Healer's Touch (Deadly Touch #1) [Complete]

Chapter 19: Growing Anxiety

Duffirk bustled.

Cheer was busy during the infrequent markets but, by comparison with Duffirk, it was a ghost town. In Duffirk, people were everywhere and everywhere there were people. The cobblestone streets were lined by gutters into which the city's waste flowed, adding its perfume to that of the tightly packed crowds. Grated holes placed at regular intervals let the liquid flow underground, but that just left a build-up of the solids. The piles weren't huge, and Llew realized that someone must have had the job of clearing it; this was the price of civilization, she supposed. As much as she wanted to earn an honest living, Llew thought she would stick to picking pockets before she accepted that job.

The buildings in the center of town stood at least two stories high, with some having five, maybe six stories. They cast perpetual shadows across the streets.

And the air was thick with smoke. Llew and Braph had yet to walk past the source, but it choked every breath she took. How could people live like this?

People streamed around Braph under the shadows of tall stone and concrete buildings, and Llew only avoided being cut off from him by sticking close to his coattails. If she let herself fall back a step, the crowd would close her out. She might have been dreaming of being free of Braph, but she hadn't been prepared for this. She knew the rhythms of Cheer, and no matter how busy the town center became, she could move between and around people unnoticed and yet continue to make her living. In Duffirk she kept bumping into people, and people kept treading on her. She just didn't get it. People seemed busier, yet they were performing the same tasks as those carried out by citizens of Cheer. Maybe she just had to get used to the pace of city life again after days on the boat followed by the security of Lord Tovias's estate, followed by the isolation of the Turhmosian plain and two days riding a lonely highway punctuated by only the smallest of towns.

It would be the perfect time to make a getaway. Braph had barely looked at her since they entered the city. But that very fact unsettled her to the point that she hadn't been able to make a move. She would. She would veer off soon, into a gap. No, she would make a gap.

Why wasn't he checking on her? Did he have some sort of invisible leash of which she was unaware? Was he just so confident that her skills didn't extend to navigating through a Duffirk crowd? Well, he didn't know much, did he, because she would be fine. She just had to... She would... Damn it!

The crowd thinned each time they turned down a new street. Llew was struggling to put her finger on why, but her nerve was gone. Suddenly, she wondered just how far out of Cheer she would have got if she hadn't run into Aris and his posse. Would she have walked a few miles and then frozen at the concept of being truly alone? It shadowed her thoughts of escape: she would be on her own, in a country she didn't know, in a huge continent she'd left when she was five. Sure, she'd been looking after herself for years. But that was in Cheer, and she knew Cheer; she knew how the people and the land worked. This was Turhmos. If she ran, where would she run to?

Finally, they turned down a quiet, almost deserted street. Braph pushed open a wrought-iron gate into an overgrown garden. A concrete path led straight from the gate, up concrete steps to a carved wood, black-painted door of a dirty-white, almost gray, two-story villa. Braph gestured her through the gate. With her nerve to run still shattered, Llew took a deep breath, closed her eyes, released the breath, and stepped through the gate.

***

Jonas hefted the man from the ground, hurling the flailing body aside. The Turhmosian landed like a sack of potatoes, accompanied by a "Hmph!". That distraction out of the way, he was free to draw two knives and face his next opponent.

They had been surprised by a small contingent of Turhmos soldiers soon after dawn. It wasn't a serious problem, but it was a hindrance. He had no idea how fast Braph was able to travel with Llew, and he had no doubt of their substantial lead. To top it off, he didn't even know where Braph was taking her.