Suite 206 in the Morning Lark Inn was a pleasant space with warm, feathered mattresses and soundproof walls. The morning air was fresh and temperate as it trickled in through a cracked open window and a potted plant full of flowers by the dresser completed the tableau.
In other words, it was the perfect place for a nap.
“Constance!” Pern burst through. “Constance, I need your help!”
“Oh. Of course it’s Pern.” Constance blinked “I mean—Pern, oh, of course! How can I help?”
“I don’t need help.” Rick muttered. “I need another warm milk.”
Rick’s leg dangled from him like a stained, cloth-stuffed rag. It was all sorts of colors that legs were not supposed to be, and Constance’s own face was hued a nauseous green.
“Oh!” Constance said. “That drunk really is in a bad way. Oh!”
“I’ve got to get to Caer Princips,” Pern said. “Can you send Rick after me once he’s healed? I’ll be a few day’s time down the road leading south”
“You’re leaving?” Constance asked. “Before finishing all the king’s quests?”
“Wanna come? We can share a tent.”
“No! I mean— perhaps it’s best for you to stay—perhaps it’s best for you to—what happened? Were you on a quest? Where’s Isaac? What of the Vulture Company?”
“I’ve got to get going as fast as I can. The Company was hired to kill Adventurers by someone close to the King, and we’ve left proof of the plot at the Guild. But, whoever it was will get rid of the rest of the evidence at the capital when the Company Chief gets there!!!” Pern spoke in a high-pitched voice that almost rose to a shout.
“Pern—slow down—and again, what happened to Isaac…?” The healer asked.
But the door was already swinging, and the last traces of Pern’s mutterings faded away: “Ten pounds dried fruit… twenty pounds dried meat… forty pounds of hard tack… that’ll be enough…”
Constance sighed. If she couldn’t talk to Isaac, she’d at least talk to Matthew. Something had gone horribly wrong, and as always that wrongness centered around Pern.
***
Rick had been laid out on a bed as soft as an angel’s wings, and above him floated a woman in a sheer white robe. He would have thought something perverted, but his current thought process went more like PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN.
“Your leg looked awful, but it was just the saphenous. Lucky for you, someone had already tied it off.”
Constance patted the leg. Wrapped around it was a bloodied handkerchief embroidered with a proud letter “B”. That was just like Pern: picking a highly elaborate font for her monogram yet getting the most important part of the symbol confused.
“Drink.”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Constance tipped a blue-white vial to his lips; it tasted chalky and sweet. A cloud smothered over his brain and soothed him, and with what remained of his consciousness he could finally think.
Constance was pretty hot. But that wasn’t really what was bothering him.
“It’s not over,” Riona had said, as she broke to pieces in his brain. He picked up her shards, and in them he saw past memories: The Vulture Company’s first attack on him and Riona. The landslide with the ‘Reaper.’ Isaac’s final attack, and the letter with a seal from the King.
Isaac had been the mastermind. The Vulture Company’s hidden leader. That was funny, wasn’t it? Not in a ha-ha way, but in a way that was a little out of the blue.
And what was going on in that second fight, anyway? Had he been the target?
“A mythril cockroach who just won’t die,” Isaac said. “Do you have any idea how much frustration you’ve brought me?”
If there was initially a single target, as the letter suggested, then that target must have been Pern.
And Isaac had been hired by someone close to the King. And Isaac was in Pern’s party, but he was also part of the Vulture Company. And the Vulture Company had marched all the way to Mazevale, which was weeks from any other human settlement. They couldn’t have been very happy about it, but orders were orders and gold was a wicked tranquilizer.
And Pern and her party had come to this town of Mazevale too. That part was weird, wasn’t it? Doing quests in a backwater where the only people who’d care about it are foxgirls and the outpost of an undermanned Guild.
That’s right. Pern was asked to come here by the King, after she broke up the previous Guildmaster’s slaving ring and forced the King’s old friend to resign. The King had then sent Pern here to nowheresville with a party of expert Adventurers to escort her.
So that wasn’t some bolt from the blue. The King had chosen Isaac, Constance, and Matthew, and sent Pern to somewhere out of the way.
“Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit.”
The healer’s room came into focus.
“Does it hurt?” Constance said.
“No—yes!” Rick winced, as he struggled to push himself upright. He felt something a little less than pain, and his arms and legs were numb. He wished that they would hurt. He wished that they’d move.
“What’s the hurry?” asked the Saintly Healer with wide angel eyes. “Wanted to report something to the Guild?”
Rick did not even twitch. He was sure that any reaction that acknowledged he’d heard that statement would lead to a very unpleasant reply; Constance pressed two fingers against his neck and his pulse ran fast, too fast against them, and she loomed over him like a pretty vampire.
“I heard you like collecting facts,” Constance said. “Did you know Pern sleeps with a stuffed bear like a child? Did you know that Pern takes really long showers and two hours to go to sleep like some kind of insane freak? No, I bet you didn’t know that. Ah, it feels good to vent. Ah, finally, I can freely call her a bitch.”
“Pern’s alright,” Rick said weakly.
“Is she?” Constance said. “Oh, I bet you like her. She’s a bitch and you’re a drunk, simp whore.”
The Saintly Healer was smug. She stretched and reached up high; she jazzed and waved her fingers. She opened a box full of doctoring tools: scalpels, stethoscopes, depressors, gauze, bandages, and leeches. There were tools for cutting, slicing, threading, insertions, dividing a human into its constituent parts and stitching it together again. She closed her box again. She would use her bare hands.
“Here’s another fun fact. All healers take Felia’s Oath, the Oath of the Compassionate Saint. It means we must do no harm, and we lose all white magic skills if we break that rule.
“So I can’t kill you for knowing what you do. But I can still take away what makes you who you are, and helpless for whatever comes next.”
“I don’t know anything.” Rick said. “I’m just a dunked shrimp hour, or something.”
“Spark!” Constance said.
A light flicked at her pinky, and she searched his pupils. “I think there’s some intellect there, somewhere… but it’s hard to tell. Your eyes are like a cat’s: smart and stupid all at once.
“Hurting someone innocent would feel just a little bit wrong, so I’ll share one last fact: King Galon ordered Isaac, Matt, and I to kill Pern. Now you know… and I have no choice but to conduct some advanced healing on you!”