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“Thank you, Healer,” I tried.
“You are most welcome. We can discuss payment later.” Approaching me, she held up her hands. “Tilt your head back.” Her palms tickled me with little points of heat as she ran them over my throat. She nodded to herself and backed up a step, rubbing her hands briskly, like a surgeon snapping off her latex gloves after an examination.
Payment. What kind of currency could they possibly use—and how would I get some? Escape could solve that problem—get free and ditch the bills in one fell swoop. Not very honorable, but ethics seemed especially gray under the circumstances.
“How can your magic work, if I’m wearing these?” I held up my arms, and the wristbands gleamed dully in the misty light.
Healer smiled serenely, a practiced look that began to grate on me. She had her share of Rogue’s and Nasty Tinker Bell’s vast superiority. Didn’t bode well for me that I was already wearing thin on it.
“There are many things in what you are calling magic, Gwynn. In fact, what you mean right now behind that word doesn’t apply at all. It’s more like the mind-to-mind talking that you’ve been doing—”
“Telepathy.”
She frowned. “That’s almost right. The healing takes magic that can be blocked through certain measures.” She gestured to the collar around my throat. “Obviously we couldn’t take this precaution before, but around the throat is the second-best possible containment.”
I knew right then I never wanted to find out what they thought the best containment was. Probably something like the man in the iron mask wore. Serious heebie-jeebies on that.
“But in the same way that Lord Rogue and I can still hear your thoughts, I can sense how your body is doing. Which seems to be quite well. I fixed other things while I was at it—you won’t need those glass slips in your eyes to assist your vision, though that was a clever idea of yours. And I took out the poisonous mercury in your teeth—was that a punishment for something?”
“What, my fillings?”
“Yes, they packed it into your teeth, which I, naturally, fixed. What a barbaric people you must come from, to punch little holes in your teeth and fill them with poison.”
Instead of gritting my teeth, I ran my tongue over them to find they were smooth, without any rough edges. And how had I not noticed my contacts were gone?
“You’ll find us much more civilized,” she assured me. “Lord Rogue treats his pets very well, in general. Not like some you could be sent to.”
She was really too much. Of course, there I was in my little doggie collar, so who was I to argue?
My palms oozed cold sweat and my heart gave a hard thump. Now that I wasn’t dying, I had the wit to panic about being trapped. Not caring that Healer watched me, I went to look out the window.
Nothing but fog, deep and impenetrable. Same thing out the other window. The outside wall was the same gray stone as inside, but disappeared into the mist after a few feet. I could possibly crawl out the window, jump onto the lawn and scamper away. Or irretrievably bash my skull on pointed rocks after a forty-story drop. I wondered if they’d heal me again, what the limits of her ability to reconstruct were.
“So, what is this place—where am I?”
“Why, you’re in Lord Rogue’s castle.” She frowned at me, considering, as if she might have missed knitting my brain together.
“I meant in a larger sense—what do you call your…world?”
“Ah.” She smiled. “This is the Land of the People.”
Of course it was.
I didn’t like this. I should be grateful for all Healer had done, but now even my own body wasn’t the same. All the information I so desperately needed to make decisions was self-referential. I needed to take some steps to regain control—who am I kidding?Gaincontrol—of this situation.
“Well, thanks for everything!” I turned my back to the window and propped my rear against it. I gestured to the dress, my nasty hairdo, trying to look humble. “I know I have no grounds to impose further, but any way I could bathe? Maybe borrow a clean outfit from somebody? Add it to my tab?”
Healer smiled, comfortable now that the pet was wagging her tail. “But of course! You know, we would have bathed you while you were out but we didn’t know the customs of your people.”
Oh yeah, I could just picture the people I might come from—where blood gook was the new mousse. I made an effort to keep that thought to myself, too, and Healer didn’t seem to hear me. Maybe I was getting better at this.
“And, of course, the spell on your dress.”
The door opened. Not locked this time—I was keeping track now. Two young men, heads bowed so they could only see the floor, tromped in carrying a brass-looking tub, which they deposited on the floor. They tromped out again as if the room were empty. No lock click behind them.
“That was fast,” I remarked.
“Oh yes,” Healer agreed. “Rogue’s people are very well trained.”
