The Silver Crown

43.

Fours moons ago, I was walking purposefully along the banks of the Saban, my bare feet slapping the rough cobles of the Market Road. It was a windy and dry afternoon and the exuberant breeze kept yanking hairs from my messy braid.

Tobin was cradled in my arms, eyes closed. His forehead was sweaty and his face flushed with fever. I was strong for sixteen and normally carrying an eleven year old boy over two miles would have put more strain on my body, but he was thin and waifish from the fever and my fright kept me strong.

I reached the small building that had the words Charms and Healings scrawled in blue paint above the door. I couldn't read but the charms in the windows advertised the place just as well as the words.

I had already been to multiple cheap healers throughout the Lower City but none of them could cure Tobin of his sudden illness. Someone had finally suggested this place by the docks. And I was desperate, so here I was.

I kicked open the door and hurried inside. A man sat behind a cluttered counter reading in the bright light given off by his magicked stone. He didn't look up until I stopped right in front of his desk, and only then because I cleared my throat impatiently.

"Yes?" He drug out the vowel.

"Someone said you could help me. My brother is very sick."

"They sent you to me?" he asked, peering at me closely and not looking at Tobin at all. "They said they might send someone to me, but I wasn't sure when," he muttered to himself, standing and setting his book down on his stool. "Follow."

I carried Tobin after him as he disappeared into the back of the store. When he finally stopped, we were in a large room with boxes and dusty furniture.

'What-" I started to ask him, but he turned and spoke a single word that I did not understand. A flash of purple light blinded me and then I was gone before I even hit the ground, Tobin still clutched to my chest.

When I came around I was not in the same dusty storage room. Instead I was lying with my hands by my side stretched out on a stone floor. Walls of cracked stone rose up around me and a closed wooden door was the only fixture in the room. I sat up slowly, my head pounding fiercely.

It only took me a moment to realize that Tobin was stretched out next to me. I crawled over to him, forcing down my nausea and praying that he hadn't been killed from the sickness while I was unconscious. But when I looked down at him, he looked perfectly healthy, a pink glow on his tanned face, no black bags under his eyes, no gaunt cheeks or sallow skin or sheen of sweat on his forehead. It was like he was never even sick.

The squealing of hinges brought me back to the present and I scrambled to my feet, my hands going to all the places where I hide my knives and coming up empty. Even the knife from my hair and my breast band were gone. That made me more scared than I had been before, even if I could fight hand-to-hand just as easily. My knives were comforting and to be without them in a strange situation made everything more perilous.

The wooden door crashed back into the wall and three men entered the room. Dressed identically in red and black tunics and black cloaks, they stormed into my prison. Two stooped to grab my arms. They dragged me from the room. The other bent and picked Tobin up, cradling him the same way I had been. Tobin slept right through it. If he wasn't sick anymore, why wasn't he waking up?

The men holding my arms dragged me through the building and up some stairs until we emerged in a long room with a table stretching down the center: a dining room.

Seated at the head of the table was a man in his mid twenties. He was bald, and clean-shaven. He had a thick black chain around his neck with a large ruby. His tunic and cloak was exactly the same as the other three men except for the golden symbols on the front of his tunic. He was undeniably in charge.