#traumatized characters

Itene

Neith had taken me from our quarters not long after Liza had started settling us in, not five minutes after our discussion with the concubines. That had rattled me, but before I could adjust, Neith was already talking and explaining.

"Alright, Itene. Here's the situation. There's a young man who has a lot of poison in his body. I haven't had a chance to check, i think he may also have some other poison in his system I might need to purge, but I need his system clean of the opium first. While I can give him medicine, he's been weakened enough by some of what's been done to him may actually straight up kill him. So I need your help to keep him stable while he recovers."

I looked at her. "And…what does that look like, exactly?"

Neith thought about it. "Uh. washing his blood a bit, maybe fortifying him if you can. I'll be giving him some things that will do the same the old fashioned way, but I'm not completely sure that he'll be able to keep it down. The trouble is that he's been forcibly addicted to a drug, and I'm not sure he's strong enough to survive withdrawal. Normally, I'd just wean him off it, but the trouble with that is that he needs to make a show of beginning to recover, and soon, or people will start believing that there's no change. So we need to force him through withdrawal and make sure he survives it."

"That seems…cruel." Risking a young man's life, or even a young boy's…

Neith looked at me. "It is. We do not live in a kind world. This is a prince set to inherit a major kingdom. A weak man in his position will die. We can lend him strength enough to survive what has been done to him, and he needs to be given the strength to begin to become actually strong again, or he and his family will die. Help me with this."

I paused. "I understand." The older I got, the more I realized that the lessons they taught me - that the world should be a kinder place, that children should be protected, all that…these were ideals they wanted, not things they believed were possible right now. Either that, or they believed that the powerful had no right to protection, regardless of age. Which meant it made far more sense why they'd become willing to start putting me in danger, why even Liza had acquiesced when forced to admit I had real power now.

I remembered Nevva.

I took a breath. "Let me go back to my quarters. I'll need some of the foci."

Neith nodded. "Of course."

I went back to our quarters and picked up the chalk and clay Vixen left for earth magic, grimly realizing that I was probably goign to have to figure out how to render more at some point. I headed back to the Prince's sickroom, where Neith was waiting, along with an elderly Hansean courtier. They were speaking in a language I didn't know, not Hansean, and Neith turned to me. "This is Shen Feng. He says he's glad to meet us. He's curious about what you're going to do."

Then I looked at the prince. His face was drawn, pale, much more so than any other Hansean I'd seen. He looked young, though I had to admit to myself that based on the ages Liza had thrown out for Hanseans and Neith's people I was also remarkably bad at gauging ages beyond 'very young' and 'very old' for people who were not either Andrasnian or Hykranian in origin. On the other hand, no one else seemed to have that problem, so maybe that just meant I'd get better at it as I traveled more.

The prince, though, if I had to guess, seemed to be a year or two older than I was. Frailer, even, despite having had enough to eat his whole life, and never having worried about switching, unless they raised princes here differently than everywhere else. Though seeing the princess made me doubt that.

"So…what do I need to do?"

"I need you to give him some kind of… fortifying."

I blinked. "Uh…I can't. I need him set on stone or earth to do that. Bare skin. That's…how that works."

Neith shrugged, and helped lift him up to set him on a chair, the prince's feet touching the stones on the floor. "Will that work?"

I nodded. "Theoretically? I don't know, Neith, I'm new at magic, I just know that you have to be touching the earth for earth magic to work. I haven't experimented with different levels of contact yet."

I slipped off my shoes and placed my own feet on the stones of the floor. "Normally I touch them with my hands," I said, "But I think I'm gonna use my hands for other parts of this?"

Neith shrugged. "Don't be defensive, as of right now, you are the most knowledgeable person we have about the use of actual magic, I can do some divine healing, some spirit speaking if I have the ritual set up, but to be honest, spiritspeaking is always a risk for me. I'm really good at medicine and herbal healing. Also poisons, but I'm trying to avoid throwing those around quite as much. You're the one who does magic. I trust you."

That made me feel a little more confident, and then Neith kept talking. "That said, I do know medicine. If you're about to start purging the poison from him, or trying to: don't. It's not real poison, it's poppy. He's addicted and getting it all out at once might kill him. Fortify him with earth magic, so I can start giving him the medicines that will help it work out of his system a little more slowly."

I nodded. "Right, right. Okay. Uh…." I focused on the mind and body rings, pressed my will, my mind, my power, down from my mind and heart, down my spine, through my legs, down through my feet and into the stones. I felt the grainy, painful sense of crawling through the earth in the form of energy, and then crawled up through the prince. I felt a wave of weakness, of sickness. It wasn't…it wasn't like poison I could purge with water, though there was that. it was also an overwhelming sense, like…

Say what you will of the orphan houses of the Eastern Empire, but you rarely go hungry in them. Abused by people too busy and thin stretched to take care of you or discipline any way but the rod, sure, but hungry? Only rarely. And that was before Alexander took power, so they're probably better now. But the year after Mistress Clytemnestra died, when I had lost my chance at becoming a weaver and being a normal imperial citizen, if an orphaned one, when I was ten, Justanlia had been ravaged by a famine. Drought had hit us, and while Justanlia had the money to buy grain or food, Fiorenz, normally the breadbasket of the empire, had been beaten into the dirt by an early frost at harvest. We'd gone hungry. I remembered the rationing from living as a city ward. Water aplenty, but a meal only every other day.

I'd been dizzy with hunger from that, within weeks, but it had gotten me much more interested in getting out of there.

The hunger and drained vitality that the Prince experienced was somewhere on the order of how I'd felt after three months. Just completely and totally drained of anything in his system - desperately hungry and desperately thirsty. Kept alive by whatever he'd been kept unpoisoned long enough to keep down. I couldn't feed him direct from earth magic - not really - but i could put enough energy into him that he'd survive what Neith did, be able to keep down what Neith was going to feed him.

I brought my will back down into the earth, then pulled. It felt like an almighty wrench in my gut, and I put my hand against the wall, or, I thought I did. My body felt distant.

But as I pulled on the earth, I felt something come up, something not quite solid. I could see, or feel, the blood on the stones twist on the ground, feel the ring that Vixen had enchanted with sigils of body burn at my hand, as the prince convulsed again, and I pushed something up through the soles of his feet, and his body jumped again. But as my will reentered his body, he seemed much, much more vital, so I kept doing it, swaying as I did, and then stopped, after another repetition. I'd felt something strange inside him. I knelt on the floor for a moment, and rasped, "Neith. He's fed. Or…fortified. I'm…not sure how I'm doing it." The clay I'd smeared onto his face, arms, and legs had crumbled away - dried and crumbled to ash, in fact.

Interesting. "Can you ask one of the servants to bring food? If I'm going to keep going, I need to eat something."

Neith nodded, and the courtier at the door looked in as Neith spoke. Then he saw the Prince, his color improved, and smiled at me, and at Neith. He and Neith exchanged words, and he sent for food for both of us, and for the prince.

"He says you have his gratitude."

I shrugged. "Glad. What now?"

"I give him medicine while you eat. We feed him, a bit. Once that's done, I start giving him medicines to begin helping his body purge itself and process through the poisons he's got the symptoms of without it killing him outright - with one exception."

"Oh?"

"He has some signs of quicksilver - very little, but it basically can't be taken out. It's going to hurt him, and badly, and healing him from it will be nearly impossible. It dissolves in the body. There's no herbs that can purify it - but it seems to be a small dose, so he may yet live. The other poisons - the damage those have done, I can reverse."

As I ate, I thought about it. "Could I remove it with magic, maybe?"

Neith thought about it. "Maybe, but be careful."

I downed a flagon of water. "Where would it be, generally?"

"Pick a spot on his body that has any kind of fat."

I made a small cut on him, and poured water in. Then I put my hand over the wound, and slowly forced my will into the water, into the cut. I found…something. Something that felt like steel, weirdly. I said as much, though my voice, sounded, to me, tinny and distant. Neith told me that was it.

I pushed, mixed water with it - or the idea of water with it. I wasn't totally certain what i was doing. Then I pulled up - pushed across. Washed it. Had to try to grip the stuff with my will, with the will of the water, until I finally pulled it out.

When I came back to myself, I was bleeding from the nose, but there was a small splattering of what looked like quicksilver on the boy's chest, which Nieth was rapidly cleaning off. She threw the rag away, and slowly fed him, helping him recover.

"I'd…recommend you go rest, Itene. Eat more, and drink more before you do. But you have accomplished a great deal. When I'm done, the prince will live. He will recover. And he will know what you have done. Well done, and thank you."

Neith

It was mostly a matter of convincing people to give her access to the prince. It wasn't an easy sell, her being from a foreign land and that being quite literally the heir to the throne. But she decided to give it her best attempt, presuming that Thomas could just sneak her in if worst came to worst. A Meloran priestess, and a trained herbalist, she could probably get in.

There was a courtier there, blocking her access to the Prince's room. "Can I see him? I'm a trained apothecary, and a Meloran priestess." She spoke in Common - she did not speak Hansean.

The courtier refused her. "I can't let anyone in without permission. It was the Emperor's own order."

Neith sighed. "I was trained in the finest schools of medicine in Tamila, as well as herbal traditions of Yndran. they taught us there that when one doctor is failing, another should take a look, just to see if any options remain that the first may have overlooked."

The courtier thought about it. "And how do I know you're not an assassin?"

She shook her head. Honesty? Honesty might indict her, she'd come with a princess who had every reason to want the heir to the throne dead since it would mean that the emperor had need for a new heir. However, the princess would probably prefer to marry the prince rather than an old man if given the choice, if the prince could be salvaged. The honest answer was that she was here for her own reason, hunting an old enemy who had every reason to want the Emperor desperate, and healing the prince might root the man out.

The courtier turned her away. "I'm sorry, miss. I have orders."

She paused, and he continued. "The Emperor is not well liked by the people. But I have seen what he has given up. I have worked with him since we were boys. He is a lonely man, and the weight of what he has to do for his nation is slowly killing him. I do not envy him. But I can lighten the weight with loyal service. I will not go against his word. If you can convince him to let you in, I will allow you to look at his son. But not without his order."

Neith took a breath. Perhaps this man would hear her, if he was worried for his friend. The whispy bearded man reminded her of Baldor, in a way. The same ironclad sense of duty. "Can you tell him, then, that a doctor and Meloran priestess from a foreign place, who has studied all over the world, wants to try to save his son? I won't…I won't pretend I'm here for your emperor. I'm here because one of my enemies is here. An evil man from far away, known for finding good people in desperate situations and taking advantage of them. I fear what he'd do if he got any kind of hooks into the Emperor of Hansea, and a sickly prince is exactly the kind of lever he'd use."

The courtier took a breath. "This enemy of yours. What does he look like?"

"Acid burned. Up along his arms. Some splattered on his neck and shoulders, though he wears a cowl by custom so I don't know that you'd see that. Speaks with a voice that buzzes, like there's wasps in his throat."

The courtier sighed. "I know him. He arrived eight days before you did. Pleads with his majesty to become the Imperial physician. Swears he has an immortality elixir. Swears that he uses forbidden knowledge, acknowledges its desperate. But…My lord…he becomes more desperate by the day. Surrounded by enemies, some open, some otherwise. I will plead your case to my lord, I did not trust this man you name enemy when he appeared, and I hope that you will be able to make his offer less appealing." The man reached out a hand. "I give you my word. I will plead your case as the emperor's oldest, longest-serving man. He will listen."

Neith nodded. "And how long might that take?"

"A matter of hours. He is in his chambers. I'll…I'll go." the man rang a bell, and two guards appeared, standing before the Prince's door. "Do not let anyone in until I've returned, for any reason."

Neith stood there, waiting. She began to pray, quietly, that what she had come to do would succeed. When she had spoken all she could to Melora, she sat on one of the divans and began to meditate, allowing herself to make peace until some time later.

"Miss? My lord says you can see his son. But only under guard."

Neith stood, slowly. She felt her knees pop, which meant she'd been there for a while. "As you will."

She was finally allowed into the sickroom. As she entered, she took a breath.

Stale blood, mixed with ancient sweat. Vomit, incense, to cover it. There was the sickly sweet scent of rot, but…not from him. The prince was covered in sores as she moved the blankets, but most of them had been expertly cauterized, cleansed. He was cleaned, regularly, apparently, and washed with what was obvoiusly strongwine. The air hung heavy with smoke, the kind used in this part of the world for cleansing, but it smelled slightly off.

"What symptoms does he have, aside from vomiting?" She laid a hand on his head. "And fever. Did these sores form before or after his time laying here?"

The courtier paused, then answered. "Before. Though they were slow. And they've closed and opened, gone away and reappeared several times since."

Neith paused. That sounded like a hint. "And…how rapidly?"

"Cycles of days, ma'am."

She looked him over. Several places, his skin was clammy, others, particularly has hands, it was alarmingly dry. She checked his eyes - they were bloodshot. "Interesting. And the smoke…"

"Keeps any miasma from his coughing from spreading." So he was also coughing. Interesting. The room was ventilated. The boy had pox-scars, but they were old, not current. "How does he take his food?"

"Regularly. Sometimes more than others."

"Does the emergence of the sores track with his eating, and are the servants on a regular schedule for who feeds him when?"

The courtier snorted. "One of the first things we thought of. They were, but no change happened. And we've observed what happens when they're randomized. It's not them, if it's poison."

Neith sighed. "Right then. That opens some possibilities, and closes others." She examined him. Pupils dialated, breath ragged. He had been turned on his side, presumably to prevent him suffocating on his own vomit when his stomach blew its contents out his mouth. "What is he currently using?"

"Lavender and Ginseng, for the seizures he was having. Keeps him relaxed. Ginger, to limit the vomiting, lots of it in his tea. The apothecary also began putting marigold paste on the sores."

Okay so the apothecary was at least theoretically competent, but was also mostly treating symptoms. "Have you tried burning the fever out?"

"He almost died before the fever broke, so not since."

She walked around the prince again. "Right. Okay. Can he keep food down for a long time?"

"It's inconsistent. Some days he has no difficulty with it. Others he suffers immensely in the attempt."

Neith pondered that. It ruled out most serious stomach ailments, which should only have gotten worse with time. "And…has he gotten worse?"

The other man thought. "He's gotten weaker because of hunger. But his actual sickness hasn't changed in almost a year."

Unchanging. Now that was strange.

Neith carefully unlaced the prince's robes, and carefully undressed him. She checked over his body, dispassionately. Even as she felt parts of the young man that any of her companions - save maybe Liza - would have flushed to touch, she felt nothing but cold detachment. No odd growths, consuming him. "And…no sign of blood when he…" She searched her mind for the polite term, then unfortunately realized that Common, trader argot that it was, had no polite term for either of the things she was about to say, "pisses and shits."

"No." That tore another theory - if he'd had any of the harder to find growths, there should have been evidence of it there.

"Does he do those things often? Or…often enough, commiserate with how often he eats and drinks?"

"I believe so? I'll ask his doctor, but I think so."

"And…what happens when the doctor goes away for a while?"

"He gets worse. He gets much, much worse. Shaking, throwing up. All of that."

Nieth paused. That did narrow it down. Supposedly, the boy was sick, but stably so, near incapacitated, but not getting worse. No blood in the bowels or bladder, none in the vomit, nor coming from the lungs. Fever, though… It shouldn't be poison, she supposed, if it was he should be damn near immune by now, if he'd been getting poisoned the same way for nearly a year. But there were things about that description that keyed her off.

She waved a hand in front of her face - the smoke from the braziers was making it hard to think. it could be a series of poisons, delivered in scattered doses, or something that didn't require much, and could be built up easily, just slightly faster than one could gain immunity, with the idea of finally finishing him off with something else entirely when the person was ready to act.

But how? How would you deliver that if the food and drink weren't spiked? His medicines couldn't be, that would be too obvious. Or…could they? Just not with poison. Something else. Something to make it look like the treatment was working. What if…what if the boy wasn't sick at all? Or even, really, poisoned?

"I need to talk to his doctor, compare notes." She said, slowly. "in the meantime, we should let him rest." They stepped out of the room, and gently closed the door.

As she took in the cool, clean air, Neith thought about it again. The sores might have just been the results of being bedridden and hungry - that could easily happen. The courtier was already running off to get the apothecary, and Neith's thoughts swirled around her head. There was no point in maintaining those braziers, either, not at this point. If the boy was truly sick with anything catchy, and he had been for almost a year, it should either have killed him outright or he should have made a recovery by now, most virulent miasmas acted much faster than that. Which meant the braziers were part of it, in all likelyhood.

Which meant…

No, shouldn't jump to conclusions. There was one more thing to rule out.

The other possibility was plague magic, which would have, should have, been discovered by now. There must have been someone with a Sense Khym around here to check. but just to check, Neith went back to their quarters and grabbed Iris. "I need your help, just really quickly." Iris didn't argue, just followed her calmly.

"What do you need?"

"Just confirming a suspicion." They rounded a corner and found the door to the sickroom. "Iris. Can you direct your Chaos Sense into that room, and tell me if the man there is under any kind of curse? I just…I just need to find out if that's a thing I need to deal with."

Iris reached out, her gold-flecked eyes rolling back as she did. She wobbled for a moment, and Neith caught her breath. "No. I don't think so. There is magic there, something that feels more like a lock than anything. I don't know what to do with that - that feels like an Itene question. But he's not cursed. What are you asking me?"

"Thank you." Neith rubbed her temples. "I wanted to make sure that it wasn't a curse making him ill. If it isn't, I have a fairly good idea of what it must be."

Iris nodded and returned to the companions' quarters.

Neith opened the door to the sickroom and took a breath of the smoke, feeling it dizzy her, very slightly. That was enough to convince her. The smoke was a censor, which could be medicinal, but if it was meant as a treatment, it would have lost its potency. And if it was meant as a means of containing the spread of a sicknes, that sickness should either have killed the prince or run its course by now.

The courtier returned, and Neith looked at the man he'd brought with him. Pale, of high-caste Tamilian extraction. Neith had known men like that when she'd gone to Tamilia. She sat down and gestured at the apothecary. "Arrest him for trying to assassinate the prince."

The courtier froze and the Tamil laughed. "What?"

"You helped keep the prince sick for almost a year. I don't doubt he was sick when it started. But I can walk this man through exactly how it happened. My lord, do you have parchment and paper? I don't want to explain this twice. Wait, first, do you speak his tongue?"

The courtier nodded. Neith answered, in Tamili, "Good. I do as well. I learned from their doctors as well. So. Allow me to explain. The prince. He was almost certainly sick at some point, with something real. However, if it was a real miasmic sickness, he should be dead by now, or recovered. If he was being poisoned by food, changing the servants should have let you identify the culprit, unless the chef was doing it, but I am equally certain that the chef was watched."

The courtier nodded. Neith smiled. "Right, so obviously, it can't be that. It isn't any of the longer, slower burning ailments that consume a man from the inside, those leave traces. Change how a man eats. Leave blood in the bladder, the bowels. Leave lumps that can be seen on the body. Leave blood in the lungs when a man coughs, or make a man cough up enough phlegm to change the balance of his humors." Humors weren't real, but even here most people still believed in them, so she might as well explain it that way.

"Right, right. But there are others that could go undetected without…"

"Not while making a man this sick. So it couldn't be any of those. Now, we get to this part. Behold, our doctor. A man with access to the prince, constant, who has the kind of knowledge that would keep anyone from catching him in the act of poisoning."

"But if I were poisoning, O knowledgeable Yndrani witch doctor," the Tamili responded, with a slight sneer, "Should he not have developed an immunity by now?"

Neith grinned. "Absolutely. He should have. But you aren't poisoning him, not in the conventional sense. In fact, he's not even conventionally sick, not anymore. No, he's drugged. The braziers aren't keeping him from spreading any kind of sickness - and you know that. If he had something that spread, it should have killed him or passed by now. If the braziers were supposed to create a smoke censor to flush his lungs, they've either done that or totally lost potency. So why still use them this far in? Unless…you're using them to keep him dizzy. The herbs in them - it's not all medicines and incense, is it?"

"Conjecture. And you're wrong."

"No, but I think it's a conjecture that holds up very well. The bedsores track well with simply going hungry and malnourished from vomiting while being bedridden, so that tells me little. The coughing intermittently might just be from the smoke if that is what I think it is. But what was really telling to me was that…when you weren't treating him, or didn't give him his medicine for more than a day or so, he would immediately get sick again. With shakes. And vomiting. And fevers. A set of symptoms that look very familiar to anyone who goes to the docks in this part of the world. And the thing about poppy is that it doesn't take a lot to get addicted - or to keep someone addicted."

The courtier froze, then slowly looked at the apothecary.

"I…I thought those shakes looked familiar when the Prince didn't get his medicine. But I…I trusted you. I trusted you with my friend's son. And you…this whole time, you were keeping him sick. Guards!" Soldiers ran at the voice, and the apothecary tried to run.

He didn't get far. As he was dragged off, the courtier looked at Neith and bowed. "Apologies for doubting you, Lady. My name is Shen Feng, and I am glad to make your acquaintance. Is there anything I can do to serve you?"

"Get me that man's equipment, please. Or have it brought to me. I'm going to need to work on the prince a while longer. Getting over what was just done to him will take time. And…among my companions there is a child mystic named Itene. I may want her help as well to help me flush his system more fully. Could you have a messenger sent to our quarters?"

Liza

The Jade Court, to Liza's suprise, felt much as it had when she'd been a little girl. In her experience, that almost never happened. Usually, when she saw something again for the first time in over a decade, she saw it through new eyes and saw the ways it had changed, or saw the ways it hadn't, and realized what she needed to do now.

This was similar - the grandeur was the same, the myriad officials and functionaries running about, with guards standing to and assorted courtiers of both sexes running around. What did take her notice, though, was how little anything had changed from her memory. Even if only as a result of the civil war that had happened between now and when her troupe had been here when she was a child, surely the tapestries or silk hangings should have been different. But no, everything looked almost exactly as it had.

The princess they'd come with was announced, grandly, and Liza glanced around. Marcus, Iris and Baldor had fanned out along with the princess. The guards asked a question of the princess about the foreigners with her, and the Princess answered that these were mercenaries chance met on the road, now recruited to her retinue to protect her.

Marcus was looking around the room, almost scanning it, and Iris whispered something. Marcus gave a dark look in the direction that Iris indicated, and the princess asked Liza what they were discussing.

"They're concerned. They say the enemy we've pursued may be here."

The princess looked concerned. "That can't be. What business would a renegade alchemist from the west have in the Jade Court of Hansea?"

Neith murmured, and Liza faithfully translated. "We have concerns that he may be attempting to sell your emperor a cure for age."

Xin Dai looked imperiously at Liza. "Such a thing is impossible."

"Not impossible," Nieth responded. "Merely at a hideous cost. One no one would ever pay knowingly."

The princess thought about that. "I see. I think I have an interest in seeing you succeed then. If he comes to the impression he's immortal, he has little reason to bother marrying me or securing a future for my family."

Liza chewed that over. "Alright." She looked past the princess and saw the Emperor of Hansea. He'd aged hard. When she'd tumbled before him as a girl, he'd seemed old and wise, but looking back he couldn't have been much older than Marcus was now, however well he'd filled the robes.. Now, he looked like a man nigh gone to his dotage, his eyes hollow and beard wispy, as though the civil war he'd won to keep his throne since last they'd been in Hansea had aged him extra decades.

Xin Dai snapped her fingers, seeming to come to a decision. "I'll have you announced. Are there any titles I could use to pretend as though you're more significant than you are?" Liza glanced at Marcus and Iris. Then at Itene.

"I have with me a Magus and Counselor of the Emperor of Aquilonia, the ArchMagrave of the Imperial Legions, and the Chief Ranger of the Aquilonian Empire."

Xin Dai raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. "I'll have you so announced."

Groups of courtiers were already coming over, and demanding that Marcus and Iris and Baldor secure their weapons with peace ties, along with the rest of her guards. They complied at Liza's urging.

They were escorted, under guard, to a private chamber where Xin Dai said they could quarter for the time being, once they had been announced with their full titles - specifically, with the titles that they had earned during their actions in hte Imperial Civil War. It wasn't technically true, but a counselor, a Magi, Chief Ranger of the Empire and Dame of Torin, two Knights of Torin, one of whom was also the Archmargrave Legionis, on a high priority hunt for a renegade, had a far better likiehood of being allowed access.

As they were escorted back, Liza finally asked. "Nieth. You keep saying that the price of immortality serums is so high that no one would ever knowingly pay it. How is it possible? What does it actually entail?"

Neith paused, then took a breath. "I'll not speak of this more than once, and I need your oath to never repeat it."

Liza was taken aback. "You have it."

"It requires human sacrifices. Lifeblood, taken from a beating heart - or rather, forty of them - in a specific fashion I do not, will not, speak of. Suffice to say that when I first read of it when looking at a crumbling old scroll, I burned the papyrus and wretched into the embers once the flames had erased the words. And there are other components - harder ones to come by. That is the most critical one, however."

Liza thought about that. "And…why would Belial be willing to give such a thing to the Emperor of Hansea?" She didn't bother asking why Neith needed her word not to speak of it. There were far too many powerful men who would happily sacrifice a beggar in whatever horrible manner a sorcerer asked to prolong their life.

"At a guess, either protection or because he believes that the Emperor can trade him something, something deep in an imperial vault. I don't know."

Iris nodded. "He is here, though. I Sensed something foul. Not chaos, I don't think, but something unnatural. Marcus felt something moving that definitely wasn't human."

"Well, that narrows our search. Hopefully, the others join us soon enough." Liza was brusque. "Neith, what do you think your odds are of simply being able to treat the emperor's sickly son? Get in good with the man enough that he may agree to hand Belial to us, or expose the Alchemist to us?"

"Wouldn't be able to say until I see the boy. But maybe. If the emperor is desperate enough to offer Belial shelter, it's at least possible that chance has come and gone."

Liza nodded. "I understand. I'll see if I can gain access to the courtesans the emperor keeps, see what rumors I can find." She chewed over a thought for a moment, then, seeing the look from Neith, she sighed, and added, "Itene, would you like to come with me? You might as well learn a little more of the art of intrigue."

Itene started. "Uh. Usually you don't bring me around courtesans and…that kind of intrigue."

Liza nodded. "No. No I don't. But it's part of the world we navigate, so you might as well learn the questions to ask and how to explore it. That way, when we all get too old, you still know what to do."

They bathed, then changed into clothes more fitting to a High Court. Liza's ballroom dancer style was a Wanderling fashion that would have drawn eyes anywhere. Itene's had been a gift from Alexander, so she looked like young Justanlian noblewoman - out of place in Hansea, except as a young ambassador learning the art of negotiation and statecraft at the knee of an elder. Which, in a sense, she was. Intrigue was another level of statecraft, even if it was one that the likes of Alexander did differently than Liza or her daughter ever would.

**

Courtesans were courtesans, pretty much everywhere. Powerful men - sometimes powerful women - had tastes, and poor young wome - sometimes poor young men - or the sons and daughters of collapsed aristocrats wound up being the favored concubines of those still wealthy and powerful. If a dynasty was collapsing due to the lack of an heir, a concubine giving birth to a bastard was often legitimatized, the bastard named the legitimate heir.

It was this explanation that Liza offered to Itene as they walked into the concubine's quarters of the Jade Court.

This emperor, however corrupt, seemed to be a man of limited appetites - in addition to his actual wife, he claimed only three concubines.

Itene was the one to point it out. "I actually don't know how corrupt this Emperor is. Alexander spoke to me a lot of instability. About why he was reluctant to enter the war as a claimant. Civil war is one of the greatest disasters that can grip a nation. He may just be desperate for anything to stabilize his dynasty so it doesn't all fall apart once he dies."

Liza had to chew on that. Was it worth it? She was familiar enough with the horrors of war, knew that there had yet to be a war fought where men did not become beasts when they took a city or town. Marcus had inaugurtaed their involvement in the civil war dealing with exactly that, and she still shuddered whenever she thought about what happened before they'd gotten there. what would have happened had they never arrived.

She pushed that down. For now, they had a clear and present task. Figure out Belial's location. Kill him. Save the emperor's rule.

But what if I helped our patron marry him and then we poisoned him? What if our patron married his son after nieth treated him? What if…

The first concubine they spoke to, Liza only asked a few questions.

But how to get her to answer?

"Apologies, my lady." That was a good start, be flattering. "I'm here to investigate something." Did she say she was looking for a renegade from the west, here to kill the emperor? No, that would be stupid. Courtesans gossiped, and concubines were worse. If Belial knew they were here, he could convince the emperor of who knew what. "I'm with a group of people renowned in our homelands, ones his Majesty has asked come to court to resolve a problem. I can offer no details. Suffice to say, he wanted people with no internal agenda here." There it was, that should get people talking. Foreign agents on the Emperor's business, hired to handle a problem free of internal bias.

"So what are you looking for?"

Itene looked back and forth between the courtesan and Liza as Liza answered. "First, do the courtesans have any thoughts on the arrival of Princess Xin Dai to the court?"

The concubine sniffed. "She won't be well liked, for certain. Her side was the one to come out the worst from the war, if General Tzun can be believed when he comes in here. She's probably just hoping to avoid the other rivals her family made coming along and finishing her up." Liza whispered that to Itene, and watched the girl's face carefully. Itene didn't respond, show any reaction, which meant either she was learning, or she had missed something important.

"Oh? And why is that significant?"

"Because it should be one of us who winds up mothering the next emperor, if the prince doesn't make it. And let's be honest, he won't. Not when he's that sick."

"What's wrong with him?" Motive, motive. This girl was really talking. Liza idly wondered if Belial would need to offer these people anything for help poisoning the current heir apparent to the throne.

"I saw him only once. Rough shape, ragged breathing. Looked like he hadn't eaten in a while."

Liza thought about that, then thought if she ought to ask if the prince was poisoned - but she decided that would be a little too suspicious.

As they parted company with the concubine, Liza turned to Itene. "What did you make of that?"

"Does she have motive to want the prince poisoned?" Itene asked, after Liza had translated.

"Yes, but she did let away one other really important piece of information. Did you catch it?"

Itene paused. "Our patron comes from a group that's in really bad shape, right? She's the weakest of the three lesser dynasties competing to marry the Emperor. We've hitched ourselves to the wrong person."

Liza paused. "Or the right one. Depends. If the Emperor is clever, and depending on exactly how weakened Xin Dai's family is, she may be perfect. If she's the weakest of the three but still strong enough to tip the scales, securign her family's loyalty and also making himself too strong for the remaining two dynasties to challenge would be a good idea. The trouble is, he'd have to do it without making them want to marry each other. If they're desperate enough to try that, this all changes dramatically." Liza worked the problem in her head. If the last two dynasties married each other and pressed a joint claim, then Hansea was destined for another war in all likelyhood. Then she followed up. "But there's one more piece you're missing. What is it?"

Itene paused. "I'm not sure.'

Liza shrugged. "Not just the information. Who it came from. That's important too. She got it from the Emperor's own general, who apparently visits the concubines. Think he's supposed to be doing that? A powerful, probably younger man, when the emperor is as old as he is? How old did that woman look to you?"

"Older than me, but younger than you." Itene said, slowly. "Oh. The General is making his own play, then?"

Liza shrugged. "Likely. But is it his own play or is he making it with one of the other lesser dynasties?"

Itene paused. "The ones he just beat in a war?"

Liza nodded. "Politics don't work the way you think they do. All the men he figured out how to kill? Those were peasants. They don't count, not to men who live in palaces. If this emperor falls, and he might, with a sick heir and others rising against him, this General Tzun may look around and find himself faced with an impossible war, and decide he'd rather help a future winner than remained yoked to a loser and find himself hanged or beheaded for helping a failure cling to power as long as possible."

Itene paused. "Alexander didn't execute loyalists of Augustus's regime."

"That's because Alexander went to a different school of governance than exists in the east. In Aquilonia, you take your oath to the crown and its law. Alexander changed that when he took office, but he wasn't going to kill off the men who had done nothing but hold to their oaths if they were willing to bend the knee to him and Isabella. He was more than happy to kill Aegir's men and replace them because they had turned traitor once and would again. Loyal men doing their duty was another matter. Here, bureaucrats, what we call burgraves or meisters in the empire, take their oaths to the crown, but generals take their oaths to a dynasty. A general attached to a failing dynasty either needs to be able to carve out his own dynasty, or start a new one."

Itene visibly absorbed that. "Gotcha. So our next step is to talk to more of the concubines and ask them about the General, or about the poisoned prince?"

Liza shook her head. "We're assuming the prince is poisoned, we don't know. If you say that aloud, you give away guesses we don't want. You plant ideas and get back bad information because of rumors you started." Basic lesson, but a worthwhile one. Never start a rumor you were chasing yourself.

The next concubine went a little smoother. The prince had been sick since shortly after the war ended, and had shown symptoms, intermittently, of the flux, of gaol fever, and of the consumption, but for such famously virulent sicknesses, none had ever spread beyond the prince himself. The boy was constantly sick, and had an apothacary looking over him, but no one knew what was causing it.

"It's definitely the apothecary is poisoning him for someone right?"

Liza glanced at her daughter when the question was asked once they were alone. "Probably, but I'd rather not jump to any conclusions."

The next concubine was harder - a regally dignified woman with a proud bearing, who insisted on them knowing that she should be the rightful empress as the Emperor's oldest surviving lover and the one who'd nursed the prince. She was also, unless Liza missed her guess, the only one of the concubines who was actually properly royalty of one of Hansea's constituent kingdoms, possibly the dynasty that had fully collapsed during the war.

Liza asked about the general first - if anyone would have a real concept for high politics it might be this woman. All the concubine did was sniff. "I may be angry at my lessers, but I'll not spread rumors about them."

Liza smiled. "Of course.'

That was perfect, actually. By all accounts, the emperor only had three concubines that he actually visited. The Jade Lady, the one she'd just spoken to, was the eldest. Then the Opal Lady, the first she'd spoken to, was extremely popular. Finally, the Pearl Lady, the second she'd spoken to, was actually comparatively a mystery, but she was widely considered the most beautiful of the three. By more than one report, the Emperor had been offered concubines of Itene's age, and had refused.

She had yet to speak to the man himself, but she was developing the picture of a deeply, miserably lonely old man, whose wife was long gone. Whose son was dying. Who dallied with younger women in hopes of stabilizing his realm, but who experienced those relationships as horrid, dry, and loveless - moved by duty rather than anything like passion. And now, he'd given shelter to a horrible monster, possibly out of arrogance, possibly out of desperation.

And what was more. If the Opal consort let it slip that the general visited. The Pearl Lady gave plenty of information about the Prince's condition. At a guess, they might have both been working together with the general in hopes of putting one of his bastards on hte throne, at the expense of the Jade Lady, who had, by her own claim, nursed if not birthed the prince, and was probably as close as the young man had to a mother.

An idea of what was happening was beginning to take shape in her head.

Thomas

                      Thomas was glad to be back in the big city – but it had been a long time since he’d been to Nistria – not since he’d come here as a teenager with a crew of pirates, in fact, only a few years older than Itene. On one hand, that meant the wanted posters were likely to be wildly inaccurate, since he’d grown a beard and shaved it since then, and grown almost a foot, but on the other hand, it meant that he couldn’t simply announce himself and expect to immediately command respect and dread the way he was used to.

              Still, being given the run of the place meant more freedom to learn about the city they’d be operating in. He helped himself to some strings of coin from one of the men he could see in the kinds of elegant robes that mean nobleman in this region, then slipped over to the moneychangers who seemed to be trading copper for slips of paper with the Imperial Seal.

              Apparently they used paper money, to make it easier than carrying coins, and with the amount of goods being traded, it was easier to issue paper money from the government and trade for some of the actual coins, to let the government control how much money was in circulation. Thomas thought that was stupid – what kind of fool would take paper just because some guy with a crown said it was good? – but a quick glance around the market showed that it was accepted, and he supposed it was quieter than a string full of coins that clacked when he was trying to sneak, so he traded the strings that he had stolen for a few notes.

Then he started actually looking around in earnest.

There was a place that looked to be an apothecary. Neith would be more of an expert in the things bought and sold there, but he could ask questions of the man to see if anyone had been through here. And certainly, if the Alchemist had done business, this man might answer Thomas’s questions.

The apothecary was actually a small woman with a flat affect, and bandages tracing up both arms, a smattering of spots across her nose, and a remarkable ability to communicate distaste with a look. Thomas tried not to be too unsettled by her stare, merely asking the professional questions he needed answered, fumbling through a language he only mostly knew. “Need to know. Did a man come here? Strange, would have had hood.”

She gave him an uninterested stare. “You’re all of those things.”

“Man I look for is an Alchemist,” he fumbled, Hansean clumsy on his lips. “Flesh Alchemist. May have changed his form.”

She gave him a sharp look. “Ah. One man. Hunched under his cloak. Few days ago. Said he had business at the palace, with an immortality elixir. I don’t know if he go through to the emperor or not. But the way he talked – and some of the things he bought – I wouldn’t put bets on him being up to anything good.”

Thomas blinked. “And. You still sold him these things?”

The woman shrugged. “He gave me a bunch of interesting components for my own experiments in trade. Nothing for flesh alchemy. Just. Poisons and antagonists. Things I like studying. Things illegal to have here.”

              That didn’t make sense to Thomas, but he had no interest in investigating the experimental proclivities of this oddity of an a apothecary when he had just gotten a lead on his actual goal. He made his excuses and left, heading towards the palace. His chances of actually getting inside with permission would be limited, but…on the outer wall, there was an easy point of entry. Servants’ quarters. He shuffled around the dozen or so knives on his person and reflected as he did so.

              The alchemist was already inside the palace, or at least, he was theoreticaly. That already raised some concerns. Either the emperor was a fool, or he was desperate – or, very possibly, both. It was also possible the man had been turned away. He supposed it was possible that he could check around the city further – check to see if there were any rumors of odd disappearances that would indicate the work of the Flesh Alchemist, especially since the group that had already gone to the palace would see him if he was already there.

 So he headed to the town's red light district - a turn of phrase that was used in the empire, probably picked up from sailors without knowing where it came from. Here, though, it actually meant something. The cities here marked the side of town with ill repute with red lanterns, marking the place of disgraceful business, where women did not go if they were of proper dignity. Where married men did not go if they were faithful, or honest. Where rich men went if they sought cheap pleasures, and poor men went only if they sought profit they could make without honor.

Thomas didn't find anything dishonest in a poor man robbing a rich man, at least not a poor man robbing a rich nobleman, though he admitted privately he'd have some objections to a man such as himself robbing a rich man like Xerxes who had more than earned his money and was using it for the benefit of others. Then again, Thomas was practically a rich man himself these days, even if he didn't ever have much cash on him, he couldn't remember the last time he'd worried about food, or shelter, or money. He was part of a knight's retinue, and even if Baldor was a hedge knight, his association with the man had changed him.

Shaking aside the unsettling thought, he walked into the red light district. Saw a few sailors here and there, a few merchants, a few rich men, and as always, the usual assortment of men whose broad cloaks and bulging pockets marked them for smugglers. He made a snap decision - smugglers, then prostitutes. Then sailors.

The first smuggler he approached had an offer. Thomas turned him down - he wasn't interested in poppy, but he was interested in information. "No poppy. I'll pay the same price if you've seen the man I'm looking for. Give me bad information and I'll cut your throat."

The man looked at him. "Maybe I've seen him. What's his name?"

"He wouldn't give you a name. Cloak, hood. Foreigner. Hunch, probably reeks like he's carrying a bunch of potions. Lots of scars, but scars like acid burns."

"Seen no one like that. Sorry. Keep your coin." The man was clearly nervous about lying, and Thomas realized he might have gone too far.

He flipped the man a small value coin. "Thanks for your honesty."

             The smuggler paused. "I don't know anything about the guy. But could be I could give you the name of a brothel keeper who would. And where to find the madame."

Thomas paused. "Oh?"

"Madame Cixi. Two streets over. The big green sign. She hosts a lot of strange travellers. Buys sometimes. You may be able to get more out of her."

Thomas threw him another few coins. "If that's good, you'll have more. If it isn't, I'll come back with a knife."

The man slunk back to the alley, and Thomas followed his directions to the brothel he was directed to. One thing he admitted to himself he appreciated about the red light district - because it accepted travellers and sailors, its traders spoke a mix of Common and Hansean he found much easier to navigate.

The brothel was easy to enter. Rich red curtains lay over different rooms, and sliding doors on runners covered entrances to deeper halls. The air hung heavy with heady smoke, and Thomas drew a cloth over his nose and mouth to prevent it from dulling his senses. He saw a woman behind a table, reclining on a chair - an older woman, in rich dress, once a beauty, undoubtedly, now gone to the abuse she had suffered and inflicted on herself with wine and powders, and with the clear signs of a poppy gum addict gripping her in the tremor of her hands and the sunken sockets of her eyes. She was Liza's age, but she looked older. At a guess, this woman had once worked in this brothel before controlling it, but unlike Octavia, who he'd helped gain control of Nemedia, Madame Cixi had fallen prey to the cycle of abuse and violence that too often claimed people in the brothel, and now played her own part in perpetuating it.

He lay coins across the table. "Madame Cixi, I presume?"

She scooped the coins, eagerly. "Yes. Here for a girl? Or a boy?"

"Neither. I'm here about a man. Not for a bedmate. I want information. I was told a man had come through here, a man I'm hunting. Foreigner, with a cowl. Supposedly has scars that look like they came from caustic potions. Probably moved strange, since he had done Alchemic things to himself."

The woman thought about it. Thomas put coins down on the table again, impatient. Cixi picked it up. "Alright, yes. Such a man did come through here. He told me that he'd been given my name as a brothel madame who could make good trade for what he wanted."

Thomas got impatient as she went silent again, chewing on the stem of her pipe. "And what did he want?" He put another coin on the table.

"He wanted something for his experiments. He gave me some special powder for my help finding it. Powder he said I could mix with the poppy in the pipe, to take the worst off the withdrawals, make the supply stretch a little longer." She drew a big drag from the pipe, and for a moment, Thomas thought he could see something ugly flicker in her sunken eyes. "He wanted - what did he want? He wanted something I didn't need. Something that aggravated the customers."

Thomas was starting to realize, with a growing sense of horror, what she had traded. "What was it?"

She reached out a hand, and he, already fairly certain that he'd be taking the money back, gave it to her. "One of the whores here, she had a bastard she couldn't feed. Too strung out on the poppy, too often. He'd get hungry and start wandering around, bothering the others, bothering the customers. The man you're hunting took him off our hands. Gave him some kind of candy and the kid followed him willingly enough."

The child was dead, or worse, no question. Thomas knew that. "You sold a kid to that. To that man. Do you know what he was?"

Cixi shook her head. "No. No I don't. He was a customer. What was he?" Her voice was curious, but not overly so.

"He was a Flesh Alchemist." Thomas felt a cold sense of rage fall over him. Almost as though he felt nothing. "That boy probably died one of the worst deaths imaginable, and probably didn't know what was happening to him until it started - and that's if he's lucky. If he's not…" If he was not, as Neith had explained the nature of Flesh Alchemy, the boy had doubtless been turned into something else, combined with other creatures. Still alive, unaware of what he had become, mentally fused with other things, beasts most likely, hungry, angry and afraid. With just enough humanity to continually learn.

"DId he mention where he was going?"

"Said he'd made agreements with the palace. I don't know if he has or not."

Thomas nodded. "One more question. Where is the powder he sold you?"

Cixi paused. "Do you want it? You gonna pay for it?" That had her attention.

Thomas rolled his wrist. "Just curious. I'm hunting him for a reason. I'd not trust that it doesn't have secondary effects. Ones that will kill you. Then again - you gave succor to my enemy. If I wanted it, you'd be well served to give it to me."

The madame paused, and handed him a small bag. Thomas looked within it and saw a small collection of powder. Confident Neith would be able to identify it, he tied it back off, then pinned Cixi to the wall and stabbed her repeatedly.

As the madame slumped to the ground, picking up his money first, then leaving it for those the madame had kept here.

Someday, he hoped to find somehwere it wasn't true. But everywhere he went, alleys were alleys and brothels were brothels.

Malzan

The road had been long to get to the first of the great cities of Hansea. He had seen some of them from a distance before, and they dwarfed even the vast metropoles of the Aquilonian Empire. Aquilonia Imperia, he'd been told, had around a hundred thousand people within its walls and the farming cantons around them.

The grand cities of Hansea averaged around a quarter million.

The road had allowed them to learn a little more. apparently, the civil wars that had wracked Hansea a decade ago were now settled. The Emperor ruled from the jade palace, with three lesser rulers reigning at three corners of his kingdom, but all three jockeyed for power, and according to their princess, the emperor was a widower with a sickly son, and civil war was at risk of breaking out again. For this reason, each of those regional rulers was attempting to marry their daughter to emperor in hopes of stabilizing the dynasty to avert another war that no one could afford - and also, do so on their terms.

None of this particularly excited Malzan, who just saw all of the explanation as a sign that he was liable to spend too much time stuck in this enormous city with all these people, and merchants shouting to sell all manner of wares, from steel, to strange paper notes, to spices, to silks, to tea. People were carried about on carts pulled by men, and he could see Baldor raise an eyebrow at the sight.

"Is that common?"

"Within eastern cities, yes." Liza said, struggling to be heard over the noise.

The princess shoved a set of tokens into Liza's hands, carved wooden pieces on silken ribbons, and marcus immediately tied his to his belt in the style of one of the Faldrean belt favors. Malzan was fairly certain that wasn't how those were supposed to be worn, but he tied his in similar manner to the baldric from whence hung his axe, having no better place to put it.

"So, we have run of the city now?" mazlan rumbled to LIza. "That's what these wooden tokens mean? The city and the country?"

"Yes. We have run of Hansea without being attacked or harassed as foreigners. But she did say that if we ran into those working for her family's rivals they might decide to attack us anyway, and they'd face few, if any, consequences for slaying foreign mercenaries. She said that these would give us the legal right to protect ourselves from such attacks without making more enemies, but…"

Marcus shrugged. "Good enough. I've seen the quality of armor folk wear around here, and I don't find it cause for concern. As long as defending ourselvs from hostile attention doesn't draw higher degrees of aggression, we can get our job done and leave."

Malzan more than agreed with the swordsman - his goal was to settle scores with the alchemist and go, before he was stuck dealing with matters in a court whose protocols of rank and heirarchy were second only to those in the court of the island nation off the coast. Overly convoluted protocols he had no interest in navigating, not now or ever, really. He was entirely to simple. No, not simple, Neith had reassured him over the years she'd practically raised him, half older sister and half mother. Simply blunt. Honest, and uninterested in subtletey.

Malzan drew closer to the others. "We are here to find the Alchemist, yes?"

Liza nodded. "Should we also be trying to help that princess? Marry the emperor, prevent a civil war in Hansea, all that? If nothing else, the loss of life and number of destroyed fields would leave this area unstable for years, and gods only know what the dragonkin would do, or Nitlan, who have never been on great terms with Hansea."

Thomas shook his head. "We came here with one job, Liza. Kill the Alchemist, find out if he had any idea where any of the Cathedral's other allies might have gone, leave. That's it. We aren't trying to meddle in politics."

Marcus - to Malzan's suprise - shook his head. "I disagree. To the north of here is the dragonkin's last territory. Let's remember, they gave aid to Aegir during the Imperial civil war, and we never figured out what the reason was. If they gain from a weakened Hansea, then I think we have an obligation to make sure they don't get it."

Iris thought about it. "I don't like it. I agree, but I really don't like the idea of playing politics in a place that we barely understand. If we can kill the Alchemist and go, that might be better. Again, if we pitch in on the wrong side, that might be worse. After all, if we know so little, couldn't we wind up throwing power to the side of this land's version of an Irwin Aegir, or stabilizing the rule of an Augustus?"

Marcus nodded. Malzan knew that they had fought for now-Emperor Alexander of Aquilonia, and had been responsible for the defeat of Irwin Aegir and the overthrow of Augustus, but he'd not heard many of hte details that would explain the comparisons they were making.

Thomas was already pouncing on Iris's statement. "Exaclty! We don't know what we're doing here. If we dive in, we could easily wind up enpowering someone worse. We ought to just find our mark, kill him, and leave. Don't take any chances and get out of here."

Malzan nodded. "Agreed. I have nothing I can offer here, and I think that being here entangles us - our skills are better used elsewhere." He actually could speak some of the local tongue, as could Thomas, from listening to Thomas's conversations with the guards, but the others were unable to. That alone limited the companions' ability to actually gather information.

Liza shook her head. "It almost doesn't matter. Any civil war in this area will kill hundreds of thousands of people, create refugees who might be snatched by the Cathedral, or allow Nitlan and the Dragonkin to landgrab."

Neith looked between them all. "If the emperor's son is sick, then perhaps I could have a look at him. I've studied in Tamilia, and Ghulia, and they have some of the greatest doctors in the world. If I could heal him, that may render all of this irrelevant, and then we can leave. Liza, maybe get me through to the boy? Or Thomas, if liza fails and I need to be snuck in and out."

That got everyone's attention. Baldor suddenly spoke. "And…pardon, but was the original plan to find the alchemist not based on being near the Emperor? Seeing as the Alchemist planned to sell some sort of immortality drug to the man in the first place?"

That brought Malzan up short. That had been the idea, but seeing the sheer size of this place made him nervous about staying here longer than he had to.

Neith nodded. "I will go to court to dispute the Alchemist's claims and treat the prince. Liza can present as my translator. Marcus, Iris, stay with the princess as her guards, so that you can be on hand if the Alchemist is there. Baldor, come with us as well, but with me and Liza, add some credibility to the idea that I am someone of import with an escort. Itene will come as well, as child mystics are not uncommon in the East. Thomas, Malzan, you speak the local language well enough, go out into the city and learn what you can. We'll come back together at nightfall in the travellers' housing that the princess said she'd buy for us."

"Understood."

**

Malzan walked off, watching the way that people stared at him. There were Chimmaerian bands this far east, just as there were Urken holds in the Hykranian mountains, but Chimmaerians rarely actually wandered through the major metropoles, whether west or east it made no matter.

Better, though, because he was a stranger, most of the folk who spoke near him did not seem to believe he'd speak the language. So often, with city dwellers, he experienced this. In all five corners of the Aquilonian Empire, people only spoke their local dialect of high imperial when they feared he was listening in, so often forgetting that Chimmaerians were polyglots near as often as Wanderlings. Hansea was no different.

And so, from this, beneath the pagoda roofs, he heard conversations of rumor from merchnants selling coins on strings, offering to change money from foreign coin to local currency. They had the money Neith had made trading the medicines she'd made from teh horn, so he didn't need their trade, but he listened. There was a mystic in court, who'd come with some kind of retinue. He listened carefully for any more information about this mystic, but none was forthcoming, so after a while, he kept walking.

He saw those man-pulled carts careen through the street, and wondered about making a bit more money hauling them - he didn't like the idea, seemed degrading, but if he saw a sufficiently wealthy or important person doing it, he might take that person up to hear that person's mutterings.

A few women stared at him - peasant women, doubtless, workers. Their feet had not been bound, they moved properly, which was a good sign. A few men as well, strong men with broad backs and sunburned faces. One family that was struggling to haul a cart caught his eye, and he approached them, silently. He siezed their cart, and lifted it. One of them spoke, in their own language. "Robber!"

"no. Help." He spoke, softly. "I am here, hunting an enemy. But I can spare effort for honest folk. Say nothing of this."

The wife of the couple - he assumed she was the wife - smiled at him, and the man grinned. It was then he realized that the man was actually significantly younger, and the woman spoke. "My husband died last year, and our ox the year before. We've not had the money to replace any of it. Bringing crops to market has been hard. Thank you, stranger. If we can help you…"

"If you've seen a strange man, a foreigner, with strange beasts, tell me. If not, say nothing of me."

Teh farmers shook their heads, but swore themselves to silence.

Malzan hauled their cart - a trivial matter for him - and set it where he was asked.

He wandered the streets, attempting to spot something, anything, that might be a step forward. He crossed a bridge, over a river, full of strange paddleboats of a design he'd not seen before, even the last time he'd been to Hansea. The sounds of hammering smiths, the smell of forges, the shouting of merchants, all of it served to overwhelm him.

Until he smelled something that finally twigged his senses. Something unnatural. The scent of rot and blood. Such a thing was common in cities, but it didn't normally come tinged with the scent of alchemic reagents. He bolted in that direction, entire body in motion. His ax would be too much to draw without drawing suspicion, but his knife, that could serve.

He bolted around corners, jumping over carts and wagons. Several people were startled, but Malzan, with his advanage of height, chest and shoulders over the commoners around him, now saw a stranger in the crowd, another foreigner, not Belial but perhaps an accomplice, one who carried a bundle that reeked of alchemic reagents. He bolted after that man, with people darting out of his path. Malzan charged after the stranger, watching him bolt around, and finally saw him dart into an alley.

Malzan rushed after him, knife upraised - only to see that the man had vanished. It was an empty alleyway. On the ground was a bag. When Malzan opened it, it contained bloodstained bandages that carried the scent he'd been after - and when he looked up, to try to see where the man had gone, to see if he could see any passage, any bolt-hole, anything…he found nothing.

But he suddenly heard mocking laughter in a voice he remembered.

Malzan had faced hydras. He had slain trolls, bloodvelds, howlers, and all manner of horrors.

That laugh, and the strange horror of magic in that alley, the realization that he'd chased an illusion sent to taunt him, made him turn and run, with all the knowledge that a hunter could stumble and become prey.