The Dismissed Saint Became the Beast King's Healer novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: Show Me the Light
In Varrhold the court distrusts the human saint; she half closes the king's old claw scar and sets her terms in writing, and at dusk her seal burns while a wolf howls beneath her window.
Varrhold stood on a grey ridge above the river, with a hundred chimneys smoking behind its walls.
Shiori climbed the road to it between two lines of wolf-eared guards, and every one of them looked at her shoulder.
The king walked ahead of her and did not look back once.
He walked fast, with his tail swinging, and the soldiers made room for him without being asked.
"You're not what I expected," a woman said at the gate.
She was fox-kin, forty-five or so, with red-gold ears and a dark green steward's coat and a ring of keys at her belt.
Her amber eyes went up and down Shiori in one quick pass.
"Nerei," she said. "I keep the keep. You've got a hole in your robe."
"I know."
"Good. I'd hate to be the only one who noticed."
The great hall of Varrhold smelled of wood smoke and wet wool.
Twenty councillors sat at a long table, wolves and foxes and cats and one huge bristling badger.
They went quiet when the king walked in.
Then they saw her.
"A southern saint," said a grey-eared old wolf at the end of the table. "The Temple's own girl, in our hall."
"The Temple threw her out," the king said.
"Or sent her."
"They sealed her. I saw the scorch."
A cat-kin woman snorted.
"Then she'll be sealed to them. They'll hear everything she hears."
Shiori felt her face go hot.
Nine days ago she had been called a mistake in front of two hundred people.
Now she was being called a spy in front of twenty.
"May I speak?" she said.
The old wolf waved a hand.
"You may," the king said.
His voice was low and level, and the whole table turned to him.
Shiori took a breath.
"I'm Shiori Hanazono. I'm twenty-two. I was a nursing student before I was a saint, and I was a saint for seven months."
She held up her hands.
"I can close wounds, break fevers and pull poison out of blood. That's the only thing I'm sure I can do."
"Prove it," the badger growled.
"You're Bram," the king said. "The court physician. Be polite."
"I'm always polite. I'm just also right." The badger folded thick arms. "Prove it on someone who isn't half dead already."
The king pushed back his left sleeve.
A long, ugly claw scar ran from his wrist almost to his elbow, white and ridged, with the skin pulled tight.
"This is twelve years old," he said. "Nobody has closed it."
The table made a sound.
Shiori stepped around the end of it and took his forearm in both hands.
His skin was very warm.
The muscle under her fingers was hard as rope.
He held still the way big animals do when they've decided not to bite.
She closed her eyes and let the light come.
It came pale and slow, and it ran down into the scar.
His breath went out of him.
The ridged skin softened under her thumbs, and the white line shrank from the elbow down to the middle of his forearm, and stopped.
She opened her eyes.
"That's all of it," she said. "An old scar doesn't close the rest of the way. I'm sorry."
"Don't be."
He was looking at her, and not at his arm.
His eyes were dark brown, plain and human-looking.
Every other eye at that table was gold or amber or green.
"Show me again tomorrow," he said, very quietly.
Bram the badger had come around the table to stare at the scar, and his ears were up.
"Huh," he said.
That was all, and Nerei coughed to hide a smile.
"Terms," Shiori said, because she was still holding his arm and it was a good time to be brave.
"Terms?"
"Two silver marks a day, a room with a lock on the inside, and a written contract. In ink. Signed."
The councillors stared at her.
The king's mouth moved at one corner.
"Written," he said. "Like the paper in your robe."
"You can see it?"
"I can smell the wax."
He looked at Nerei.
Nerei had a quill out before he finished the sentence.
The contract took five minutes, and the king signed it in a quick square hand.
He held the quill out to her handle first, and his fingers touched hers on the pass.
They both let go a little too slowly.
The afternoon went by in the strange hurry of a new place.
Nerei took her up a stair to a room with a narrow bed, a stove, a stone window and a lock.
"He picked it himself," she said. "Don't tell him I told you."
It was the corner room beside the king's tower, and the window looked west.
Shiori set her bread down on the table and sat on the bed.
The sky outside went gold, then amber.
Then her left shoulder began to burn.
For eight dusks it had only ached.
Tonight it was a slow, spreading heat.
She dropped to her knees on the floor and pressed her hand over the place.
The heat climbed her spine.
Her vision went white at the edges, and she heard her own breath whistling.
Far below the window, in the dusk, something enormous began to howl.
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