Light, steel, and wheels passed by Mercurio’s window, but it was the wailing that woke up Rhea.

It was a rare, cold summer’s morning, dew on the windowsills. The smell of hot tea filled the room. Something foreign and eastern. She shot up and jerked forwards, eyes half-open and hair a mess, the feeling of rough sheets between her legs.

“And there she is.” Mercurio slid a cup towards her. He flashed his yellow smile as he tied his greasy hair. “Did you have a good, long rest?”

“Good and long, but not a rest.” She fluttered her eyelashes and brushed her faded golden hair. She stopped but hid it well enough - her back was hurting. She turned to the window, shouts from the streets. “What’s going on? Are they still carrying?”

“Southern gate’s gone wrong.” Mercurio leaned out the window, beams of sun drifting on his copper skin. “They keep shouting it, ‘bring out the dead, bring out the dead.’ It gets louder by the day here. Is it this loud by the barracks?”

“King’s road is quiet. We hear bells from the keep, but they’re not this loud.” She stopped when she tasted the tea. “Where’d you find this? It’s strong.”

“I hear it helps.” His eyes darted to the cup, nodding confidently. “Stifles the bad air, gets rid of corruption. And besides,” he sat down on the bed - his bed - and ran his gnarled fingers up her smooth legs, “what sort of brute would not perfume a woman’s wake? Can you smell it?”

She smiled. “So kind of you, Mercurio, but I have plans at the Apple. I’ve already missed Madame’s calling twice, and I fear a third time would be my last.”

Mercurio surveyed her with thin and unyielding eyes. Hers darted. A lock of hair slid down her shoulder. She might've darted too quick. “You’re going to see that boy? That farm-monger?” Rhea could’ve sworn she felt his fingers dig deeper into her thighs. “Rhea, you don’t have to. I’ve only a few more years, and then I’ll become captain, hear? Just hold and wait, and I’ll take you away from this whores’ trouble.” He leaned in to kiss her. She looked down and let her hair fall between them. Unsuspicious, he backed off.

Rhea’s hands clasped his. “You’re sweet, Mercurio, but I have to work.” She didn’t see what his expression was like; he didn’t say anything. However, the air grew hotly awkward, stifling even as the morning chill filled the room. She didn’t have time for Mercurio; he was just another man enamoured by her deep, bewitching eyes, her soft lips, and her even deeper and softer tongue. They all were.

She donned her cloak, a colourless mess of tattered sheets tied at her waist with a deep red cotton band. She had to. It was law. No decent woman would tolerate such shabbiness, but she was no decent woman. Without the band, she'd have been locked away.

She already owed Mercurio a handsome sum, and she didn't want to owe him more.

"When are you available? I would much like to speak with you on a matter I deem important." His words felt off; he was a simple soldier, pike and lance, shield used, squireless, scarred with arrows and nary a speck of magic. What could have been so important? Why were his words so formal?

Rhea crossed the doorway and kissed him. "Come to the Apple, meet me in my rooms. We can discuss it there, away from," before she could finish, another wail, another shout.

"Bring out the dead! Bring out the dead!"

Mercurio kissed her collarbone. She pretended to like it.

Rhea always hated walking home from the southern gate. It was always uphill, and she hated traversing the old stairs: they’d always have night soil in the cracks of the steps, sloshing and slithering in noxious ponds of brackish brown and black.

And the guards, the guards! Ardalsalam was the City of Perpetual Flame, but it was also rumoured to be the City of a hundred gates, and she didn’t doubt it. Gates and gates and gates and gates, and every single one of them staffed guards with piercing stares and crawling hands, always needing to do an “inspection” whenever she’d have to pass through. She never knew how many knives she could've hid in her bosom or how much nightswallow she could've tucked behind her lips. The guards knew, apparently.

She didn’t know what happened in the castle, at the College of Medicalers, but she knew what was happening here, down here. The streets became so loud since the Wall cooled. Day-by-day, more and more wagons trailed the avenues, and they never sold anything.

“Bring out the dead!” The pullers would say.

“Bring out the dead!” For the past few days.

At first, there was nothing. A poor soul here and there, a strange corpse-carting going nowhere. But then, within days, it got worse. The bodies began to pile up, men and women of all ages slung onto buckling wood like animals. Mothers and fathers would shriek and shout to let them bury boys both big and small in cemeteries, but even cemeteries were beginning to fill up. “Bring out the dead!” They shouted. “Bring out the dead!”

The girls got the wagons, for they'd be turned to cinders in incomplete pits. It was a poor sight for the girls, arms hooked and curled, bones jutting, skin popping like crackle-candles. She was lucky she hasn't yet fallen ill.

As she walked home, eyes peered through the widening cracks of the shutters, but she was used to it. She wished she could stay inside, waiting it out, but she had to work. She always had to work.

She suffered the last guard’s pat before she came home.

The brothel was dark as always. Nobody was here, and nobody bothered to swing open the panels and let a little light in. Most of the time Rhea would be awake at the Winding Apple with a lobby full of men and conversations slurred by northern ale and woods-wine. She'd see sparkles everywhere, a magic trick or two, deep red curtains draped with velvety lace and perfumed with owmsmoke. False modesty would always shut the doors, but screams and moans and creaking floorboards always serenaded her.

Now, the place greeted her with empty rooms, unmade beds, musting chairs, cold lounges, sporing wine, and she groaned at the sight. “I don’t want to do the cleaning.” She whispered. She whispered loud enough to awaken a rumble.

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The pounding footsteps followed Madame’s crushing hug. She was tall and stout, arms as thick as thighs with lashes like knives. Though Rhea knew her as Madame Kiri, the matriarch of the Winding Apple, the men of the barracks knew her as something else: Mattira, Urven for a death-mare, the Man-Breaker. “The Regent’s still got the whole city on lock. Been almost a week now, and that bitch is robbing me of talents.” Mattira didn’t let go, one of her hands on Rhea’s shoulder and another on her head. “Come back from the South Gate? Mercurio?”

“The very one.” She slid over to the table and opened the curtain just a crack. The sunlight revealed a black-haired vixen, tall and fair, munching on a stick of softening tack in hot sorrel soup. Rhea stole a piece. “Sorry, Lysa.”

Lysa clicked her tongue and continued eating. “Word is running ‘round the barracks. Mercurio’s plannin' on proposing.”

Rhea coughed, but she didn’t choke. “Sorry?”

“Marriage. He wants to make a decent woman of you.” A moment of silence fell, with Madame Kiri leaning on the bannister of the stairs. Lysa's eyes narrowed. “Do you?”

“Make a decent woman of me?” She scoffed, paused, and swung her arms. Her back was killing her. “I’ve no interested in making a decent woman of myself; what’s he plan on doing, making a decent woman of me? What about you? Have you become decent? Modest Lysa?”

Lysa shook her head. "I'm not married, and that - I know you're goin' to mention him - but that Medicaler boy is not my type. So no, Rhea, I've no one. Well, other than the Madame, of course." The Man-Breaker waved joyously from the bannister.

"Well then, same as I. No one, nothing."

“Not the first time, though, that someone’s asked you that.” Lysa stopped eating. “What about the Wentlane boy? Acceptin’ his proposal?”

“To be a trophy? I'd be nothing more than a bear above his hearth." She leaned back. "It'd be worse since a bear wouldn't need to swallow his cock. Besides,” Rhea winked at Madame Kiri, “how will the Apple run without me?”

“Posh, fool girl, you bring in boys with barely any coin.” Madame Kiri waved her heavy hand at her. “Marie will take over. She took over Sophia’s boys without a problem.”

Rhea’s jokey attitude turned deeply serious as food rolled around in her mouth. Sophia, it had been a while since they spoke - she remembered the soft girl, hardened to become a Medicaler. What a shock to think of what a thatcher’s girl could do! Sophia’s story was always Rhea's bit of hope. Whenever she remembered it, chills ran down her spine. From a whore to a knight! What a climb!

Some day, she thought.

But at the moment, she had to stop everything. She was hit by a headache. Then, pins in her hands, where even the soft breeze of morning air scraped her skin like sandpaper. She coughed again. Madame Kiri rushed over and, with a hard thwack, slapped her back, but nothing happened. “Rhea, girl, your head.”

“I’m a little dizzy, is all,” Rhea assured them. “Can I borrow your bed, Lysa? Mine's already made.”

Lysa heaved a heavy, theatrical sigh. “Make it after you’re done; I don’t want you sweating all over it again.”

The Apple wouldn’t be open for business until sundown, and she was sure a bit of sleep would do her good.

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It was dark, but there was no noise. It was strange - even during the lockdown there'd be a laugh or two, the sound of slamming schooners followed by a few fake giggles.

Rhea woke with a fever like nothing she had ever felt. Every limb hung weak, disconnected from her torso. Salty, clear fluid poured from her mouth and nose, a hot pain shot behind her eyes followed by searing headaches. She swung forwards to get up, but it was so disorienting that she collapsed back on Lysa’s bed.

This wasn’t just tiredness, this wasn’t just a headache, this wasn’t just nightswallow. Something unseen prickled her skin, needles brushing along her fingers and toes. She staggered out of bed, collapsed, and vomited into Lysa’s chamberpot. Breathing became work. Her body became weak. The muscles in her back felt like they were going to rip apart.

Half-naked, she staggered out of the room and onto the balcony, hearing the sounds of hushed whispers and clanging baubles. Madame Kiri was leaning over a feverish Lysa, who, like some dying animal, laid on her side on the dinner table.

A Medicaler, short-haired and fair-skinned, no more than twenty, was panicking at her side, hands raised and glowing green. Lysa continued to convulse. Marie, a curly-haired woman with dark violet eyes, saw Rhea stumble out of Lysa’s room. “Rhea!” She rushed over, up the stairs, and gently led her down.

Madame Kiri tried to keep her eyes on Lysa but would shoot a glare at Rhea. The Man-Breaker was furious.

Nothing seemed to slow Lysa’s twitches. Her teeth chattered, her eyes deep red, and like Rhea, fluid flowed out of her mouth and nose. “Ser Medicaler, why is this happening to us? Is this area corrupted?” When Madame Kiri asked that, the other girls looked at each other with worried eyes and whispered.

“Lady Mattira, please, be patient.” His eyes were drooping. The energy was leaving him. His arms were failing. How long had he been healing? “I’ve not seen this before -”

“This whole city has been plagued by Magepox, boy. Are you telling me you haven’t seen Magepox? Where've you been?” The Medicaler kept trying even as he flinched at Madame Kiri’s heavy slap.

“I don’t know, Lady Mattira, her body is taking my magic, but it doesn’t seem to be getting better!” Unlike Rhea, Lysa was turning pale and limp. Tears streamed down her face. Her hand reached out to Rhea, and together, they both failed to stand up on their own energy.

The women backed away from the two of them, but Madame Kiri made no such moves. Her hands curled into fists and hovered together. Her head was down. “What, pray to tell, do we do?”

The Medicaler wiped another bead of sweat off his brow. His tunic was deep grey, his cold hauberk on the floor. Some of Lysa’s saliva trickled onto it, but he didn’t care: he wanted to make her well. “We need to separate the girls. Get the sick to a rectory.”

Madame Kiri shook her head. “No rectory will takes whores.”

“The girls can seek shelter at the college -“

“No college will take whores.”

“Do they have family? Do they have friends they can rely on?”

“Whores' families are whores, ser Medicaler. They sleep, both in the embrace of God and men, in the same beds! This is their home!” By this time, Lysa’s coughs splashed phlegm all over the floor, which stuck to the curling planks and fading varnish. Madame Kiri’s teeth gritted so loudly, and roughly, the other women backed away from her. “I cannot have them here, but I cannot leave them to die.”

His eyes darted away from Madame Kiri entirely, and he kept his focus on Lysa. “I know of one option.”

“Well then, confound it, man, tell us!” Rhea fell to her knees, though she never let go of Lysa’s hand. Perhaps Lysa never let go of hers.

"There's one rumour." The Medicaler had given up by now. He staggered to the coat and then back to his hauberk and started putting everything back on. "College mages say that the witches of East Siral, in Hinderwood, have found an answer, that a strange warlock leads them. It's a long journey by foot, but a carriage could bring you to their borders within a week and a half."

"No carriage driver will go to East Siral for paltry coin." Madame Kiri buried her face in her hands. "The Urven are too wild, too fierce, and your Regent's lockdown has made it difficult for me to keep these doors open." Tears streamed down Madame Kiri's long face. "Unless you know someone who will take them all the way to Hinderwood, we must think of something possible!"

The Medicaler's hands grasped Lysa's. Rhea saw a ray of hope in those grey eyes. "It's possible." He tucked Lysa's arms by her side, and with a loud groan, turned on her back. "I'll take them to Hinderwood myself. It's the least I can do for failing my Medicaler's task."

Madame Kiri hugged him. She refused to let go. "But Rhea, Rhea, girl, you are ill, but this is far and painful. Would you risk a journey to East Siral?" She placed a firm hand on Rhea's shoulder.

Rhea, who'd been sitting down at the Lysa's side, eyes half-closed and lips white, stayed the Man-Breaker's grip with her hands. "Let me go." She slumped forwards. "I am dead anyhow."