Free Valor of the Healer by Angela Highland

groundskeepers. Faanshi didn’t know them. “His Grace’s orders, chit,” the older one barked, spitting sideways into the bushes, as though addressing her left a foul taste in his mouth.
    The younger one’s face should have been friendly, with its innumerable freckles and crown of fiery orange hair, but he gave Faanshi a hard glare as he worked. “The master believes you’ve been having too many gentleman callers. We’ll be putting a stop to that, we will.”
    He knows !
    “No!” With her scream, her feet propelled her onto the crate beneath the window. Her hands shot up, one clawing through the bars in desperation, as high as she could stretch above the bricks that now blocked part of her way. “I won’t let you! Don’t take away my light!”
    The older man’s weathered cheekbones flushed dark red as he scowled. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be, girl.”
    “Bloody mad elf-blooded—down, if you know what’s good for you!” The younger man struck Faanshi’s hand with his trowel, slicing across her palm. “Wailing about it won’t change what the duke says you’ve got coming.”
    The slash across her hand splintered Faanshi’s awareness. She couldn’t tell which came first—her pained yelp, the crate upending as her foot slipped off the side, or her body crashing to the floor. Then the heat rose up in her palm where the trowel had struck, obliterating the rent in her flesh before it had even begun to ache.
    Dizziness curled her in on herself, while blind instinct pulled her glowing hand to her chest before the men by the window could see. Can’t let them see — deliver me , Lady of Time — he knows !
    Weak though it was, the light stood out in the cellar’s gloom, and the men at the window flinched at the sight. The young one swore, and his old companion starred himself.
    “Great Father! What’s she doing? The Hawks came at dawn, they’re for her, aye? They’ve come for her?”
    “Never you mind. His Grace’s business, not ours. Ours is to finish sealing this window before tonight. Keep at it, boy.”
    Faanshi remained where she’d fallen, her hand cradled against her. Her magic’s gleam died almost the moment it ignited, a mere accent to the shrinking semicircle of daylight on the floor. She scarcely noticed, for she couldn’t take her gaze off the vanishing figures outside. All thought narrowed to a final mumbled prayer to keep her light, but the men didn’t hear her, and as the bricks piled higher and higher along the window, she despaired that Djashtet wouldn’t hear her either.
    * * *
    Her promised hour of freedom never came. No one brought sunlight or fresh air or the cake from the kitchen. No one brought any food at all, not even the gruel that was her usual fare when she was in ill favor, or any water to drink. With her window bricked, she couldn’t see the sun, and so she didn’t know the hour when the akreshi duke came at last.
    Weak with hunger, thirst and terror, hunched into a ball on her cot, she snapped up her head as the cellar door swung open—and cringed at the lantern light that jabbed into her eyes. Even then the shape of his frame was unmistakable.
    “I’m very angry with you, Faanshi.”
    She knew each nuance of his voice. His shouts could hammer her like blows, their force all the greater for heralding the blows of his hands. But he didn’t shout now, and that was worst of all. When he whispered, when his words grew calm, she could never tell when he’d hit her next. Standing there in the cellar door, cast into shadow by the lantern light, he looked to have captured the sun itself. She’d never behold it again, her frightened mind gibbered, as he shut her away in a prison of night.
    “Concealing the truth from me is as great a sin as lying.”
    “Mercy, akreshi !” Faanshi scuttled up, trembling, to prostrate herself at his feet.
    It didn’t help. With her face to the floor she couldn’t see what he was doing, and not until he yanked her