Page 48 of Grave Situation

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

In the end,Tia insists I burn the human bodies as well, destroying all the evidence of what happened here. First, though, she searches them for any clues as to who they are or who sent them. I’m too squeamish to watch, so I drag my bedroll out of my tent and make Jaimin sit on it.

“Tell me what’s wrong with you,” I order, and he sighs.

“I’m fine.”

I look him over. He’s still moving awkwardly, and his face is set. I can’t see any evidence of wounds, though, or broken bones. “No. You’re not.”

“It’s… complicated.” His gaze drifts away, then back. “How much do you know about healing?”

“I do stupid things and healers make them better,” I say, trying to coax a smile. His face doesn’t look right without that twinkle of amusement.

To my relief, his lips quirk. “Anything else?”

Uhhh… “Healers have different strengths, just like mages. Some need to use medicines to supplement their ability, while others are superstars who don’t even need to touch someone to identify the problem. That’s it, though. That’s all I know. Oh, andyou can’t heal death. Because…” I sweep my hand at the ashes scattered around us.

He nods. “Okay. Everything in a human body gives off a particular resonance. Healers have the ability to sense that resonance. When something affects it, like an illness or a wound, the resonance changes, and it feels wrong to us. What we do is like?—”

“Retuning it?”

He makes a face. “That’s as good an analogy as any. But the ability to sense resonance is also why healers have such good natural shields. We form them in self-defense, because every changed resonance, every papercut or sniffle, is loud.”

I think that through. “To stick with the musical analogy, like hearing an out-of-tune instrument playing constantly?”

“Yes.” He nods. “You want to block your ears, because it reverberates through you until you feel it in your bones.”

“You’re not making this whole healer thing sound all that great,” I tell him honestly, and that earns me a chuckle.

“No, it is. It’s amazing. Because I get to tune all those instruments back to perfect health. But what I’m saying is… it can be uncomfortable, especially when you’re not prepared. And especially when there’s a lot of wounds. Injuries caused by violence hurt the most.”

I wince. “So Tia and me killing all these people hurt you?”

He shakes his head. “Not really. Not like you mean. What I’m feeling now is because I killed a man.”

Shock and horror are twin lightning strikes. “You weredefendingyourself!”

“It’s still anathema to every fiber of my being. My Talent wants me to heal, not kill. At the academy, we drill extensively in defensive fighting, because it’s better to know how to fight someone off, give them minor wounds and hope they run, than to accidentally kill them and face the backlash.”

“That’s what this is? Backlash?”

He nods.

“How does it work? It’s painful, obviously. But it doesn’t replicate the wound on your own body, or you’d be dead.”

“Nothing like that. Just pain, in every nerve I have. The worse the wound I inflict, the worse it feels.”

“Wait, so… if you accidentally scratched someone, it would cause you pain?” That’s fucked up. Does Master know about this?

“Not for a genuine accident. If I was doing something I knew could potentially cause harm and judged it worth the risk, then someone was injured or killed, that would hurt, but not like this. Intent is the main driver of backlash. To intentionally kill is the most painful.”

Involuntarily, I look across the clearing to his tent. Tia’s dragged the dead man out and is pulling the dagger from his chest. I avert my eyes before I can gag. “So you didn’t kill him accidentally?”

Jaimin grimaces. “I woke because something felt bad. The resonance was shrieking at me, the same way it did with the plague, onlyworse. Plague, for all its horror, is natural. Zombies are not. I was lying there, trying to count how many of them were here, when my tent was opened.” He takes a breath. “I sleep with my dagger. All healers do. People… Some people consider us easy targets. They’ve heard about backlash and think we can’t fight back.”

Holy gods. Holyfuckinggods. I bite my tongue to keep from interrupting.

“I had mere seconds to decide what to do. I decided this mission—you and the stone—was the priority. I couldn’t risk a drawn-out tussle; couldn’t risk being killed. Couldn’t risk that I’d fight him off, but not wound him badly enough to stop him from causing more trouble. So I intentionally killed him.” Hegrimaces again. “I underestimated the backlash, though. I’ve never killed anyone before, not even accidentally. My plan was to help fight off the others, but…” He shrugs slightly. “Instead I was a liability after all.”

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