could get to it.
The Slab wasn’t its real name, but that’s what all the apprentices and low cords called it. Its real name was something like Healing Quality High-Enchanted Pynvium, which didn’t have the same ring at all. I’d never actually seen it, not even when Mama was alive, but Tali said it was pure pynvium, ocean blue and the size of a bale of hay. I could eat for the rest of my life with what the Luminary must’ve paid the enchanters for it.
Tali flexed her fingers and winced. “You could have sold that to the pain merchants, you know.”
I scoffed. The pain merchants weren’t quite thieves, but they paid so little for pain it was practically stealing it. Before I was born, they used to charge people for healing just like the League did, but they’d discovered they got more pain if they offered to pay for it. They made their money now from using that pain to enchant their trinkets and weapons, which they then sold to Baseeri aristocrats for a lot more than they’d got by healing folks.
Of course, there were drawbacks to this.
Since the pain merchants didn’t hire trained healers any more, you could never be sure you’d actually get healed if you went to them. Some of their Takers just took your pain and left what was wrong if they didn’t know how to heal it. Only folks with no other choice went to them now and I’d seen my share of “mysterious deaths” among the poor and desperate. There were as many limps and crippled limbs from bad merchant healing as there were from war wounds.
I was almost desperate enough to go to them, but I had other reasons to keep my distance. “Too risky. What if they sensed I was a Taker and wondered why I didn’t dump it myself?”
“Not that many can sense. You’re one of the few I know who isn’t an Elder.”
That talent still didn’t buy me breakfast. I’d trade it fast as fright to sense pynvium like Tali could; to feel the “call and draw of the metal” as she had pounded into my head over the summer, trying to get my skill to work right. She’d just turned twelve and we’d thought to join the League together. Turn us both from untrained Takers into real Healers and live a good life. The League was one of the few Baseeri-run places that accepted Gevegians. Both sides had lost so many Healers in the war and there just weren’t enough trained ones to go around these days.
But no matter how hard we tried, I couldn’t sense pynvium, couldn’t dump pain into it. I’d made Tali go alone and the League had accepted her as fast as they would’ve turned me away. I hated her for it at first, then felt guilty as soon as I realised it was easier worrying about just me. But it would have been nice to have a soft bed and regular meals like she did.
I rose. “I’d better go. I might find work cutting bait or washing down the docks if I hurry.”
“Maybe we could risk you applying to the League now?” Tali whispered, playing with the pin holding her apprentice cords to her shoulder. The cupped hand offered a life I’d never have. “Several apprentices are missing so we’re short-handed. The Luminary’s worried about it too.”
“What do you mean, missing?” I dropped back into the pillows. The war had ended five years ago, but I still remembered how it started. Healers disappearing in the night, stolen from their homes to heal in the Duke of Baseer’s war. We didn’t know what war. We barely knew who the Duke was back then. That changed pretty fast when his troops invaded, occupying Geveg and stealing our pynvium when our Healers started hiding.
“Not like that,” Tali said, eyes wide. “At least I don’t think so. The Elders said they left because the training was too hard. People even heard the Luminary complaining about it.”
“Do you believe them?”
She shrugged. “It happens, but people usually say goodbye when they go.”
Unless they didn’t leave of their own accord. I shook the concern away. I was worrying over nothing. Tali was safe at the League. Three meals a day, a soft bed, training from the best Healers in Geveg. All the things I couldn’t get for myself, let alone give her.
“Anyway,” she continued, “I thought maybe we could convince them to let you heal, and when your shift ended I could do the transfer for you.”
My heart flipped like a beached fish. “You didn’t tell them about me, did you?”
“Of course not! But you can heal. We could work as a team.”
Pointless—and dangerous—to even ask. “No, Tali, you know what they’d do to me if they found out I could shift.”
Experiments, prison, maybe even death. A few years ago, the Duke starting claiming that abnormal Takers were abominations and were to be brought to the League if discovered. He’d put up posters all over Geveg, covered every inch, even the smaller farming isles.
Tali shrugged. “I heard they might lower the entrance requirements for apprenticeship down to those just strong enough to heal minor cuts and bruises, so I thought maybe the Luminary wouldn’t care. You can heal a lot higher than that.”
But it wasn’t real healing, not like what Tali did. “He would care. Besides, it would wear you out and the League wouldn’t risk your health. They need you.” Even if they didn’t ship me off to Baseer, I was useless to them. I’d keep drawing pain until I was so twisted up in agony I couldn’t move.
“Well,” Tali said after a brutally long silence, “if you don’t want to work here, then next time steal a whole chicken. That way you’d have eggs every morning.”
I grinned, even though I did want to work for the League and be a real Healer. I just knew it would never happen. “A chicken loose at the boarding house? Millie would love that.”
“So steal a coop as well. And some corn. Maybe a little bit of straw for a nest.”
I tried to keep a straight face, but the idea of a coop in my room was too much. The giggles came on fast. Tali and I rocked back and forth like children, clutching our sides, tears in our eyes, until the rounds bell rang.
Tali stood, her shoulders quaking. She pushed a blonde strand of her Healer’s ponytail off her shoulder, jingling the tiny jade and gold beads woven through it. Her hair looked pretty, all smooth and straight like that. I couldn’t afford the irons to flatten my curls. Neither could Tali really, but League apprentices had to look smart, and they got to share luxuries like hair irons and face powders. Aristocrats