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It was after lunch, when my group took our turn in the infirmary, that I saw the real evidence of what had happened while we’d been gone.
At least half of the patients we were treating were in the infirmary for knife wounds or other injuries that looked as though they’d been sustained in a battle. Or rather, a riot. A good third of the remaining patients were there for what Magister Marcellus called “invisible wounds of the head and the heart”. Almost every bed in the infirmary was filled, and there was little time for instruction as we students were rushed about, treating people as best we could.
And it wasn’t just that one day, or the first week. As the weather got colder and autumn inched closer and closer to the snows that would mark the beginning of winter, the injuries kept coming. Even though the city remained in a kind of lockdown. Even though there were no reports of battles or riots or confrontations on the streets.
In fact, the only thing anyone saw on the street at all were happy, cheerful people who gadded about, pretending to share gossip or peddling trinkets—all of whom had the feeling of being actors paid by the king to make it look like nothing was wrong in Royersford.
But everything was wrong. There was almost no news from the outside, even from the king’s city or the other large cities up and down the coast. The food that was served in the college’s dining hall grew simpler and blander as the city’s supply of herbs and other fresh things that would have had to be brought in from the countryside diminished. A general gloom filled the air, and when the first flakes of snow began to fall, not even the people who were paid to act cheerful were able to keep a smile on their faces.
Royersford was heading for a Dying Winter, and I didn’t know what to do about it. I was trapped as much as anyone else in the city, maybe more so.
Which was why it came as a little bit of a surprise when Mara rushed up to me while I was in the middle of infirmary duty one afternoon less than a month before Solstice and without preamble or explanation said, “You’re coming with me.”
“Wait, what?” I stepped away from the bed of the middle-aged woman who hadn’t spoken for a month, whose husband had gone off with General Rufus’s army, never to return, and whose son had been crushed in the mountain pass.
I hated leaving the woman. I’d been focusing my healing studies and practices on the healing of the mind for the last few weeks, and even though it was a heartbreaking sort of healing, I felt called to it. There were too many women and men who had lost everything and could hardly drag themselves out of their beds anymore, and that was only counting the ones in the college infirmary. Who knew how many of them were at home in their beds, no one to treat of comfort them as they—
“Conrad,” Mara snapped, dragging me out of my thoughts about the defeated people all around me. I glanced to her, and she went on with a firm, “You have to come with me. You’ve been…requested.”
Now I was really curious.
“Who requested me?” I asked, grabbing the healer’s kit I’d put together myself, with tinctures I’d made in classes, bandages, and everything else I’d come to think a healer should need with him. It reminded me of the box Galina carried, actually. I then followed Mara out of the ward, and out of the entire infirmary.
Mara grabbed her thick, wool coat from the hook in the infirmary’s coat room, then grabbed the one I’d had to purchase with the tiny stipend the college gave me for such things. I tucked myself into it, then followed Mara outside, though she still didn’t say anything.
“Mara, you really need to tell me where we’re going,” I said as she led me not only out of the infirmary, but out through the college’s gates and into the city.
“You’ll know when we get there,” she said in a quiet, dark voice.
I hated being out in the city, now that the winter had well and truly started. Royersford had never felt like my home, even though I’d been there for over four months now. And since the destruction of the new army, it was an eerie and dangerous place to be.
As Mara led me through the almost empty streets, I shook my head over how big of a contrast the city was now to how it had been during the harvest festival. Back then, the streets had been teeming with men, women, and children, all of them bright-eyed and smiling as the season was celebrated. Buildings had been decorated, music filled the streets, and the scent of roasting meat and sweet pies had filled the air.
Now, it was as if the city was inhabited by no one but ghosts and soldiers. The few other people out and about were hunkered into their thick coats, faces mostly hidden, snowflakes gathering on their shrouded heads, as they went about their business with baskets over their arms, or more commonly, nothing at all.
The shops were open, but their doors remained shut. No displays of goods stood in front of the shops to show what was on hand that day. I knew from what I’d seen coming into the kitchens that shipments of produce from the countryside were sporadic, and there was no telling what was available at any time.
Royersford was lucky to be on the sea. Whether wheat or apples or livestock for slaughter were able to be shipped past the guards—who were now positioned at every road leading into the city—or not, we always had fish and seaweed—which I discovered I could tolerate, but I really didn’t like.
I figured out that Mara was leading me to the palace when we were a few streets away. Prickles raced down my back at the thought of why we were heading there, why I’d been requested. There was only one possibility, really. The only person who I’d had significant interaction with in the palace was King Julius.
The buildings lining the streets leading up to the palace themselves seemed to shrink back in fear for me as we approached the heavily-guarded gate. Like they knew I might never emerge from the palace if I went in.
“Stop in the name of the king,” one of the guards shouted as we approached.
Mara uncovered her head to show them who she was, gesturing for me to do the same.
I rushed to comply, then was shocked when the guards immediately stepped aside with a respectful bow for Mara.
“Good morning, Lady Mara,” their leader said, sending Mara a toothy smile. “You’re looking lovely this morning.”
I felt sick and anxious on Mara’s behalf. I knew the sort of look the head guard sent her. It wasn’t just lust, it was greed. And it made sense, though I’d never stopped to think of it before. Mara was the niece of the king, and she was unmarried.
Mara only nodded to the guard as she gestured for me to follow her inside the palace. My gaze went immediately to the tree where the young man had been tied and hanging during the harvest festival. It was empty and bare-branched now. The rest of the front garden seemed barren and withered as well, which wasn’t just because winter had arrived.
Gone was the loud laughter of the palace revelers from the harvest festival. There was no more food and drink being circulated by harried servants, who had likely expected to be caught and fucked up against a wall at some point, as I realized now. There were no men and women lounging about the central pool, pretending to be merpeople. In fact, the pool had been completely drained, and I saw piles of brown leaves newly covered with snow blown into the corners.
The halls of the palace echoed as Mara led me through the warren of deliberately confusing hallways. The relative silence had the hair standing up on the back of my neck. I knew from gossip at the college that the palace was far from empty. It had become a haven for the noblemen and senators who were the target of the people’s seething rage. But the hallways were empty, and even the walls were hushed.
