Thieves' World: Enemies of Fortune

Consequences Jody Lynn Nye

Pel held the compress on Tredik’s right biceps until the bleeding stopped, then dabbed at the deep slash with an antiseptic wash. The fair-haired carter’s lad watched him work, the pain dulled by a very small amount of poppy in a large slug of willow-herb tea. Pel wanted him conscious so he could appreciate what he was going through.

“Don’t tell my mother,” Tredik pleaded, as Pel sewed up the slash.

“That you’ve been brawling?”

The young man—old enough to know better—reddened. To his credit, he didn’t make a sound as the sharp needle went in and out of his flesh. “Not exactly brawling. We were having our own tournament, see? We’re training up for next time. That Tiger lady, she shouldn’t have bested everybody in Sanctuary so easy.”

“Why not? If she was well trained, hale, and aware, she had as much chance as any fighter here.”

“But it’s not right, a stranger taking the prize in our own city. One of us ought to have defended it properly. I think it was witchcraft. If that old Torchholder had been around, well, he’d have spotted her for what she was. I mean, what she must be. A witch, I mean. No outlander ought to be that good.”

Pel smiled. He doubted that during the years of the Bloody Hand, or even the early times of Irrune rule, that anyone would have been invoking civic pride, but it sounded as though Sanctuary’s youth felt something for their troubled and fate-trodden city.

“Well, it’s too hot to battle like that,” Pel said gently, winding bandages over the now-clean wound. “Infection grows in temperatures like this.”

“Oh, so we should wait until winter rolls around again?” Tredik asked, rolling one mud-brown eye to meet Pel’s bright blue gaze. Pel had to laugh.

“There’s no right season for stupidity and high antics,” the healer said. “You’ll do what you do. It’s not up to me to stop you. I won’t tell your mother …”

“Gods bless you!”

“ …If you do.”

“Ser Garwood!”

“You can’t hide what happened to your clothes, can you?” Pel reminded him. “Those rips and all that blood? Take your time over the matter. You can pick your moment to tell her the truth. But she must hear it. What if you’d been killed? If you’re going to fight like a man, you must learn to take precautions like a man, and your medicine afterward. Speaking of which …” He produced a small clay bottle with a chunk of wax-soaked rag for a stopper. “One sip of this three times a day, dawn, noon, and nightfall. You haven’t got an infection at present. This will keep one from appearing.”

Tredik pulled his torn tunic back on over his head. “I’ll be a man, all right. What do I owe you?” His face turned red again. “I haven’t got much money. Everyone’s been telling me they’re broke and asking me to wait. It’s getting so my father is telling me to ask for goods to settle the bills.”

Pel sighed. Actual cash had been growing very short for him, too. Admittedly, the quality of wares offered in exchange for his services were becoming more interesting since the wrecked ship had been found, but there were items for which he must pay in coin. Bezul had been kind about exchanging some of the oddities, but none of the merchants could hold out indefinitely. Pel felt as though there was a wall somewhere, and all of the money of Sanctuary was disappearing behind it. The wall must be broken down, or the economy, key to rebuilding this wounded city, would collapse. He slapped Tredik on the back.

“My next workday is this coming Shiprisday. Percaro traded a patch of land he inherited to Bezul for a new plow blade. I took it off his hands for a herb garden. It’s full of rocks in all the wrong places, blocking the sun. There’ll be at least three of you helping me to lay out the plot. If you haul the stones out, you can have them, trade them to Cauvin if you wish. I don’t need them. I need the space for plants.”

Tredik gave him a grateful glance, both for finding a non-cash solution and for treating the debt seriously. He was of a man’s size, but still remained a boy in so many ways. Pel couldn’t remember having been that innocent. Tredik tucked the small bottle into his torn tunic, and made his escape.

He was the last of the brawlers to seek out Pel’s assistance. Mioklos’s son Nerry wouldn’t lose his left eye, but it had been a near thing. He was going to have one impressive scar, though it would never look as though it belonged upon the round and cheerful face that bore it. His sister Las was probably to blame for the entire mock tournament, whipping up their newfound patriotism into a frenzy. She had come out of the battle without a wound, and, Pel was sure, was lying her heart out regarding her involvement. The boys half admired and half resented her, seeing her as a pesty younger sister, but also, maybe, a future Tiger in her own right. Pel had known plenty of brave and fierce women who had fought for the Bloody Goddess. Please, he thought, may Las be a force for goodness—real goodness. He admired the Irrune for calling such a tournament, allowing any fighter to come forward and try their skill.

Pel had had few dealings with the Irrune since his return. The largely Rankene and Ilsigi population of Sanctuary had gone on with their lives as usual, trading and cheating, raising children, making love, building, eating and drinking, gossiping and arguing. It was splendidly normal in his eyes, a life he would never have foreseen taking joy in. Blasphemers, brutes, thieves, philanderers—so many would have merited death or punishment by Dyareela, but Meshpri—Meshpri loved them all. Pel had to work hard to live up to his new goddess’s altruism. But that was why she was a goddess, and he a poor, flawed mortal.

Maybe a roughed-up mortal if he didn’t pay attention to his potions! He went over to the altar where he had a beaker simmering over a candle. This medicine relieved the tightness of a weakening heart. It took two long days to prepare. Two pinches of heart root into the potion caused the liquid to foam up the sides of the ceramic beaker. As the bubbles subsided, the brew turned a bright red. Pel breathed a sigh of relief.

An answering exhalation made him jump. Heart root dust flew everywhere. He had been so intent on his preparations that he had not noticed the muffled shape just inside the door of the temple.

“Forgive me!” he exclaimed, hastily putting down the bottle of powder.

He glanced down into the beaker. A miracle that he had not accidentally dumped in more of the powerful ingredients. An over-measurement would have caused the potion to thicken and overflow spectacularly; plus, the stain would have been difficult to get out of the smooth stone surface of the altar. All was well. He turned his attention to his visitor.

The shape stirred slightly, and a pair of deep amber eyes rimmed with kohl looked out at him through the shadow cast by a fold of silky bronze cloth.

“You concentrate so deeply,” a husky female voice said. Pel didn’t recognize it. This was not Kadasah dressed up in camouflage. “I have been watching you. You are very careful.”

“Not so careful,” Pel said, with rueful humor. “I don’t normally ignore customers, M’sera … ?”

But no name was forthcoming. She was an Irrune; the accent was unmistakable, and she was tall. If he had been standing beside her, the top of her head would have been level with his mouth. The eyes studied him deeply.

“We … I … need someone who takes care of others. I hear you can keep a secret. Is it true?”

“I promise it,” Pel averred. “If you ask for my services, I will not tell anyone what passes between us. You pay for both treatment and confidentiality.”

“Under pain of torture or death?”

Pel eyed her, but the amber gaze didn’t waver. She wasn’t joking. “I have vowed to care for the sick and injured, though I hope not to have to suffer to help others. How may I aid you?”

The honey-colored eyes held steady for a long moment, as though making a decision. “I am not your patient. If you choose to come with me you must tell no one where you have been or what you have done. Do you swear?”

“Not to you,” Pel said. “To my patient, whoever he or she may be, and whatever it is the patient wants kept secret.”

A nod. “Then, come.”

“Wait,” Pel held up a hand. “I can’t bring my entire pharmacopaeia with me. What am I to treat?”

Another hesitation. “Infection.”

The sun had fallen behind the buildings. Long shadows dropped cool darkness upon Pel’s shoulders as he followed the woman between buildings. The last legitimate deliveries were being made, such as beer and provisions to the taverns. Pel caught a tempting scent of roasting meat wafting out of the door of one establishment. A patient of his, a fragile young woman whose persistent cough he had cured, raised a hand from the table she was clearing in greeting to him. He waved back, tilting his head toward her with an unspoken question. Before the young woman could respond his escort shot out a long, narrow hand from inside the folds of cloth, and grabbed his arm, pulling him into the shadows.

“Please do not speak to anyone,” she whispered. “No one must know where you are bound.”

Pel forbore to remind her he didn’t know where they were bound. “They will think I am behaving oddly if I don’t pass the time of day with them,” he told her, reasonably. “Walk ahead of me a few paces so we’re not seen together. I’ll keep an eye on you.”

The woman fell silent, then nodded. “All right.”

Pel hefted his sack of herbs and medicines, and wondered whether he was walking into a trap. His guide was not a young woman, and the rich fabrics spoke of someone who was well-connected at court. Everything about the silent shadow who flitted ahead of him in and out of lantern-light made him believe she was a noble, even royal. She was intelligent, too. She had picked a moonless night, one cooler than the last several, ensuring that most of the folk who would otherwise be sitting on their doorsteps or on stools outside of the inns moaning about the heat would have fled indoors.

His guess had to be at least partly right. Though the alleyways and narrow streets through which they passed were not ones Pel normally traveled, he knew they were approaching the palace. Naturally, she did not advertise their arrival by marching up the long approach to the well-guarded gate. Instead, she joined the slow-moving queue of suppliers and workers who trudged toward the dimly lit postern gate and the kitchens. Pel would have thought that one among them would have turned to notice the bundle of bronze silk among them, as distinctive as a jewel on a burlap sack, but not one of them looked up from his or her burdens. Either they were well schooled with beatings or threats to ignore the sudden presence of their betters, or she carried some magical device on her to conceal herself. No, it wasn’t magic, he realized, as he shuffled forward in between a barrowload of cabbages and a herd of goats hoping to get at the sweet-smelling green globes ahead of them. It was fear. He’d heard of the Irrune response to those who failed to heed their customs. Pel could almost scent the waves of dread as the silk-clad figure pushed by, heading for a corridor that led off the main passageway to the right. He was well-familiar with the smell, having inflicted it on hundreds, if not thousands, of sinners during his life as the embodiment of Wrath.

A flash of gold in the flickering torchlight, and his guide slipped out of view around the corner. Pel pulled his satchel out of the mouth of a flat-faced goat, who was chewing vigorously on the strap, and hurried after her. He had taken only a few steps into the sudden darkness when the door behind him shut with a loud clang! All light was cut off. Pel spun back and tried to pull it open. The heavy latch had snapped behind a heavy bar. His fingers fumbled over a sharp-cut keyhole, but no key. He was trapped!

For a moment the events of his past life shot through his mind like an evil children’s picture book. Had he been lured here to join his former associates in humiliating and painful death? He fumbled in his satchel for the vial of poppy. He might have time to down it, and float off to eternity in peaceful oblivion, before they dug out his eyes and sewed him into a sack.

In that moment, he became aware of a soft blue light beside him no brighter than the phosphorescent glow of rotting fish. The glittering eyes regarded him above a palm-sized globe from which the gleam emanated. They looked amused.

“Stay close,” she said. The blue glow floated away into the blackness.

Willing his heart to slow down to a normal pulse, Pel obeyed.

Rumors of secret passages riddling the many levels of the ancient palace were proved true as the quivering light led Pel along narrow corridors of stone, up unexpected flights of stairs, and down ramps with low ceilings he never saw until his forehead impacted with one. Blinking stars of pain out of his eyes, he hurried to catch up with the will-o’-the-wisp who guided him. Far away he could hear noises and hollow voices like ghosts, but they never encountered another living creature. The rats avoided these passages as much as humans did.

After an eternity in the cold, damp darkness, he emerged suddenly into a warm, stifling blackness in which smoldered the red-gold coal in the heart of a single brazier. The blue glow vanished. Another smell, that of putrefying flesh, caught at Pel’s throat and made him cough.

A low voice, near to the fire, chuckled.

“Makes you sick, eh? I’m attached to it, can’t get away from my own stink.” The accent was Irrune, coarse and hearty.

“Who … ?” Pel began, but his own voice failed him.

“Call me … call me Dragonsire,” the man said. The joke appeared to please him. He chuckled some more. A pair of slender, fair-skinned hands appeared near the faint light and poured dark liquid from a slender-necked pitcher into a heavy goblet. Another hand, dark in contrast to the woman’s, reached out. The cup disappeared into shadow. “Ahhh! Wine, ser?”

“Er, thank you,” Pel said, realizing how dry his throat was. A cup was pressed into his hand by the unseen server. It was surprisingly heavy. Pel guessed that it must be made of gold. The rough shapes of stones studding the bowl scraped his fingers. He hesitated before drinking. “Er, how may I serve you?”

“Right down to business? Good.” The figure sat up. Pel thought he knew what to expect as the firelight touched its face, but he still gasped out loud. Arizak. “Do not fear me. Heh! If anything, I have more to fear from you.”

“What, ser?” Pel asked. Sweat filmed his face and palms. He had to grasp the big cup in both hands to keep it from squirting away from him.

“I don’t fear pain. No Irrune does. I don’t fear death. We welcome a good death. But this!” Arizak gestured at his leg with a disgusted hand. “This is not a good death. I am disgusted by it. It’s not a clean battle wound, an ax through the neck, a sword in the belly, a dagger tearing out your heart. No! It’s like being eaten alive by slugs. Look!”

He pulled a cloth off his lap. Beneath his left leg lay outstretched, the end propped up on a painted stool. There was no foot.

As nervous as Pel felt suddenly facing the ruler of his city he was taken even further aback by the limb the Irrune chief now revealed to him. The original wound must have been a fearsome one, but it had disappeared in seeping pillows of flesh that had been a healthy pink and had turned an angry red, even going black in small patches that Pel knew would grow. He sucked in his breath. The rot would have to be cut away if the limb was to be saved—if it could be saved at all. The leg must have been very painful. When he looked up, Arizak’s gaze held his, strong, confident, and weary.

“I have three sons,” the Irrune lord said. “Each wants to rule after me. My eldest is the strongest. He is not often here. He does not like Sanctuary. I don’t like it much myself. He came here at my behest this week—you may have heard. The greatest product of this place is talk. Everyone talks to everyone.”

“Yes, lord, I knew.”

Arizak slammed the heavy goblet down on the arm of his chair. “He did not show decent respect. I will not take that, not while I draw breath. I want to be whole again, healer, as whole as I can be. I want to ride out and teach my miserable offspring the truth about the name he bears. If he survives, well, maybe I’ll let him rule one day. When my time is over. But my time is not over yet. Not yet.” The face grew more craggy as from a throb of pain.

“Why me, my lord?” Pel asked, full of pity. “You have healers and magicians in plenty. The best in the land.”

The shrewd gaze met his eyes and locked them in place. “You must have been born in a basket, man,” he said. “They are all corrupt in this city, men and women alike. It comes from living inside these rotting walls. If you had the clean air all around, you’d have to be an honest man. Here, you can hide your sins.”

“He is honest,” said the soft voice of the woman who had guided him. Pel looked around for her, but the brazier’s light fell short. The shapes he saw beyond it could have been curtains or pillars or tapestries. The blue light reappeared, rising until it was between Pel and the unseen woman. “The stone affirms it. No great faults here—fewer than most men, as though he was a young child. I wonder why. Perhaps he was born in a basket.”

Pel opened his mouth and closed it again. To correct her he would have to explain his rebirth, and that admission would cost him his life. He knelt over the wound and prodded it gently. Every poke made the flesh twitch, but the Irrune lord said nothing. He had impressive self-control. He had to be in agony. Most of Pel’s patients moaned and cried over splinters in the thumb.

“Can you do anything?” Arizak asked, after a time. “You can say no, man, and leave here with your skin. I just want truth, that is all and everything to me. If you can cure me I will reward you well. If you cannot, I will be glad of your candor. I am so weary of the shite-eating hypocrites in this city, it would be worth a bronze wristlet to hear an honest answer.”

“I can try, lord,” Pel replied. The stink of the rotting flesh made his throat tighten. “Such a wound has to be treated inside and outside. If your constitution is hale enough, you may be cured, with Meshpri’s aid.”

“Pah!” The Irrune ruler spat a wine-tinged gob on the floor. “Keep your false godlings to yourself, Wrigglie. If you’ve got any skill in your fingers Irrunega put it there.”

“I apologize,” Pel said, and went back to his examination. Meshpri aid him, indeed! He had never seen such decay in a wound on a living being. Yet, he felt the flesh. In spite of the cold he felt warmth in them, and when he pinched a patch of intact skin down near the tortured ankle, the color rushing back to it was visible even in the poor light. Automatically he felt behind him for his pouch. Without his having to ask, the unseen serving woman came forward with the blue ball in her hands. Its illumination increased to a pure blue like a cloudless sky, easy for Pel to distinguish which herb packet was which.

“What do you need?” the soft voice of his guide asked from the shadows.

“Water and wine,” Pel replied, untying packets. “This will take more than one treatment, probably many. Best would be water drawn from an open stream under a waning moon, to assist in closing the injury. But we must heal the infection first, not shut it away inside your flesh.”

“Shut away, like me in this frog-filled city,” Arizak growled. “Go ahead, then.”

He sat back in the big chair. Pel could now see that it had been carved out of a single piece of wood, a master’s work. Dragons reared their heads under each of the ruler’s big hands, and another loomed up to form the chair back. From all accounts that was the way Arizak lived: surrounded by dragons, not one as benevolent as the wooden ones who supported him. Perhaps his truest supporters were here: the silent serving woman and the gold-eyed lady who waited in the dark.

The serving woman brought him a small table, and set the pitcher of wine upon it. A small metal pan, bronze by the glints of light the fire struck off its sides, was placed on the brazier to heat. Pel willed himself to concentrate, to allow his mind to step away from this dark and troubled place, to the hamlet where his life had started over. Instead of the Irrune ruler, he pictured a farmer whose leg had been sliced by his plow blade, and had been too stubborn and too busy with the planting to come in to have it seen to until his wife forced him. He glanced up into the golden eyes of the woman waiting by the wall, and guessed that this case was much the same.

Pel stood up and exercised his long back. Arizak had drained the cup of medicine he had mixed and was watching him with speculative eyes.

“What do you make of it, healer? You’ve eased some of the pain. Good start. Can you cure my frog-rotting leg?”

Pel opened his mouth to speak.

“Yes,” a woman’s voice interrupted him, at the same time a young man’s voice said, “No.”

Surprised, the healer looked around for the speakers. The ruler lifted an eyebrow.

“A mummer as well, you can throw your voice in two different directions. Give me a straight answer, and keep your ventriloquism to amuse those shite-eaters in the Maze. I want a straight answer.”

“I don’t know, ser,” Pel replied, getting his own voice back. “But I will try.”

“Good enough.” Arizak turned to the woman with the golden eyes. “Take him back.”

All the way through the dark streets, Pel wondered whence had come the voices that had spoken out in Arizak’s chamber. Once the bronze-clad lady had illuminated the room with the globe she now held shielded in her hands he could see no one but the four of them. The old man had seemed surprised but not alarmed, so it was no one concealed behind the walls. Clearly, Arizak believed Pel had manifested them.

Pel had a different interpretation, though he scarcely dared even to think it: Meshpri and Meshnom had spoken, there in the small stone room. The healing gods had watched over him, and given him the ability to heal, this he knew, but they had never before manifested themselves. What did it mean? In the gentle goddess’s eyes, all patients were the same, with rank, age, wealth having no impact upon her gift to them. Yet not only did the gods speak out regarding this patient, but they disagreed on his prognosis. It meant to Pel that Arizak was at a turning point, neither too ill to recover nor guaranteed to live, and that his life must impact the health and well-being of many others.

The Avenue of Temples was silent this dark night. Voices and footsteps rang from the depths of the surrounding city. Only the soft brushing of their feet on the stones could be heard. Pel paused. Was that another set of feet behind them?

He couldn’t tell. When he stopped, they stopped. It might have been an echo in the man-made valley of stone. If she heard, his guide made no indication. Just before they reached Pel’s shop, he thought he saw a very small figure, darker than the darkness, slip in between two of the ruined buildings. A spy? A would-be thief? A patient in need of Pel’s services who did not wish to reveal him- or herself yet?

Inside, the woman set down her blue stone. It glowed gently, then faded.

“I leave this with you, healer,” she said. “When my lord has need of you, it will burn with the blue fire. Follow where it leads. It may not be to the same place as tonight—I do not know. Will you come?”

“I will,” Pel promised.

“And no word?”

“None.”

She inclined her head, and slipped out into the moonless night.

Shiprisday bloomed bright and hot. Pel toiled as hard as any of his patients paying their debts; harder than some, of course. Once again, Miskegandros, fabric merchant and sufferer from gout from his overindulgence in the foods he loved and could afford, lounged at the side of the field shouting orders as though he was the master here. Pel should have insisted on cash from the Rankan, but Miskegandros was disinclined to part with any for his weekly dose, and, truthfully, Pel thought a day’s hard gardening would do the man more good.

“Up, good ser,” Pel said, playfully, urging the merchant to his feet with the flexible tines of the rake that the man had discarded. “By my reckoning you have five hours to go.”

“But it’s only four hours left in the day,” the Rankan pouted. “The others say they’re leaving by late afternoon.”

“And they’ve been working since midmorning,” Pel explained, with a friendly expression that brooked no disagreement. “Come along, you’re still several yards short of a suit.”

Grumbling, the Rankan lumbered to his feet and went back to raking. The pile of stones grew on the perimeter of the field where a small group of girls were fitting them into the gaps in the ragged wall. Once this had been a noble’s pleasure garden, Bezul had relayed from Percaro, the most recent of the land’s many owners. Around the five-acre plot ranged an ornamental stone-and-brick wall that had been ten feet high. Most of the stones aboveground had been removed by neighbors who needed them for their own walls.

It was too small to be a viable field for any of the farmers, because the footings of the wall were still too high to plow over, and were seated too deeply into the earth to dislodge economically. It was really of no use to anyone in these poor days but someone like Pel, who needed only a small patch of land for healing herbs. The wall would keep animals from wandering across it and destroying precious plantings. A couple of farmers had contributed fruit trees. Pel was especially pleased with the two decent sloes and a wild cherry bush, both old enough to produce next year if he could keep them from going into root shock. But he’d be a pretty poor healer not to prevent that, he chided himself cheerfully.

A few breadths of intact wall still remained, too fragile to disassemble without destroying the lacelike brickwork. In the shade of the widest of these Pel treated laborers with sunburn and a few patients who had ventured outside the city walls in need of his services. A new pipe driven down into an old well dribbled a meager throb of water over his hands as he cleansed the matter from a nasty boil on the arm of an elderly Ilsigi woman. Her blood was slowing, as was the way of extreme old age, and she considered stimulants a plague and a nuisance.

“Try to fool this old body?” she had said, as she rose from the sparse grass with a rustle of skirts and fragile bones. She tapped the side of her head. “It’s the old mind you can’t trick.”

“I bow to your wisdom,” Pel said, springing up. She laughed, a dry cackle, and hobbled away.

He wasn’t done with physicking just yet. One of the girls detached herself from the group within the garden and made her way over, the tilt of her head just a little too casual, her saunter just a little too deliberate. Ilsei had eaten green berries a few weeks ago that gave her incessant diarrhea. Another youngster who pleaded with him not to tell her parents, she had volunteered for a half day’s work to pay for the medication, but the flux had been cured weeks ago. She sent a cocky smile to her friends, then crouched down by Pel’s side.

“Healer,” she whispered tentatively, after glancing about to make sure no one was listening, “what does it mean when one bleeds twice in the moon?”

A boy Pel guessed to be Ilsei’s age came to hover over the two of them. Pel glanced up.

“Can you wait over there a while, please?” he asked, pointing to the remains of a bench against the bricks about twenty feet away, and turned his attention back to Ilsei, but her face was frozen in embarrassment. Pel looked up again.

“I’m not used to waiting,” the boy said, putting a hand automatically on the dagger at his belt. Pel recognized him as Raith, youngest of Arizak’s three sons. He was a good-looking youngster, graceful in the way of men who have used their muscles.

“I’ll go!” Ilsei exclaimed, scrambling to her feet. Pel stood and took her hand. He met Raith’s gaze firmly with the confidence of the priest who was used to rambunctious and uncontrollable acolytes.

“He can wait. We will walk over here and finish our consultation.”

The expression in his eyes must have surprised the Irrune prince, for he kept his mouth shut. The girl could hardly choke out another syllable as she kept looking over the healer’s shoulder at the impatient Irrune. At last, Pel let her go, after she had promised to come to his shop on the morrow with her mother.

“Now, ser,” he said, turning to Raith with a pleasant smile. “How may I serve?”

The boy’s mouth twisted, as if deciding whether to spit out a sour mouthful. “You’ve got balls. I came to give you a warning.”

Pel raised an eyebrow. “For what?”

The mouthful came out in a blurt. “For my father. I know you were at the palace the other night. Who brought you? What did you do?”

“That,” Pel said, with more calm than he felt, “is none of your business.”

“Don’t give me your Wrigglie evasions,” Raith snarled, though he stayed where he was. “My father is gravely ill. I know about you healers. You pretend you have skill, but you keep him ill for your own purposes. You make vegetable soups and stinking pills that do nothing.”

“Have you tried them?” Pel asked. “Stop your bristling, young man. I am not being flippant. I will not tell you anything about any patient I have, in the palace or outside it. You would welcome the same discretion if you came in search of my services. Anyone would tell you the same.”

“Well, I will tell you something, then,” Raith said, his face as red as his hair. “I know how devious you Wrigglies are. If you are attending my father, and if you are thinking about using your skills for anything except healing him, and if he dies before I … if he dies and I can trace the reason back to you, you won’t need a fellow healer, you’ll need a hole in the ground for your remains.”

“Ser, there is no need to threaten me,” Pel said, gently. “My task is to give aid to the sick. I do not kill. I never sell or use poisons. On that you have my sworn word.”

But Raith had made up his mind to be offended. Pel realized he had stepped on a tender nerve. He knew that this youngest of Arizak’s three children had no less ambition for the throne than the other two. And he was a boy, no older than the sword-fighting youths who were pulling up roots and raking stones just on the opposite side of the ancient brick wall.

“I will tell you what,” Pel suggested, as Raith glared at him. “If you notice that your father is unwell, come to my shop. I would be glad to call upon him at your bequest. If he gives permission, you may even oversee the treatment.”

A snort told Pel how likely it was his father would ever let him watch, but Raith was appeased.

“I’ve got my eye on you,” Raith said, pointing a finger at Pel’s nose, though he had to point upward to do it. “I have watchers everywhere. If my father dies, you die.”

“I understand, ser,” Pel replied. Raith swept his cloak in one arm and attempted to retreat in a dignified manner, but the heaps of stones made the stride into a series of tiptoeing hops back to where a man-at-arms waited with the boy’s dancing stallion. Raith shot him one more look meant to warn, then spun the horse around. Pel sighed and went back to mixing sun-cure. So he had been followed that night. Raith had wasted a trip warning him to do what he was going to do anyhow.

With Shiprisday safely over, some of Pel’s payment-backward patients came out of hiding.

“My spots came back in only three days!” Whido the baker protested, banging his hand on the old stone altar that served Pel as a shop counter, mixing palette, and operating table in one. He plunked himself down on the tall stool to which Pel gestured him. “Call yourself a doctor, eh? The sisters in the ruins up there,” he gestured in the direction of the Promise of Heaven, “said it’s a condition that goes away in time. Have you been making them come back so you can wring more padpols out of me?”

“Not all acne goes away, you mindless pud,” Pel countered, amused. He had respect for the Rankan women who had moved in to aid the unfortunate of Sanctuary. With an eye for a bargain, or just worried about the best care, many a local had tried to play the knowledge of one against the other. Pel found the ladies to be good neighbors. “Sometimes it stays with the victim for a lifetime. It can only be treated, not cured. Didn’t they tell you that, too?” The expression on Whido’s face told him they had; he was just trying to bring the price down again, for the sixtieth time. Just see what outrage he’d wear if Pel tried to bargain down the price of fresh bread! -

Whido shot a glance at the knot of Irrune men loitering casually by the door. “Well, do something! People think I’m infecting my goods.” He waggled a hand at his flourdusted face. The oil from his pores caused it to cake in runnels.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Pel said, crossing his arms and leaning back thoughtfully. “You look like one of your own crumb cakes. Isn’t that a good advertisement?”

“Pel!” Whido sputtered.

The healer couldn’t help but laugh.

Once more, he handed over a salve and a draught in a rag-stoppered clay bottle. He didn’t need to tell Whido what to do with it, but this time he put out an upturned palm. “Eight padpols. Four for today, and four for last week. I’ll get the accounting for your other missed weeks next time I see you.”

“Pel!”

The healer folded his long arms and fixed him with a bright blue eye.

“No argument. You didn’t come to help yesterday. I don’t walk in shite twice on purpose. Payment at the time of service. We’ll discuss credit again when you’ve been up to date for a few months.”

Grumbling, Whido felt in his scrip. He plunked down eight blackened shards of silver and stomped out. The brown-cloaked man just inside the door came to take his place on the stool. Pel judged him to be around thirty, silky brown hair and beard framing a weather-bronzed face. He held out a hand. The fingers were swollen and bruised, causing the gash across the back to stand out proud.

Pel began to pick the clods of earth and stone fragments out of the torn flesh and swab it with a cleansing solution. “How’d you do this?”

“New horse,” the Irrune gritted. “Bashed me into a wall then tossed me off. Rubbed my glove into my hand. Does that stuff have to sting?”

“Yes,” Pel said. “I’ve never found a mixture that worked that didn’t. It’ll go numb in a moment. Hold still, this won’t take long.”

He took a strand of gut out of the bowl where he kept it soaking and threaded it into a needle cleaned and heated in candleflame. The man tensed as the needle went into his skin, then relaxed visibly at the promised numbness. As Pel worked on closing the deep gash, the man’s companions wandered about the shop. No other patients were waiting, so they spoke to one another loudly in their own language.

“Eh?”

A brown hand reached past Pel’s elbow. He thought nothing of it, until he saw the hand close around the blue stone that Arizak’s lady had given him. He glanced over his shoulder and recognized the mustachioed face of the man holding it: Naimun, son of Arizak and brother of Raith.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” Pel asked, as the man examined the stone, turning it over and peering into it.

“Indeed it is,” Naimun replied smoothly, tossing the stone from one hand to another. He was far taller than Raith, and had a fluidity of movement that went beyond grace, to almost a snakelike sinuousness. “My father’s first-wife likes blue stones.” His eyes rose suddenly to Pel’s. “This one is a great deal like one she has. May I bring her this one as a gift? I will pay you for it.”

Pel took up too much flesh in his next stitch, earning a grunt from his patient as he hit a non-numbed portion. He swallowed hard, and dabbed a little more deadening salve on the skin. “I must decline, good ser,” Pel said, uneasily. He prayed Meshpri’s kindness that the stone would not begin to glow now. “It was a present from a lady.”

“Would she be pleased to see her gift used to hold down paper, instead of holding a place of honor in your home?” Naimun asked. “But, I see you live here.” He gestured around the renovated temple. Pel noticed his eyes picking up details of sacks of herbs and grasses, the store of wood, and the multitude of baskets, just the things one might concentrate on if one was planning to wreck or burn a home.

He tied off the knot at the top of the scar, and covered his work with a patch of clean lint that he knotted into place with a length of boiled linen. The man reached into his scrip for a couple of soldats and put them down. Naimun swept up the silver and replaced it with a round, bright disk that glittered unexpectedly in the dimness of the temple. Gold. Pel glanced at the bright coin, then gave the prince a curious look.

“For your services, healer, and maybe for more later on.”

“Do you ail, ser?” Pel asked. “How can I help?”

“Not I,” Naimun said. He flicked his fingers, and the wounded man strode to the front of the building, out of earshot “You have heard that my father is gravely ill.”

“I had heard he lost a leg,” Pel equivocated.

“A foot. But he continues to suffer from the wound. In fact, so much that it might be a mercy if the gods were to gather him into their bosom.” Naimun shot him a sideways glance.

“Each man and woman goes in good time,” Pel said, knowing perfectly well what the prince was asking of him, and knowing just as clearly that Naimun knew he understood. “Besides, he has healers and magicians in plenty. I have heard stories of the great shaman …”

“A fraud,” Naimun purred. “But I know your reputation. You are good at your craft. I appreciate that.” He tossed the smooth blue stone from his left to his right hand. He set it down where he had found it and smoothed it with deliberate fingers. “A fine tool, perhaps, to be used by the right craftsman. To use toward the right outcome, eh?”

“I am afraid I don’t understand, ser,” Pel said, his heart rising into his throat. “It’s only a stone.”

“Of course it is. And you are only an apothecary, a herbalist, who dispenses drugs for the well-being of your patients. But what if they are in so much pain that they wish to die?”

“I never use poisons,” Pel stated firmly.

“But the ease into long sleep …” Naimun suggested smoothly. “What do you do for the ones whose every moment is a misery? Do you never give them enough poppy to help them go?”

Pel hesitated. “I am guided by their wishes.”

“But what if I could assure you that a patient does wish it, but is incapable of expressing such a wish? Whether by infirmity or pride?”

“The patient would have to be the one to tell me,” Pel said. “My craft demands I do no harm.”

At that moment the blue stone burst into life, radiance shooting out from between Naimun’s fingers. They both stared at it. Naimun pulled his eyes away from the stone and fixed them on Pel.

“I don’t know why it does that,” Pel blurted out, desperately. “I’m sure it’s magical, but neither of us knows what it’s for. It suddenly lights up, for no reason. I wish it would do that at night.”

“You have secrets,” Naimun said suddenly, in a low voice. “I know what they are.”

Pel’s heart stood still. What did he know?

“My father’s life is too long. The injury in his leg which will not heal provides the perfect excuse for a dutiful healer to visit him. Perhaps the lady who gave you this stone”—again Naimun fondled the blue rock, the glow reflected in his eyes—“would want you to practice your craft to the best of your ability. But, alas, in this case you were unable to save your patient. Bad luck. The will of Irrunega. No fault to you.” He smiled, but his eyes were intent, focused. “Within the week, healer, I expect to hear news. Use this when you visit the palace. It will assure those you meet that you were summoned there by the son of Arizak, your services a gift from his devoted heir.” He reached into his pouch and withdrew a heavy bronze-gilt armlet studded with gems and set it beside the gold coin. “The guards will allow you into Arizak’s presence. Do not fail me. I will reward you very well. But if you do not”—again the eyes went dead and flat like those of a snake—“you will wish you had poisons to take to avoid the pain that awaits you.”

With a swirl of cloak he was gone, leaving Pel to stare at the big ring on Meshpri’s altar. It seemed too large for Naimun’s arm. The cabochon jewels around which the relief of a dragon twined were worth a fortune. What if he sold it and fled on the proceeds? The summer sea was smooth enough—he could commission a ship with that much money.

But in the meanwhile, a patient awaited him, one in whom the gods themselves took an interest. As soon as he was sure Naimun and his friends had gone, he gathered up his supplies. Just before he closed his bag, he tucked the heavy metal armlet into it.

“Too slow!” Arizak complained, as Pel pointed out the improvement in the raddled flesh of the stump. “Can’t you just drain the frogging mess away all at once?”

“No more than I can replace your blood all at once,” Pel explained. “It takes time. You should be pleased that it is going as quickly as it is. What are the marks I see here and here?”

Arizak grunted and took a deep draught from his wine. “The others have been cutting away the black flesh. Wouldn’t you do the same?”

“Well, ser, if you were a patient in my shop, I’d use maggots to do the job for me,” Pel admitted. “They only eat dead meat, and their touch is far gentler than the knife.”

“Hah! We Irrune would do the same.” His head snapped up and he turned to the silent serving woman. “Go get some maggots out of the kitchens. Don’t tell me there are none. I can almost smell them in the bread sometimes. Reminds me of the old days.”

The amber-eyed lady escorted Pel back into the secret passage.

“He wants an artificial foot that will allow him to ride the stirrup again. Can you make one that will not hurt him?”

“I believe so,” Pel said. “My master taught me how, though I’ve never fitted one myself. There might be a few trials and errors.”

“He accepts that,” the lady assured him. “Our customs eschew the dependence upon gold and silver that most of you in Sanctuary prefer,” she said. “Our way is to trade directly for what we wish, and to reward those we choose to reward in a tangible manner. What would you like? Anything may be yours, I am so pleased to see my lord mending, in however small a way.”

Pel smiled. “Well, if a man came to me in the Avenue of Temples with such a difficult case, I’d charge him the equivalent of a couple of blocks of dressed stone per visit. I’m trying to rebuild my home, and most of my income goes to materials.”

“So be it.” The lady sounded amused. “Such stone will be delivered to you. I see you still have my globe. May it light your way safely home.”

Pel hesitated. “I have a problem, lady, with regard to your globe,” Pel began. He told his story of Naimun’s visit, and showed her the bronze ring.

“This belongs to my son. It went shortly after he arrived last week. I wondered—” Her eyes met Pel’s. “You know who I am, now.”

“Yes, m’sera. But I have never heard you say your name, so I couldn’t confirm it if anyone asked me.”

“You are discreet, healer. I will take care of this myself. That snake will never take my son’s place.” She tucked the arm ring into a fold of her enveloping cloak. “Farewell.”

He didn’t have to worry about guiding himself out The blue globe gleamed brighter when he took the correct turnings, and dulled to a mere flicker when he went the wrong way. It left his mind free to design a prosthetic foot for the lord of Sanctuary. The base would be wooden, covered and padded with leather. Two pieces, one for the ankle to instep, and the other from the arch of the foot forward. Both would be tightly wrapped in the leather so the foot would flex slightly when he pushed off in a step. If his balance was good he would soon forget he was wearing it. Pine was the best choice: light, though not light enough to simulate a real foot. Lint or a silk pad in the cup at the top of the foot in between the straps would protect the stump. The risk was if Arizak used it too much, and rubbed his leg raw. Well, they knew how to summon Pel if he was needed.

He trusted the lady to deal with Naimun, but he would still have to watch over his shoulder for a good long while. Rumors were rife in Sanctuary that those who went onto the middle son’s bad list tended to wind up floating in the river, or were just never seen again.

Pel slipped out into the warm night. The blue glow dulled, leaving the globe a simple stone. He looked at it in wonder as he walked toward the long stone lane from the kitchens to the street. No one else was out. What meals might be prepared must be made with foodstuffs brought in during the day. A single lantern told him where to turn for the main street. The stone stayed quiescent. Pel watched it in case Verrezza might summon him to return.

“Thief!”

Suddenly, a hand took him by the throat and slammed him into the wall. Out of reflex, Pel flung his wrists upward, knocking the other’s arms away. Scarcely seeing his opponent, he turned to run. More hands grabbed him, punching and clawing at his shoulders. He threw a vicious backward kick. A loud oof! came from the man behind him. Pel ducked under the arms and used his shoulder as a battering ram into the midsection of the man on his left. The man on the right reached for him, but got his groaning comrade instead.

Clasping the stone and his bag to his chest, Pel ran. His feet flailed on the hot, wet cobblestones. The sound of booted feet scrambling pursued, coming closer and closer. He dared not look behind him.

He opened up his long legs, wishing he had wings instead. At the end of the lane he dodged across and plunged into the narrow, stinking alley opposite. Constricted by his surroundings, he shoved past or leaped over trash-filled baskets, discarded furniture, and one drunk mumbling to himself against the wall. Pel changed direction, cutting into the next street and ducking underneath the very noses of a couple of burly seamen grinning over the contents of a clay jug. He hit his stride on one long stretch, hoping to make it to the Vulgar Unicorn before his pursuers caught up with him. The bartender owed him several favors.

Only a few hundred yards to go. The echo of many running feet made his heart pound.

To his dismay, one set of feet came closer and closer. Pel gave his uttermost effort, but the man behind him caught him just steps away from the welcoming door.

An arm around his throat hooked him off his feet and yanked him into the nearest alley. A big face, burned brown by the sun, pressed up close to Pel’s.

“Thief! Give me that,” per-Arizak growled. He wrenched the stone out of Pel’s hand. It burst into light as if glad to see the Dragon. For a moment Pel could see in it an image of the boy per-Arizak must have been. He grabbed Pel’s bag and began to paw through it. “Let’s see what else you have stolen.”

“I didn’t steal the stone,” Pel protested, as the Dragon’s friends caught up with him. “She gave it to me. I’m a healer. It’s a loan. She’ll tell you!”

“A healer! So my mother did bring in another shite-handed potion-maker,” per-Arizak grinned. Pel started to dive past him for freedom, but the big man drew a sharp dagger and put the point to his throat. “Let’s see what you have here: leaves, brews, powders … trash.”

“I do no harm,” Pel croaked, rubbing the parts of his neck not immediately adjacent to the dagger point. “She called me.”

“I know what she called you for. You do more harm than you know, Wrigglie.”

“But I …” He hesitated to break confidence, but he couldn’t help Arizak if he was dead. He prayed to Meshpri for forgiveness. “I am aiding your father, not harming him.”

“That’s the wrong thing to do.”

“What?” Pel asked.

Per-Arizak leaned close, so that Pel could smell the thick, sour liquor that was on the big man’s breath. “You interfere in a natural process Do nothing. Let him die in his own time, according to the will of Irrunega. It can’t be long, not the way I saw the blackness advancing up that stump of his. Better that he had died cleanly in battle.”

“But your mother …”

“Will do as I say, once I am ruler of this stinking hole,” the Dragon stated, plainly. “As you will. When I rule, as I will, if you obey me now, you’ll live a long and peaceful life If you don’t”—he reached into his pouch and brought out the gleaming globe of stone—“they’ll find this embedded in your skull. Take it. You can return it to my mother when you go to tell her you can help her pervert the course of time no longer.”

He pushed Pel against a wall, dismissing him, and gestured to his friends. They shoved past the healer and strode into the Vulgar Unicorn, calling loudly for service.

Pel stood on the pavement, the light from the stone leaking out from between his fingers in the dark of the moonless night. The third and eldest of the sons of Arizak had discovered him and made his demands. What each wanted were all contradictory to one another: heal, kill, or leave alone. He could fulfill one, but not all of their wishes. Any of the three actions would get him killed, not once, but twice. Only one followed the teachings of his savior gods.

Pel turned away from the brightly lit door and started to trudge toward home.

Now what do I do? he thought, praying hard for an answer. He did not want to die, nor did he really want to leave the city he had vowed to help heal.

But there was no answer from Meshpri or Meshnom. His only guiding light on his way was the globe.