“Nah,” she said with a smile. “He’s Dyareelan swine, but I need him alive to prove a point, so … can you fix him, Meral?”
“I’m afraid he’s rather dead,” Meral announced after kneeling and taking a closer look just for their benefit.
“Are you sure?” Kadasah asked in a disappointed voice.
Meral stood up and looked at her with a smile. “The blade seems to have both severed his neck from his backbone and cut his windpipe in two. In my medical opinion, he’s quite dead.” Meral marveled at the fact that there wasn’t a lot of blood; the blow had managed to bring death without hitting any major blood vessels. “On a brighter note, it’s a very clean kill.”
“Could you check him again just to be sure? I sort of need him alive,” she said.
“I told you he was dead, Kadasah. You don’t have to be a healer to see that. You stabbed him through the back of his neck.”
Kadasah gave her companion a dirty look then turned to Meral, smiled helplessly, and said with a shrug, “It’s a very good sword. Are you sure you can’t … I don’t know … make a potion to bring him back?”
“Dead is dead,” Meral answered. “I’m a healer not a wizard.”
She nodded and sighed. “I was afraid of that.”
“He … well, he doesn’t look like one of the Bloody Hand,” Meral said. He’d known Kadasah for a while and it wasn’t the first time she’d come to him when she was in trouble. Kadasah was hotheaded and he wouldn’t half put it past her to kill some poor soul over a dice game then want to take it back.
“Well of course he doesn’t, that’s the whole point,” she explained. “He’s a member of Naimun’s entourage.”
“They’ve infiltrated Arizak’s court?” Meral asked with astonishment and more than a little anxiety.
She seemed to realize then that she might have told him too much. He wondered just what she was up to, and now it looked like she wasn’t likely to tell him. She could be making up this whole story right off the top of her head. It would be just like Kadasah to do that, especially if she’d killed this fellow by accident
“Well, I guess we better take our body and go; sorry to have awoken you, Meral.”
“No problem.” It was, of course, but no sense telling Kadasah that. For one she wouldn’t care and for another it never hurt to have a mercenary of some reputation on your good side.
Kadasah and her friend picked up the body by the arms and started dragging it out.
Meral started to try and stop them, he would have liked to ask them a couple of more questions, but thought better of it. “Sorry I couldn’t help,” he said, watching them as they dragged the body away.
“Maybe some other time,” Kadasah yelled over her shoulder, and then they were gone.
Meral smiled, shook his head, and started back for his bed, but before he made it halfway across the floor a man came screaming into the apothecary brandishing a large dagger. He ran at Meral. Meral stepped aside, and the man ran past him. As he turned to continue his attack Meral pedaled backward, frantically looking for something to use as a weapon to defend himself. He tripped over something of unknown origin and went sprawling. His attacker stood over him ready to pounce, and Meral was sure he was about to breathe his last. He cringed under his arms, and Kadasah seemed to appear from nowhere, sword in hand, screaming a battle cry.
His attacker turned to face the woman and found himself sliced nearly in two for his troubles. She looked down at Meral, smiling helplessly, and shrugged. “Good sword,” she apologized. “And bad, bad, evil cultist.”
“You … you saved my life from that Dyareelan scum,” Meral said as Kadasah reached down with her free hand and helped him to his feet. “If there is ever anything I can do for you …”
“Ah, it wasn’t nothing, but … as long as we’re talking. You got any potions to … Oh, I don’t know, make me run faster and jump higher? And I don’t want the crap this time, Meral, I want the good stuff.”
Meral made up the potion quickly. When he had finished she shoved it into one of three pouches she carried on her belt, then she left, stopping just long enough to reach down and grab the cultist’s body by one foot and drag it off with her.
Meral wanted to ask her why she was taking the body. Ask if they shouldn’t call the authorities about the attack. But the truth was Meral was a healer of moderate skill. His potions many times didn’t work exactly as they were supposed to. He couldn’t afford any more bad press, and dead bodies in a healer’s office were never good for business. Then there was that other thing—it just wasn’t smart to get on Kadasah’s bad side, people who did wound up dead.
“Better to have her as an ally,” Meral mumbled as he put his herbs away.
They didn’t really start talking until they had unloaded the bodies in a remote location next to the Swamp of Night Secrets.
Kadasah started to laugh even as Kaytin stood shaking in his boots and looking all around, expecting some evil haunt to pop out from behind the trees and fog at any moment.
“Meral never even blinked, he just gave me those potions. Hell, I think he’d have given me half the store if I’d just asked. He thought I saved him. It never occurred to him that the bastard had followed us there and that he figured the healer knew too much and was going to kill him just as a forerunner of getting his hands on us.”
“The Bloody Hand are on to you. They know now that you’re the one who’s been depleting their numbers, probably because of all your bragging. They sent an assassin for us, and you somehow find that funny. Well, Kaytin for one is not laughing.”
“Would you calm down and quit being such a chicken shite? They didn’t have time to send someone after us. That guy had to have seen us take ole-what’s-his-face and followed on his own”
“And that’s another thing, Kadasah. I saw no one following us, and neither did you. It is the Chaos Goddess herself who has seen what you are doing. That man,” Kaytin pointed to the larger of the two corpses, “called out to her in his final moments. She heard and sent another of her servants after us.”
“Frogs, Kaytin. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times. There are no gods; there are no goddesses. Just stupid people who want to believe that everything that goes wrong in their lives isn’t their fault.”.
Kaytin covered his ears. “Kaytin does not want to hear. Quit saying such things, and especially don’t say them here and now.” He uncovered his ears and said in a hopeful voice, “Perhaps the Bloody Hand was after the healer and not after us at all.”
“Come on, Kaytin, use that little thing you call a brain. Why would a member of the Bloody Hand be after Meral?”
“Because they want to cause pain and destruction, and someone who heals takes away pain and stops destruction,” Kaytin answered.
“Ah … maybe, but I don’t think so. Doesn’t matter. Meral thinks I saved him, and I’ll be able to go get any kind of potion I want, without paying for quite awhile.” Kadasah busied herself stripping the corpses of anything that might identify them—and anything of value. “I ruined this robe and the shirt he was wearing under it,” she muttered.
“If Dyareela is on to you, ruined clothing will be the least of your worries and you might need the healer’s services to mend your wounds.”
“I’ve blown farts more powerful than this so-called goddess.”
“Kadasah, do not taunt the goddess,” Kaytin said in a hiss.
She frowned then, and for a second Kaytin thought that perhaps she understood the true seriousness of their situation, but then she ruined the moment by saying, “This one’s covered with tattoos and scars, but Naimun’s boy doesn’t have a single distinguishing mark on his body. Frogs, how can I prove I got two? If these guys aren’t going to mark themselves, it’s going to make it damn hard for me to collect my reward.”