The King's Blood (50 page)

A gurgle, so quiet it almost seemed imagined, broke from the child's vibrating jaw. The mother sobbed, and took the limp hand in hers. "Please," she begged, "please voice for her."

Kynton's mouth fell slack, but he nodded and lowered slowly to his knees. Taking the dying child's hand in his own he closed his eyes. "To the Lady, come for this babe..."

"Leeta," her mother cried, "her name is Leeta."

Kynton barely paused, his voice strong in the dying room, "I beg of you to treat Leeta with all the care and love a mother would her child." The old woman choked, and for a moment Kynton looked as if he were about to falter.

"Take her to your breast to hold her safe, until she is joined by her father's Father in the heart of Scepticar."

The prayer finished, Kynton bowed his head and brought the dying girl's hand to his lips. Kissing it softly, he placed it upon her shattered chest and rose. His fingers drew a small symbol upon her forehead, and, as his hand moved away from her face, a tiny breeze brushed his skin. The final, strangled breath of her soul fled from the broken flesh.

He guided his arms around the mother's shoulders and lifted her up, away from her final child to succumb to this poison. She didn't scream, she didn't rail, she didn't fight. She simply turned to the priest with tears rolling down her cheeks and whispered, "Thank you. She's with Scepticar, because of you."

Silent streets erupted into the first bit of action they'd seen in weeks as the remaining villagers pulled out of their sick beds to glare upon the visitors. Ciara especially felt the heat of rage boiling in each bloodshot eye. But their mistrust shifted as a man in blue emerged from the Widow's house, a bundle across his arms. Only a pale hand was visible beneath the rolled bed sheets. Aldrin set down the last of the wood he scavenged from the Historian's stock and walked back from the pyre as Kynton placed the girl upon it. All of the ex-priest's humor seemed drawn from him as soft eyes inspected the corpse ready for cremation.

A handful of feet, curious about the ceremony, scattered out of their thresholds. Heads peered out windows and withering hands clung to doorframes. The priest took a torch from the dark girl and, casting a glance back at the Widow's house to make certain she was still curled up on the floor out of exhaustion and a small sleeping draught, he said a simple prayer.

"May the winds be fair," his voice caught, uncertain what was the proper phrase for burning the dead. The most his fellows ever intoned was "Hope them vultures peck your eyes out first so's you don't watch 'em eats your liver." But that seemed rather inappropriate. Doctor's humor didn't translate well. Bowing his head, Aldrin and Ciara joined him. The witch glared, her eyes judging the useless spectacle in front of her. Touching his forelock once, Kynton held the torch to the kindling and waited for the pyre to light.

He stepped back towards the prince and stood with the torch still raised as a guard against death herself. Flames caught quickly to the bedclothes, enveloping the corpse in flickering orange until it vanished in the haze of smoke. Still Kynton watched, his eyes never wavering, afraid that if he lost sight of the girl she'd get off the pyre and start to walk around while still flaming.

"Excuse me, sir," Kynton jumped straight into the air as a hand touched his elbow.
 

He spun about, holding the torch dangerously close to an old man's face, as he tried to get his bearings back. "Yes? What is it?"

The old man, even more withered than the woman who lost her child, rolled his small felt cap in his hands, "I was wondering, if...if..."

"If what?" Kynton's priestly mask was cracking as foreign emotions burrowed into his brain.

A cough, like the breaking of a mountain, pulled his head up to five more villagers each clustered behind the old man in various states of illness. "Are you a doctor?"

The priest sighed, "Yes, yes I am."

It was over eighteen hours before the ex-priest was able to find a bed he could pass out in. He didn't much care what it was as long as it didn't have one of his patients oozing to death in it. Isa spent the rest of the day toddling adorably beside him, playing the disagreeable nurse to his bumbling doctor. It worked rather well for most of the patrons who didn't look twice at a witch clearly mixing up potions in their own cooking pots. All superstitious eyes were on the man sent from god. It didn't matter which one as long as he got them better.

Luckily for Kynton, most of the rest suffered from a mix of famine and a nasty stomach flu from spoiled grain. There were no more shattered bodies, only growling stomachs which were helped by the over generous portions of oatmeal the Historians piped out. The rest of the villagers the pair drugged up enough either so they'd sleep to let nature take its course, or enough to remove the pain, so they could then drug them to sleep.

Things progressed rather nicely, until they came to the home with not one, but three statues of Scepticar, each facing the three directions. South was Argur's domain and should never be mentioned in polite company. The wife was a kind woman; harried as she raced about the groaning beds of her three children, but she paused and gave a small curtsey each time she passed a statue.
 

The woman was barely out of hearing when Isa grumbled loudly, and mocked, "Why not call upon a flying piece of cheese to save you? It'll be as much help."

"And here I thought you witches all worshiped the Underlord and danced naked under the full moon," Kynton whispered to her, trying to maintain the calm composure of a man people assumed knew everything.

"And here I thought you doctor's actually used your brains," Isa spat back, "but you spew your worthless words while your patients spew on themselves."

The priest shifted; he spent half of his life surrounded by the overtly religious. He wasn't used to facing an atheist head on, much less one armed with a paring knife and a lemon. "And what comfort would you bring to these people?"

"Medicine, food, and strict instructions on how to tell when their stores have turned," she recited as if it were a test.

"And when the medicine fails, the food runs out, then what?"

Isa's pale eyes narrowed like a snakes as she looked up at Kynton, a long way for her, "Do not say it. Out of all the bullshit, narrow minded, ineffectual answers, 'hope' has to be the worst of them all."

Despite himself, Kynton smiled at her, "Then I'm glad I didn't say it."

The woman returned to them, her arms overloaded with laundry that Kynton helped her with to boil away any clinging demons from the illness. Isa fell silent, fuming, but with enough of a preservation instinct to keep her views quiet while the vacant marble eyes of a nonexistent god glared upon her.

She held her tongue as they visited the home of a couple who'd succumb to the same lice and fever problem that graced most of the others. The men seemed hesitant at first about the priest in their midst, but Kynton only smiled demurely and helped to shave their heads and salve their wounds. Gods and goddesses knew he'd seen more than his far share of sexuality surrounded by men who were sworn to a life free of women, not of chastity. Not that a vow of chastity would have slowed some of them down.

It was only after they passed the house of the local blacksmith, a rather homely woman who grunted at anyone that looked at her shoes wrong, that the witch picked back up their conversation. "What good has religion done to this world?"

The priest laughed, "You ask that as I succor this ailing town?"

"A witch could just as easily," Isa pointed out smugly, "If they weren't threatened to be put to the pyre for trying."

"Yes," Kynton said, "and if the town had enough coin to pay for it."

"So you're helping these people out of the kindness of your heart, and I'd only do it for the weight of my pocket?"

"If the broom fits..." the priest trod a very thin sheet of ice.

"But you wouldn't even be here were it not for your Bishop and his lust of gold."

"And if it weren't for Hospar, I wouldn't have been with the Bishop either," Kynton smiled a moment and said simply, "I'd be some spoiled brat running swords through peasants for fun and pretending I'm noble to impress empty headed women."

"At least your imaginary friends in the sky provide some perspective," Isa muttered, angry to have her tirade thrown off by a jab at himself.

"Sometimes that is all they provide, when we're out of sacrificial wine."

One of the more ambulatory of the locals waddled past the pair as they trekked back towards the other side of the town. He waved madly at Kynton, his freshly shorn head glinting in the setting sun. The priest returned the wave, running on the spare energy of youth.

"Prove to me," Isa started again, "Prove to me that your god is more powerful than magic."

As the girl extended her finger, Kynton sighed and wrapped his large hand over hers, getting a mild spark through his arm, "If you can see it, touch it, prove it, then it isn't faith."

The witch blinked in surprise before her eyes narrowed in rage, "That's the greatest steaming pile of horseshit I've seen since we passed the barn."

Kynton laughed heartily at that, as he released the witch's grasp, "I said exactly that to my Master and was rewarded with a sound booting up my backside."

"Then why..."

He gazed down at the witch, so cocksure in her convictions, begging for him to either agree with her worldview or volley back another blow. He still remembered when he clung desperately to always being right, to his unshakeable beliefs. It felt like an age. "These people need a doctor, and yet they wanted a priest," was all Kynton said as he walked away from a fuming Isa.

A calloused hand thudded onto Aldrin's shoulder as a third mug of fermented barley water shuddered down the table. With the priest and the witch off providing succor, the prince did what he did best and found himself entrenched deep in one of the now rare gatherings of the locals.
 

Rotting grain breath breathed onto his face as one of the heartier of the men clanked his mug against Aldrin's and raised it high, "Salon!"

The prince smiled wanly while raising his mug, uncertain if that was a call to drink or for a haircut. But his new friend grinned manically and poured most of his draught down an enlarged gullet. Aldrin feigned a few sips, before tossing most of the brew behind him where it landed on a very inebriated houseplant.

"Wha' do you call thees stuff again?" Mitrione slurred, his overabundant backside having trouble remaining in the pair of children's stools he crouched over.

"Poison," Kaltar muttered, taking as much care as Aldrin with his share.

They were camped out in what the locals affectionately called the Mayor's house, though no one had been able to pinpoint exactly who the Mayor was or why his home had so many small cat figurines scattered in every corner. Men, freed from their duties of keeping their overwrought wives chained to dying stoves and coughing offspring, flocked to the gathering.

It was about five minutes before a belching contest started up. "Excellent work, my good sir," Kaltar said as if he were grading a term paper, "there was quite a reverberation within that gas blast."