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Chapter 25 - Time // For Finger

  Maeve leaned against the side of the altar, arms crossed, an additional piece of cloth wrapped around the two filter cartridges on the cheek of her mask to block out the stink of burnt flesh.

  Thirty-seven men lay on makeshift benches-for-beds in front of her. Their charred and blistered skin barely clung onto them, and their bodies twitched in pain as the few men who weren't injured fetched them water and colored pills from their own pockets. Maeve had seen sights like this before—a clinic in the aftermath of a disaster—because Vharnveil, for all its gold and splendors, wasn't exactly a peaceful land either. She'd seen clinics twice the size of this one give up on less men with weaker ailments.

  Truth be told, she didn't think even half of the thirty-seven men could be saved.

  But that was why she was told to watch and learn.

  Gael may be a drunk—a drugged-up, crow-whispering, practical-engineering drunk—but the way he stumbled and staggered between the benches down there, nobody would think he didn't know what he was doing. He blurred through the prayer hall like a ghost on the wind, slathering ointments, pressing against ribs, pinching open wounds, peeling back dead skin where they’d already begun to blacken.

  Every time Maeve blinked, it was like he'd made another clone of himself, reaching into his jacket and pulling out something new for a different patient: a tincture, a crushed root, a vial of dark liquid that smelled like fire when it hit raw flesh.

  “Fleshrot’s set in here,” he muttered to himself, pressing two fingers against a gangster’s arm where the burned skin had gone waxy and yellow. “Nasty, nasty. If you don’t scrape it off, your arm’ll stink worse than the Drowned Market. Any objections?”

  The man groaned something weakly

  “Oh, don't be a child. I've had worse on my nails.” Gael didn’t wait for an answer. He tossed a hooked scalpel at the man and tilted his head at Cara, who’d already set up her cooking station with three convertible surgical carts directly before the altar. She was the pharmacist, and he gave the prescriptions. She started brewing something out of crushed vines, moss, and roots as Gael moved onto someone else.

  This new bed was occupied by a younger man, his left side burned almost completely raw. The smell rising from his body was putrid—too putrid. Gael hovered over him for only a moment before yanking the man’s wrist up and sniffing his fingertips.

  “You swallowed pyrepetal, didn’t you?” Gael said plainly.

  The man groaned. Maeve barely caught his reply, hoarse and weak: “To dull the pain—”

  Gael grabbed his jaw and forced his mouth open. His pupils were dilated. His breath reeked of blood and burnt sugar.

  “Bloody fuckin’ idiot.” Gael let go of him roughly and turned his head toward Cara. “One bowl of allowroot and oxthistle!”

  “Pyrepetal overdose?” Cara called back, already tossing a new batch of ingredients into the pot on the second burning cart.

  “Yeah! Heart’s gonna burst in ten minutes if he doesn’t flush it, so get his bowl done before anyone else's!”

  Gael didn’t even pause before moving to another patient.

  The rapidfire pace didn’t stop. For another hour, Gael continued diagnosing man to man with methodical efficiency, never stopping, never second-guessing himself. He handled shattered bones, seared nerve endings, blood loss, infections—identifying them all in moments. The burned gangsters were all skeptical at first, scoffing at the doctor in the raven mask, but then he’d say something too specific—too uncanny—for them to doubt.

  Maeve saw color draining from their faces every time he made a diagnosis.

  “You’ve got mite lungs. Probably from living near the Chokewarrens? Get it checked out before it drowns you in your sleep.”

  “That ain't a fucking burn, you flagging shit. It’s black blood fever starting up. You drink Wraithpier water without passing it through a filter recently?”

  “Nails are dark. Liver’s giving out. Lay off the forty-five percent alcohol for a few weeks or you’ll be pissing bile by next month. Here, have a thirty percent instead. Weakling.”

  Gael moved too fast. Faster than Maeve or Cara could keep up with. For the first hour, at least Cara was somewhat useful—cutting away ruined clothes, pressing dampened linen over scorched skin, smearing layers of herb-thickened salves across raw flesh—but once the worst of the worst had been handled, once the bandages were wrapped and the antiseptics had done their numbing work, it became clear that even Cara wasn’t needed for the menial fetch-herbs-from-the-storage-room labor that Maeve had been doing.

  So Gael waved Cara off as well and told her to get some sleep.

  Cara went without protest, already half-dead on her feet. Maeve didn’t. Not even as Cara passed by and tapped her shoulders, mumbling something about Maeve finally being able to sleep without having to share a bed with Gael tonight.

  Maeve didn’t leave to sleep.

  She stayed by the side of the altar instead, watching Gael run around the prayer hall. Midnight bled into the deepest hours of morning, and as the night stretched on, the injured men stopped groaning one by one and fell into restless sleep.

  Then, at last, the sky began to lighten.

  A weak, grey-green sliver of dawn crept through the stained glass windows around them, and all was quiet in the prayer hall like the aftermath of a slaughter.

  Gael trudged towards the altar, circling around the statue of the Saint to get to the stairs beside her. He was languid like a corpse, shoulders sagging, head lolling slightly forward, top hat almost sliding off his messy hair. His coat was filthy—splattered with blood, ointments, char, but he didn’t seem to notice. Or care.

  He staggered past Maeve, barely upright. “Done,” he mumbled, voice hoarse. “Thirty-seven stabilized. Nobody’s dying. Gonna get a bit of shut-eye. If anyone else comes in, tell Cara… to deal with it…”

  Then his cane and knees gave out the moment he took his first step onto the stairs.

  Maeve whirled around and caught him before he could hit the ground. He wasn’t quite unconscious—she doubted someone as permanently drunk and drugged-up like him ever really slept—but he was dead weight in her arms, and his breath was warm against her shoulder, his body slacking with exhaustion.

  Groaning, she shifted his weight, half-dragging, half-carrying him up the stairs and into the surgical chamber.

  The moment she managed to throw him onto the surgical table in the center of the chamber, he was out cold. She adjusted his arms and legs slightly, making sure he wouldn’t roll off, but once she was done, she stared at him for a moment.

  Arms crossed, she watched his chest rise and fall with slow, deep breaths.

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  …

  He was strange.

  He was nothing like the doctor who had tricked her parents.

  No Vharnish feared its grave diggers, only its Plagueplain Doctors. One would carry you to the earth, and the other would hold you there. Plagueplain Doctors weren’t ‘healers’. They weren’t men who spent entire nights stitching up the wounded and diagnosing gangsters like they were childhood friends. They were violent, brilliant madmen obsessed with whatever field of bioarcanic sciences had caught their interest, and they would carve into bodies like books if there was something they really, really wanted to know.

  So maybe Juno was right. She’d called Gael a ‘wannabe’ Plagueplain Doctor, but at the same time… Old Banks had said otherwise.

  Even Maeve knew the legend: ‘Only Seventy-Two Demonic Plagueplain Doctors. No more. No less’. Their numbers were absolute. They represented the seventy-two servants of the first Saintess Severin—the Great Saintess Severin—back when she was still alive and leading the Church of Severin over half a century ago. If one valued their head, they wouldn’t dare impersonate the seventy-two even by making a knockoff raven mask.

  And the fact was, it seemed Gael had been running around Bharncair for quite some time with that mask on, so the Church must know about him. That he was allowed to live meant he was a legitimate Plagueplain Doctor, and though he may not be a particularly noteworthy or important one the Church had to keep on a leash—unlike a few who were permanently stationed in Vharnveil—he must have taken his mask from someone else.

  Or inherited it.

  Maeve exhaled slowly.

  All Plagueplain Doctors had a title and a rank to go along with it, denoting how long they’d managed to hold onto their masks. The Grimatrix Doctor was ranked one, rumoured to have lived through The Day The Dark Stars Fell. The Armament Doctor was ranked eighteen, rumoured to have played a big part in Saintess Severin being able to strike down the Plague God over half a century ago before dying herself. The Rapture Doctor, ranked thirty-three, was rumoured to have a finger in every negotiation and discussion up in Vharnveil. Those ranked below thirty-three were all the original servants of Saintess Severin, while those ranked thirty-four to seventy-two had all been replaced at least one or two times in the past half a century.

  So, Gael must be one of those who’d been replaced.

  But who?

  Which title?

  Which rank?

  The moment Maeve stepped back from the surgical table, shaking out the tension in her arms, a knock came at the door. A dull, firm rap against the wood—measured, unhurried. Not a desperate gangster begging for treatment. Not another emergency.

  Still, her body tensed on instinct.

  She turned, already moving to answer, but before she could take a step, Cara’s voice drifted from the bedroom.

  “The chaos all over?”

  Maeve glanced up. Cara stood in the doorway, rubbing sleep from her eyes, her long black hair half-loosened from its usual bun. She still looked exhausted, but Maeve nodded.

  “Cool,” Cara mumbled. “I’ll get the door.”

  She padded across the room, yawning into her wrist, and pulled the door open.

  The man who’d first knocked on the door to the clinic last night stood in the threshold, and Maeve’s breath hitched.

  She hadn’t recognized him last night in the dark, but now that sunlight was slowly brightening the world, she recognized him immediately. He was one of the higher-up men from the Black Bloom Bazaar. One of Lorcawn’s five bodyguards.

  Right now, he looked a bit different outside the overgrown chaos of the marketplace. His long black braids were tidily woven, and his dark coat was crisp and well-fitted, not the usual thrown-together scraps of the gangsters down in the central ward. But his face was still the same: gruff, sharp-boned, hard as a scar that’d healed the wrong way, and she still couldn’t get used to that patchwork leather mask over his mouth that looked like it was made with scorched human skin.

  She stiffened.

  The man, however, didn’t seem to recognize her. Or Cara, for that matter. His gaze flicked from her to Gael’s unconscious form on the surgical table, then back to her. He jerked his chin.

  “Let’s talk business,” he said plainly.

  Cara’s expression didn’t change, but when she glanced briefly at Maeve, it was enough of a signal.

  Maeve moved fast. She sprinted around the chamber, dragged three chairs in front of the surgical table, arranged two of them facing the other one, then sat down in one of the two while the man sat on the one. Meanwhile, Cara disappeared into the bedroom. A moment later, she reemerged with a lacquered wooden tray and a small pot of steaming hot tea. Maeve dipped her head and took a cup as Cara set the tray down, pouring another for their guest.

  But before Cara could hand it to him, the man reached into his coat and pulled out a heavy coin pouch, tossing it at Maeve with a flick of his wrist.

  Maeve caught it squarely in her lap. It was heavy.

  “That’s a thousand Marks per man, plus service charge,” the man said. “Fifty thousand Marks in total. Is that enough for payment?”

  Cara grinned. A sharp, slanted thing. She gave a slight bow, one hand still behind her back and the other under the tray. “Oh, that is far more than enough. Thank you for your patronage, good sir.”

  But Maeve could hear it: the tightness in her tone. The subtle urgency. Cara didn’t want to be dealing with the Repossessors—she wanted them out of here.

  Unfortunately, the man wasn’t leaving just yet. His eyes flicked to Gael’s sleeping form again, narrowing slightly.

  “That boy,” he muttered, more to himself than anyone else. Then he looked around at Cara and Maeve. “Is he really a Raven?”

  Silence.

  Maeve dipped her head and pretended to be completely absorbed in her cup of tea.

  “... He’s my little brother." Cara let out a slow breath through her nose. “That’s all he is.”

  The man studied her for a long moment. Then he nodded, accepting the cup of tea Cara finally extended to him.

  As she sat down in the last chair, he dipped his head slightly.

  “My name is Fergal,” he said. “Second Finger of the Repossessors.”

  Cara’s grip on her teacup barely tightened, but Maeve caught the tiny movement. She leaned toward Cara, voice low. “What does that mean?”

  Cara didn’t look at her, eyes still locked on Fergal. “The Repossessors are led by the Palm, who’s the big boss. That’d be Lorcawn, the golden-haired man we saw back in the Black Bloom Bazaar,” she murmured. “But one man can’t run an entire ward, so the five separate divisions in the gang are led by his Five Fingers, so if he’s the Second Finger, that makes him third in command in the entire gang.”

  Fergal sighed, rolling his shoulders slightly. “No need for all that,” he said, taking a slow sip of his tea. “Real, honest-to-god doctors in Blightmarch deserve my respect, and right now, most of my men are in terrible shape. Not just from last night. We’ve only recently moved into this neighbourhood, so we don’t have the manpower to handle everything ourselves yet.”

  Then his dark gaze settled on the two of them.

  “So I need locals,” he said. “I have a job offer for the three of you. I’ll pay well, of course.”

  Maeve and Cara exchanged a glance.

  Then, just as Cara was about to open her mouth and surely decline the Repossessor’s offer—

  Gael twitched violently behind them.

  Both of them flinched as he sat upright, mask slipping askew. His fingers trembled, blindly grabbing for something. Then, with an almost practiced motion, he pulled a syringe from his coat and jammed it into the side of his own neck.

  The effect was immediate. His entire body jerked, a shudder rolling through his limbs, and then—just as suddenly—he stilled.

  His head snapped toward them, pupils blown wide, fever-bright.

  “I heard something about a job,” he rasped. “How much you paying, man?”

  Maeve scowled. “You barely got five minutes of sleep.”

  “I don’t need sleep. I need money.” He turned his attention to Fergal. “So? What is it? You need locals, yeah? We’re locals. We know this place better than anyone. Whatever it is, we can handle it.”

  Cara still looked hesitant, and Maeve didn’t blame her. Maeve didn’t exactly like the idea of working with violent gangsters, either, but for his part, Fergal didn’t answer immediately either.

  He just looked at Gael for a long, long moment—as if wondering if the Plagueplain Doctor could be trusted—before exhaling his nose.

  “I need you to hunt someone down,” he said finally. “I believe the warehouse fire last night wasn’t an accident. I think it was the work of a blood-sucking Nightspawn by the nickname of the 'Flighty’.”

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