Sasha scrambled through the markets to secure medicine. Stopped in front of one stall manned by a hazel-skinned merchant in a lavender robe, she bit her thumb at the choices among the multicolored herbs and antiquities. “Well, there’s the dreblum. And is that ichium?”
A small line formed behind her. She turned to an older stranger with a greying ponytail and beard. “Ah, sorry, you can go ahead. I’m not very good at this.”
His head tilted a little in interest. “Are you looking for medicinal herbs? Looking to treat someone?” His voice sounded raspy and lulling.
“Yes, actually.”
He grinned. “Well, you’re in luck then. I’m a physician. Would you like a hand?”
“If it wouldn’t be a nuisance.”
She explained Randle’s symptoms to him. Lack of breath or energy, drowsiness, and a fever. A horrible mood too, but nothing could cure his personality. The physician clicked his tongue. “You’re on the right track with the dreblum as it numbs pain, but his humours sound wildly unbalanced. Your father may be overdue for a bloodletting. I perform them, you know. I could help him. Free of charge too.”
“Nothing is free though, right? Anyway, thank you for the offer, but I’ll have to decline. My father distrusts doctors.”
Her response caught him off guard. “I see. You’re a careful one.” Then he pointed at another reddish foreign fruit. “Those will help too.”
“Thank you.”
Sasha nodded and collected her things. After paying the merchant, she left for home with a stride. The physician stared at the back of her head with a cold face devoid of empathy. An aloof man of many blades stood next to him in line, knives at the hip and two long bladed machina crossing on his back. His nose broken long ago healed bent slightly to the left. Jericho looked between Sasha’s distancing figure and his partner blankly. “Is she really the new hawk?”
The Doctor made eye contact with him. His face said it all. Well, it was supposed to. Jericho frowned, agitated. “You think I can read your mind?”
On Sasha’s way back, she couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. Chills shot up her spine, which she failed to dispel by shaking her shoulders. Then, in a rush, she turned around a brick building’s corner onto Tanner’s Street. A stranger bashed right into her, their foreheads clacking. She fell onto her butt, rattled and dazed. Her basket spilled. Sasha stared up at the black beak of a plague doctor’s mask and froze solid there on the ground, her eyes as wide as an owl’s. The Doctor reached out to help her up, a cane in his other hand, but she flinched. She blocked his gesture with shaking fingers in front of her face. He sighed and walked around Sasha, leaving her there. “Strange girl. Stranger city.”
Heart beating in her ears, Sasha scrambled her mess together and broke out into a sprint. She bumped shoulders with many who shot her back pissed off glares, many on their way to or from work, many who were as sick as Randle, coughing and sneezing uncontrollably. She rushed up into Troll’s Treasure before slamming the door behind her.
The sound scared Xavier and Abdul to attention, the first almost falling backwards out his seat, feet propped up. Abdul caught the back of the chair. Xavier placed his hand on his heart. “Gods, girl. Is something wrong?”
Sasha struggled to compose herself a bit before shaking her head. “It’s nothing.” Then she raised up the busted-up basket with a fake half-grin. “I’ve gotten what you asked for, Abdul.”
Abdul stood up and stretched. He motioned for her to follow him, leaving Xavier to guard duty. Tailing behind, Sasha watched the back of his head, which towered nearly a foot over her. Back in Zaibah, he and his brother worked together as mercenaries and battlefield surgeons. He was the expert when it came to medicinal healing though. They came here to Monestate, this festering pit, in hopes of better opportunities. They were two of thousands escaping that war-torn country once beautiful and flourishing.
Abdul determined to heal Randle properly. He wouldn’t let any western doctor of humours and nonsense even look in their old man’s direction. Before entering Randle’s bedroom, Abdul looked down at Sasha. “Tell me the truth about what happened out there.”
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“I thought I ran into that doctor from before. I thought it was over. I was mistaken.”
He was calm as usual. Even with a resting wry smile. “Don’t worry. I doubt he’d recognize you.”
“Right. Thanks.”
“But I do have one warning though. There’re many plague doctors in Monestate now. They came with the new sickness. Only more will come too. Get used to the sight.”
“I see. So, I’ll never really be able to tell whether it’s him or not.”
Abdul shrugged. “Eh, no use worrying about something out of our control now.” Then he opened the door to greet Randle.
The old man looked asleep, cool wet rag folded across his head, but he wasn’t. Randle possessed a corpse's liveliness. He barely creaked his neck to turn and face Abdul who set the basket down to rummage. Abdul assured him. “Sasha’s procured some good stuff. I’ll be able to help you. There’s the ichium, the dreblum, the… wait a second.” He picked up a strange red fruit. “Sasha, no, no, no.”
His reaction to it washed anxiety over her. He motioned to her and then went to the hallway. She looked at Randle who seemed confused before joining Abdul. “Sasha, heart of man is poisonous. Usually, it’s just an irritant, but it becomes fatal when taken with ichium. What were you thinking?”
Sasha stared up at him in disbelief as if connecting dots. Then she remembered. “I didn’t. A physician recommended it. He said it’d help too.”
“Sure, it’d help kill him. This fact is elementary.” His face twisted as if he was about to continue with something he’d feel guilty for later. “Babies know its danger before they know goo goo ga ga.”
She raised her eyebrow at the baby thing before shaking her head. “Well I—I’m sorry. Why would he suggest it then?”
The physician's face appeared in her mind. There was a falseness to his kindness. An oddness she couldn’t pinpoint. “Unless…”
He knew it was poison.
Abdul sighed then put the issue aside. “I guess let’s just be grateful we caught it. I’ll need to make sure to wash off whatever touched it. You wash your hands too, and don’t touch your eyes.”
He moved on past this easy, but Sasha couldn’t shake a new fear. Was that physician The Doctor or just a malicious stranger? As she rinsed her hands in the bathroom, she overheard Abdul speak to Randle in the other room. “I’m going to be borrowing your stove to make a serum. If you take it daily while staying rested and hydrated, you should feel better come a few days. This disease may be something new though. Something unrelated to our common ailments. There’s no way to know if this will work.”
Randle didn’t respond. Sasha looked at herself in the mirror. She felt a soreness in her throat; one that reminded her of the night Ley never returned.
Many grey days passed where Randle never moved or said a word, only disappearing to go to the bathroom. Sasha handled Troll’s Treasure’s hordes of customers alone other than the support of the twin guards for unruly types and the common robbery. Many of the visitors, like Randle, looked dreadfully sick with runny noses. Simply Interacting with them made Sasha nervous. Come time to close shift, she lost sleep every night struggling to ignore the heavy coughing and sneezing leaking through the walls.
The last thing Sasha remembered before passing out was Primus’s low rambling monologue from his wall mount. She couldn’t tell if he spoke to her or himself though. All she knew was that, for once, she found his voice soothing. Perhaps even necessary. “There’s nothing to worry about. Only the sharpest blade may slay my ex-wielder. No sickness of body, heart, or mind will take him. If only humans lived forever like machina. These days would never end.”
Sasha navigated the Bazaar District’s abyssal midnight streets thrown into chaos. Colossal wagons and carriages hauled mounds of corpses toward Low Monestate, toward the southern gates. Everyone wore cloaks covering their faces, seldom meeting eyes, and carried torches that they chased darkness away with in a frenzy. Sasha spotted a lone orphan crying in the middle of the street. His parents were nowhere in sight. But before she could reach him, an owl boasting a twelve-foot wingspan and black iron talons screeched from its perch on the rooftop above.
It swept down and snatched the boy. Sasha stared blank, not feeling a thing, as it carried him away, bloodcurdling screams echoing out. She watched Monestate’s townsfolk burn accused strangers at the stake, their hands and feet tied, over roaring blue flames. They begged as their skin flayed and melted, giving off the scent of searing pork. Sasha found herself surrounded by plague doctors with chirping and blinking raven heads. They were oddly polite for murderers. She gazed at one such figure in front of her absurdly tall. Enough to spark doubt. He wore a comically large trench coat. That guy… isn’t he just two dudes on top of each other’s shoulders?
She woke up in bed, completely paralyzed but conscious. Barely able to even wiggle her toes, staring out into the void that was her room, she watched Ley stand at the side of her bed. The loudest sound Sasha could make was a tense groan. Before her eyes, her brother had been twisted, limbs broken and outstretched morbidly. His head was gone. Missing. Sasha’s expression malformed and broke.
Come morning, Sasha curled up in her blanket and ugly wept until lunch. She ignored any knocking. For the first time, Troll’s Treasure didn’t open on a weekday, despite the crowds gathering out front.