“Medicines,” Mara answered. “Bandages. Healer supplies. Would you like to look?”
In fact, the soldiers did want to look. They gestured for us to come outside of the gates, made sure they were shut behind us, then searched through our healer’s kits until they were satisfied we weren’t carrying anything we shouldn’t have.
“Come along,” the tall one said once the search was finished.
Royersford had changed in so many ways since before Solstice. The structures were all the same. The multi-story buildings still lined wide thoroughfares, and the streets still crossed each other and merged in infinite combinations, giving the city the feeling that it had been built haphazardly over generations that hadn’t followed the architectural plans of their predecessors.
But those streets were now empty, and even though I could tell the shops were open, their doors were shut and I saw almost no one inside shopping. I remembered what we’d been told about the king distributing supplies to every household using special couriers, but now I knew what that looked like.
We saw very few people as we were escorted across the city and to the sloping streets that led up into the hills. That wasn’t to say the streets were empty, though. There was actually a good deal of wagon traffic. I even spotted Horacio and his wagon at one point as he, presumably, made deliveries. He didn’t see me, though, and before I could even wave to him, we turned a corner and headed up the hill.
The view from the hill told even more of a story than walking through the streets did. I hadn’t been up on the hills since arriving in Royersford, and within an instant, I could see why the wealthy nobles had their houses up so high.
Everything was visible, once we got past a certain elevation—the city, the ocean, the north hill, and the countryside for miles and miles. I could see that the snow was well on its way to melting. There were patches of brown and dull green here and there in the countryside surrounding the city. There were a large number of ships in the harbor as well, which could have explained why the college had never run out of supplies, even though travel overland was difficult in winter.
But I could see other things too. Like the camps of soldiers that were planted around the city gates. There were lines of wagons waiting to enter the city as well, and even though it was too far to see clearly, I was certain they were all being thoroughly checked before anyone was let in. Wagons were leaving the city too, but I didn’t have any sort of view of whether there were lines waiting to leave or if those wagons were being searched as well. I was certain they were.
“It’s pretty much as I thought,” Mara said as we walked on, all glancing down into the valley.
She didn’t elaborate. I wouldn’t have wanted her to, not with the soldiers accompanying us.
“My family….” Appius didn’t finish his thought. I could see what it was anyhow, considering how anxious he looked.
It was a sign of how concerning the view was that I almost reached out and took his hand. I didn’t, though. The Old Realm might have been hedonistic, and rules might have been relaxed within the confines of the college, but I didn’t want to accidentally land myself and Appius in even more trouble.
“We’re to take you to Senator Helias’s house first,” the shorter of the two soldiers told us once we reached a street that ran parallel to the top of the mountain.
I nodded to the man, not certain what else I could do or say.
The situation in the south hill estates was exactly what Magister Marcellus said it was. Senator Helias and his family all had a slight ague. And it truly was nothing that a bowl of beef broth and a few days in bed couldn’t take care of. But everyone in the family seemed so excited to see us and talk with us about things at the college that I was a bit taken aback.
The same happened at the second household we visited. And the third. The illness was nothing, but the fever everyone had for information and some sort of word from the city was all-consuming. It didn’t take long for me to realize that the college wasn’t the only part of the city that had been isolated, the nobles of the hill estates had been warned to stay in their houses as well.
We stayed all day. After lunch—which was provided for us at the house of a low-ranking senator—the three of us split up so that we could cover more territory with our calls. In addition to treating a few more cases of ague, I lanced a few boils, inspected a case of gout, and in a fit of desperation on her part, treated a new mother for an infected nipple from breast feeding. The poor woman was in so much pain that she begged me for something that would either render her unconscious or kill her.
“I’m afraid all I have is a tincture for pain relief,” I told her as I saw to her in the upstairs room of a house at the very summit of the hill. “It’s my own blend, and I think it will do you some good.”
That was another unexpected outcome of the college being isolated and its students having to shift the course of their studies. I’d done far more work on concocting medicines while we were isolated than I ever would have otherwise. I thought I’d become particularly good at it.
“Anything,” the poor woman wept. “Just…anything.”
“It might do you some good to, er, rest your breast in a bowl of snow to numb the pain,” I said, blushing. “I can step out onto the balcony and fetch some for you.”
“Please.”
I took a bowl and stepped out onto the large balcony that overlooked the back garden and, to my surprise, the far side of the hill. I hadn’t stopped to think that the hill had another side, which was ridiculous, but that’s what isolation and narrow concentration on education did. As I straightened after scooping up a bowl of slush, I took a moment to gaze out at the countryside on the other side of the mountain.
That was when it hit me. That was how I could escape. The other side of the hill wasn’t guarded. The hills themselves served as walls on the north and south sides of the cities. The only way to reach the tops of the hills to begin with was to be a nobleman or connected with the nobles. I didn’t suppose the nobles themselves had any reason to leave Royersford by climbing down the forested far sides of the hills, but the more I studied the landscape, the more I saw it would be a simple thing to walk down through the woods and out into the countryside.
“My lady, I am unfamiliar with Royersford,” I started once I came back into the house with a bowl of slush. “Is there any sort of wall at the base of the hill on the south side? Or are there soldiers patrolling the hills?”
“Why do you want to know?” the woman asked, narrowing her eyes at me.
I thought fast. “I’m going to recommend that you keep your breast uncovered until the infection goes away, and I wouldn’t want any soldiers accidentally seeing you like this.”
The woman made an impatient sound, then winced with pain. “There are no soldiers up here or on the other side of the hill. The hills are inaccessible on that side anyhow.”
“Inaccessible?” I asked, already forming plans.