Delia Prance's Arc

Chapter 32 of 59

The truth of her blood was locked away, but the house was full of the sick. Delia stood in the flower-draped healing house at dawn, watching her hired workers move between the forty beds. She had brought them on to change dressings, carry water, and feed patients. That part worked. The floors stayed clean. The beds turned over fast. But when a boy came in with a fever, she found the medicine shelf half empty. She climbed to the locked office, pressed her palm to the floor, and grew what she needed. She ground it, jarred it, carried it down. The workers watched her hands and did not understand. None of them knew how to steep a root or measure a poison. They could hold a cup. They could not fill it. So Delia did both jobs. She healed every patient and made every dose herself, and by midday her arms shook. A worker asked her how much bloodwort went into a burn salve. Delia stopped. She saw the whole week stretch ahead, every jar hers alone to fill, every dose hers alone to weigh. She would break before the beds emptied. So she changed the plan. She gathered the six workers around a table in the sunlit ground floor. She kept her magic hidden, but the craft she could teach. She showed them how to grind a dried root to powder. How to smell wolfsbane and set it aside. How to count drops for a child against drops for a grown man. She let them ruin a batch and try again. By dusk two of them could mix a fever draught without her. Nick found her there past sundown, sleeves rolled, teaching a woman to strain a tincture through cloth. He crossed to the flowering bushes by the window, blue and purple blooms crowding the sill, and set down a cup of tea. "They're learning," he said. It was not a question. "Two of them can dose now," Delia said. "By week's end, all six." She wiped her hands. "I can heal and they can prepare. I don't have to do both anymore." "Good." Nick's face stayed flat. He turned the cup in his hand and did not drink. "A rider came to the field this afternoon." He drew a folded paper from his coat. The wax seal bore the king's mark. "My father summons us. Both of us. To the palace." Delia took the letter. The trained workers moved behind her, filling jars without her hand. She had solved the house. Now the crown wanted her inside its walls again. She broke the seal.