The road grew quieter as we moved away from the center of town.
Crowded shops gave way to older stone homes with flowering gardens and ivy climbing their walls. The academy tower disappeared behind the rooftops, and the sound of carriage wheels slowly faded.
People still noticed Lynne.
An elderly baker was carrying a wooden sign inside when he saw us approaching.
“Miss Daniels?”
He set the sign against the wall.
“What happened to you?”
Lynne glanced down at the gray blanket wrapped around her shoulders.
“I’m all right.”
The baker looked at her swollen eyes.
He clearly didn’t believe her.
Instead of asking again, he disappeared into his shop.
A moment later, he returned with a small loaf wrapped in brown paper.
“For your family.”
Lynne shook her head.
“You don’t have to give me anything.”
“Take it.”
He placed the loaf carefully in her hands.
“Your father never allowed anyone in this neighborhood to go hungry. I’m not letting his daughter walk home without supper.”
Lynne lowered her eyes.
“Thank you”
He rested a hand gently against her shoulder.
“Go home, Lynni.”
We continued down the road.
A florist arranging buckets outside her shop called Lynne over and pressed a bundle of white flowers into her arms.
“For your mother.”
Then she selected a small yellow flower and tucked it between the others.
“And that one is for you.”
Lynne smiled faintly.
“Thank you.”
Two children playing beside a garden gate ran toward us as soon as they recognized her.
“Lynni!”
One of them stopped directly in front of her and stared at the blanket wrapped around her shoulders.
“Did you fight a monster?”
Lynne looked down at herself.
Then at me.
“Something like that.”
The second child’s eyes widened.
“Did you win?”
Lynne’s smile faded.
“I don’t know.”
Neither child seemed to understand the answer.
Their mother came hurrying across the garden.
“Leave Miss Daniels alone.”
“We were just asking.”
“I know.”
Then she looked at Lynne.
Her expression changed the moment she saw her face.
For a second, I thought she was going to ask what happened too.
Instead, she placed a hand against Lynne’s arm.
“Your mother will be worried.”
Lynne nodded.
“I know.”
An older man removed his hat as we passed.
A woman watering flowers outside her house placed one hand over her heart.
Someone waved from an upstairs window.
People greeted Lynne everywhere we went.
Some called her Miss Daniels.
Others called her Lynne.
The ones who seemed to know her family best called her Lynni.
By the time we reached the end of the shops, Lynne was carrying bread, flowers, and two apples someone had somehow managed to add to the pile without me noticing.
I looked at everything in her arms.
“Does this happen everywhere you go?”
Lynne gave me a tired little smile.
“Sometimes.”
“You’re pretty popular.”
Her smile faded.
“Not really.”
I raised an eyebrow.
She looked down at the loaf.
“They loved Dad.”
“What did he do?”
For the first time in several minutes, something warm appeared in her expression.
“Lots of things.”
“That’s specific.”
She glanced at me.
“I’m trying to decide where to start.”
“With the biggest thing.”
“That depends on who you ask.”
“What would you say?”
Lynne thought for a moment.
“He helped people.”
The answer was so simple I almost laughed.
Judging by her expression, she was completely serious.
“How?”
“He was a healer.”
“Like the people at the academy?”
“Yes, but…”
She hesitated.
“People say he was the greatest healer Albion ever had.”
I looked at her.
“In its entire history?”
Lynne nodded, though she seemed uncomfortable saying it herself.
“That’s what they say.”
“And you were going to leave that part out?”
“He didn’t like people talking about him that way.”
“Why?”
“He said being praised for helping someone made it sound like helping them was unusual.”
That sounded like something Lynne would believe too.
“What made him the best healer ever?”
She adjusted the loaf beneath her arm.
“He understood things other healers didn’t.”
“What kinds of things?”
Lynne looked ahead.
“When I was little, the Sweating Sickness spread through a town in northern Albion.”
The name sounded almost harmless.
Her expression told me it wasn’t.
The contrast between the name of the disease and her grave tone was almost comic.
“People could wake up feeling completely healthy,” she continued. “Then their heads would start hurting. Their hearts would race, and they would sweat so much that their clothes could be wrung out.”
“That could kill them?”
Lynne nodded.
“Sometimes it only took a few hours.”
She swallowed.
“Some people ate breakfast with their families and were dead before sunset.”
Suddenly the name didn’t sound harmless anymore.
“How did it spread?”
“No one knew.”
“Did they ever find out?”
“Not completely.”
She shifted the flowers higher against her chest.
“Dad understood more of it than anyone else.”
The roads leading in and out of the infected town had been closed.
Soldiers prevented anyone from leaving.
Families with enough money had already fled. Most of the local officials had gone with them.
Several healers entered before the quarantine began, but the sickness kept spreading.
“They tried to strengthen everyone,” Lynne said.
“With magic?”
She nodded.
“They thought the sickness was making the patients weak, so they kept forcing more vitality into them.”
“That sounds reasonable.”
“It made them worse.”
I frowned.
“Why?”
Lynne took a moment to gather the explanation.
“Dad said healing doesn’t create health. It helps the body do what it already knows how to do.”
I remembered the healers at the academy.
The injured men lying beneath their hands.
Wounds slowly closing.
“The sickness made everything happen too quickly,” Lynne continued. “Their hearts beat too fast. Their bodies grew too hot. They lost water faster than they could replace it.”
“And the healing made all of that happen faster too.”
Lynne nodded.
“The other healers were trying to make the patients stronger.”
“What did your father do?”
“He made them slow down.”
That answer sounded almost stupidly simple.
Apparently it wasn’t.
Victor measured how quickly each patient’s heart beat
Instead of forcing more vitality through the entire body, he used small amounts of magic only where he thought it was needed.
He slowed hearts that were beating dangerously fast.
Kept swollen airways open.
Prevented muscles from tightening into seizures.
Helped patients retain water and salts long enough to survive the worst of the fever.
And when magic wasn’t needed, he refused to use it.
“He said every part of the body was connected,” Lynne explained. “If you changed one thing without understanding everything around it, you could save someone from one problem and kill them with another.”
“So he cured it?”
Lynne immediately shook her head.
“Dad hated when people said that.”
“What did he say?”
“That he didn’t defeat the sickness.”
She looked down at the flowers.
“He only learned what it was doing.”
The other healers had tried to overpower it.
Victor studied it.
He learned which symptoms were helping the body and which ones were killing it.
He taught people without magic how to cool the sick safely, replace the water and salts they lost, keep them from choking, and recognize when their hearts were beginning to fail.
Those people taught others.
Then those people taught more.
Slowly, the number of deaths began to fall.
“He sounds like more than a healer,” I said.
“He was a natural philosopher.”
I had heard the term several times since arriving at the academy.
From what I could tell, magician described what someone could do.
Natural philosopher described how well they understood what they were doing.
Less like someone who broke the rules of nature.
More like someone who understood those rules well enough to do things nobody else thought were possible.
“So his magic wasn’t stronger?”
“It was strong,” Lynne said. “But that wasn’t why he succeeded.”
“Then why?”
“He understood the body better.”
She said it as though the answer should have been obvious.
Maybe here, it was.
To everyone else, Victor Daniels probably looked like a man capable of bullying death itself.
But it wasn’t that he ignored the rules.
He understood them better than everyone around him.
“Did he stay outside the quarantine and tell people what to do?”
Lynne looked almost offended.
“No.”
“He went inside?”
“He was told that once he crossed the barricade, he wouldn’t be allowed to leave.”
“What did he say?”
Her expression softened.
“He said he wasn’t planning to leave until everyone else could.”
Victor remained inside the town for nearly three months.
He slept wherever there was room.
Sometimes on clinic floors.
Sometimes beside patients whose families had already died.
He worked until his hands shook too badly to hold his instruments.
When people were too weak to eat, he fed them.
When there weren’t enough attendants, he cleaned rooms and carried water himself.
When someone couldn’t be saved, he stayed with them so they wouldn’t die alone.
“What happened to him?”
“He caught it.”
My stomach tightened.
“And survived?”
“Barely.”
She looked at the little yellow flower resting among the white ones.
“Mum says he was unconscious for six days.”
“And after that?”
“He woke up and tried to go back to work.”
I stared at her.
“Of course he did.”
Lynne gave a small laugh.
“The other healers tied him to the bed.”
“Really?”
“He said they were overreacting.”
“He sounds difficult.”
“He was.”
There was affection in her voice now.
For a few minutes, talking about him seemed to bring part of him back into the space between us.
“What else did he do?”
Lynne glanced at me.
“You asked for the biggest story.”
“What about the littler ones?”
That earned another faint smile.
There were other stories.
Smaller ones.
At least, Lynne considered them smaller.
Victor repaired the roof of an elderly widow’s house after a storm and left before she could offer him payment.
He brought food to families who were too proud to ask for help.
He treated wounded soldiers from both sides of a conflict because, according to him, injuries didn’t care which flag someone served.
He remembered the names of every child who greeted him in the street.
And whenever someone died whom he had been unable to save, he visited the family afterward.
“He helped widows find work,” Lynne said. “Paid school fees for children if they needed it. Sometimes he brought food.”
She paused.
“Sometimes he just sat with them.”
“Why?”
Lynne looked at me.
The question seemed to confuse her.
“Because they still needed someone.”
I thought about the ghost Lynne had been talking to earlier.
The families she had promised to visit tomorrow.
“He took every death personally?”
Lynne nodded.
“Every one.”
There was no pride in her voice.
Only longing.
“He used to say bringing someone back wasn’t the only way to save them.”
I looked at her.
“Bringing someone back?”
Lynne nodded.
“From the dead.”
I almost stopped walking again.
“What?”
She looked at me.
“Dad could restore people who died.”
“Your father could bring dead people back to life?”
“Yes.”
She said it with the same tone someone might use to tell me their father was good at carpentry.
I stared at her.
“How?”
Lynne looked down.
“I don’t really know.”
That surprised me almost as much as the answer itself.
“You don’t?”
“I was little.”
She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
“And even the people who studied with him didn’t understand everything he could do.”
“So he could just…”
I made a vague motion with one hand.
“Bring anyone back?”
“No.”
Her answer came quickly.
“He couldn’t save everyone.”
There was something in the way she said it that stopped me from asking more.
Not yet.
Instead, I looked down the road.
I was beginning to understand why everyone here remembered Victor Daniels.
Not only because he could bring back the dead.
But because of what he did when he couldn’t.
Lynne continued after a moment.
“He once missed a royal banquet because a farmer’s daughter broke her leg several miles outside town.”
“What did the royal family say?”
“They were angry.”
“And your father?”
“He said they could invite him again.”
I laughed.
“He really said that?”
“Mum says he used more polite words.”
“But that’s what he meant.”
“Yes.”
“He sounds important.”
Lynne thought about it.
“He was.”
Then she smiled sadly.
“But he never acted like it.”
We turned onto another street.
Lynne suddenly stopped.
Ahead of us, several town guards stood outside one of the houses.
Two women were speaking with them.
One was older, though still young enough that I guessed she was Lynne’s mother before I had any reason to know that.
She had the same soft features.
The same eyes.
The other woman looked like a completely different version of Lynne.
Her auburn hair had been pulled into a ponytail.
Not in a way that looked like she was trying to be fashionable.
More like it had gotten in the way at some point and she had solved the problem.
Her sleeves were rolled up.
Her arms were folded.
She looked like someone who didn’t have much patience for things that wasted her time.
Lynne froze.
I looked at her.
Then at the guards.
“I’ll check.”
Before she could answer, I hurried ahead.
One of the guards turned toward me.
I recognized him from the academy.
I raised a hand.
His face brightened.
“Well, if it isn’t one of today’s heroes.”
Heroes.
I still didn’t know how I felt about that word.
I gave him a small bow.
“Hello.”
Then I glanced toward the women.
“Is everything all right?”
“We were just telling Miss Daniels what happened.”
The older woman looked at me.
Then past me.
Her face changed.
“Lynne?”
She ran straight past me, barefoot across the stone road.
“Lynni!”
Lynne barely had time to move before her mother wrapped both arms around her.
The bread nearly fell.
Then Lynne broke again.
Her face disappeared against her mother’s shoulder as she started crying.
The younger woman thanked the guards quickly, then turned and hurried inside.
For a second, I wondered why.
A moment later she returned wearing slippers and carrying another pair.
“Mom.”
Lynne’s mother either didn’t hear her or didn’t care.
The younger woman sighed.
She crouched beside her and somehow managed to slip the shoes onto her mother’s feet while she was still hugging Lynne.
Only after solving that problem did she straighten and wrap one arm around both of them.
Lynne cried into her mother’s shoulder.
The younger woman rubbed her back.
“Easy.”
“I’m okay,” Lynne managed.
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m not hurt.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
The front door opened again.
A young man stepped outside.
He looked a few years older than Lynne, though clearly younger than the woman with the ponytail.
His blond hair had been cut into a close buzz cut. He had broad shoulders and heavy arms that made him seem older at first glance.
He stared at Lynne.
At the gray blanket.
Her swollen face.
The way she clung to their mother.
“Lynni?”
Lynne looked up.
“Jonny.”
He ran.
Jonathan reached them in several quick strides and threw his arms around his sister hard enough that the woman with the ponytail had to brace all three of them.
Lynne buried her face against his chest.
His hand settled against the back of her head.
“Who did this?”
“No one.”
His jaw tightened.
“That doesn’t look like no one.”
“I’m not hurt.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
The woman with the ponytail placed a hand on his arm.
“Let her breathe.”
Jonathan slowly released Lynne, though he kept both hands on her shoulders while looking over her face.
There was something almost military about the way he held himself.
The close-cropped hair.
The straight back.
The way his attention shifted briefly toward the road behind us before returning to Lynne, as though checking whether whatever had frightened her might have followed us home.
He looked like someone trying to become a soldier.
Lynne seemed relieved to have him beside her.
But there was a tiny tension in her expression when she looked at him.
I had no idea what that was about.
“I have to say…”
I turned.
The guard was still standing beside me.
“I was impressed.”
“With what?”
“You.”
“Oh.”
For some reason, every time he spoke to me I felt like I was in trouble.
Even though he was obviously being friendly.
“Thank you.”
“Three grown men?”
He looked me up and down.
“You don’t look like much.”
“Thanks.”
He laughed.
“I mean that as a compliment.”
“That did not sound like one.”
He laughed again.
“You ever think about joining the Elite Legion?”
I stared at him.
“The what?”
“Or maybe the Kingsguard one day.”
I continued staring.
Apparently my face answered the question.
“Never mind.”
“…Thank you?”
The guard grinned.
There was something more important I wanted to know.
“So… what happens now?”
“With you?”
“With all of this.”
I gestured vaguely back toward the academy.
“You don’t need to worry about anything tonight.”
He nodded toward Lynne’s family.
“We told them enough.”
“Enough?”
He lowered his voice.
“They know several men broke onto academy grounds. They know Miss Daniels was being pursued. And they know you and Miss Fan stopped them.”
He glanced toward Lynne.
“I left out the uglier parts.”
I nodded.
“Probably a good idea.”
“That was my thinking.”
He straightened.
“You’ve had enough excitement for one day.”
He gave me a casual wave.
“Get some food. Get some sleep. We know where to find you if anyone needs anything else.”
“Thanks.”
The guard headed back up the street.
By then Lynne’s family had started moving toward the house.
Her mother suddenly stopped.
She looked back.
At me.
“…You?”
I looked behind myself.
Nobody.
I looked back at her.
Her eyes moved slowly from my face to my shoulders.
Then down my arms.
Then back up again.
“You’re the boy who saved my daughter?”
Before I could answer, the woman with the ponytail looked me over.
“He doesn’t even look like he could lift a sack of flour.”
“Daniella.”
“What?”
She tilted her head.
“He’s tiny.”
“…Thanks.”
“No offense.”
Daniella looked genuinely fascinated now.
“How did you fight three grown men?”
“I…”
I had absolutely no idea how to answer that without making the evening considerably longer.
Lynne’s mother seemed to recognize this.
“Later.”
She placed a hand against Daniella’s shoulder and gently pushed her toward the door.
“But—”
“Later.”
Jonathan finally looked directly at me.
His gaze dropped to the crooked name tag pinned to my shirt.
“Xu XiaoXing,” he read.
I glanced down.
“Apparently.”
His eyes narrowed slightly.
“Apparently?”
“I don’t remember my name.”
Jonathan stared at me.
Then at the tag.
Then back at me.
“I’ll explain later,” Lynne said.
Jonathan looked toward her.
Whatever questions he had seemed to disappear the moment he saw her face again.
“All right.”
For now, apparently.
Their mother stepped between everyone and the door.
“Inside.”
Daniella opened her mouth.
“Daniella.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
Daniella closed her mouth.
Their mother looked at me.
“You too.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
She held the door open.
“You walked my daughter home looking like that. I’m not sending you away hungry.”
I looked down at myself.
My clothes were still wrinkled and damp in places.
Bruises had begun darkening along my arms.
The crooked name tag was still pinned to my chest.
I probably looked worse than I felt.
“Thank you.”
Warm air met me as I stepped through the doorway.
So did the smell of dinner.
Bread.
Tea.
Something savory cooking deeper inside the house.
And something sweet I couldn’t identify.
My stomach immediately made a sound loud enough for everyone to hear.
Daniella looked down.
Then back at me.
“That explains the size.”
I sighed.
Lynne laughed.
Not much.
Just a small,tired sound.
But this time it was real.
Her mother smiled.
“Dinner first.”
“I wasn’t going to argue.”
The entrance hall was much larger than I expected.
A staircase curved upward along one wall.
Flowers sat in little ceramic pots beneath the windows, and several coats hung beside the door.
The house didn’t feel especially grand despite its size.
It felt lived in.
Shoes had been left unevenly beneath a bench.
A book rested open on a small table.
Someone had abandoned a cup of tea beside it.
There was a basket of folded laundry on the stairs that looked as though somebody had meant to carry it upstairs and forgotten.
For the next several minutes, everyone spoke at once.
Was she hurt?
Why was she wrapped in a blanket?
Had she eaten?
Why hadn’t the academy sent word sooner?
Lynne tried to answer everything.
She failed.
Daniella took the bread and flowers from her before they ended up on the floor.
Jonathan stayed beside her, his attention moving between Lynne and everyone asking questions as though he were trying to make sure nobody overwhelmed her.
Their mother kept touching Lynne’s hair and face.
Everyone was taking care of her.
Maybe this was where she got it from.
I smiled.
Then I realized I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do.
I had known Lynne for less than a day.
These people were her family.
I was some strange boy who had arrived at their door wearing wet clothes, several bruises, and a name that apparently wasn’t mine.
I considered quietly leaving until something on the wall caught my attention.
A portrait.
It hung above a narrow wooden table beside the staircase.
Fresh flowers covered most of the table beneath it.
Some were beginning to wilt.
Others looked as though they had been placed there that morning.
Several candles stood between them.
Only one was burning.
I stepped closer.
The man in the portrait was tall.
He wore dark ceremonial clothing with a pale sash crossing his chest.
One hand rested behind his back.
The other rested gently on the shoulder of a little girl.
Lynne.
She couldn’t have been older than six or seven.
Her hair was shorter, and her face was rounder.
But there was no mistaking her.
She was smiling up at the man beside her.
I studied his face.
Kind eyes.
The same eyes as Lynne.
This had to be him.
At the bottom of the portrait was a small brass plate.
Victor Daniels.
I stared at the name.
So this was the greatest healer Albion had ever known.
A natural philosopher who understood the body so deeply that his work looked like a miracle.
The man who had entered a dying town when everyone else wanted to escape it.
The man who stayed beside people he couldn’t save so they wouldn’t have to die alone.
The legend who could apparently bring people back from the dead.
I looked toward Lynne.
She had finally escaped most of the questions and was standing beside her mother while Daniella carried the bread toward another room.
“Is that your father?”
Lynne followed my gaze.
Her expression immediately softened.
“Yes.”
I looked back at the portrait.
I had spent most of the walk hearing stories about him.
People throughout the neighborhood treated his daughter like someone they owed a debt they could never repay.
Somehow, after hearing all of that, Victor Daniels didn’t feel like someone from the past.
I half expected him to walk through the front door at any moment.
“I hope I get to meet him.”
Everything seemed to stop the moment the words left my mouth.
Daniella stopped walking.
Their mother lowered her eyes.
The tension left Jonathan’s face all at once.
I looked at Lynne.
I had definitely said something wrong.
For a moment, the sadness in her face was so deep that I wished I could reach into the air, grab the words, and shove them back into my mouth.
“Sorry.”
Lynne shook her head.
“No.”
Then she looked toward the portrait.
A little smile touched her face.
“I hope so too.”
I frowned.
Then my eyes moved back toward the brass plate.
Victor Daniels.
There was something beneath his name that I hadn’t paid attention to before.
Two dates.
I stared at them.
Then at the flowers.
The candle.
The way everyone had gone silent.
The way Lynne had spoken about him the entire way home.
Dad was.
Dad said.
Dad used to.
I finally understood.
Victor Daniels had died years ago.