Working without the crown’s consent was treason. As was any number of the other things I needed to do over the next several days. On the other hand there was a reason that Miranda had been trying to steal the prince’s healing stone, and I was not about to let such things go unanswered, no matter what the other weavers said. It had taken a long while to put together a plan that would neither get my family in trouble nor lead them to find me. But I wasn’t about to let something like the prince’s sudden return stop me from carrying out my plans.

In fact, I was going to use his ball to my advantage. Most of the court was there, and there were few people in the palace. I was hoping not to run into anyone, and if I did I was hoping that they did not recognize me. I had changed out of my mage robes for the last time, and I wore the plain clothes of a peasant visiting the palace. The only thing I had kept of my former life was my medallion, because it was good for storing magic. If I were found by anyone of note, my life would be forfeit anyway, so I couldn’t imagine having the medallion was going to make much of a difference.

Still, I tucked it under my high collared dress, so that nobody might see it, and picked up my satchel of the things I was going to need for my work. It was unnerving that most of the things still bore that S that marked them as a present from his highness, but that had been long years ago. They were good tools, and I was in no position to mock them. Aside from that, I brought the largest water container I could fit into the bag. Walking out with a large water jug would have caused too much notice, but it was what I really wanted to do. I would just have to purify the water I drank.

I knew I should be taking the back passages, like a good peasant, but whenever I had tried to map them out, someone had found me and set me straight. After a while, I decided that they posed me more of a risk than the general passages, because while the servants all knew each other, the nobles wouldn’t think much of a peasant in the hallways. Besides, everyone really should have been at the ball.

Of course things didn’t work that way, and I almost died when I saw Master Haskell at the end of one of the halls I was walking down. I didn’t freeze, because that would have been a direct reason for him to suspect me, but my step did falter. I got it back on track as well as I could, and looked away from the silver haired weaver.

“Oh, there you are Sela,” he said in a loud voice, making me wince. “But why in Saf’s name are you dressed that way? I know you aren’t supposed to wear weaver’s clothing to a court function, but even noblewomen must have more sense than that, you look almost like a peasant.”

“I’m not going to the ball,” I told him, when I was close enough that we didn’t have to yell. “I spoke to Arkin about it yesterday.”

“Oh,” Haskell sounded disappointed. “I suppose I should have expected his highness to want to claim you as soon as possible, I just thought he would do so in the ball room, rather than send you away from it. But then, he always has his own way of doing things, weaves bless him.”

“Yes,” I replied, trying not to lie to him too much. “I don’t want to keep you from the ball though.”

“Oh, yes, why don’t you go, your grace. I’ll see you in a few days at our meeting on what to do about the illness in the lower city.” He said, fortunately moving on before I had to respond. I practically held my breath until I got down to the stable entrance. Here I was going to have to work my first weave of the evening.

One of the weavers in my class could bend the fabric of space so that she appeared to blend in with her surroundings, rendering the eye unable to see her. I had no such talent, but as a healer, I was quite capable of reaching into minds and rendering them unconscious. It was on my list of treasonous acts for the day, as we weren’t supposed to touch people without their consent, but one more or less thing that would get me sentenced to death wouldn’t harm me. I reached into their minds, working the fifteen people still in the courtyard into a light stupor, so that I could leave the palace.

But leaving the palace wasn’t the difficult part; even walking the upper city on foot wasn’t all that difficult tonight. I made sure to walk as far from my family’s house as possible, so that if anyone saw me they could not suspect them, but it was the next part of my plan that really worried me.

Getting into the lower city.

The wall surrounding the lower city was not meant to keep people from the upper city out, but as an extra defense against invaders. It was meant so that the peasants could fall back behind the safety of more walls, but seeing how it was being used now made me suspect of those motives. Now guards roamed the walls ensuring that people didn’t break the quarantine. I couldn’t make them all fall asleep as I had done with the people in the stable yard, but I could get around them in my own special way.

It was nearly impossible to transport within the castle, because there were so many weavers and it was likely that one would run into some unpleasantness. The city of Selwyn was not such an issue, especially not at the wall between the upper and lower city when the city’s wards were not activated. I ducked behind a house to release the weave I had formed.

“Your grace,” a firm voice called, and I cursed myself as I flinched at the title. If I had just not responded he might not have recognized me. I had already started to release the weave though, so I had no way of stopping it, of course confirming my act of treason. I knew, as the weave took me to the ruins of my family’s old house in the lower city that I had entertained hopes of getting by without anyone noticing who had done the work. But, as I had said to Prince Arkin the day before, I knew the consequences of my actions.

As I had known it would be, my family’s house remained unoccupied, even after all these years. It was interesting that having a weaver in the family brought so much prestige and so much stigma all at once. What surprised me was that the streets were far from empty. I would have assumed that a sickness-ravaged area would be like a town with no people, but a good number of people saw me go inside the house and put my stuff down in the front room.

My first job was to see to the water source, where I thought that the disease was spreading. In this part of the lower city, it was a spring not to far from my parent’s old house. People were still getting water from there, but when I approached the spring, they scattered. Without the time to search for the specific disease, I performed a general purification on the water, and hoped that it would help improve things. Then I went back to my parents’ house.

I laid out the blanket I had woven for the purpose of acting as a portable clean surface, and arranged my healing things, before going outside to paint the elongated triangle of Saf. Normally, I avoided the religious symbol whenever I could, but when painted in blue it meant that this was the house of a healer. Then I went inside to have my first meal as a traitor to the crown.

It was several hours before I heard a knock on the door, but I was ready to pull my teeth out from boredom when I did. I had never answered a door so quickly in my life. Outside was a girl of sixteen or so who looked healthy enough, but haggard from being underfed.

“It’s my father, Mistress Witch,” she said. “He and mother both took sick soon after we were quarantined, but Mama seems to be doing okay. I mean, she has the fever and all, but she isn’t gray or anything. My father seems to be having delusions.”

“I’ll come with you,” I said, going to pack my kit back up. I hadn’t even thought that people might not have the ability to come to me, but of course, if they were sick enough to seek a healer they would have to be very sick indeed.

When I had packed I followed her two houses down, where I found that not only were her parents sick, but two of her younger siblings as well. I treated three of them as best as I could, but the father was so far gone, there was little I could do for him. I burned the disease out of his system, but he was still so weak, I doubted he would make it.

A small child came to get me from that house to the house across the way, where it seemed that his mother and five of his older siblings had taken ill, the father being nowhere to be found. Again, one of the girls and the mother were so sick that I didn’t think that even burning the disease away did much to help them, but I did the best I could.

And it continued from there. One of the healthier family members or their neighbors would come to get me, and I would follow them to wherever I was needed.