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“What need, sir?” you sigh and say.
Gently he removes himself from the mother’s grasp, who remains there a shattered thing, and leads you (or rather is led) outside.
“This illness has struck too swift and too deep for my arts to heal. My physics fail…”
“Metaphysical aid is priced in horrors,” you reply, speaking what was in his thoughts.
He squats to your height and seizes you. “I have always sensed a kinship between you and them,” he says.
“Horrors?”
“Metaphysics. First, I wondered you did not belong to this caste. Then I knew you do not belong to this world.” He thumbs the white scar around your throat. There is a pity in his expression that smites you deeper than any blow. He stands. “Vows, and the cowardice of them, forbid me to do what must be done.” From his robes he brandishes a heavy cross, and lays it flat upon his trembling palm. It glitters flame and water, where the gems are set, and gold where they are not. He takes your palm by his other hand and presses the cross down upon it. “Take this to the fens where the curse-maker, oath-breaker, wryd-sister, lives.”
“I?” you say, even as your hand closes around the cross.
“If you had not come, I would have sought you out. It must be you.” He touches your chest, as if to feel your fear. But there is none, and he is satisfied. “Purchase the brew that will save this innocent.”
“I could purchase ought besides.”
“We shall see,” he says, and ducks back inside the cottage.
Your thoughts are…
>That the priest is fool to trust you. With this, you can purchase the means to your studied revenge.
>That blindness unbecomes this cursed priest. His insight is keener than he sees; even the damned may become his instruments.
>On gallantry, on the tales upon your brother’s knee before he turned traitor, of damsels, dragons, and the knights who sought them.
>Write-in