When Felix got to the bottom of Yew’s tower the night before, Chretien was waiting at the foot of the stairs to take him to Clarissa, the healer. He knew she had sung to him and that her song had made his pain melt away, but he couldn’t remember much else. Apparently her song had that effect on people, or that particular song did at least.

Chretien had to carry him back to the Dormitory in his arms like an infant.

“That was the good song you heard, my friend,” Chretien said when he regained his lucidity. “Cherish it, for you shall not hear it again soon.”

He wasn't wrong: it was a good song, a beautiful song. And not only had it lifted his pain. it left a warm and pleasant sensation spreading through his body that lasted for the rest of the evening. It was something like the flush of drinking too much wine but also different.

Chretien was also right that he wouldn’t get that song again, whatever it had been. And he would have very much liked it, seeing as the very next morning, he and Janus woke up in agony.

“It’s numen backlash. At least in your case,” Clarissa pronounced over Felix’s unmoving body sprawled out on a cot in her infirmary. “As for you, little boy, I haven’t a clue how you remain among the living at all.

“I’m…fourteen,” Janus croaked from the cot beside him.

Clarissa sang them a different song this time. There was no pleasant warmth this time, just numbness.

As his pain abated, Felix realized that Clarissa was extremely pretty, and especially so in the clear morning light pouring through the stained glass windows. She was tall and looked a few years older than himself with chestnut-brown tied up and covered under a white cloth. She had a small nose and cool gray eyes, with dark, smooth skin that was mostly covered by a linen dress with an apron over it. Felix guessed she was from the old Roman country, or further south, from the accent of her Francian.

Even through the numbing effect of her song, Felix could feel himself blush as Clarissa took off his shirt to tie a bandage around his chest where a light trickle of blood had been forming,

“Why is this happening?” Janus moaned. “After the fight I was fine, but now it hurts so bad. Can’t you use your magic to heal me better than this?”

Moving to Janus, Clarissa somewhat crisply ripped a bandage off his face and began to fit a new one.

“Ow!” he yelped. “What was that for?”

“My ‘magic’, as you call it, is doing everything it can. Bardic arts cannot long alter the material world. So when a song knits your wounds, they will open again. All it can do that will last is to heighten your body’s power to mend itself. The song that is in you now should steadily relieve your pain. And while I have stronger arts, it would not do to give a stronger song to a boy as tiny as yourself.”

“As for you,” she continued, turning to Felix. “The song from yesterday, it was to give you a peaceful sleep on your first night. Now, you must both heal yourselves. And you will remain in bed like good boys until you do. I will bring you your meals and sing to you again every few hours, and as long as you do not try to move around you will be fully healed.”

“Eeeh?” Janus whined. “Do we have to?”

“Yes, we have to,” Felix growled. “Shut up. Do as she says.”

Janus was not at the age where he could understand the appeal of staying in bed all day while being fed and sung to by an attractive older girl.

“Fine, but I’m sleeping in my own bed. It’s mine, after all.” Janus said, rising from the cot he was sitting on, only to be forced back down by Clarissa.

“No no, I will not be coming to you in the dormitories—you will be staying here, so I know you are resting. I will have someone bring down your things, should you have need of them.

Janus groaned but he was unable to protest against the substantially-taller Clarissa, who began sewing bandages in the corner.

Felix noticed him screwing up his eyes in concentration and looked around for what was drawing Janus’s interest, but saw nothing. It was like he was trying to do an impression of himself when he fought the boar and failing.

Wait, is he trying—

“Stop that,” Felix snapped. “You’re not fighting anyone, so just lie there and rest like she said.”

“What? I’m not doing anything.

“You know what you’re trying to do!”

“I have no idea—“

Clarissa laughed just loud enough for them to notice.

“What?” Janus asked. “What’s so funny?”

“It is nothing. You two remind me of my brothers, back in Sicilia. They always bicker like that. Most of the people I treat here are…a little older. But it is not a bad change.”

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Felix was not pleased with Clarissa thinking of him as a younger brother. Was he developing a crush on her, or was this feeling in his heart the effect of her song? Regardless, he had to correct this impression by talking to her like more of an adult. He sat up in bed and, trying to put some bass in his voice, asked, “How did you come all the way here from Sicilia?"

Clarissa smiled at him mischievously, but a little sadly. “Much the same way as you came here, I am sure. I abandoned my family and all my responsibilities because I wanted to be a singer. If you mean, how did I come across the sea—it was by ship, years ago.”

“Were you a normal Guild member before you joined the Song-Catchers, or whatever this group is called?”

“I was. I was lucky enough to find another woman singer to act as my mentor. But just when I thought things were going well, I found out from Mr. Yew that this woman—the she-dog—had become jealous of me and was planning to have me kidnapped and sold off. He, Mr. Yew, heard a rumor that my songs relieved pain, and found her plot while he was investigating me. Things did not end well for her.” Here, she rather forcefully cut a hanging thread with a smirk. Felix wondered if she was implying what he thought she was. “Now I am here.”

This girl is awfully forthcoming, Felix thought. Maybe it was useful for a healer if her patients felt a stronger personal connection to her. For his part, Felix wasn't about to tell anyone his life story. You never knew when some buffoon would start making idiotic comments when you talked about yourself that way too long.

“So you left your family to become a singer,” Janus said, though the tone sounded completely wrong. “Yet I’m sure this isn’t the life you envisioned. Did you want freedom? Adventure? Yet here you are, sewing like—"

Felix practically leaped from his bed and covered Janus’s mouth with his hand.

“What the hell has gotten into you?”

“Stop it you two!” Clarissa said firmly but without raising her voice as she pulled Felix off Janus and pushed him back into his bed.

She’s surprisingly strong, Felix thought.

Janus was visibly shaken. “I’m sorry,” he said, putting his own hand over his mouth in place of Felix’s. “I don’t know why I said that. I don’t know where it came from.”

Felix could believe that. He was surprised Janus had enough understanding of such adult matters to even come up with such a thing.

“It’s fine,” Clarissa said, unperturbed. “You may be right, somewhat. There are days when I want to be out there, with the others. But I’m the only one who can sing songs of the Priestess—the only one who can heal. Many would die if I wasn’t here, doing this homely work. And what we do here is important—it is preserving the essence of humanity. That is what Mr. Yew taught—“

She stopped as though losing her train of thought and blushed. Then, catching herself, she stood up and announced she had chores around the Barracks to attend to and that she would be back within the hour. Her last words before leaving them were a vague threat about what would happen to them if she caught them out of bed when she returned.

“She likes Yew,” Felix said with a barely repressed sigh.

“Eeh? Yew is a lot older than her, isn’t he?”

“I have no idea. It’s hard to tell anything about that guy.”

“Are you disappointed?”

“Maybe a little.”

They remained silent for several minutes. Felix could not bring himself to close his eyes, let alone sleep. The effects of the song were advancing and he could feel warmth in his chest. It wasn’t pleasant warmth like last night but it was definitely getting hotter in there.

“What happened when you were talking to her with that nasty tone?”

He asked. “You did the same thing in the tower, calling that Chretien a weakling even though you had just met him.”

“I really don’t know,” Janus answered, his voice full of self-reproach. “Something just came over me. My humors must be out of sorts.”

“Try not to do it again. I brought you here and it reflects badly on me.”

“I’ll try.”

More silence. Felix turned on his side and, despite the heart-fire, began to feel drowsy. He was just at the point where his thoughts were turning vague and nonsensical when Janus asked loudly, “What do you think she meant by ‘Priestess’?”

Felix nearly fell out of the bed, like he had fallen down the stairs in the dream he had almost entered. “W-What? Priest...I have no idea. Damn it, I was nearly asleep.”

“Sorry, I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. I’ve only read priestesses, I didn't think they existed anymore.”

“If it's from those old Greek stories, I’ll just admit it now—I don’t know anything about that stuff. And every time you or the others here bring it up, it just makes me feel like…"

Before Felix could finish, the door to the infirmary swung open wildly and a pale-looking man with wiry black hair in a brown cloak stood in the doorway looking frantically around the room. Felix saw he was carrying an even paler man whose torso had been bound with an improvised cloth bandage that was soaked in blood.

“Dov'è Clarissa?” the man screamed at them in a language Felix didn’t recognize.

Janus did recognize it, and he timidly responded in the same tongue. But the desperate man ignored him, set the other down on a free cot, and began looking frantically around the room for something. Up close, Felix could see his close-cropped hair and chiseled face covered in a few days of black stubble marred by his now almost blue skin. He was slim but muscular in a way that would have inspired envy in Felix had the man not been so obviously on death’s door.

When the man spotted a cabinet in the corner, he ran to it, pulled the locked door right off its hinges, and began frantically through the shelves muttering, “Blood, blood, blood.”

At least I can understand him now, Felix thought.

In moments, he shouted triumphantly, “Blood!” From here, he produced a bottle of greenish-black liquid from the cabinet, went to the wounded man, tipped his head back so his mouth opened, uncorked the bottle, and poured it down his throat.

Felix could smell the liquid from his cot—something like pine needles crossed with rotten eggs. The smell alone made him want to vomit, but it seemed to have the desired effect, as color started returning to the wounded man’s face. But at the same time, Felix noticed the bandage on his torso start to bloom with a new bloodstain.

“God damn it!” the first man screamed. “Where is—“

“I’m here, I’m here!” It was Clarissa. She rushed through the door accompanied by a large muscular man with olive skin and wavy red hair.

“I gave him a blood potion, but he’s still bleeding!"

Without preamble, Clarissa began singing. Slowly, the pool of blood that had been gathering around the man stopped growing. He began to cough and moan.

“Gilbert?” Clarissa said softly, kneeling down and touching his face. “ Gil, Can you hear me?”

The man whose name was Gil opened his eyes. “Yes, I hear you. Where am I?”

“You’re safe at the Barracks. Commander Graecos found you and Iulus brought you here. You’re not in danger.”

Tears started rolling down Gil’s eyes. “Jonathan is dead,” he said. “Basso…the traitor killed him.”