Hunted Sorcery (Jon Oklar Book 2), B.T. Narro [digital book reader txt] 📗

older. From some of the things he’d said, I wondered if he might even be fifty years old. I supposed he was not hard to look at when he was behaving like he was now. He had bright green eyes and messy blonde hair. He had a prominent jaw, square and strong. I thought he usually looked a little scary, but I hadn’t seen him smile like he was now.

Curiously, Aliana’s mother had very pale skin while Aliana had tanned or even bronze skin, depending on the light. Aliana had wondered who her father was. Apparently, the man had helped finance certain endeavors in her life, but he had not been around for her when she needed him the most, like after their home burned down. He had not been there ever, in fact. She had never met him and didn’t know his name.

Her mother knew, and she refused to tell Aliana. It had been an issue of great frustration to Aliana, she had told me a while ago. But from the way her mother was looking at Leon, I was starting to believe that Gwen was no longer romantically involved with Aliana’s father.

There wasn’t much room for the four of us in this small space, but soon Gwen took Leon into the back room and drew the curtain as they spoke about Aliana. Quincy and I stood in the entrance room awkwardly, able to hear everything they said.

“Aliana is extremely talented,” Leon told Gwen. “We’re lucky to have her with us. She can track and hunt now, and she’s even learning to ride well.”

What he said greatly bothered me, and I didn’t know why. Everything he’d mentioned was true. Aliana was talented. She and the others who didn’t know how to ride horses had begun to learn, and she was picking it up quickly just as she had the bow. It wasn’t Leon’s words but something about his deliberately pleasant way of speaking that got to me.

I suddenly realized why. This proved that Leon was capable of being nice. He’d just never chosen to be nice to us.

A man walked in with a bloody scrape down his arm. “How much to treat this?” he asked nervously, his gaze bouncing around between the two of us.

“Let me see.” Quincy approached, but the man stepped back.

“I don’t want to be charged for a look.”

Quincy stopped. “I’m assuming you’ve seen Healer Gary?”

The man nodded.

“I don’t charge you for a look. I need to assess the cut to…actually.” He looked at me. “I almost forgot. Would you like to heal him, Jon?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Heal me? What do you mean?” The man stepped back to keep distance as I stepped toward him.

“It’ll cost you five copper,” Quincy said.

“Five? This could heal on its own.”

“It could,” Quincy said, “but it could also become infected and kill you, which I’m sure you know, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. Five is the cheapest price you’ll get. The ointment to prevent infection is usually more than five coppers on its own, but since Jon here will heal you without it, you will only need to pay five copper.”

Five copper really wasn’t very much. Even before I started being paid forty silver a week, I would’ve gladly paid five copper to heal a nasty scrape like the one on this man’s arm.

“What do you mean heal me? Like sorcery?”

“Yes,” I answered. “Sorcery.”

He looked at me for a long while with a growing curiosity to his expression.

“Five copper. Agreed.”

I stepped close and lifted my hand in front of his bloody wound. “This is going to hurt for a few moments, but that just means it’s working.”

“All right.”

I began the spell but almost stopped in shock as he let out a few very improper expletives.

“I’m sorry!” he apologized as I kept up the spell. “Gah! Bastard, son of a, gnnnahhhhh!”

“Done.”

He looked down at his arm. There was blood around where his wound used to be, but the wound itself was gone.

“Wow. That really worked. It’s not going to come back?”

“No, it’s healed.”

He didn’t seem to believe me as he moved the loose skin around on his arm and pinched around where the scrape used to be.

“Tell others,” I said. “I’ll try to be here at this time every day.”

He looked up at me in surprise. “Will do. Thank you. Thank you very much.” He pulled out his coin purse and handed me the five copper bits. I passed them to Quincy as the man strolled out.

“When did you learn to heal, Jon?” Gwen asked me, the curtain drawn back again. Her tone was as if she thought she should’ve known this about me already. “Aliana tells me things,” she added, probably after noticing my confused expression. “But she didn’t mention you can heal.”

“I can for a while now. Has she visited you recently?”

“Not for a little while.”

“I see.” I suddenly felt wildly suspicious about Aliana and her mother, but I wondered if I was overreacting.

I was soon distracted as another man entered, this one complaining of a sharp pain in his stomach. We went through a similar back and forth as with the last man before he agreed to have me heal him. This was my first case of trying to heal something that I couldn’t see or feel for myself.

I stepped up and put my hands over his stomach without touching. Normally I could sense the injury in addition to seeing it when I pushed out my mana toward the problem. A message was relayed to my mind about what was wrong, and I felt like my mana knew exactly how to fix it. But here, I felt nothing.

“Leon,” I said. “Is there a technique to finding an injury I can’t see?”

Leon stepped up and moved his hands around near the man’s stomach. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“There is,” said the man as he groaned. “Terrible pain.”

“I assure you there isn’t an injury,” Leon said. “Jon, you would feel it like you have the others.”

“It’s not an injury,” said the