Kelford sat in the bend of a slow, wide river, a walled town of shingled roofs under the evening sky. The six miles from the ridge ate the whole afternoon, mostly since the knife man hopped like a wounded crow.
"Hey, can we pick up the pace back there, or is everybody planning to retire on this road?" Ray called over his shoulder, tugging the rope.
"His knee bends sideways now," Yuzu said, "thanks to you."
"It was a great idea, Doc, so I stand by every inch of that knee."
The knife man whimpered at the word, hopping faster as if his kneecap might hear Ray and get ideas.
The four prisoners shuffled behind the mule, roped neck to neck, their splints and slings rattling with every step.
Rogan walked last, his wrists lashed with a borrowed belt, his eyes fixed on Ray’s back for six straight miles.
’Six miles of staring means he’s counting my steps, waiting for the one where I stop paying attention.’
"You keep looking at me like that, champ, people are going to start talking," he said without turning around.
Rogan spat into the dust, "Laugh it up, wand-boy, while the guild sharpens the knife it’ll use to skin you for laying hands on licensed men."
"Hahaha, then I’ll make sure to bring them a fruit basket when I visit."
The mule snorted at everyone, plodding on with the weary contempt of an animal that carried idiots for a living.
Yuzu walked beside it with the satchel hugged against her ribs, checking the vials by touch every hundred steps.
"How much is all that medicine worth, if somebody had to buy it twice?" he asked, nodding at the satchel.
"Forty silver... if the herbalist liked me that morning."
"Then those four clowns tried to sell a woman and forty silver of medicine to goblins for one lousy purse they could have earned honestly in a week, making it the shittiest trade I’ve ever seen."
"They also kept the purse," she said dryly.
The gate was a timber arch under a single lantern, guarded by a thick-necked sergeant with a spear.
He planted the spear across the road, eyeing the prisoners like a man who found a rat in his soup.
"Halt right there, lad, then explain why you’re dragging licensed escorts through my gate like a string of trout."
"Sergeant Bram, it’s me," Yuzu said, stepping into the lantern light, "these men sold me to the goblins in the Xua gorge."
Bram squinted at her, then at Rogan, then back at her with the slow suspicion of a man near supper.
"Rogan’s crew has walked this road for three years, miss, without a single complaint on the guild board."
"That’s what happens when nobody you sell lives long enough to file one," Ray said, "which is a hell of a business model."
Bram sighed through his mustache, "Who are you supposed to be, lad, walking up to my gate on foot without a pack or a single paper to your name?"
"The name’s Ray, freelance contractor, currently running a free delivery service for your town watch."
"Freelance means unregistered, so you’ll stand in the guild hall by morning or I’ll fine you—"
"How much is the fine for loitering around here, just so I can budget for it?" Ray asked, cutting in.
"Two silver, lad, though I’d enjoy collecting it more than my supper."
Bram leaned toward Yuzu’s skirt, sniffing once as his whole face wrinkled at the reek of fish oil.
"That’s swamp bait, sure as rain, the oil trappers smear on a carcass to call goblins out of the reeds."
"Rogan smashed it over my skirt at the dead spring while his axeman held my arm," Yuzu said flatly.
The sergeant looked at Rogan for a long moment, his tired eyes going hard as old leather in the cold. He waved two younger watchmen forward, letting them take the prisoners’ rope from Ray’s hand without another word of argument.
"The magistrate can have the lot of them, though the rest of your story keeps until morning, miss."
The youngest watchman knelt by Rogan to swap the belt for iron cuffs, fumbling the buckle with nervous fingers.
"Hold still for me while I fit these cuffs around your—" the boy mumbled.
The belt fell loose mid-sentence, Rogan’s good hand darting out to snatch the dagger from the boy’s hip.
Ray stopped blinking before the blade cleared its sheath, his eyes settling on Rogan without hurry.
Rogan came off his knees blade-first from two paces, driving his whole weight at the man who wrecked his shoulder.
Ray turned inside the thrust, catching the wrist for a Krav Maga break as his knee crushed Rogan’s thigh.
"Aghhh!"
Rogan folded onto the cobbles, his leg dead beneath him while the dagger skittered toward the gutter.
Ray set one boot on the dagger, looking down at him with no expression at all.
"You had six miles to change your mind, Rogan, so I’d advise you to stay down this time."
He said it quietly, almost kindly, while the watch horse by the gate shied hard against its post. Bram took a half step back without meaning to, his spear rising an inch before he caught himself.
The pale guard at the gate decided his own feet deserved his full attention.
Then the grin came back, easy and lopsided, his hand offering the pale guard the dagger hilt first.
"Keep that tied down, kid, seeing as some of your guests are very sore losers."
"Y-yes, sir, I’ll keep it tied down tight from now on," the boy stammered, clutching the dagger with both hands.
Ray tugged his belt out from under the moaning heap, threading it back through the loops of his trousers.
"I’ll take this back too, given that my pants have been nervous for six miles."
Bram stared at Rogan writhing in the street, then at Ray, chewing his mustache as if it might explain things.
"Twenty years on this gate, lad, I’ve never once seen a man move like that without a spell behind him."
"I guess I eat a lot of... vegetables," Ray said, earning a look that could curdle milk.
’Twenty years on a gate without seeing it tells me exactly how rare my kind of trouble is around here.’
They left the prisoners with the watch, walking into the town square as lamps flickered on behind shutters.
The square should be roaring at this hour, full of vendors packing carts while children dodged their mothers. Instead it lay hushed, the few people still outside hurrying past with scarves pulled up over their mouths.
"Is it always this quiet here, or did somebody forget to invite me to the funeral?"
"It was loud a month ago," Yuzu said.
A woman at the central well swayed, her bucket slipping from her fingers as her knees gave out.
Yuzu was moving before the bucket hit the ground, catching the woman under the arms to lower her gently.
Pale light spread from her palms into a shallow dome, the Veil settling over the woman like a blanket.
"She’s burning with channel toxicity, her pulse is fluttering like a moth, hold her head still for me."
Ray knelt, cradling the woman’s head in his lap while Yuzu tipped a sunleaf tincture between her cracked lips.
’Her fingertips are violet, like she dipped them in ink, except the color sits under the skin.’
The woman’s breathing slowed as the shaking eased out of her limbs, the dome brightening once before it faded.
"She’ll live through the night, though she needs a bed with boiled water before this comes back worse."
A thin man burst out of a doorway, wringing his cap in both hands, "Hanna, oh gods, please tell me she’s breathing!"
"She’s breathing, so carry her to bed, boil every drop she drinks, then fetch me at dawn."
He gathered his wife into his arms, mumbling thanks over his shoulder as he stumbled back through the doorway.
"That vial cost two silver, which I will never see again," Yuzu said, corking it with a sigh.
"Put it on my tab, considering I became a man of means about... three hours ago."
She watched the door close, her mouth pressed into a line that aged her ten years in a breath.
"That’s the fifth collapse this month, counting only the ones who could crawl to my door."
"Has anybody told the town council, or is a dying town above their pay grade?" Ray asked, scanning the shuttered windows.
"I told them four times, which earned me a lecture about boiling water and not frightening people."
"Telling poor people to boil their water is a brilliant plan right up until someone has to buy the firewood."
"The council owns the firewood yard," she said.
A cart rattled across the square behind an old horse, carrying a small coffin wrapped in linen.
A couple walked behind it without speaking, the father’s hand resting on the lid as if it might blow away.
Yuzu went still beside Ray, her hand finding his sleeve and refusing to let go.
"That’s the Merrow girl, who was six... who came to my clinic with the fever two weeks ago."
The linen over the coffin was spotted with violet stains, blooming in the cloth like bruises on a child’s arm.
’I’ve buried plenty of people who earned it, but nobody alive has ever earned a box that small.’
Ray unwrapped the goblin knob from its rag, holding it beside the linen as the cart rolled past.
The same violet stared back from both, with an identical sick shine and a faint warmth against his palm.
[ SAMPLE COMPARISON ]
[Sample 1: Goblin Nodule]
[Sample 2: Coffin Linen]
[Sample 3: Fever Patient]
[Contaminant: Identical]
"Doc, draw me a bucket from that well," he said quietly, every trace of the joke gone from his voice.
Yuzu let go of his sleeve as if the cloth turned cold, staring up at a stranger’s face.
She hauled the bucket hand over hand, then held her palm above it, letting a thread of light sink in. The water answered with a sullen violet haze, humming faintly in the falling dusk like a hive of angry wasps.
"Every well in Kelford draws from the same river channel, which means every house in town is drinking this."
"Then this was never a fever, which makes it a poisoning with a whole town on the guest list."
’Nomi said he drives siphons into the living channels and drinks until the towns around them rot.’
Ray looked past the wall at the river, slow under the last light, carrying poison into every cup in Kelford.
’It’s only my first day in this world, yet I can already see exactly where this contract is going to lead.’