The Healing Wars: Book I
The Shifter
Janice Hardy
For Thomas Hardy and Harlan Ellison.
Only one knows why.
Contents
Map
One
Stealing eggs is a lot harder than stealing the whole…
Two
The Elder stared down at me, looking as solid as…
Three
Strength left my legs, and I flopped into the weeds…
Four
“Don’t hurt me,” a low voice said matter-of-factly, as if…
Five
“Wait!” I called after Enzie, but she was already running…
Six
We left the Sanctuary and turned right, toward one of…
Seven
I got as far as the bridge before I stumbled…
Eight
The League had never looked so mean.
Nine
“Are you a Healer or not?”
Ten
No! It couldn’t be true. Curling into a ball and…
Eleven
“Punctual as well as smart,” Zertanik said as the clock…
Twelve
Agony swiped my knees out from under me. I collapsed…
Thirteen
I couldn’t fail here. Tali wasn’t safe. Danello and the…
Fourteen
“What do we do now?” Soek whispered, his gaze darting…
Fifteen
We hit the guards. I landed dead center on one…
Sixteen
“Nya!”
Seventeen
“They’re alive?” I repeated, wanting to believe it, but afraid…
Eighteen
Moving with the mob was a lot easier than fighting…
Nineteen
“Danello!” I dove forward as he collapsed, catching him before…
Twenty
Had my anger poisoned the pynvium?
Twenty-one
Everyone raced forward and grabbed a cot, dragging them away…
Twenty-two
I gripped the arms of my chair. They couldn’t prove…
Twenty-three
Pain exploded from the Slab, slamming me back against a…
Twenty-four
“So I told him I’d be delighted to empty it…
Twenty-five
Danello carried me out. No matter how hard I tried,…
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Map
ONE
Stealing eggs is a lot harder than stealing the whole chicken. With chickens, you just grab a hen, stuff her in a sack, and make your escape. But for eggs, you have to stick your hand under a sleeping chicken. Chickens don’t like this. They wake all spooked and start pecking holes in your arm, or your face, if it’s close. And they squawk something terrible.
The trick is to wake the chicken first, then go for the eggs. I’m embarrassed to say how long it took me to figure this out.
“Good morning, little hen,” I sang softly. The chicken blinked awake and cocked her head at me. She didn’t get to squawking, just flapped her wings a bit as I lifted her off the nest, and she’d settle down once I tucked her under my arm. I’d overheard that trick from a couple of boys I’d unloaded fish with last week.
A voice came from beside me. “Don’t move.”
Two words I didn’t want to hear with someone else’s chicken under my arm.
I froze. The chicken didn’t. Her scaly feet flailed toward the eggs that should have been my breakfast. I looked up at a cute night guard not much older than me, perhaps sixteen. The night was more humid than usual, but a slight breeze blew his sand-pale hair. A soldier’s cut, but a month or two grown out.
Stay calm, stay alert. As Grannyma used to say, if you’re caught with the cake, you might as well offer them a piece. Not sure how that applied to chickens, though.
“Join me for breakfast when your shift ends?” I asked. Sunrise was two hours away.
He smiled but aimed his rapier at my chest anyway. It was nice to have a handsome boy smile at me in the moonlight, but his was a sad, sorry-only-doing-my-job smile. I’d learned to tell the difference between smiles a lot faster than I’d figured out the egg thing.
“So, Heclar,” he said over his shoulder, “you do have a thief. Guess I was wrong.”
Rancher Heclar strutted into view, bearing an uncanny resemblance to the chicken trying to peck me—ruffled, sharp beaked, and beady eyed. He harrumphed and set his fists against his hips. “I told you crocodiles weren’t getting them.”
“I’m no chicken thief,” I said quickly.
“Then what’s that?” The night guard flicked his rapier tip toward the chicken and smiled again. Friendlier this time, but his deep brown eyes had twitched when he bent his wrist.
“A chicken.” I blew a stray feather off my chin and peered closer. His knuckles were white from too tight a grip on so light a weapon. That had to mean joint pain, maybe even knuckleburn, though he wasn’t old enough for it. The painful joint infection usually hit older dockworkers. I guess that’s why he had a crummy job guarding chickens instead of aristocrats. My luck hadn’t been that great either.
“Look,” I said, “I wasn’t going to steal her. She was blocking the eggs.”
The night guard nodded like he understood and turned to Heclar. “She’s just hungry. Maybe you could let her go with a warning?”
“Arrest her, you idiot! She’ll get fed in Dorsta.”
Dorsta? I gulped. “Listen, two eggs for breakfast