| By: Gabriel and Miriam Cole |
Gustav Garigliano woke suddenly with some half-realized noise ringing in his ears. Groggily he
turned over and fumbled on the crowded night table for his spectacles.
“Pitch dark?” he muttered to himself. It was deep in the night, only the palest hint of bluish white
light shone around the edges of the thick, dark curtain over his lone bedroom window. Jevenell
and Beredell were still in the sky, then, but Iritar had set already.
He nearly came out of his skin as someone below pounded the door to the shop so hard that the
walls—and the shelves of jars, bottles, and simples—rattled threateningly. Clumsily, Gustav fell out
of his bed in a tangle of blankets. His heart pounding, he grasped vainly for his robe as the
hammering came yet again. It was followed by a clatter and the sound of smashing glass
somewhere below.
“Thieves!” the healer moaned, abandoning his search for his dressing gown. He reached under
the bed and drew out a rusty and disused old crossbow. Feeling somewhat reassured by the
weapon, he made for the door, pausing only to slip on his hard-soled workshoes. Gustav was by
no means a warrior, but he had not lived thirty-seven years in Ranporkin by being a complete
carpet. If thieves wanted anything from his shop, they were going to get a very rude welcome.
“Healer!”
The voice was muffled, but Gustav clearly understood the word as he descended the rickety steps
that led to his shop below. Immediately, the insistent thumping began again, rattling the windows in
their frames. There was another clatter from below, this time the sound of some pottery cracking
and scattering upon the floor. The pounding stopped, leaving behind only the diminishing sound of
a saucer spinning to a stop on the hardwood floor.
“Open the damn door, Garigliano!”
The voice was familiar, but this was Ranporkin, and it was the middle of the night after all. Gustav
stumbled down the last three steps, his shoes crunching on broken glass as he reached the
landing. Hastening across the darkened expanse of his shop, he cried out and stumbled as his
shins barked against a crate. Feeling his way around it, Gustav approached the door, reaching out
for the bar just as the pounding came again.
“OPEN. THE. DAMNED. DOOR!”
Each word from beyond the wooden portal was punctuated with an ever increasingly powerful
blow. The last one was so strong that the Healer was certain that the heavy bar was starting to
splinter.
“Who—who goes?” he called in a quavering voice. “I’m warning you—I’m armed!”
“Of course you are, Garigliano, you motherless—OPEN THE DOOR OR I’LL GUT YOU!”
Gustav paused. The voice was one he knew well, but—,
“It’s me. Orion Murke for the love of Ret! I need your help, damn you to Hell!”
“Murke! Why didn’t you say that?” Gustav threw back the bar and undid the latches, opened the
door carefully just the same.
Sure enough, it was the massive form of Orion Murke on the other side. He was sweating
profusely and cradling a dark haired woman in his arms, but that was all the Healer saw before the
man’s massive form shouldered him aside and entered.
“Bar that door,” Orion barked hoarsely. “And get your simples and whatever together. This
woman is in dire need of your skills.”
Obediently, Gustav re-barred the door. He set the crossbow aside and fumbled with the lamp in
the bracket between the door and shop window. A heartbeat later, he had a flame going within the
glass chimney and the details of his shop sprang into view. Orion’s incessant pounding had
knocked all of the bottles and crockery off the shelves along the front wall; an infernal and foul
smelling mess of glass and liquid all that remained of at least several weeks worth of fermenting
and distilling. Grumbling, he turned back to Orion, only to find that the man and his charge had
vanished from the shop.
“Murke?” the Healer called out uncertainly. “Where’d you get off to, boyo?”
Orion’s massive hands came at him out of the gloom. Gustav yelped as he was lifted bodily from
his feet and half-carried, half-frogmarched through the curtain behind his glass-fronted counter.
Almost without realizing it, he had passed through the dim hallway and been unceremoniously
dragged through the now-open second door. Not many people knew the room even existed; when
the door was closed it looked like a blank stretch of wall. But Murke had been here before, and as
the leader of the Renna, the Ranporkin Thief’s Guild, it only seemed natural that he should easily
discover the secret of the concealed door.
“Now see here, Murke—,” Gustav began irritably. But the words died on his lips at the sight of the
woman Orion had laid on the tall surgeon’s table in the center of the room. She was unfamiliar to
him; pale, with a thick mop of black curly hair. A girl of—he paused a moment, admitting to himself
that he couldn’t with any accuracy make a guess of her age. A young woman, then, with a terrible
wound between her third and fourth rib on the right side.
“Well, I understand your insistence, then,” the Healer muttered. He made to hasten from the room,
but Orion thrust his Healer’s satchel into his arms and very pointedly closed and latched the door.
Gustav swallowed, nodded, and set the bag on the small table beside the bed. With deft
movements, he withdrew a bottle of strongwhiskey and a pair of heavy shears. Orion made a
sound of annoyance, but the Healer ignored him and made a hasty examination of the patient. Her
breathing was somewhat light and quick—a bit damp—her lung is damaged, then, Gustav noted
silently. He listened for a moment at her breast, her heart beat was thready, quick; she was not at
all in a good order.
Behind him, Murke paced about the room, fidgeting with the cabinets that ran around three of the
walls. He returned to the concealed door, listened for a moment, spun back with a creak of leather
and a rustle of cloth. “Well?”
The Healer jumped. He realized that at this point, Orion was as dangerous as a wounded bear and
that this woman was a very prized possession. He offered no audible reply but deftly worked the
long, heavy bladed scissors; cutting away her tunic and halter so that he could examine her injury.
It looked like a fairly simple—fairly deep—stab wound. But there was quite a bit of blood pooling
on the table beneath her. That was odd; the wound was bleeding but not profusely. Gently,
Gustav turned her on her side—flinched—and turned fierce eyes on the man behind him.
“And what do you expect me to do for her?” the Healer asked in a frantic hiss.
“Do what you do, Garigliano.” Orion shot back in a hard, perilous voice, his eyes going wide in
barely controlled rage. “Heal her.”
“She’s been run through, man—you should have taken her to a mage.” Even as he spoke, he was
moving; carefully laying the woman on her back again and hastily reaching into a bin beneath the
elevated table. He withdrew a pair of towels and with the greatest care, he folded one and placed
it beneath the woman’s back in an effort to staunch the bleeding. “Have to work fast,” he
murmured aloud, “Lest the blood pool in her lung.” Taking the second towel, he creased it thrice
and pressed it to the wound on her chest.
“I cannot tarry any longer, Gustav,” Murke said to him as he worked. The big man was in a state
of enormous agitation. He paced heavily, resettled the weight of his great tall claymore on his
back. “That’s why I brought her here.” Much of the gusto had gone out of his voice as his eyes fell
upon the woman’s pale, still form. “She is hunted; even now, I fear the Lily might be fast upon us. I
need to make certain that they do not find her.”
“The Lily!” Gustav cried in alarm, his eyes darting wildly around the close confines of his hidden
room in a sudden panic; he half expected Assassins to leap abruptly from his well-ordered
cabinetry. That moment passed in a flush of shame, and he fixed Orion with a gimlet stare.
“The Lily Brotherhood seeks her and you brought her here?”
“I knew you had this room,” Orion said with an impatient shrug. His eyes were not on the Healer.
He was still staring down into the porcelain features of the young woman, stroking the thick, fine
curls back from her face. “I will come back for you, my love,” he half-moaned, and for a moment
Gustav witnessed the depth of pain carefully held in place behind the shroud of ruthless menace
Orion wore upon his face. The towering man kissed her brow lightly and gave her pale cheek one
last caress. Looking up again, he repeated to the Healer, “I shall return as soon as it is safe. Look
after her, Gustav, for if you do not it will be better that the Lily find you.”
“What are you going to do, Murke?” the Healer queried in a quavering voice, wondering at how
deep this man had now involved him in the Lily’s affairs.
“What can you do against those black-souled murderers?”
“Quite a lot, actually,” Murke snarled and the look that painted his face made a believer out of
Gustav.
“Come quickly and bar the door,” Orion barked, opening the concealed portal carefully and peering
into the gloom of the hallway. Gustav followed him, hastening to keep up. At the door, Orion
paused one last time and retrieved something leaning against the jamb. Gustav’s eyebrows rose;
he had not noticed the big man leave it there when he had brushed his way inside. He held it out to
the healer; a heavy broadsword with an unadorned pommel of some strange metal. A thick twist
of black cloth had been wrapped around the grip, but it was not that which Orion offered him, but
rather the worn, leather scabbard.
“This is not to leave her side, understand me?” Gustav nodded, dumbly, taking the sheathed blade
carefully. “Do not touch it; so help your soul do not try to sell it. Put it where she can see it as
soon as she awakes, understand me?”
“Yes, yes,” Gustav stammered, unconsciously clutching the sword to his chest. Now he was as
anxious as Orion; and he had a grievously injured patient to see to. “Might I inquire her name?”
Orion’s mahogany colored eyes were dark and unreadable above his beard.
“Best if you don’t,” he replied, his voice clipped and hurried. With a furtive glance behind him Orion
Murke was gone; vanishing into the night as quickly and completely as the very Assassins he was
working to evade.
Harrumphing quietly, Gustav barred the door and hurried back to his hidden room. When that
door, too, was securely latched he quickly lit three more lamps, bathing the room in brightness
before returning to the bottle of liquor he had set out earlier.
Taking a basin from below the table, he poured half the contents of the bottle into the bowl and
bathed his hands in it. A second basin came out; several instruments, carefully wrapped in a
separate, water-proofed leather case went into it and the rest of the whiskey followed. The room
smelled suddenly of a distillery, the odor of strong liquor was so redolent upon the air. Bandages,
gut, and three more thick, white towels went onto the side table; the satchel went to the floor.
Several needles of varying thicknesses and shapes went into the bowl with the other instruments.
All of it had taken Gustav only a handful of heartbeats to accomplish.
“Well, you must be very important, lass,” he said to the still form on the table. “Common people
do not attract the attentions of the Brotherhood of the Lily, after all.”
He went to one of the cupboards along the wall, took out a small lamp and tripod and several
shaped pieces of iron. After a moment’s thought, he took out three stout leather belts as well.
With a sigh, he lit the lamp. Setting two of the iron shapes on the tripod to heat, he turned back to
the woman and began unlacing and removing her boots.
“Forgive me, girl,” he murmured once her footwear was tucked out of the way in a corner. He
retrieved the shears from where he had left them, “I have to have your leggings off; they are dirty
and you are already bad enough off. No need to risk infection.” When her soiled garments were
disposed of, he soaked a towel in the bowl of whiskey he had used to cleanse his hands and
began thoroughly washing her.
There was more than a little mystery surrounding this young woman. She could not possibly be
older than twenty, but she was very obviously well-nourished and healthy. Clean. Unusual
characteristics in the general population of the city of Ranporkin. Perhaps one of Orion’s mother’s
courtesans? Madam Murke’s was the most exclusive and elegant brothel in Ranporkin. A woman
to suit every taste, for those with a taste for women, was the much touted slogan of the Silken Star
Hotel. Not that a man of Gustav Garigliano’s meager means could ever afford to mix with the type
of aristocracy that frequented Madam Murke’s ever-so-noble establishment.
But then he spotted the ring on her right hand. It was gold and heavy, inlaid with lapis and what
could only have been a real sapphire, cut into the anchor emblem of the Docker’s Guild. He felt
his eyebrow go up. So, a Docker, eh? Surely a girl as young and pretty as this must belong to
someone? Murke? Seemed to be so, but what on earth would a Docker be doing with the leader
of the Renna? The Dockers and Thieves were bitter enemies, weren’t they?
Gustav realized that his hands had lingered overlong at her breasts. He cleared his throat
nervously, muttered, “Sorry, lass, got lost woolgathering,” and turned her on her side. His
eyebrows rose into his hair this time; the back of her right shoulder was covered with an elegant
and expert tattoo of an anchor. Definitely the property of the Docker’s Guild, Gustav said to
himself. I wonder what a skin-art like this costs? But his thoughts were quickly distracted by the
curves of her hips and legs, the suppleness of her back and shoulders. She had a very long and
elegant neck; though it was mostly hidden by her voluminous fine, black curls. Unusual that; dark
curly hair and such alabaster pale skin. He wondered idly at what distant land she had come from.
“I regret this next part, lass,” Gustav whispered to her as he turned her on her back again. “But I’ll
restore you a bit of modesty.” He dragged another of the coarse towels over her hips and legs
and then secured her lower limbs to the table with two of the wide leather belts. Gustav retrieved
his satchel from the floor and withdrew a smaller towel and several small, silver instruments that
looked like scissors. Mumbling to himself, he wiped the sweat from his brow with a hand that
trembled slightly.
“This would be a challenging task at the best of times,” he confided in his unconscious charge.
“Nevermind the middle of the night.” Angrily, he swept his spectacles from his face, and
immediately returned the eyeglasses to their precarious perch on his large and somewhat beaky
nose. She was such a pretty, delicate thing, this woman. The damp, quick breaths tore at him—he
realized that he really had needed no urging from Orion Murke at all. No matter what else might
transpire, Gustav Garigliano was going to save this woman’s life.
The irons were glowing brightly now; it was almost time. “Ah, lass, you’ll not like this much, I’m
afraid.” He folded the other leather strap in two and set it aside for the moment. Casting about,
he found his satchel where he had discarded it, rummaged a bit, and retrieved a smaller bottle.
This he uncorked carefully, taking care not to inhale the lemony sweet fumes. He needed a clear
head about him for the next task. After physically steadying himself, he poured the liquid onto the
young woman’s wound.
Her eyes flew open and she screamed in pain—as well she should, Deter brew was terribly caustic
stuff. Gustav snatched up the folded belt and thrust it between her teeth as she bawled. Her eyes
rolled—rich brown, he noted, the color of chocolate—she was blind with agony, however, and she
bit down fiercely on the strap.
“I am sorry,” he offered softly. “But now it is time for the irons.”
With that, Gustav the Healer went to work.
Half a candle later, he was done. The young woman was still writhing and moaning, her skin
glistened with sweat and blood as she heaved rapid, shallow breaths. The stink of burned flesh
was thick in the close air of the small concealed room; in spite of Murke’s dire warnings, Gustav
was going to have to air the room out. Her breathing still troubled him; she was gasping and
gurgling—his ministrations had been quite unkind. “I’ll mix you something to help you sleep,
lass,” Gustav stated aloud, wiping his hands with a clean cloth. “Something to slow that soppy
breathing.”
Cautiously, he opened the door and peered out into his hallway. Nothing. Creeping slowly, he
made his way through the curtain and into his shop, though he realized an attack from a Lily
assassin would be as silent as a soul leaving its body. Beyond the windows, bluish gloom of deep
night had given way to the slightly brighter gray gloom of earliest dawn. Hell of a night, he thought
absently as he peered out the glass with dark circled eyes. Pulling the thick, canvas curtains tightly
shut, he retrieved a mortar and pestle from beneath the counter. Into it went a handful of herbs,
two delicate dried flowers, and a drop of concentrated Oil of Wasp. He ground all of this together
until it formed a barely moist, grayish green lump. Nodding in satisfaction, he crossed to the hand-
pump in the corner and filled a battered kettle. Behind him, still strapped to the table in the hidden
room, the girl began to cough.
Hastily he lit the alchemist’s lamp on the corner of his counter, set the kettle on the tripod above it
and rushed back to his charge. She had turned as much on her side as she could manage with her
legs strapped down and was coughing wetly. Blood flecked her lips and chin; Gustav knew that if
she was going to survive, he had to get her sedated. With an arm about her shoulders, he carefully
lifted her to a sitting position, patting her bare back and murmuring soothingly. She coughed
uncontrollably for what seemed an age—Gustav had expected such, her right lung had, after all,
been punctured through. But her wracking spasms shook her entire frame until a thin stream of
bloody drool splattered the towel spread across her legs. A moment later a gob of foul smelling
sputum followed and the girl slumped back against him, moaning much more weakly.
The Healer gently allowed her to lie back on the table. He smoothed the damp hair away from her
face and began undoing the belts that had restrained her. As soon as she was free, she began
writhing again.
“Now don’t fall off that table, lass,” Gustav warned absently. He went to the cabinets on the other
side of the room and began undoing the hidden latches. When he was finished, the lower doors
folded down as one, revealing a carefully prepared cot. He quickly made it up, and went back to
her side, scooping her up in his arms. She was surprisingly heavy, her whole body solid with
muscle. But he got her tucked in easily enough, pulling a sheet up over her nudity. Warmth wasn’t
in short supply at the moment; it was summer outside, and the lamps had heated the close,
windowless room to the point that he was sweating profusely himself, and he clad in just a thin
sleeping tunic.
She moaned again and twisted toward the wall, and Gustav started, suddenly remembering his
simple and the water heating on the counter in his shop.
“Be right back, me’girl,” he assured his senseless patient. Dawn was brighter now, a pink glow
edged his curtains and the shop was becoming more visible. His eyes noted the mess of the night
before and he grimaced, absently thinking that it was the worst of injustice that a rotten day should
follow a rough night. But that idea was fleeting, and he returned his attention to the kettle over the
flame. It was at a slow boil—perfect in fact for what he needed to do.
He crossed to his crockery—realized that most of it had been smashed—and swore bitterly.
“Damn you, Murke, you great brute!” He sorted through the broken pieces until he found a
battered cup. Its handle was missing and there was a chip in the rim, but it would hold liquid and
that was all he really needed. Into the cup went the lump of herbs he had crushed and prepared
earlier, over this he poured the boiling water. A heady aroma wafted up and Gustav smiled self-
indulgently. “Perfectly mixed,” he chortled aloud. When the liquid had steeped for several marks,
he took a spoon and strained the aromatic mess back out. “Now for the narcotic,” he declared
with finality, fumbling in the dark for his keys. He located first the jangling ring and then the small
keyhole in the drawer beneath his till. It unlocked with a satisfying clack, and the rattle of coins
could be heard as he opened it and retrieved the tin from inside. It was red and marked with an
attractive serpentine letter. Powdered Essence of Bloodflower, he mused. A thing of rare and
time-consuming make. Inside the tin were carefully folded little parchment packets. Each
contained a dose of the strong, bitter drug. He took out two, replaced the tin and locked the
drawer once more. With a single twist of his wrist, the little pouches folded open; an angry hiss
followed as the powder dissolved in the cup, turning the liquid the color of freshly spilled blood.
Hurrying, Gustav returned to his patient’s side. She was coughing again, turned on her opposite
side and shaking with nearly silent spasms. Again he sat her up and bracingly held her as she
shook. This time, though, he had the drink to offer her. To his surprise, she sipped greedily,
taking the liquid between choking gasps. Only a little spilled, making a red rivulet over her delicate
chin and onto her breast. Gustav wiped this away with the hem of his sleeping tunic, frowning at
the crimson stain—much like that of pomegranate juice—that remained on her alabaster skin.
But the coughing subsided, the moaning subsided, and her breathing slowed. A double dose was
very powerful; he would have to be very careful not to give her too much too often. Within a hand
of heartbeats she was deeply asleep, and he once more lowered her to the soft, clean cot.
The cleanup took until mid-morn. Gustav groaned wearily and settled himself on the stool behind
his counter. His shelves were repaired, but his simples were all gone and there would be no
getting the stain off of the wooden floor in the front corner. Precious little of his crockery
remained, and his glassware—oh, the cost of replacing that many bottles! He cursed Orion Murke
for perhaps the hundredth time that candlepiece. Not that he minded the work of caring for the
young woman; but really, why did the ogre have to destroy his shop in the asking?
The bell above the door rang, and Gustav looked up with a frown. The air seemed to turn chill as
two men entered, their faces set in the hard look of Ranporkin street thugs. Gustav swallowed
loudly and was suddenly very glad that he had shut the concealed door when he had last checked
on the girl, just a hand of marks earlier.
"Can I help you, goodmen?” the Healer asked with cool cordiality.
“Depends,” the first, a tall blond man drawled. “You Gustav Garigliano?”
“That is what the name on my door says,” Gustav answered with far more bravery than he felt.
“You’re a friend of Orion Murke, ain’t you?” This from the other one, a swarthy, dark-haired
Ranporkiner.
“Hardly,” Gustav sniffed.
“Its been said that he showed up here last night,” the blond one said with a pronounced curl of his
lip. “That he was seen coming and going. Late. In the wee hours of the day.”
Gustav thought fast. These men seemed far too bold and not nearly subtle enough to be
members of the Lily Brotherhood. Thugs? Dockers? Bullies from the Smith’s Guild? It hardly
mattered; Gustav had been operating his apothecary for nearly twenty years and had seen his
share of trouble. “Aye, the bastard was here. Ransacked my shop. I only just finished cleaning up
the mess he made.”
The men looked at one another, before turning back to Gustav. “Was there anyone with him? He
bring someone here to you? A woman perhaps?”
“Nay,” Gustav knew he was growing red about the ears and decided to pass it off as his growing
impatience and ire. He puffed up his chest and crossed his arms, taking a measured step toward
the two leering men. “I’d have remembered that, I’m sure.”
“So there was no one with him?”
“Didn’t I just say that?” the Healer snapped, throwing up his hands. “Murke trashed my shop—
mayhap he was looking for this—whomever. Ever think of that? Now, either buy something or get
out—you are trying my patience.”
Again the men shared a look, before turning their eyes on him once more.
“You’d best be telling the truth, Healer,” the blond one cautioned as they headed for the door. “Or
we’ll make certain you’ll live just long enough to regret it.”
“Hah!” Gustav returned, feeling sick, but doing his best to hide it, “Do you have any idea how
many times I’ve been threatened, boyo? Look for Murke elsewhere. Oh, and you know what? I
hope you find him.”
And he did, too. He remembered the fearsome look on Orion’s face when he left the night
before—this pair of ruffians did not stand a chance against that giant, and they went away all
confidence and bravado. Idiots hired to look for the Renna’s massive leader and his girl—
probably paid a pittance. Gustav had fronted well, but as soon as they were gone from the shop
he slumped on his stool and shook uncontrollably.
Damn you, Orion Murke, what have you dragged me into?
The soup was good; some of the best he had ever made.
Gustav put the spoon down next to the pot and took his somewhat dented colander down from its
peg above the hearth. He would have to strain out the small bits of meat and vegetable, of course;
it wouldn’t do at all to have the girl choke on them. He’d use one of his best china bowls, of
course—a cracked cup was fine for dosing medicine, but a cracked bowl? Hardly a charming
place-set for dinner.
There had been no men come looking for her beyond the two who had showed up the morning
after she arrived. That had been three days ago. Three days, Gustav thought happily. She was
recovering well—oh, she was still unconscious, wracked by coughing fits, and half-out-of-her-mind
with pain, but these things were to be expected. Had she not been run clean through? Of course
she had! But she had been taking and passing water and bloodflower-laced tea with no trouble.
Tonight she would have soup.
He let her bowl cool a bit while he ate his own; it would not do to burn her with it either. When it
was ready, he placed in on the worn wooden tray he used for his evening tea, tucked the spoon
and napkin beside it and took it to her.
“Hey, ho, lass, I brought you some soup,” Gustav called cheerily as he entered his hidden room.
Lazily, the young woman turned her head toward him. Surprised, the Healer set the tray on the
surgical table and went quickly to her side.
“Mmm ergh?”
Her voice could scarcely be called a whisper, and her eyes were rolling, lids fluttering in the manner
of the heavily drugged. “Shhh,” Gustav soothed, his thick black hair falling into his face as he
leaned down to speak at her ear.
“Be easy, lass. I’ve brought you some soup.”
“Shhhhliinnh,” she sighed and her eyes rolled shut. Her breathing settled, becoming soft and
even. It seemed a shame to wake her again.
“Come on, now, my lovely,” Gustav urged brightly, gathering the extra pillows that he had brought
and propping her up with them. The blanket fell away from her breasts, and he only waited a
moment before tucking it up around her again. I really should bring her an old tunic, he reminded
himself firmly. Then again, it was hot and humid in the little room, and a tunic would only make her
toilet duties more difficult and more uncomfortable. Besides, her nudity didn’t seem to bother
either of them much.
“Now, I’ve brought you some soup,” Gustav repeated, pulling up his sturdy chair and retrieving the
tray. The broth still steamed a little, so he stirred it and blew gently on the spoon. “It’s quite tasty,
I must say. Much better than the medicine I keep giving you.”
He held the spoon to her mouth. It took a moment, but soon enough her lips parted and she
sipped down the liquid. Her eyes drifted open slightly and she sighed.
“I knew you’d like the soup!” Gustav chuckled gleefully. “Delicious, isn’t it? I actually managed
upon a whole, fresh chicken in the market this morning. Can you believe it! A whole chicken!”
The girl of course, did not reply save to open her mouth the slightest bit as the spoon brushed
against her lips once more. Semi-conscious or not, she managed to take in most of the warm
broth—a good sign all around.
“Well, well,” the Healer remarked when it became apparent that she was finished. “You did very
well with that. You should be better in no time at all, going on like this.”
Oddly enough, saying that made Gustav feel somewhat uncomfortable. He was growing rather
attached to his lovely young patient. Her porcelain features were so expressive; she seemed so
happy while he was feeding her the meager supper. Now, though, he could tell the pain was
returning; her face had become clouded, her breathing quicker.
Gently, he removed the extra pillows one by one so that she could lie flat and return to sleep.
Already, there was some fitfulness to her slow, stirring movements. A low moan escaped her as
he took away the last of the cushions; soon, he would have to prepare another dose of medicine
for her.
“I’d best set to work, lass,” Gustav told her. He gathered the tray and returned it to his tiny
kitchen. A hoarse cry followed him, hurrying his steps. “You certainly do seem to rush your way
through the remedy,” he muttered, setting his own somewhat less dinted teapot on to boil. It was
true, his bloodflower concoction did not seem to have enough potency—the young woman would
only sleep for a pair of candles and then she’d be writhing and sweating and coughing and
moaning all over again.
“I’ll be needing to find something stronger,” he repeated as he hurried past the hidden room again
and into his shop. He gathered the ingredients for her ordinary dose, but stayed his hands as his
eye fell on a dusty bottle on the topmost shelf. Frowning, he took it down, read the faded label.
Powdered Thorntoe.
The bottle was nearly full of dull brown crystals. The barest pinch in boiling water, tempered by
strong brandy—it was what he would use if he were going to amputate a limb. Amputations,
however, were not at all among his normal practice. I’m no blasted Field Surgeon, after all.
Another strained cry from the hallway decided him; he put the bloodflower packet back in the
drawer and unstoppered the Thorntoe.
Thump.
Gustav jerked awake with a start. It was stuffy in his bedroom; the air humid and close. Had there
been a sound—some half remembered noise from below? Whatever it had been, he needed to
rise anyway. A smile came to his lips; time to make porridge for himself and the young—
Thump! Thmp-Thump!
The noise wasn’t terribly loud, but it startled him all the same. Stumbling, he fell out of bed and to
his knees; one leg in and one out of his trousers. Murke?!
Panicked inexplicably by the thought of the giant thief returning, he struggled to get his leggings
on. Snatching a shirt from a pile of clean, unfolded clothes, he shrugged into it as he descended
the clap-trap stairs. It is only just dawn, he noted, a sinking feeling building in his guts, Perfect for
that great, bloody, whore’s son to—
Thump!
Gustav froze halfway across his shop. The noise had come from behind him; it wasn’t a knock at
the door at all.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
Quickly, he went to the curtain behind the counter; the noise was coming from the hidden room
where the young woman slept soundly in a Thorntoe induced delirium. Gustav swallowed hard and
paused, his eyes falling on his Healer’s satchel where it sat, neatly packed and ready, behind his
counter. Something had gone badly wrong—
Thump!
He was opening the door to the hidden room without any clear knowledge of approaching it. The
hidden hasps snapped free, the door sprang open a crack; he hardly hesitated to throw it wide.
“Oh, Ret¬ be merciful!”
The young woman was thrashing about in sweat soaked, tangled sheets. Her eyes were clenched
tight shut, her mouth open in a silent scream. The wound on her ribs was an angry-red, raised
welter that seemed to be oozing, crimson lines of infection were snaking away from it in three
directions. The room was almost unbearably hot and smelled of stale sweat and sickness. She
twisted in the sheets again, and her left foot struck the wall.
Thump!
The noise broke Gustav’s moment of horrified inaction. He was across the room in a heartbeat,
pressing the backs of his fingers to her neck.
“Ghat’s black prat!” he swore dismally. She was raging with fever.
“Should have brought you upstairs with me, lassy,” the Healer said as he stripped off the shirt he
had just pulled on. “Should never have left you here in this little room.” He used the wadded
garment to wipe sweat and puss and grime away from the wound. It looked terrible; he was going
to have to lance it.
Hastily, Gustav began taking instruments and bandages from his satchel. He soaked the shirt in
whiskey and wiped her skin clean with it, prepared gut and needles, readied his scalpel. It was slow
work and tedious; the scalpel had to be held just so, had to slice deep, but not too far. The poison
had to be forced from the point of fester, the wound had to be cleaned, rinsed. She shocked a
year from his life when she suddenly found her voice and emitted a howling shriek of agony.
Though rattled, Gustav kept a clear head and thrust a wadded bandage between her teeth. Soon,
he had the wound re-opened as deep as he dared, letting her bleed out the poison. She was
thrashing; oddly, in the week she had lain recovering, she seemed to have lost little of her strength.
Stitching would be impossible with her flailing about—Gustav dug in the bottom of his bag until he
found a small black bottle with a tight-fitted green stopper. He opened the flask with his teeth,
poured a healthy measure of the contents onto another of the bandages and pressed it tightly over
her nose and mouth. She struggled against him for perhaps a dozen heartbeats before falling
back into the pillows with a wan sort of listlessness that tugged at his heart.
“Don’t worry, lass,” he told her, tossing the cloth to the floor. He began preparing his needles and
gut. “I’m not giving up on you. I’ll get you sorted out proper, or I’ll renounce my name!”
Once again, Gustav the Healer took to task.
“You need a name, girl.”
The young woman made no reply save the sound of a spoonful of porridge being swallowed. It
was the first food she had been able to keep down since her fever broke two nights earlier.
“Well, it has been twelve days; girl, lass, and the like hardly seem adequate.” He pressed another
spoonful past her lips and she swallowed automatically. Her eyelids fluttered open—such pretty
brown eyes she had.
“Brown eyes, black silky hair, milk white skin—you probably have the name of a princess, eh?
Orion wouldn’t say, you know. Thought it best I didn’t know it. But he probably never guessed you
be here so long. Twelve days and all. He’s not coming back; I’ll stake my shop on it. Damn fool
went off and got himself killed, you mark me. He shouldn’t have fiddled with those Lily bastards;
damn bunch of heartless killers them. Got you dragged into it too, I see.”
“Sisshhssin,” she slurred, staring lazily up at him.
“Oh, right, porridge,” he chuckled. He fed her another spoonful, which she swallowed slowly.
“Good to hear your voice, you know.”
He sighed contentedly and looked out the window. The bustle of the typical Ranporkin day was
just beginning; the sun was up, the eggmen and milkmaids were already calling out their wares.
Soon, he would have to go down and open his shop. He looked back at the girl and set the
porridge bowl aside. Tenderly, he tipped her head up and offered her a tumbler of water. A sip at
first, followed by greedy gulps, she actually strained toward him in an effort to slake her thirst.
“Easy, easy,” he chuckled. “There is no shortage of water hereabouts.”
Gustav allowed her to drain the glass before guiding her back to the pillows. He offered her more
of the thin gruel, but she seemed to have lost interest; her face was turned toward the wall and she
had drifted back into a semi-conscious fugue. Smiling, the Healer gathered up the dishes onto the
tray and set the stack on the night table. Folding back the cover, he examined the wound in her
ribs and nodded in satisfaction. Healing was progressing nicely; the fester had gone. Now she
was calm and resting very comfortably in his own bed. Carrying her up the rickety steps had been
a fright, but it had prompted him into having the blasted things replaced. The workmen had been
competent and quick—blessings not often found in Ranporkin—and had done the job in an
afternoon. It was no longer any trouble at all to go up and down, carrying food or medicine or tea.
He still hadn’t got around to finding her any sort of clothing, but she was well cared for and clean—
he carried water up every night to bathe her. And if his hands lingered on her more feminine
features during her nightly scrub—well, he was only a healthy man, unmarried, and not all that old.
Besides, she certainly did not seem to mind in the least.
“But you still need a name,” he murmured, tucking the coverlet back up around her neck.
She turned toward him suddenly, her eyes still half-lidded and unfocussed.
“Asabbbnlll?” she suggested thickly.
"Sable! Brilliant!” he ran his hands through her fine black curls and grinned down at her. “Sable, it
is then!”
“Nnnnnn,” she groaned, but he was ready with her morning remedy.
“Hush, now, Sable,” he cooed gently, tipping the steaming cup against her slightly parted lips.
“Sleep is what you need.”
The din of the Ghoresh Market pressed in on Gustav in a way that was one part familiar, one part
exhilarating, and one part terrifying. Nearly anything a person could possibly want was available
from the seemingly endless stalls, carts, hawkers and ruffians that crowded the broad, sunny
square. The weight of gold coins tucked into the inside of his belt was making him slightly nervous;
men were killed daily for less and Gustav rarely carried so much with him. I rarely have so much,
he thought cheerfully. I’ll be sure to drink a toast to the health of the lovely Lady Dezilee Azell and
her squalling newborn son.
He had a good reputation, sure enough, but he could scarcely believe that even the lesser nobles
inside the walls of the Concillatory had heard of him. His shock as the breathless serving man had
burst into his shop the evening before must have looked ridiculous; but Gustav Garigliano was a
Healer foremost, and he had made his way in all haste to the manor of Lord Stevickk, the good
Lady Azell’s husband.
It had been a difficult birth, to be sure, but when all was said and done mother and babe had come
through healthy and glowing. For this, the Lord Stevickk had paid him with four heavy gold marks.
It was a ransom, certainly, but Gustav was a practical man as well; he was not about to turn his
nose up at good coin.
And what to do with the windfall?
The market pressed about him on all sides. Something for Sable, certainly. She was healing so
well, it was hard to imagine that just a month ago she had been run-through with a sword. She still
needed his attention, of course, just as she still needed the strong medicine for her pain. It was a
shame really, that it kept her almost entirely unconscious. When the time for another dose
approached, she would drift into a somewhat foggy semi-wakefulness, but she usually uttered only
nonsense. It really was better to keep her sedated.
Something caught his eye, and he expertly shoved his way through the crowd to a dressmaker’s
stall. The woman truly had excellent wares; silks, satins, furs—the stuff of nobility. He fingered the
fabrics, trying to imagine what Sable would look like in one of the dresses—or the gowns.
Hardly the appropriate setting for an evening dress, he thought, considering his cramped bedroom
above his shop. A sparkle of blue attracted his attention. He pushed the dresses out of the way,
revealing a light, shimmery satin nightgown. It was pale azure; a good match, he thought for her
milky skin and dark hair.
“See something you like?”
The husky voice was well cultured and almost seductive. He turned to find the shopkeeper, a
handsome woman some few years his elder, staring at him with an intense expression. It was
quite unnerving, truth be told.
“Um, well—,” he stammered, “That it to say, aye—I, um, have,” he held up the nightgown
somewhat helplessly and watched her lips curve in a slight smile.
“Ah, that is a very nice piece, if I do say so myself,” the woman purred. “And unless I have
grossly misjudged you, it must be for someone else, no?”
“Huh?” Gustav shook his head, “Yes, yes, for my—ah—,” But what was Sable to him? Why did
he suddenly need to explain who she was to this stranger?
“Favorite whore, perhaps?” the woman suggested with an uncomfortably knowing wink.
“Wha—no!—Madam, I beg your pardon. I want the blasted thing for my, um, intended!”
“Oh, very good,” the woman allowed, bending ever so slightly at the waist. “So you’ll want to know
the price?”
“If you please,” the Healer huffed stiffly.
“Three gold pieces.”
“Robbery!” Gustav gasped. “I’ve never heard of such—,”
“My good man, if you want your lover dressed for bed like a noblewoman, you’ll pay like a
nobleman. Otherwise, try Minzee’s shop down the way. She’ll have wool and maybe some linen.”
“No, no, I want this,” the Healer griped with a dark, upward glance of his eyes. He dug into the
hidden pouch behind his belt and handed her three of the four coins. With a smile, the shopkeeper
made them vanish, and swiftly wrapped his purchase in stiff brown vellum.
“Pleasure,” she clucked bemusedly, before swaying off to assist another customer. Grumbling,
Gustav struggled on, fighting against the crowd until he was able to get back onto the
thoroughfare. Not that the street was much less congested, but at least here the foot traffic was
flowing.
He looked down at the package in his hands and frowned. Why shouldn’t he consider Sable his
intended? She’d been with him long enough—it had been a whole month. Didn’t he care for her,
provide for her, bathe her, soothe her, and look out for her? Of course he did. She might be much
younger, but he wasn’t an old man by any stretch. He was a good provider—a Healer with an
excellent reputation. His shop wasn’t in the Concillatory or the Noble Quarter, but it was far from
the slums. He was a good catch—excellent even—how could she possibly say no to a husband
like him?
Gustav’s thoughts put a jaunty spring in his step as he continued on his way. She couldn’t—
wouldn’t—say no, of course. This was Ranporkin, after all; the most cutthroat, diabolical, nasty
city in the Westengaard. Women—especially pretty ones—were victim to all sorts of trouble if
they didn’t belong to a man. Most women married young; there might be rampant lawlessness in
Ranporkin, but it was rare even here for a man to talk or bribe his way out of trouble if he interfered
with another man’s girl. A woman without a man, however, was fair game and many of those
games had no rules.
As soon as Sable was well enough he’d buy her a ring of promise and he make a spectacular
meal. Why, he’d even by new dishes from which to serve it. He was certain that she would be
overwhelmingly grateful for the assistance he’d already rendered; there would be nothing to keep
her from accepting his offer of Vowing.
He slowed, fingering some striped melons on a vendor’s cart. He had never really thought of
himself as a family man before. Frowning, he thumped the fruit, listening to its sound. There
would be children, of course; Sable was young, just coming into her good years.
“This one,” he told the merchant, and handed over a pair of copper coins. He wondered what their
own babes might look like. Would they have her pale skin and onyx hair? Or would they more
resemble him—a monochrome of tan? They should have at least four and wouldn’t a pair each of
boys and girls be perfect?
Chuckling happily at the thought, Gustav turned and headed back toward his shop. He could just
see them now, his little tots, playing in the little walled garden behind his house. He’d teach his
sons the Healer’s craft, of course, and make good marriages for his daughters. Yes, the life of a
family man certainly suited him.
Something else caught his eye. He sauntered over to the stall, beaming with his own thoughts and
fingered a magnificent quilt. It was the sort of thing that customarily covered a couple’s marriage
bed. The stitching was fine and even, the outer edges given over to carefully worked pastoral
scenes. But it was the center mosaic that had really attracted his attention; a rose of silk sewn
carefully into the wool. He turned back a corner and felt his eyebrows go up in surprise; the quilt
was backed with a linen sheet.
“You like this, no?” a woman’s voice asked hopefully. Gustav turned toward her. He was
surprised; she was obviously an Arinonan—a rarity in Ranporkin. She was very comely with skin
as pale as Sable’s and blonde hair that fell to in a thick plait all the way to her slim waist.
“You like, eh?” she urged again, her voice thick with the accent of the north. “Good price I give to
you, yes?” He realized that she was tall enough to look him in the face with eyes as blue as the
spring sky.
“Mama?”
They both looked down at the same time. A little girl, the spitting image of her mother, was tugging
at the woman’s skirts. The images of children playing in his back garden returned stronger than
ever. He would have a little girl, certainly, and she would be the striking likeness of Sable.
Gustav smiled kindly at the woman. “How much then?”
She really did look like a princess, dressed in the blue satin nightgown.
It was strange, almost, how the thin garment clung to every swell and valley of her body and made
her look even more alluring than she had been nude. Gustav swallowed. He shouldn’t be so
disarmed by the sight of a scantily-clad young woman, especially one who had been so grievously
injured. But the hem went no lower than her mid-thigh, and the neckline plunged just so—
Of course, he already knew what was beneath the garment. In fact he knew it very well indeed;
hadn’t he just finished bathing her before her dressed her in the thing? You’re being foolish, he
chided himself. You are a mess because the girl is Sable, your intended.
His intended. Gustav sighed serenely and reached out to stroke her face with the backs of his
fingers. A shadow crossed her pale features as she turned ever so slowly toward the touch. She
frowned, opened her mouth, murmured something unintelligible and then drifted back into deep
slumber.
“That is your medicine, love,” Gustav told her gently. “Keeps the pain away.
I’ll return in a bit.”
It only took about a candlepiece for the Healer to complete his evening chores, bathe, and return
to their room with tea for himself and water and medicine for Sable. He sat in his battered and
comfortable old chair by the window, taking his streaming drink and watching her sleep. She was a
lovely creature; it galled him to think what Orion Murke must have entangled her with to make the
Lily Assassins harm her so. But Murke wasn’t coming back—after all, it had been a month, hadn’t
it? A month and several days, in fact.
No, the big thief was not going to return. Sable was free to settle down with him, and be a Healer’
s wife. His eyes flicked across the room to the sword in the corner and his forehead wrinkled. A
Healer’s wife would have no need of such an instrument of death. He set the teacup aside and
strode over to it. Murke had told him not to sell it, but he cared little for that. It really
didn’t look all that valuable, he noted with disappointment. The pommel and crossguard were
somewhat plain; a circle and slightly downward bent sweeps of what looked like brass. The
scabbard was leather and wood, old and badly worn. The grip—well, the grip was wrapped in a
crude twist of black cloth. There might be something of value there, some gem or such inlaid
against the wood. He unbound the rags and rolled his eyes when he unveiled nothing but a hand-
worn mahogany hilt. No wonder the great brute told him not to sell it—the thing wouldn’t fetch
more than a handful of gold pieces. Perhaps the blade was of good quality—
“Yeaugh!” Gustav yowled as a searing flash of agony ripped up his arm from his hand. He
dropped the still-sheathed blade to the floor with a dull thump and inspected his injury. An angry
scarlet burn traversed his palm, glowing angry red as it swelled menacingly. Hastily, he poured
some water from the night stand pitcher over it and bound it up with one of the clean bandages he
kept handy for Sable. Furious, he kicked the sword back into the corner.
“You see, Sable,” he snarled, sitting next to her on the bed. “You see why no good at all comes of
owning a sword?”
She did not reply.
The Healer sighed sadly and tried to ignore the painful throbbing from his hand. He stretched out
next to the woman and draped his arm over her middle. The feeling of the satin sliding over her
skin made him completely forget the pain in his palm as other, more needful sensations took over.
He tangled his undamaged fingers in her hair, burying his face in her soft, damp curls and breathing
in her warm scent. She was intoxicating.
It would be so easy, he knew, to succumb to her beauty. There were so few reasons to resist,
after all. Were they not intended? Did he not provide for her already, as a husband provides for
his wife? Had they not grown close in the days since he had moved her here to his room?
Sable made a soft noise and slid closer to him. Gustav began to sweat; it really would not be a far
stretch to push the hem of the nightgown up a bit, turn her just so—
He cleared his throat and took a deep breath, filling his nose with her pleasant smell. A line of
thought that you really should not entertain, he scolded himself. But really, did he not already bathe
her daily? Was he not already intimately familiar with her body? His hand slid up her belly a bit,
though he was careful not to disturb the thin wrap of the bandage beneath the satin. A smile rose
on his face—he knew every curve, dip, rise, and valley of her as surely as he had ever know any
other female. So why not allow that spark of intimacy to bloom further?
Because that would not be honorable of you, he argued. Who cared about honor anyway? The
girl was fortunate enough just to be alive; even more so to have a man so competent and good at
providing wanting to marry her.
And yet, that was as far as it went; an empty promise. He should buy her the ring first—the token
that proved he would actually be the provider he claimed to be. His hand gave a particularly bad
throb, and Gustav the Healer groaned into Sable’s hair.
“You drive a hard bargain, my girl,” he muttered, stroking his hand along her hip for a moment
before pulling the quilt up over them both. “A bargain that certainly leaves me hard!”
With that he folded her in his arms and tried to fall asleep.
“Damn!”
Gustav swore bitterly as he dropped his basket not thirty paces from his shop. The market had
been over crowded that morning and he had purchased a lot. The ring, foremost, and that was
tucked into the hidden pouch behind his belt. But he had also bought food to make an elegant
dinner—a whole coney, already cleaned and dressed; new potatoes, a loaf of rich dark bread, and
the most spectacular peach pie he had ever laid his eyes upon. Fresh butter, green-beans, a bottle
of milk, and a bottle of fine red wine crowded his basket with the rest.
Today is the day, he reminded himself. Today Sable will wake up, we will have a proper dinner, I’ll
give her the ring, and our life will truly begin. Fortified, he picked up the basket and grumbled at the
stiffness of his injured hand. It had been two weeks since he had the burn off that blasted sword
Murke had left with the girl, and still his hand hadn’t completely healed. But that was a passing
concern—today was the day after all. Gustav took a deep breath, grinned, and entertained his
mind with thoughts of how he would some day tell his children how their mother had come to him.
He rounded the corner and felt his blood chill. The door to his shop was slightly ajar. His
hesitation lasted only a moment—hurrying forward, he noted that nothing was damaged, the door
had not been forced in any way.
You didn’t close it, you old fool, he growled internally. You were in such a state to get to the
market and get the ring that you didn’t even lock up properly. Somewhat, comforted, he went in
and set his purchases on the counter. Best check on Sable, just in case. She should be waking
soon, anyway—he had made sure that her dose that morning was weak—a bit less than half what
usually kept her slumbering.
The stairs he took two at a time. No sign of struggle or violence. He relaxed further, tittering at his
own incompetence.
But the chuckles died when he entered his room. He felt his face fall slack, felt the crushing
disappointment of loss well up inside him. His knees hit the floorboards.
Sable was gone. The room was empty, the bed rumpled. The girl, nightgown, quilt and sword
were gone—the only reminder that she had ever been there at all was the small, heavy gold ring
worked with an anchor. A ring that she had left on the night table. A ring—as payment for his
services—and nothing more.
turned over and fumbled on the crowded night table for his spectacles.
“Pitch dark?” he muttered to himself. It was deep in the night, only the palest hint of bluish white
light shone around the edges of the thick, dark curtain over his lone bedroom window. Jevenell
and Beredell were still in the sky, then, but Iritar had set already.
He nearly came out of his skin as someone below pounded the door to the shop so hard that the
walls—and the shelves of jars, bottles, and simples—rattled threateningly. Clumsily, Gustav fell out
of his bed in a tangle of blankets. His heart pounding, he grasped vainly for his robe as the
hammering came yet again. It was followed by a clatter and the sound of smashing glass
somewhere below.
“Thieves!” the healer moaned, abandoning his search for his dressing gown. He reached under
the bed and drew out a rusty and disused old crossbow. Feeling somewhat reassured by the
weapon, he made for the door, pausing only to slip on his hard-soled workshoes. Gustav was by
no means a warrior, but he had not lived thirty-seven years in Ranporkin by being a complete
carpet. If thieves wanted anything from his shop, they were going to get a very rude welcome.
“Healer!”
The voice was muffled, but Gustav clearly understood the word as he descended the rickety steps
that led to his shop below. Immediately, the insistent thumping began again, rattling the windows in
their frames. There was another clatter from below, this time the sound of some pottery cracking
and scattering upon the floor. The pounding stopped, leaving behind only the diminishing sound of
a saucer spinning to a stop on the hardwood floor.
“Open the damn door, Garigliano!”
The voice was familiar, but this was Ranporkin, and it was the middle of the night after all. Gustav
stumbled down the last three steps, his shoes crunching on broken glass as he reached the
landing. Hastening across the darkened expanse of his shop, he cried out and stumbled as his
shins barked against a crate. Feeling his way around it, Gustav approached the door, reaching out
for the bar just as the pounding came again.
“OPEN. THE. DAMNED. DOOR!”
Each word from beyond the wooden portal was punctuated with an ever increasingly powerful
blow. The last one was so strong that the Healer was certain that the heavy bar was starting to
splinter.
“Who—who goes?” he called in a quavering voice. “I’m warning you—I’m armed!”
“Of course you are, Garigliano, you motherless—OPEN THE DOOR OR I’LL GUT YOU!”
Gustav paused. The voice was one he knew well, but—,
“It’s me. Orion Murke for the love of Ret! I need your help, damn you to Hell!”
“Murke! Why didn’t you say that?” Gustav threw back the bar and undid the latches, opened the
door carefully just the same.
Sure enough, it was the massive form of Orion Murke on the other side. He was sweating
profusely and cradling a dark haired woman in his arms, but that was all the Healer saw before the
man’s massive form shouldered him aside and entered.
“Bar that door,” Orion barked hoarsely. “And get your simples and whatever together. This
woman is in dire need of your skills.”
Obediently, Gustav re-barred the door. He set the crossbow aside and fumbled with the lamp in
the bracket between the door and shop window. A heartbeat later, he had a flame going within the
glass chimney and the details of his shop sprang into view. Orion’s incessant pounding had
knocked all of the bottles and crockery off the shelves along the front wall; an infernal and foul
smelling mess of glass and liquid all that remained of at least several weeks worth of fermenting
and distilling. Grumbling, he turned back to Orion, only to find that the man and his charge had
vanished from the shop.
“Murke?” the Healer called out uncertainly. “Where’d you get off to, boyo?”
Orion’s massive hands came at him out of the gloom. Gustav yelped as he was lifted bodily from
his feet and half-carried, half-frogmarched through the curtain behind his glass-fronted counter.
Almost without realizing it, he had passed through the dim hallway and been unceremoniously
dragged through the now-open second door. Not many people knew the room even existed; when
the door was closed it looked like a blank stretch of wall. But Murke had been here before, and as
the leader of the Renna, the Ranporkin Thief’s Guild, it only seemed natural that he should easily
discover the secret of the concealed door.
“Now see here, Murke—,” Gustav began irritably. But the words died on his lips at the sight of the
woman Orion had laid on the tall surgeon’s table in the center of the room. She was unfamiliar to
him; pale, with a thick mop of black curly hair. A girl of—he paused a moment, admitting to himself
that he couldn’t with any accuracy make a guess of her age. A young woman, then, with a terrible
wound between her third and fourth rib on the right side.
“Well, I understand your insistence, then,” the Healer muttered. He made to hasten from the room,
but Orion thrust his Healer’s satchel into his arms and very pointedly closed and latched the door.
Gustav swallowed, nodded, and set the bag on the small table beside the bed. With deft
movements, he withdrew a bottle of strongwhiskey and a pair of heavy shears. Orion made a
sound of annoyance, but the Healer ignored him and made a hasty examination of the patient. Her
breathing was somewhat light and quick—a bit damp—her lung is damaged, then, Gustav noted
silently. He listened for a moment at her breast, her heart beat was thready, quick; she was not at
all in a good order.
Behind him, Murke paced about the room, fidgeting with the cabinets that ran around three of the
walls. He returned to the concealed door, listened for a moment, spun back with a creak of leather
and a rustle of cloth. “Well?”
The Healer jumped. He realized that at this point, Orion was as dangerous as a wounded bear and
that this woman was a very prized possession. He offered no audible reply but deftly worked the
long, heavy bladed scissors; cutting away her tunic and halter so that he could examine her injury.
It looked like a fairly simple—fairly deep—stab wound. But there was quite a bit of blood pooling
on the table beneath her. That was odd; the wound was bleeding but not profusely. Gently,
Gustav turned her on her side—flinched—and turned fierce eyes on the man behind him.
“And what do you expect me to do for her?” the Healer asked in a frantic hiss.
“Do what you do, Garigliano.” Orion shot back in a hard, perilous voice, his eyes going wide in
barely controlled rage. “Heal her.”
“She’s been run through, man—you should have taken her to a mage.” Even as he spoke, he was
moving; carefully laying the woman on her back again and hastily reaching into a bin beneath the
elevated table. He withdrew a pair of towels and with the greatest care, he folded one and placed
it beneath the woman’s back in an effort to staunch the bleeding. “Have to work fast,” he
murmured aloud, “Lest the blood pool in her lung.” Taking the second towel, he creased it thrice
and pressed it to the wound on her chest.
“I cannot tarry any longer, Gustav,” Murke said to him as he worked. The big man was in a state
of enormous agitation. He paced heavily, resettled the weight of his great tall claymore on his
back. “That’s why I brought her here.” Much of the gusto had gone out of his voice as his eyes fell
upon the woman’s pale, still form. “She is hunted; even now, I fear the Lily might be fast upon us. I
need to make certain that they do not find her.”
“The Lily!” Gustav cried in alarm, his eyes darting wildly around the close confines of his hidden
room in a sudden panic; he half expected Assassins to leap abruptly from his well-ordered
cabinetry. That moment passed in a flush of shame, and he fixed Orion with a gimlet stare.
“The Lily Brotherhood seeks her and you brought her here?”
“I knew you had this room,” Orion said with an impatient shrug. His eyes were not on the Healer.
He was still staring down into the porcelain features of the young woman, stroking the thick, fine
curls back from her face. “I will come back for you, my love,” he half-moaned, and for a moment
Gustav witnessed the depth of pain carefully held in place behind the shroud of ruthless menace
Orion wore upon his face. The towering man kissed her brow lightly and gave her pale cheek one
last caress. Looking up again, he repeated to the Healer, “I shall return as soon as it is safe. Look
after her, Gustav, for if you do not it will be better that the Lily find you.”
“What are you going to do, Murke?” the Healer queried in a quavering voice, wondering at how
deep this man had now involved him in the Lily’s affairs.
“What can you do against those black-souled murderers?”
“Quite a lot, actually,” Murke snarled and the look that painted his face made a believer out of
Gustav.
“Come quickly and bar the door,” Orion barked, opening the concealed portal carefully and peering
into the gloom of the hallway. Gustav followed him, hastening to keep up. At the door, Orion
paused one last time and retrieved something leaning against the jamb. Gustav’s eyebrows rose;
he had not noticed the big man leave it there when he had brushed his way inside. He held it out to
the healer; a heavy broadsword with an unadorned pommel of some strange metal. A thick twist
of black cloth had been wrapped around the grip, but it was not that which Orion offered him, but
rather the worn, leather scabbard.
“This is not to leave her side, understand me?” Gustav nodded, dumbly, taking the sheathed blade
carefully. “Do not touch it; so help your soul do not try to sell it. Put it where she can see it as
soon as she awakes, understand me?”
“Yes, yes,” Gustav stammered, unconsciously clutching the sword to his chest. Now he was as
anxious as Orion; and he had a grievously injured patient to see to. “Might I inquire her name?”
Orion’s mahogany colored eyes were dark and unreadable above his beard.
“Best if you don’t,” he replied, his voice clipped and hurried. With a furtive glance behind him Orion
Murke was gone; vanishing into the night as quickly and completely as the very Assassins he was
working to evade.
Harrumphing quietly, Gustav barred the door and hurried back to his hidden room. When that
door, too, was securely latched he quickly lit three more lamps, bathing the room in brightness
before returning to the bottle of liquor he had set out earlier.
Taking a basin from below the table, he poured half the contents of the bottle into the bowl and
bathed his hands in it. A second basin came out; several instruments, carefully wrapped in a
separate, water-proofed leather case went into it and the rest of the whiskey followed. The room
smelled suddenly of a distillery, the odor of strong liquor was so redolent upon the air. Bandages,
gut, and three more thick, white towels went onto the side table; the satchel went to the floor.
Several needles of varying thicknesses and shapes went into the bowl with the other instruments.
All of it had taken Gustav only a handful of heartbeats to accomplish.
“Well, you must be very important, lass,” he said to the still form on the table. “Common people
do not attract the attentions of the Brotherhood of the Lily, after all.”
He went to one of the cupboards along the wall, took out a small lamp and tripod and several
shaped pieces of iron. After a moment’s thought, he took out three stout leather belts as well.
With a sigh, he lit the lamp. Setting two of the iron shapes on the tripod to heat, he turned back to
the woman and began unlacing and removing her boots.
“Forgive me, girl,” he murmured once her footwear was tucked out of the way in a corner. He
retrieved the shears from where he had left them, “I have to have your leggings off; they are dirty
and you are already bad enough off. No need to risk infection.” When her soiled garments were
disposed of, he soaked a towel in the bowl of whiskey he had used to cleanse his hands and
began thoroughly washing her.
There was more than a little mystery surrounding this young woman. She could not possibly be
older than twenty, but she was very obviously well-nourished and healthy. Clean. Unusual
characteristics in the general population of the city of Ranporkin. Perhaps one of Orion’s mother’s
courtesans? Madam Murke’s was the most exclusive and elegant brothel in Ranporkin. A woman
to suit every taste, for those with a taste for women, was the much touted slogan of the Silken Star
Hotel. Not that a man of Gustav Garigliano’s meager means could ever afford to mix with the type
of aristocracy that frequented Madam Murke’s ever-so-noble establishment.
But then he spotted the ring on her right hand. It was gold and heavy, inlaid with lapis and what
could only have been a real sapphire, cut into the anchor emblem of the Docker’s Guild. He felt
his eyebrow go up. So, a Docker, eh? Surely a girl as young and pretty as this must belong to
someone? Murke? Seemed to be so, but what on earth would a Docker be doing with the leader
of the Renna? The Dockers and Thieves were bitter enemies, weren’t they?
Gustav realized that his hands had lingered overlong at her breasts. He cleared his throat
nervously, muttered, “Sorry, lass, got lost woolgathering,” and turned her on her side. His
eyebrows rose into his hair this time; the back of her right shoulder was covered with an elegant
and expert tattoo of an anchor. Definitely the property of the Docker’s Guild, Gustav said to
himself. I wonder what a skin-art like this costs? But his thoughts were quickly distracted by the
curves of her hips and legs, the suppleness of her back and shoulders. She had a very long and
elegant neck; though it was mostly hidden by her voluminous fine, black curls. Unusual that; dark
curly hair and such alabaster pale skin. He wondered idly at what distant land she had come from.
“I regret this next part, lass,” Gustav whispered to her as he turned her on her back again. “But I’ll
restore you a bit of modesty.” He dragged another of the coarse towels over her hips and legs
and then secured her lower limbs to the table with two of the wide leather belts. Gustav retrieved
his satchel from the floor and withdrew a smaller towel and several small, silver instruments that
looked like scissors. Mumbling to himself, he wiped the sweat from his brow with a hand that
trembled slightly.
“This would be a challenging task at the best of times,” he confided in his unconscious charge.
“Nevermind the middle of the night.” Angrily, he swept his spectacles from his face, and
immediately returned the eyeglasses to their precarious perch on his large and somewhat beaky
nose. She was such a pretty, delicate thing, this woman. The damp, quick breaths tore at him—he
realized that he really had needed no urging from Orion Murke at all. No matter what else might
transpire, Gustav Garigliano was going to save this woman’s life.
The irons were glowing brightly now; it was almost time. “Ah, lass, you’ll not like this much, I’m
afraid.” He folded the other leather strap in two and set it aside for the moment. Casting about,
he found his satchel where he had discarded it, rummaged a bit, and retrieved a smaller bottle.
This he uncorked carefully, taking care not to inhale the lemony sweet fumes. He needed a clear
head about him for the next task. After physically steadying himself, he poured the liquid onto the
young woman’s wound.
Her eyes flew open and she screamed in pain—as well she should, Deter brew was terribly caustic
stuff. Gustav snatched up the folded belt and thrust it between her teeth as she bawled. Her eyes
rolled—rich brown, he noted, the color of chocolate—she was blind with agony, however, and she
bit down fiercely on the strap.
“I am sorry,” he offered softly. “But now it is time for the irons.”
With that, Gustav the Healer went to work.
Half a candle later, he was done. The young woman was still writhing and moaning, her skin
glistened with sweat and blood as she heaved rapid, shallow breaths. The stink of burned flesh
was thick in the close air of the small concealed room; in spite of Murke’s dire warnings, Gustav
was going to have to air the room out. Her breathing still troubled him; she was gasping and
gurgling—his ministrations had been quite unkind. “I’ll mix you something to help you sleep,
lass,” Gustav stated aloud, wiping his hands with a clean cloth. “Something to slow that soppy
breathing.”
Cautiously, he opened the door and peered out into his hallway. Nothing. Creeping slowly, he
made his way through the curtain and into his shop, though he realized an attack from a Lily
assassin would be as silent as a soul leaving its body. Beyond the windows, bluish gloom of deep
night had given way to the slightly brighter gray gloom of earliest dawn. Hell of a night, he thought
absently as he peered out the glass with dark circled eyes. Pulling the thick, canvas curtains tightly
shut, he retrieved a mortar and pestle from beneath the counter. Into it went a handful of herbs,
two delicate dried flowers, and a drop of concentrated Oil of Wasp. He ground all of this together
until it formed a barely moist, grayish green lump. Nodding in satisfaction, he crossed to the hand-
pump in the corner and filled a battered kettle. Behind him, still strapped to the table in the hidden
room, the girl began to cough.
Hastily he lit the alchemist’s lamp on the corner of his counter, set the kettle on the tripod above it
and rushed back to his charge. She had turned as much on her side as she could manage with her
legs strapped down and was coughing wetly. Blood flecked her lips and chin; Gustav knew that if
she was going to survive, he had to get her sedated. With an arm about her shoulders, he carefully
lifted her to a sitting position, patting her bare back and murmuring soothingly. She coughed
uncontrollably for what seemed an age—Gustav had expected such, her right lung had, after all,
been punctured through. But her wracking spasms shook her entire frame until a thin stream of
bloody drool splattered the towel spread across her legs. A moment later a gob of foul smelling
sputum followed and the girl slumped back against him, moaning much more weakly.
The Healer gently allowed her to lie back on the table. He smoothed the damp hair away from her
face and began undoing the belts that had restrained her. As soon as she was free, she began
writhing again.
“Now don’t fall off that table, lass,” Gustav warned absently. He went to the cabinets on the other
side of the room and began undoing the hidden latches. When he was finished, the lower doors
folded down as one, revealing a carefully prepared cot. He quickly made it up, and went back to
her side, scooping her up in his arms. She was surprisingly heavy, her whole body solid with
muscle. But he got her tucked in easily enough, pulling a sheet up over her nudity. Warmth wasn’t
in short supply at the moment; it was summer outside, and the lamps had heated the close,
windowless room to the point that he was sweating profusely himself, and he clad in just a thin
sleeping tunic.
She moaned again and twisted toward the wall, and Gustav started, suddenly remembering his
simple and the water heating on the counter in his shop.
“Be right back, me’girl,” he assured his senseless patient. Dawn was brighter now, a pink glow
edged his curtains and the shop was becoming more visible. His eyes noted the mess of the night
before and he grimaced, absently thinking that it was the worst of injustice that a rotten day should
follow a rough night. But that idea was fleeting, and he returned his attention to the kettle over the
flame. It was at a slow boil—perfect in fact for what he needed to do.
He crossed to his crockery—realized that most of it had been smashed—and swore bitterly.
“Damn you, Murke, you great brute!” He sorted through the broken pieces until he found a
battered cup. Its handle was missing and there was a chip in the rim, but it would hold liquid and
that was all he really needed. Into the cup went the lump of herbs he had crushed and prepared
earlier, over this he poured the boiling water. A heady aroma wafted up and Gustav smiled self-
indulgently. “Perfectly mixed,” he chortled aloud. When the liquid had steeped for several marks,
he took a spoon and strained the aromatic mess back out. “Now for the narcotic,” he declared
with finality, fumbling in the dark for his keys. He located first the jangling ring and then the small
keyhole in the drawer beneath his till. It unlocked with a satisfying clack, and the rattle of coins
could be heard as he opened it and retrieved the tin from inside. It was red and marked with an
attractive serpentine letter. Powdered Essence of Bloodflower, he mused. A thing of rare and
time-consuming make. Inside the tin were carefully folded little parchment packets. Each
contained a dose of the strong, bitter drug. He took out two, replaced the tin and locked the
drawer once more. With a single twist of his wrist, the little pouches folded open; an angry hiss
followed as the powder dissolved in the cup, turning the liquid the color of freshly spilled blood.
Hurrying, Gustav returned to his patient’s side. She was coughing again, turned on her opposite
side and shaking with nearly silent spasms. Again he sat her up and bracingly held her as she
shook. This time, though, he had the drink to offer her. To his surprise, she sipped greedily,
taking the liquid between choking gasps. Only a little spilled, making a red rivulet over her delicate
chin and onto her breast. Gustav wiped this away with the hem of his sleeping tunic, frowning at
the crimson stain—much like that of pomegranate juice—that remained on her alabaster skin.
But the coughing subsided, the moaning subsided, and her breathing slowed. A double dose was
very powerful; he would have to be very careful not to give her too much too often. Within a hand
of heartbeats she was deeply asleep, and he once more lowered her to the soft, clean cot.
The cleanup took until mid-morn. Gustav groaned wearily and settled himself on the stool behind
his counter. His shelves were repaired, but his simples were all gone and there would be no
getting the stain off of the wooden floor in the front corner. Precious little of his crockery
remained, and his glassware—oh, the cost of replacing that many bottles! He cursed Orion Murke
for perhaps the hundredth time that candlepiece. Not that he minded the work of caring for the
young woman; but really, why did the ogre have to destroy his shop in the asking?
The bell above the door rang, and Gustav looked up with a frown. The air seemed to turn chill as
two men entered, their faces set in the hard look of Ranporkin street thugs. Gustav swallowed
loudly and was suddenly very glad that he had shut the concealed door when he had last checked
on the girl, just a hand of marks earlier.
"Can I help you, goodmen?” the Healer asked with cool cordiality.
“Depends,” the first, a tall blond man drawled. “You Gustav Garigliano?”
“That is what the name on my door says,” Gustav answered with far more bravery than he felt.
“You’re a friend of Orion Murke, ain’t you?” This from the other one, a swarthy, dark-haired
Ranporkiner.
“Hardly,” Gustav sniffed.
“Its been said that he showed up here last night,” the blond one said with a pronounced curl of his
lip. “That he was seen coming and going. Late. In the wee hours of the day.”
Gustav thought fast. These men seemed far too bold and not nearly subtle enough to be
members of the Lily Brotherhood. Thugs? Dockers? Bullies from the Smith’s Guild? It hardly
mattered; Gustav had been operating his apothecary for nearly twenty years and had seen his
share of trouble. “Aye, the bastard was here. Ransacked my shop. I only just finished cleaning up
the mess he made.”
The men looked at one another, before turning back to Gustav. “Was there anyone with him? He
bring someone here to you? A woman perhaps?”
“Nay,” Gustav knew he was growing red about the ears and decided to pass it off as his growing
impatience and ire. He puffed up his chest and crossed his arms, taking a measured step toward
the two leering men. “I’d have remembered that, I’m sure.”
“So there was no one with him?”
“Didn’t I just say that?” the Healer snapped, throwing up his hands. “Murke trashed my shop—
mayhap he was looking for this—whomever. Ever think of that? Now, either buy something or get
out—you are trying my patience.”
Again the men shared a look, before turning their eyes on him once more.
“You’d best be telling the truth, Healer,” the blond one cautioned as they headed for the door. “Or
we’ll make certain you’ll live just long enough to regret it.”
“Hah!” Gustav returned, feeling sick, but doing his best to hide it, “Do you have any idea how
many times I’ve been threatened, boyo? Look for Murke elsewhere. Oh, and you know what? I
hope you find him.”
And he did, too. He remembered the fearsome look on Orion’s face when he left the night
before—this pair of ruffians did not stand a chance against that giant, and they went away all
confidence and bravado. Idiots hired to look for the Renna’s massive leader and his girl—
probably paid a pittance. Gustav had fronted well, but as soon as they were gone from the shop
he slumped on his stool and shook uncontrollably.
Damn you, Orion Murke, what have you dragged me into?
The soup was good; some of the best he had ever made.
Gustav put the spoon down next to the pot and took his somewhat dented colander down from its
peg above the hearth. He would have to strain out the small bits of meat and vegetable, of course;
it wouldn’t do at all to have the girl choke on them. He’d use one of his best china bowls, of
course—a cracked cup was fine for dosing medicine, but a cracked bowl? Hardly a charming
place-set for dinner.
There had been no men come looking for her beyond the two who had showed up the morning
after she arrived. That had been three days ago. Three days, Gustav thought happily. She was
recovering well—oh, she was still unconscious, wracked by coughing fits, and half-out-of-her-mind
with pain, but these things were to be expected. Had she not been run clean through? Of course
she had! But she had been taking and passing water and bloodflower-laced tea with no trouble.
Tonight she would have soup.
He let her bowl cool a bit while he ate his own; it would not do to burn her with it either. When it
was ready, he placed in on the worn wooden tray he used for his evening tea, tucked the spoon
and napkin beside it and took it to her.
“Hey, ho, lass, I brought you some soup,” Gustav called cheerily as he entered his hidden room.
Lazily, the young woman turned her head toward him. Surprised, the Healer set the tray on the
surgical table and went quickly to her side.
“Mmm ergh?”
Her voice could scarcely be called a whisper, and her eyes were rolling, lids fluttering in the manner
of the heavily drugged. “Shhh,” Gustav soothed, his thick black hair falling into his face as he
leaned down to speak at her ear.
“Be easy, lass. I’ve brought you some soup.”
“Shhhhliinnh,” she sighed and her eyes rolled shut. Her breathing settled, becoming soft and
even. It seemed a shame to wake her again.
“Come on, now, my lovely,” Gustav urged brightly, gathering the extra pillows that he had brought
and propping her up with them. The blanket fell away from her breasts, and he only waited a
moment before tucking it up around her again. I really should bring her an old tunic, he reminded
himself firmly. Then again, it was hot and humid in the little room, and a tunic would only make her
toilet duties more difficult and more uncomfortable. Besides, her nudity didn’t seem to bother
either of them much.
“Now, I’ve brought you some soup,” Gustav repeated, pulling up his sturdy chair and retrieving the
tray. The broth still steamed a little, so he stirred it and blew gently on the spoon. “It’s quite tasty,
I must say. Much better than the medicine I keep giving you.”
He held the spoon to her mouth. It took a moment, but soon enough her lips parted and she
sipped down the liquid. Her eyes drifted open slightly and she sighed.
“I knew you’d like the soup!” Gustav chuckled gleefully. “Delicious, isn’t it? I actually managed
upon a whole, fresh chicken in the market this morning. Can you believe it! A whole chicken!”
The girl of course, did not reply save to open her mouth the slightest bit as the spoon brushed
against her lips once more. Semi-conscious or not, she managed to take in most of the warm
broth—a good sign all around.
“Well, well,” the Healer remarked when it became apparent that she was finished. “You did very
well with that. You should be better in no time at all, going on like this.”
Oddly enough, saying that made Gustav feel somewhat uncomfortable. He was growing rather
attached to his lovely young patient. Her porcelain features were so expressive; she seemed so
happy while he was feeding her the meager supper. Now, though, he could tell the pain was
returning; her face had become clouded, her breathing quicker.
Gently, he removed the extra pillows one by one so that she could lie flat and return to sleep.
Already, there was some fitfulness to her slow, stirring movements. A low moan escaped her as
he took away the last of the cushions; soon, he would have to prepare another dose of medicine
for her.
“I’d best set to work, lass,” Gustav told her. He gathered the tray and returned it to his tiny
kitchen. A hoarse cry followed him, hurrying his steps. “You certainly do seem to rush your way
through the remedy,” he muttered, setting his own somewhat less dinted teapot on to boil. It was
true, his bloodflower concoction did not seem to have enough potency—the young woman would
only sleep for a pair of candles and then she’d be writhing and sweating and coughing and
moaning all over again.
“I’ll be needing to find something stronger,” he repeated as he hurried past the hidden room again
and into his shop. He gathered the ingredients for her ordinary dose, but stayed his hands as his
eye fell on a dusty bottle on the topmost shelf. Frowning, he took it down, read the faded label.
Powdered Thorntoe.
The bottle was nearly full of dull brown crystals. The barest pinch in boiling water, tempered by
strong brandy—it was what he would use if he were going to amputate a limb. Amputations,
however, were not at all among his normal practice. I’m no blasted Field Surgeon, after all.
Another strained cry from the hallway decided him; he put the bloodflower packet back in the
drawer and unstoppered the Thorntoe.
Thump.
Gustav jerked awake with a start. It was stuffy in his bedroom; the air humid and close. Had there
been a sound—some half remembered noise from below? Whatever it had been, he needed to
rise anyway. A smile came to his lips; time to make porridge for himself and the young—
Thump! Thmp-Thump!
The noise wasn’t terribly loud, but it startled him all the same. Stumbling, he fell out of bed and to
his knees; one leg in and one out of his trousers. Murke?!
Panicked inexplicably by the thought of the giant thief returning, he struggled to get his leggings
on. Snatching a shirt from a pile of clean, unfolded clothes, he shrugged into it as he descended
the clap-trap stairs. It is only just dawn, he noted, a sinking feeling building in his guts, Perfect for
that great, bloody, whore’s son to—
Thump!
Gustav froze halfway across his shop. The noise had come from behind him; it wasn’t a knock at
the door at all.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
Quickly, he went to the curtain behind the counter; the noise was coming from the hidden room
where the young woman slept soundly in a Thorntoe induced delirium. Gustav swallowed hard and
paused, his eyes falling on his Healer’s satchel where it sat, neatly packed and ready, behind his
counter. Something had gone badly wrong—
Thump!
He was opening the door to the hidden room without any clear knowledge of approaching it. The
hidden hasps snapped free, the door sprang open a crack; he hardly hesitated to throw it wide.
“Oh, Ret¬ be merciful!”
The young woman was thrashing about in sweat soaked, tangled sheets. Her eyes were clenched
tight shut, her mouth open in a silent scream. The wound on her ribs was an angry-red, raised
welter that seemed to be oozing, crimson lines of infection were snaking away from it in three
directions. The room was almost unbearably hot and smelled of stale sweat and sickness. She
twisted in the sheets again, and her left foot struck the wall.
Thump!
The noise broke Gustav’s moment of horrified inaction. He was across the room in a heartbeat,
pressing the backs of his fingers to her neck.
“Ghat’s black prat!” he swore dismally. She was raging with fever.
“Should have brought you upstairs with me, lassy,” the Healer said as he stripped off the shirt he
had just pulled on. “Should never have left you here in this little room.” He used the wadded
garment to wipe sweat and puss and grime away from the wound. It looked terrible; he was going
to have to lance it.
Hastily, Gustav began taking instruments and bandages from his satchel. He soaked the shirt in
whiskey and wiped her skin clean with it, prepared gut and needles, readied his scalpel. It was slow
work and tedious; the scalpel had to be held just so, had to slice deep, but not too far. The poison
had to be forced from the point of fester, the wound had to be cleaned, rinsed. She shocked a
year from his life when she suddenly found her voice and emitted a howling shriek of agony.
Though rattled, Gustav kept a clear head and thrust a wadded bandage between her teeth. Soon,
he had the wound re-opened as deep as he dared, letting her bleed out the poison. She was
thrashing; oddly, in the week she had lain recovering, she seemed to have lost little of her strength.
Stitching would be impossible with her flailing about—Gustav dug in the bottom of his bag until he
found a small black bottle with a tight-fitted green stopper. He opened the flask with his teeth,
poured a healthy measure of the contents onto another of the bandages and pressed it tightly over
her nose and mouth. She struggled against him for perhaps a dozen heartbeats before falling
back into the pillows with a wan sort of listlessness that tugged at his heart.
“Don’t worry, lass,” he told her, tossing the cloth to the floor. He began preparing his needles and
gut. “I’m not giving up on you. I’ll get you sorted out proper, or I’ll renounce my name!”
Once again, Gustav the Healer took to task.
“You need a name, girl.”
The young woman made no reply save the sound of a spoonful of porridge being swallowed. It
was the first food she had been able to keep down since her fever broke two nights earlier.
“Well, it has been twelve days; girl, lass, and the like hardly seem adequate.” He pressed another
spoonful past her lips and she swallowed automatically. Her eyelids fluttered open—such pretty
brown eyes she had.
“Brown eyes, black silky hair, milk white skin—you probably have the name of a princess, eh?
Orion wouldn’t say, you know. Thought it best I didn’t know it. But he probably never guessed you
be here so long. Twelve days and all. He’s not coming back; I’ll stake my shop on it. Damn fool
went off and got himself killed, you mark me. He shouldn’t have fiddled with those Lily bastards;
damn bunch of heartless killers them. Got you dragged into it too, I see.”
“Sisshhssin,” she slurred, staring lazily up at him.
“Oh, right, porridge,” he chuckled. He fed her another spoonful, which she swallowed slowly.
“Good to hear your voice, you know.”
He sighed contentedly and looked out the window. The bustle of the typical Ranporkin day was
just beginning; the sun was up, the eggmen and milkmaids were already calling out their wares.
Soon, he would have to go down and open his shop. He looked back at the girl and set the
porridge bowl aside. Tenderly, he tipped her head up and offered her a tumbler of water. A sip at
first, followed by greedy gulps, she actually strained toward him in an effort to slake her thirst.
“Easy, easy,” he chuckled. “There is no shortage of water hereabouts.”
Gustav allowed her to drain the glass before guiding her back to the pillows. He offered her more
of the thin gruel, but she seemed to have lost interest; her face was turned toward the wall and she
had drifted back into a semi-conscious fugue. Smiling, the Healer gathered up the dishes onto the
tray and set the stack on the night table. Folding back the cover, he examined the wound in her
ribs and nodded in satisfaction. Healing was progressing nicely; the fester had gone. Now she
was calm and resting very comfortably in his own bed. Carrying her up the rickety steps had been
a fright, but it had prompted him into having the blasted things replaced. The workmen had been
competent and quick—blessings not often found in Ranporkin—and had done the job in an
afternoon. It was no longer any trouble at all to go up and down, carrying food or medicine or tea.
He still hadn’t got around to finding her any sort of clothing, but she was well cared for and clean—
he carried water up every night to bathe her. And if his hands lingered on her more feminine
features during her nightly scrub—well, he was only a healthy man, unmarried, and not all that old.
Besides, she certainly did not seem to mind in the least.
“But you still need a name,” he murmured, tucking the coverlet back up around her neck.
She turned toward him suddenly, her eyes still half-lidded and unfocussed.
“Asabbbnlll?” she suggested thickly.
"Sable! Brilliant!” he ran his hands through her fine black curls and grinned down at her. “Sable, it
is then!”
“Nnnnnn,” she groaned, but he was ready with her morning remedy.
“Hush, now, Sable,” he cooed gently, tipping the steaming cup against her slightly parted lips.
“Sleep is what you need.”
The din of the Ghoresh Market pressed in on Gustav in a way that was one part familiar, one part
exhilarating, and one part terrifying. Nearly anything a person could possibly want was available
from the seemingly endless stalls, carts, hawkers and ruffians that crowded the broad, sunny
square. The weight of gold coins tucked into the inside of his belt was making him slightly nervous;
men were killed daily for less and Gustav rarely carried so much with him. I rarely have so much,
he thought cheerfully. I’ll be sure to drink a toast to the health of the lovely Lady Dezilee Azell and
her squalling newborn son.
He had a good reputation, sure enough, but he could scarcely believe that even the lesser nobles
inside the walls of the Concillatory had heard of him. His shock as the breathless serving man had
burst into his shop the evening before must have looked ridiculous; but Gustav Garigliano was a
Healer foremost, and he had made his way in all haste to the manor of Lord Stevickk, the good
Lady Azell’s husband.
It had been a difficult birth, to be sure, but when all was said and done mother and babe had come
through healthy and glowing. For this, the Lord Stevickk had paid him with four heavy gold marks.
It was a ransom, certainly, but Gustav was a practical man as well; he was not about to turn his
nose up at good coin.
And what to do with the windfall?
The market pressed about him on all sides. Something for Sable, certainly. She was healing so
well, it was hard to imagine that just a month ago she had been run-through with a sword. She still
needed his attention, of course, just as she still needed the strong medicine for her pain. It was a
shame really, that it kept her almost entirely unconscious. When the time for another dose
approached, she would drift into a somewhat foggy semi-wakefulness, but she usually uttered only
nonsense. It really was better to keep her sedated.
Something caught his eye, and he expertly shoved his way through the crowd to a dressmaker’s
stall. The woman truly had excellent wares; silks, satins, furs—the stuff of nobility. He fingered the
fabrics, trying to imagine what Sable would look like in one of the dresses—or the gowns.
Hardly the appropriate setting for an evening dress, he thought, considering his cramped bedroom
above his shop. A sparkle of blue attracted his attention. He pushed the dresses out of the way,
revealing a light, shimmery satin nightgown. It was pale azure; a good match, he thought for her
milky skin and dark hair.
“See something you like?”
The husky voice was well cultured and almost seductive. He turned to find the shopkeeper, a
handsome woman some few years his elder, staring at him with an intense expression. It was
quite unnerving, truth be told.
“Um, well—,” he stammered, “That it to say, aye—I, um, have,” he held up the nightgown
somewhat helplessly and watched her lips curve in a slight smile.
“Ah, that is a very nice piece, if I do say so myself,” the woman purred. “And unless I have
grossly misjudged you, it must be for someone else, no?”
“Huh?” Gustav shook his head, “Yes, yes, for my—ah—,” But what was Sable to him? Why did
he suddenly need to explain who she was to this stranger?
“Favorite whore, perhaps?” the woman suggested with an uncomfortably knowing wink.
“Wha—no!—Madam, I beg your pardon. I want the blasted thing for my, um, intended!”
“Oh, very good,” the woman allowed, bending ever so slightly at the waist. “So you’ll want to know
the price?”
“If you please,” the Healer huffed stiffly.
“Three gold pieces.”
“Robbery!” Gustav gasped. “I’ve never heard of such—,”
“My good man, if you want your lover dressed for bed like a noblewoman, you’ll pay like a
nobleman. Otherwise, try Minzee’s shop down the way. She’ll have wool and maybe some linen.”
“No, no, I want this,” the Healer griped with a dark, upward glance of his eyes. He dug into the
hidden pouch behind his belt and handed her three of the four coins. With a smile, the shopkeeper
made them vanish, and swiftly wrapped his purchase in stiff brown vellum.
“Pleasure,” she clucked bemusedly, before swaying off to assist another customer. Grumbling,
Gustav struggled on, fighting against the crowd until he was able to get back onto the
thoroughfare. Not that the street was much less congested, but at least here the foot traffic was
flowing.
He looked down at the package in his hands and frowned. Why shouldn’t he consider Sable his
intended? She’d been with him long enough—it had been a whole month. Didn’t he care for her,
provide for her, bathe her, soothe her, and look out for her? Of course he did. She might be much
younger, but he wasn’t an old man by any stretch. He was a good provider—a Healer with an
excellent reputation. His shop wasn’t in the Concillatory or the Noble Quarter, but it was far from
the slums. He was a good catch—excellent even—how could she possibly say no to a husband
like him?
Gustav’s thoughts put a jaunty spring in his step as he continued on his way. She couldn’t—
wouldn’t—say no, of course. This was Ranporkin, after all; the most cutthroat, diabolical, nasty
city in the Westengaard. Women—especially pretty ones—were victim to all sorts of trouble if
they didn’t belong to a man. Most women married young; there might be rampant lawlessness in
Ranporkin, but it was rare even here for a man to talk or bribe his way out of trouble if he interfered
with another man’s girl. A woman without a man, however, was fair game and many of those
games had no rules.
As soon as Sable was well enough he’d buy her a ring of promise and he make a spectacular
meal. Why, he’d even by new dishes from which to serve it. He was certain that she would be
overwhelmingly grateful for the assistance he’d already rendered; there would be nothing to keep
her from accepting his offer of Vowing.
He slowed, fingering some striped melons on a vendor’s cart. He had never really thought of
himself as a family man before. Frowning, he thumped the fruit, listening to its sound. There
would be children, of course; Sable was young, just coming into her good years.
“This one,” he told the merchant, and handed over a pair of copper coins. He wondered what their
own babes might look like. Would they have her pale skin and onyx hair? Or would they more
resemble him—a monochrome of tan? They should have at least four and wouldn’t a pair each of
boys and girls be perfect?
Chuckling happily at the thought, Gustav turned and headed back toward his shop. He could just
see them now, his little tots, playing in the little walled garden behind his house. He’d teach his
sons the Healer’s craft, of course, and make good marriages for his daughters. Yes, the life of a
family man certainly suited him.
Something else caught his eye. He sauntered over to the stall, beaming with his own thoughts and
fingered a magnificent quilt. It was the sort of thing that customarily covered a couple’s marriage
bed. The stitching was fine and even, the outer edges given over to carefully worked pastoral
scenes. But it was the center mosaic that had really attracted his attention; a rose of silk sewn
carefully into the wool. He turned back a corner and felt his eyebrows go up in surprise; the quilt
was backed with a linen sheet.
“You like this, no?” a woman’s voice asked hopefully. Gustav turned toward her. He was
surprised; she was obviously an Arinonan—a rarity in Ranporkin. She was very comely with skin
as pale as Sable’s and blonde hair that fell to in a thick plait all the way to her slim waist.
“You like, eh?” she urged again, her voice thick with the accent of the north. “Good price I give to
you, yes?” He realized that she was tall enough to look him in the face with eyes as blue as the
spring sky.
“Mama?”
They both looked down at the same time. A little girl, the spitting image of her mother, was tugging
at the woman’s skirts. The images of children playing in his back garden returned stronger than
ever. He would have a little girl, certainly, and she would be the striking likeness of Sable.
Gustav smiled kindly at the woman. “How much then?”
She really did look like a princess, dressed in the blue satin nightgown.
It was strange, almost, how the thin garment clung to every swell and valley of her body and made
her look even more alluring than she had been nude. Gustav swallowed. He shouldn’t be so
disarmed by the sight of a scantily-clad young woman, especially one who had been so grievously
injured. But the hem went no lower than her mid-thigh, and the neckline plunged just so—
Of course, he already knew what was beneath the garment. In fact he knew it very well indeed;
hadn’t he just finished bathing her before her dressed her in the thing? You’re being foolish, he
chided himself. You are a mess because the girl is Sable, your intended.
His intended. Gustav sighed serenely and reached out to stroke her face with the backs of his
fingers. A shadow crossed her pale features as she turned ever so slowly toward the touch. She
frowned, opened her mouth, murmured something unintelligible and then drifted back into deep
slumber.
“That is your medicine, love,” Gustav told her gently. “Keeps the pain away.
I’ll return in a bit.”
It only took about a candlepiece for the Healer to complete his evening chores, bathe, and return
to their room with tea for himself and water and medicine for Sable. He sat in his battered and
comfortable old chair by the window, taking his streaming drink and watching her sleep. She was a
lovely creature; it galled him to think what Orion Murke must have entangled her with to make the
Lily Assassins harm her so. But Murke wasn’t coming back—after all, it had been a month, hadn’t
it? A month and several days, in fact.
No, the big thief was not going to return. Sable was free to settle down with him, and be a Healer’
s wife. His eyes flicked across the room to the sword in the corner and his forehead wrinkled. A
Healer’s wife would have no need of such an instrument of death. He set the teacup aside and
strode over to it. Murke had told him not to sell it, but he cared little for that. It really
didn’t look all that valuable, he noted with disappointment. The pommel and crossguard were
somewhat plain; a circle and slightly downward bent sweeps of what looked like brass. The
scabbard was leather and wood, old and badly worn. The grip—well, the grip was wrapped in a
crude twist of black cloth. There might be something of value there, some gem or such inlaid
against the wood. He unbound the rags and rolled his eyes when he unveiled nothing but a hand-
worn mahogany hilt. No wonder the great brute told him not to sell it—the thing wouldn’t fetch
more than a handful of gold pieces. Perhaps the blade was of good quality—
“Yeaugh!” Gustav yowled as a searing flash of agony ripped up his arm from his hand. He
dropped the still-sheathed blade to the floor with a dull thump and inspected his injury. An angry
scarlet burn traversed his palm, glowing angry red as it swelled menacingly. Hastily, he poured
some water from the night stand pitcher over it and bound it up with one of the clean bandages he
kept handy for Sable. Furious, he kicked the sword back into the corner.
“You see, Sable,” he snarled, sitting next to her on the bed. “You see why no good at all comes of
owning a sword?”
She did not reply.
The Healer sighed sadly and tried to ignore the painful throbbing from his hand. He stretched out
next to the woman and draped his arm over her middle. The feeling of the satin sliding over her
skin made him completely forget the pain in his palm as other, more needful sensations took over.
He tangled his undamaged fingers in her hair, burying his face in her soft, damp curls and breathing
in her warm scent. She was intoxicating.
It would be so easy, he knew, to succumb to her beauty. There were so few reasons to resist,
after all. Were they not intended? Did he not provide for her already, as a husband provides for
his wife? Had they not grown close in the days since he had moved her here to his room?
Sable made a soft noise and slid closer to him. Gustav began to sweat; it really would not be a far
stretch to push the hem of the nightgown up a bit, turn her just so—
He cleared his throat and took a deep breath, filling his nose with her pleasant smell. A line of
thought that you really should not entertain, he scolded himself. But really, did he not already bathe
her daily? Was he not already intimately familiar with her body? His hand slid up her belly a bit,
though he was careful not to disturb the thin wrap of the bandage beneath the satin. A smile rose
on his face—he knew every curve, dip, rise, and valley of her as surely as he had ever know any
other female. So why not allow that spark of intimacy to bloom further?
Because that would not be honorable of you, he argued. Who cared about honor anyway? The
girl was fortunate enough just to be alive; even more so to have a man so competent and good at
providing wanting to marry her.
And yet, that was as far as it went; an empty promise. He should buy her the ring first—the token
that proved he would actually be the provider he claimed to be. His hand gave a particularly bad
throb, and Gustav the Healer groaned into Sable’s hair.
“You drive a hard bargain, my girl,” he muttered, stroking his hand along her hip for a moment
before pulling the quilt up over them both. “A bargain that certainly leaves me hard!”
With that he folded her in his arms and tried to fall asleep.
“Damn!”
Gustav swore bitterly as he dropped his basket not thirty paces from his shop. The market had
been over crowded that morning and he had purchased a lot. The ring, foremost, and that was
tucked into the hidden pouch behind his belt. But he had also bought food to make an elegant
dinner—a whole coney, already cleaned and dressed; new potatoes, a loaf of rich dark bread, and
the most spectacular peach pie he had ever laid his eyes upon. Fresh butter, green-beans, a bottle
of milk, and a bottle of fine red wine crowded his basket with the rest.
Today is the day, he reminded himself. Today Sable will wake up, we will have a proper dinner, I’ll
give her the ring, and our life will truly begin. Fortified, he picked up the basket and grumbled at the
stiffness of his injured hand. It had been two weeks since he had the burn off that blasted sword
Murke had left with the girl, and still his hand hadn’t completely healed. But that was a passing
concern—today was the day after all. Gustav took a deep breath, grinned, and entertained his
mind with thoughts of how he would some day tell his children how their mother had come to him.
He rounded the corner and felt his blood chill. The door to his shop was slightly ajar. His
hesitation lasted only a moment—hurrying forward, he noted that nothing was damaged, the door
had not been forced in any way.
You didn’t close it, you old fool, he growled internally. You were in such a state to get to the
market and get the ring that you didn’t even lock up properly. Somewhat, comforted, he went in
and set his purchases on the counter. Best check on Sable, just in case. She should be waking
soon, anyway—he had made sure that her dose that morning was weak—a bit less than half what
usually kept her slumbering.
The stairs he took two at a time. No sign of struggle or violence. He relaxed further, tittering at his
own incompetence.
But the chuckles died when he entered his room. He felt his face fall slack, felt the crushing
disappointment of loss well up inside him. His knees hit the floorboards.
Sable was gone. The room was empty, the bed rumpled. The girl, nightgown, quilt and sword
were gone—the only reminder that she had ever been there at all was the small, heavy gold ring
worked with an anchor. A ring that she had left on the night table. A ring—as payment for his
services—and nothing more.
| Leather and Blood |
| September 2009 |
| Serial Fiction |
| Copyright 2009 by Gabriel and Miriam Cole |
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| Episode I, The Bite of the Lily |
Warnever 27, 2220
A whisper in the darkness, the kiss of steel, silence—and death.
This is how the Assassination should have taken place; this is our modus. But tonight the victim
has vanished as surely and as completely as any among our Brotherhood could have
managed. Twelve men; twelve of the best Lily are dead. And where are their heads? Why can
none of these incompetents answer that question for me?
This is surely a dark omen. Would that the Heir were here; he would no doubt offer some quite-
voiced insight into this newest uncomfortable madness. He alone of the First Circle can be
trusted—and yet where has the man been tonight. Did he go with the doomed twelve? No, the
others would have been swift to tell me that. It leaves me
The incomplete final journal entry of Herstol Ju’Vorna,
Grand Malik of the Brotherhood of the Lily
A whisper in the darkness, the kiss of steel, silence—and death.
This is how the Assassination should have taken place; this is our modus. But tonight the victim
has vanished as surely and as completely as any among our Brotherhood could have
managed. Twelve men; twelve of the best Lily are dead. And where are their heads? Why can
none of these incompetents answer that question for me?
This is surely a dark omen. Would that the Heir were here; he would no doubt offer some quite-
voiced insight into this newest uncomfortable madness. He alone of the First Circle can be
trusted—and yet where has the man been tonight. Did he go with the doomed twelve? No, the
others would have been swift to tell me that. It leaves me
The incomplete final journal entry of Herstol Ju’Vorna,
Grand Malik of the Brotherhood of the Lily
| Second Eraon of Men, Year 2220 |
Editor's Note: Miriam and I have included this, the first Episode of Leather and Blood, because
of the strong popular demand we have had from readers to include some kind of serial story of
our own in Orion's Child. We are very grateful to all of you who have requested this--it is very
flattering indeed to have such an interest in our work.
Leather and Blood when finished will be a complete novel, the prequel to Bloodmoon. Leather
and Blood is the story of the five years Miriam Bloodmoon spent traveling the Southlands and
waging war on the Raiders with her famous Sabre Wolves and Velkyr Free Companies. During
the tale, you will come to see how Miriam met and recruited the principle characters of
Bloodmoon, and you will learn why the Raiders began speaking of the Sabre Wolves as if they
were the very shadow of the Angel of Mourning. It is our sincere hope that you have as much
fun reading this as we are having writing it.
Gabriel M. Cole
August, 2009
of the strong popular demand we have had from readers to include some kind of serial story of
our own in Orion's Child. We are very grateful to all of you who have requested this--it is very
flattering indeed to have such an interest in our work.
Leather and Blood when finished will be a complete novel, the prequel to Bloodmoon. Leather
and Blood is the story of the five years Miriam Bloodmoon spent traveling the Southlands and
waging war on the Raiders with her famous Sabre Wolves and Velkyr Free Companies. During
the tale, you will come to see how Miriam met and recruited the principle characters of
Bloodmoon, and you will learn why the Raiders began speaking of the Sabre Wolves as if they
were the very shadow of the Angel of Mourning. It is our sincere hope that you have as much
fun reading this as we are having writing it.
Gabriel M. Cole
August, 2009