Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
“It's time.”
The command came a second before the knock. At dawn.
Not a servant's knock, tentative, apologetic, the kind that hoped you might not answer. This one landed twice, flat and certain, and then the door opened before she'd fully sat up.
She was on her feet while reaching for the small knife she kept in her boot in one motion. It was pure reflex, but then she stopped.
Anthony stood in the doorway.
In full daylight, he'd been imposing.
At this hour, half-lit by a single corridor torch and the barely grey dawn through the window behind her, he was something else.
Broad shoulders filling the frame, already dressed, already armed, not a trace of sleep on him, as though the man simply didn't require it.
She was aware, in some distant and inconvenient part of her, that she had not yet combed her hair.
He took in the knife, the defensive stance, the fact that she'd been sleeping in her clothes. He said nothing about any of it.
"Come," he ordered.
She stared at him. Outside the narrow window, the sky was barely grey, the kind of early that felt like the night hadn't finished yet. "Now?"
"The boy wakes early. His breathin' is worst in the mornin'." He turned from the doorway. "Come."
She put the knife away, smoothed her hair back with both hands, slung her satchel over her shoulder, and followed him.
The keep was different at this hour.
The great hall was empty, the torches burned low, the silence had a texture to it. Not the silence of absence but of held breath, of a household not yet fully awake but already listening. Her boots on the stone floor sounded too loud. She shortened her stride without thinking.
Peat smoke hung in the air, warm and old and layered over something underneath, the cold of deep stone that no fire entirely reached.
She'd been in great houses before, visiting the sick of wealthy men who sent for her when their own physicians failed. They'd all had this quality in common.
The warmth was on the surface. The cold was structural.
Then the whispers started.
Not loud. Not meant to reach her, or meant to reach her exactly, which amounted to the same thing.
They came from doorways, from the gap between two men carrying timber across the far end of the corridor, from a pair of women who pressed back against the wall as she and Anthony passed.
"The Dragon's brought her himself."
She slowed. Just slightly. Enough to catch the answer from somewhere behind.
"Aye. Dragon of McArthur doesnae ride for nothin'."
She let her eyes slide sideways toward Anthony.
He walked as if he heard nothing, eyes forward, pace unchanged, the corridor clearing ahead of him the way water cleared a stone dropped into it.
Immediate, instinctive, nobody quite able to explain why they'd moved.
She studied him openly now.
She hadn't let herself do it properly before. On horseback, there was too much else to manage, and in the courtyard, there had been too many people watching her watch him. But here, in the low torchlight, with his back half-turned and his attention on the corridor ahead, she looked.
Broad through the shoulder, the back of his neck weathered, the muscle across his upper back moving visibly beneath his shirt with every stride.
Decisive in how he moved, each step placed like a statement. And along the left side of his jaw, running from beneath his ear and disappearing beneath his collar, was a scar. Red-silver. Old enough to have settled but not old enough to fade entirely.
She'd seen burn scars before. She knew what made them.
"The Dragon's brought her."
She looked forward again.
"Dragon," she said. Quiet. Just loud enough to reach him and no further.
He didn't look at her. "Folk talk."
She hummed. Let a beat pass.
"Fiery," she said thoughtfully, as if considering the word from several angles.
The corridor went dangerous-quiet.
He stopped.
She stopped a half-step after him. He didn't turn, stood facing ahead, and when he spoke his voice came out level and carrying, somehow managing to feel like every sharp gaze in the keep had been redirected her way at once.
"Another word," he said calmly, "and ye'll be healin' from the dungeons."
She drew breath in sharply.
And then, because the look on his face from the side was doing something around the jaw that she couldn't quite categorize, and because some part of her had made a decision before the rest of her caught up, she closed her mouth. Said nothing. Faced forward.
For the briefest moment, the very corner of his mouth moved. The barest suggestion of something.
Did he just smile?
There and gone before she could be certain she'd seen it.
He walked on. She followed.
They stopped outside a door at the end of the upper corridor. Carved oak, older than the rest of the fittings, the iron handle worn smooth from years of use.
Anthony put his hand on it and didn't open it.
It lasted less than two seconds. Anyone else would have missed it.
But she was watching. The hand on the handle, still. A half-beat too long. The slight change in how he was breathing.
He's afraid.
Not of her. Not of the corridor. Of what was on the other side of this door.
She understood, suddenly and completely, that whatever she found in that room was the thing that had sent him riding into the western glens himself rather than dispatching a fourth set of men.
She said nothing. She didn't look away from his face.
He pushed it open.
The room was warm, close, the curtains drawn against the draft so that the light came only from the hearth. Amber and low, throwing soft shadows across the ceiling.
It smelled of lavender ash and something medicinal underneath, the remnants of remedies tried and failed. She catalogued it without thinking.
Yarrow. Elderflower. Something camphor-based, used too heavily.
The bed was near the hearth. Small.
A child's bed, built low, heaped with blankets despite the warmth of the room. And in it, barely visible beneath the layers, a boy.
She crossed the room before she'd decided to.
Healer first. Always healer first.
Everything else fell away the same way it always did. The locked room, the rope burns at her wrists, the man in the doorway behind her. Gone.
This was the part of her that didn't argue or calculate or resist. This part simply moved.
She sat on the edge of the mattress and looked at the child properly.
Six years old. Slight, not the slight of a small child but of a child who had spent too much energy on other things. Dark hair, damp at the temples. Eyes closed.
His chest moved with each breath, but moved wrong. A shallow pull, a pause, then a desperate catch at the top, as if each breath had to be negotiated rather than simply drawn.
I ken that sound.
She'd heard it in adults who'd breathed smoke for too long, in children born in cottages with no ventilation, in old men whose lungs had hardened with decades.
But in a child this young who had survived it this long, she pressed her lips together. Counted it as something, quietly, to herself.
He's stronger than he looks.
She pressed two fingers gently to the inside of his wrist. Counted. Placed her palm lightly on his sternum, feeling the rise and fall directly.
Behind her, Anthony had taken up a position against the far wall, arms folded, gone completely still.
She felt him there.
Not the same way she felt the hearth, the hearth didn't watch her. He was still and silent, and she was aware of every second of it, aware that he was reading her face for information she hadn't decided to give him yet.
Fox had padded in silently and settled himself beneath the bed frame.
Good lad.
Without being sure which of them she meant.
"Windows," she said without looking up. "Open them slightly. Nae wide, two fingers of gap, nay more."
A beat.
Servants hesitated, she assumed, because the room had been sealed against the cold and no doubt had been sealed that way by command.
Anthony nodded. She didn't see it, but she heard the immediate compliance.
The soft scrape of a shutter being eased open, the thin thread of outside air that reached her a moment later. Cool. Clean. She breathed it herself and felt the difference.
"Good." She opened her satchel. "Bring me water. Hot but nae boilin'. And clear the room. Everyone except the Laird."
Movement behind her.
The brief sound of people filing out, the door pulling mostly closed. She didn't check. She was already measuring dried lungwort into the mortar, working by feel, her hands knowing the ratios.
“Aye, lad, I'm yer new healer.”
She spoke softly to James while she worked. Not to wake him, just to be a sound in the room, something calm and continuous that the sleeping body could register without alarm.
She'd learned that from her grandmother, who'd learned it from hers.
Ye talk to them, her grandmother had said, even when they cannae answer. The body hears more than the mind does.
She mixed the first compound and held it near his face, letting the steam carry the vapor into the air above him rather than forcing anything.
Then she adjusted the blankets. Peeling back two layers, which she suspected had been added out of love and were making things worse, and repositioned him slightly so his chest could open more fully.
Minutes passed.
His breathing changed. Not dramatically. Not the sudden recovery that people always hoped for and healers learned to stop promising.
But a small easing. The pause between breaths lengthening slightly, the catch at the top smoothing a fraction, the effort in his small chest decreasing by the measure of something that would be invisible to an untrained eye.
She heard Anthony exhale from the wall behind her. Slow, almost imperceptible. But she heard it.
She stayed where she was for another full minute, watching the rise and fall, counting the rhythm.
Then she sat back and looked at the boy's face properly for the first time. The relaxed features of a child in sleep, the slight furrow between his brows even now, the long eyelashes that cast small shadows on his cheeks in the firelight.
Stubborn, Ye've been fightin' this yer whole life, haven't ye?
She looked up at Anthony.
He was watching her. Not the boy, her.
Arms still folded, expression still closed, but whatever lived behind that composure had shifted in the last ten minutes and she could see the edges of it. Something raw and barely managed.
"He's strong," she said. "Stronger than ye think."
He looked at James. Then back at her. Inclined his head once.
No gratitude spoken. She didn't need it spoken.
She'd been doing this long enough to know what it looked like in people who didn't have the words for it. The exhale, the shift, the careful way they looked at something they'd been afraid to hope for.
She turned back to her work.
"I'll need to ken his full history," she said, keeping her voice matter-of-fact. "Every remedy that's been tried. Every herb, every compound, every physician's instruction and in what order."
She began sorting through what remained in her satchel, taking stock. "And I'll need lungwort. Ye willnae have it in the stores, it's nae common this far east. I'll need to find it."
"I'll send someone."
"I'll go meself. I need to see what else is growin' nearby.
" She glanced over her shoulder at him. "Before ye say nay, I'm nae fleein'.
I cannae treat him with what I daenae have and I cannae trust someone else to identify what I need.
Half of what grows in Highland soil looks the same to an untrained eye. "
He considered her. "Ye'll have an escort."
"I daenae need one."
"Ye'll have one." The tone closed the subject without raising in volume. "What else?"
She faced forward again, irritation noted and set aside.
"Steam twice a day, mornin' and evenin'. The compound I've mixed goes into the water, a pinch only, nay more. The windows stay cracked at all times regardless of temperature."
She paused. "And the blankets. He only needs two. The warmth is well-intentioned but it's pressin' on his chest and makin' him work harder."
A long pause from the wall behind her.
She could feel him absorbing it, the particular resistance of a person realizing that something done with love has been doing harm.
"Aye," he said finally. Quiet.
She packed her satchel and rose from the edge of the bed. Fox emerged from beneath the frame, stretched with extravagant slowness, and fell in beside her feet.
She looked at James once more, the small chest rising and falling, calmer now, the room cooler and cleaner around him.
"I'll be back later," she said. "Daenae close the window."
She moved toward the door.
Behind her Anthony hadn't moved from the wall.
She paused with her hand on the frame and looked back at him. Standing there in the amber light with his arms still folded tight across his chest and his expression still controlled. Watching his nephew breathe, jaw set, eyes fixed on the boy's chest as it rose and fell.
She didn't say anything. There was nothing to say that wasn't already in the room.
She stepped out into the corridor and pulled the door almost closed behind her.
Outside, the servants had gathered in a loose cluster a respectful distance away, waiting, watching. She could already hear it starting to move through them in murmurs, low and swift.
The healer had come. The Dragon had brought her. The boy's breathing had eased.
She walked back toward her chamber and said nothing to any of them.
But something had shifted in the weight of the keep around her, small, fragile, like a door opened onto a room that had been sealed a very long time.
She'd felt it before. It was what happened in a house when hope came back in.