"How much?" asked Carzen the sawyer, Sharheya's son-in-law, eyeing the apothecary warily. Pel's mass of black-and-silver hair and smooth face confused people as to his age, but his calm bedside manner gave him the air of a sage, too dignified to argue with.
Pel held up long fingers to count. "Nine padpols for today, another for the twist. A bright silver soldat for the month-long cure."
"A soldat! Too much!"
"Pay the man," Sharheya said, her eyes narrowing as if the pain had returned suddenly. Pel knew there was little love lost between his two visitors, but the widow Sharheya owned the wood and the lumberyard attached to it that was the family's fortune. If Carzen wished his wife to be disinherited and all passing to Sharheya's scholar brother, all Carzen had to do was infuriate Sharheya at the right moment. Accidents happened, especially in such a dangerous place as a sawmill. The woman was always changing her will. Pel had been in and out of it for a year. He had never cared whether a bequest was forthcoming; he would have provided care for those who genuinely needed his gift. If he liked them it would cost them less than it cost Carzen. He didn't like Carzen. The man had all the conscience of a scorpion.
"What's in it?" Carzen asked, peering at the taller man from under his shaggy brown eyebrows.
"Willowbark, dark-well water, cider, poppy, feverfew picked at the new moon, sgandi leaf…"
"Sgandi? You mean stinkweed? I could make your potion, for nothing!" Carzen snapped his fingers under the healer's nose. "I could throw those weeds in a jug and save myself the price, as well as the trouble of coming to you."
Pel just raised his salt-and-pepper eyebrow. "In what proportions would you mix them? Too much of one thing, not enough of another would be fatal. And do you know the propitious times to gather each plant? Where to get the most potent weeds?" It had been so long since he'd been here in his home city that the local Ilsigi—the Wrigglie—dialect felt strange and slippery in his mouth. What was the commonplace insulting term they used to one another? Yes, that was it. "Pay up, pud, or take your problems home with you. Fair for fair. If you won't pay, then I have no obligation to you. I don't care." But he did. He could feel the suffering of the people who came to him, and he wanted them whole. His hand sought out Sharheya's, and held it tightly. All their pain resonated in him. It was part of his punishment, and his salvation. The old woman gave her son-in-law a disgusted look.
"Pay him and let's go home! I don't trust the apprentices to make that rosewood table for Lord Kuklos without supervision."
Grumbling, Carzen dug in his scrip. Looking up at Pel after each coin hit the table, he tossed out padpols one at a time. When he got to nine he started to put his purse away. Sharheya cleared her throat with meaning, the meaning being that if he didn't move faster she would call for pen and parchment right there. He put the tenth down for the herb twist, then very slowly produced a soldat. It wasn't very shiny.
"How long?" Carzen asked. Pel pointed up. The wood-smith ran a practiced eye across the ceiling. "Uhm. Nine yards. You need more than one, pud. All that's holding up your roof is prayer. You need at least sixteen."
"I can't afford them all at once," Pel said. "I'm in no hurry."
"A good joist'll cost you more than one soldat. Four."
"Two. Add in next month's treatment as well," Pel offered, as the woodman started to protest.
"You've got a deal, foreigner," Carzen said. He spat in his palm and held out his hand. Pel gripped it. "I'll have my boys haul it up." He leered at the apothecary. "Labor's extra."
"Carzen!"
"It's all I expect," Pel gathered up the money in his free hand and tucked it away in his apron. "Thank you." He bowed over Sharheya's hand, a Rankan custom that he'd picked up from the courtiers of his more exalted clients. "I wish you healthy. If you have need of me, come back at once, or send a messenger."
Sharheya rose, chuckling. She stretched her back, arching it plea-surably. "I'd best come myself, healer. There are not too many boys in our yard who would willingly go running alone up the Avenue of Temples, no matter what kind of a beating I'd threaten them with for disobeying. Good day to you. Come, Carzen." She stalked out of the stone building and waited at the side of their donkey cart, waiting. The sawyer followed, still grumbling.
Pel watched them go, jingling his earnings in his pocket. The Avenue of Temples might not be everyone's idea of a choice address, but the muffling qualities of the empty buildings in between his shop and the next inhabited structure saved him many an explanation, especially at night, when guilt stalked him like a wolf.
The day he had fled Sanctuary he had never intended to return. The horrors he had left behind were more than any man's mind could have taken without breaking. The worst was that he was responsible for some of it.
He had been called Wrath of the Goddess, because his long reach and swift stride meant that none could escape him. His emotions ran to extremes, but especially his anger. He had believed with all his heart in the cause of the Mother. Humanity was corrupt, as anyone could see by the plagues that it had called down upon itself from the gods. To save it, therefore, required purification, freeing the mortal sphere from that which angered the divine mother goddess. He'd entered Sanctuary with the others of the Hand, determined to wipe out the stain.
But the purge had not gone as he had expected. The Mother had not caused the city and all of humankind to ascend into a new, pure age. Instead, over the next nine years came more of the corruption he had always seen before, some of it coming from the very priests he respected, coupled with a savagery that horrified him. When earlier only the unrighteous were being sought out and destroyed, he'd been able to accept that. But as the occupation continued, with anyone who held back a padpol or had an impure thought being considered irretrievably evil, Pel began to doubt. Then he grew frightened. If he was suspected of losing faith in the Mother he would be next on the flensing block. He was not afraid to die for his beliefs, but they were slipping away from him. He waited for a cleansing fire to come down and consume all the priests who were killing indiscriminately, who took offerings from the impure then killed them anyhow. None came. Sacrifices were held for no reason. Men and women were bled out for no other reason than they had angered one of the Hand. Then came the siege by the Irrune. The Servants of the Mother offered up desperate sacrifices to regain control. His own wife, sister-priest who had stood beside him when they swore themselves to Dyareela, caught the blood fever, and pulled their own child from the pits to cast onto the Mother's altar. The horror of watching their daughter die broke Pel's mind free. No longer could he wield his knife without thinking that beneath it was some father's son or daughter.
Though he had pronounced them in silence, once the words had been said he could no longer remain with the other worshipers of Dyareela. Their stronghold was falling to the Irrune and Lord Molin Torchholder. Many priests had disappeared underground, ahead of the schism, and more ahead of the Irrune invasion. He told his masters that he was going into hiding, too. They gave him their blessing, thinking that he would continue secretly to do their bloody work for them. He let them believe it. As soon as he could, he fled Sanctuary.
He went as far as money would take him, then walked straight off the cart out of the last town into the countryside. He had no thought as to shelter or food or comfort. If his goddess had abandoned him, he had no choice left but to welcome death. But it didn't want him yet.