Kwanai awoke and immediately sensed the change in the air.

He could smell it outside, the subtle stench of Ku'eb's Will slowly eating men alive from the inside out. The husks were still a fair distance away, but they were coming closer.

Thank you, Ku'eb. I will use them well.

When the hunter and the musician tried to interrupt his meditations, he let them. It was inside the house now. Only a trace, of course, weak as a candle flame, but it would grow. Kwanai knew how to be patient, as patient as the marsh. In the meantime... he had to do his part to help that little flame of Ku'eb's grow.

The hunter followed him, and then the talkers took over. Kwanai merely stepped aside and watched as the discussion turned to argument, and argument to threat. They didn't want to get close to her, the carrier, but that was alright. There were other ways to feed Ku'eb.

When they were all distracted, paying attention to everything but him, Kwanai slipped away. He went through the dining room's side door, into the kitchen where the food was burning, and out the scullery to the back garden.

The miserable caravan had taken their rest beside the overgrown flowerbeds. Twenty unfortunate traders, men and women with a half-dozen wagons between them, lay in what shade they could find, burning but shivering in their delirium.

Kwanai watched them silently, and even though he was not trying to hide none of them raised their heads far enough to notice him. Some were mumbling to themselves, trying desperately to make sense of whatever visions their own decaying minds presented to them, and others simply lay as if already dead, waiting for it all to end.

Something about it all gave Kwanai pause.

All that poisoned the blood and rotted the soul was subject to Ku'eb, and yet there was a sense of another hand in the sickness that ravaged the mortals before him. Perhaps, he realized, this wasn't a gift from Ku'eb, but another trick in the game Teru was playing with them. A trap of some kind, or a test...

The others talked of Teru as if the Kingdomers' god was actively working against them, presenting trials that they would find personally challenging. The wrongness the previous day certainly had felt pointed at the black paladin, and now, today, an entire feast for worms marched into Kwanai's hands as if begging to be claimed. It seemed so straight-forward... but they weren't playing with Ku'eb. They were playing with Teru. And Teru was a cheater.

Kwanai closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath. If this was a trick, then he was not going to walk into it. Even weak, foreign gods had to know enough to read mortal minds, so Teru must know what he wanted to do. Which meant there was only one way to ensure he didn't somehow satisfy the Gambler's design.

Kwanai the Plaguemancer felt ill contemplating it, but the decision had been made. He would cure the worthless traders. He would save their lives.

It was familiar work, drawing nature's fury out of living things. He had been the sole gardener of his marsh for years, and this was not all that different. His victim, for he had no other word for it, convulsed as he dragged the plague from her veins, and her groans stirred a few of the others from their own self-focused stupors. Two of the men staggered to their feet and tried to threaten him, demanding he stop whatever it was he was doing without understanding it. Kwanai didn't blame them. In any other situation, his chanting over a Kingdomer would be the individual's condemnation to a second-life of utter misery.

Someone cursed at him, and he heard the struggle of a weak hand wrestling a sword from its sheath. He didn't have to stand waiting. He twirled his staff in his hand and walked away from his current target, widening his focus. Some fool tried to stumble after him, but it was easy to evade a man whose body was mere hours from giving up to a painful death.

The first woman gasped behind him, and as the others began to feel his marshland-magic take hold, she felt it relax its grip. Kwanai's staff crawled with the plague that had been within her, a small but powerful potential held in wait.

“Stop!” cried the first woman a moment later, but not at Kwanai. “Don't attack, he's... he's helping us.”

Foolish woman, thinking I need her intervention...

But Kwanai had made his choice, and Kingdomer-arrogance wasn't going to make him change his path. He walked and turned among them, a slow but purposeful dance through shuddering bodies, taking care not to allow a single hem of his robes to brush their living-corpses.

The men with swords dropped them as he neared the end of his work. One by one, the feeble traders were able to push themselves upright again, breathing easily again, their sweaty flesh no longer burning. He made a last pass with his staff and then turned where he stood, twirling it back in front of him where he sealed the sickness inside with both hands. The wood shivered, the yellow-green glow of plaguemancy seeping through the bark, but in his hand it slowly settled.

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It, like himself, was patient. All things beneath Ku'eb's dominion, physical and otherwise, knew how to wait.

The traders stared at him. Some attempted to thank him verbally in the way their society permitted, but it was hampered by the natural wariness Kingdomers experienced when confronted by one of Kwanai's people. Many of them, Kwanai knew, expected him to turn his magic against them as soon as they let their guards down.

I have more valuable targets in mind... this time. My name on the corpse of a god will make all sacrifices before then as dust.

So, instead of forcing them into their natural place of groveling terror, Kwanai permitted himself to spread his hands non-threateningly, even dipped his head in shallow mimicry of the polite bows he had seen the paladins exchange.

“I accept your thanks,” he said slowly, consciously using as little of his native accent as he could, “and ask you to consider me not an enemy. We have faced enough of those on this road.”

The traders all glanced at one another, and finally one man who had received most of the looks stepped forward.

“We don't see a lot of greenmen in the west,” he said cautiously, “and even fewer who'd try to help anyone. Who are you?”

Kwanai forced himself not to react to the utter gall of the man. You owe me your disgusting first-flesh lives, Kingdomer. You should be on your knees, begging to be allowed to repay me.

“As I have aided you,” he said instead, trying to ignore the enormous breach of etiquette, “I would ask you aid me now. My temporary companions and I have a journey ahead of us, and we have no transport. For saving your twenty lives, I want only one of your wagons and the horses that accompany it.”

The Kingdomers all started murmuring among themselves. The man who had first spoken looked affronted, but he must have understood how little room he had to refuse any demand Kwanai made, and so said nothing.

“How do we know you didn't curse us to begin with?” called one of the mutterers. “Whatever this was, it wasn't natural. Yesterday we were healthy as horses, and this morning...”

Kwanai closed his eyes, impatience growing. “I could have waited for you to die,” he replied coldly, “and taken all your horses along with every valuable on your plague-ridden bodies. And yet I save your lives, against the tradition of my people. Are you really going to argue with me?”

Astonishingly, his very straight-forward logic only riled the traders further. Several placed their hands on the hilts of their weapons, and the leader took a threatening step forward.

“Don't you threaten us, swamper; you're outnumbered. I don't know what kind of trickery you're trying to pull here, but you don't get to just march in here and demand whatever you want.”

“He did get rid of that plague,” protested the woman who Kwanai had cured first, and Kwanai silently granted her the title of Sensible for a Kingdomer. “Don't you think we can spare something in thanks for that?”

“Sure, something,” agreed the leader, though his tone was still hostile. “You don't seem to have any supplies, swamper, so how about a discount on goods? Our entire stock is now at a no-profit price for you and your... ah, 'temporary companions', wherever they are.”

Kwanai wondered how quickly a plague that had taken half a day to leave twenty people near-death could kill one man. Perhaps his thoughts reached his eyes, because the leader took a step back and a few swords started sliding from their sheaths. The two men who'd dropped their swords quickly bent to retrieve them.

“Everyone, just calm down,” insisted Sensible for a Kingdomer (Kwanai mentally shortened it to Sensible). “He is a swamper, remember – they don't know Kingdom manners or how to barter or anything down there.” She stood, holding out her hands to pacify her companions. “He's not being that unreasonable, if you just stop and think. If we saved a bunch of greenmen from... let's say bandits, then wouldn't we expect some kind of gratitude, even if we don't know how greenmen show gratitude? So we might make a suggestion, right?”

“I like you, Shcsasik,” Kwanai commented, the word rubbing pleasantly against the roof of his mouth. I need to speak aloud in the proper tongue more often. “For a Kingdomer.”

Sensible winced slightly at his compliment, but forged on valiantly. “We've sold enough wares before now that, really, we could probably empty one wagon and still have room for the usual riders in those that remain. Let's show some proper Kingdom-manners and repay the greenman like we'd want to be repaid. With graciousness.”

Grumbling and ungracious, the other traders felt compelled to verbally agree with her, even when they clearly didn't agree. The leader took charge too late and began pointing at his men, gesturing at the wagon they were apparently ready to part with and ordering the others to retrieve whatever was stored there and, then, where and how to pack it all away again. Sensible sighed in relief and shot Kwanai a sideways looked, as if embarrassed by the embarrassing display of ingratitude her fellow-Kingdomers had displayed.

Kwanai turned and walked away, leaving the traders to finish their dull work. They would have to go through the front gates to leave the manor's grounds, so even if they tried to leave with his rightful and merciful reward, he'd see them with plenty of time to retaliate. The others should still be in the entry hall, after all.

The Stitchdoctor crouched like a vulture between a bloody corpse and a pile of black armor, rocking back and forth on his heels, muttering to himself, and twitching erratically like the madman he clearly was. When Kwanai peeked in the other room, he saw the siren's corpse, also torn open, in the middle of the floor.

Ah.

He carved his claim in her second-flesh, then walked up the stairs to find the others.

“Do not go downstairs,” he suggested when they came down the hall.