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instruction, had overheard the brat's preposterous pleadings and taken
sympathy on her, coming to find the Doctor in her workshop mortar and
pestling her pungently arcane ingredients with my help and report that her
services were requested. By some bastard from the slums!
I could not believe it when she agreed. Couldn't she hear the storm groaning
round the lanterns in the roof above? Hadn't she noticed I'd had to light all
our lamps in the room?
Was she deaf to the gurgle of drain water in the walls?
We were on our way to see some destitute breed who were distantly related to
the servants of the Mifelis, the chiefs of the trader clan the Doctor had
worked for when she had first come to Haspide. The King's personal physician
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was about to pay a call in a storm, not on anyone noble, likely to be ennobled
or indeed even respectable, but on a family of slack-witted all-runt
ne'er-do-wells, a tribe of contagiously flea'd happen-ills so fundamentally
useless they were not even servants but merely the hangers-on of servants,
itinerant leeches on the body of the city and the land.
Coinless and hopeless, to be short about it, and even the Doctor might have
had the sense to refuse but for the fact that she had, bizarrely, heard of
this sickly urchin. 'She has a voice from another world,' she'd told me as
she'd swirled on her cloak, as though this was all the explanation required.
'Please hurry, mistress!' wailed the whelp who'd come to summon us. Her accent
was thick and her voice made irksome by her disease-dark snaggle teeth.
'Don't tell the Doctor what to do, you worthless piece of shit!' I told her,
trying to be helpful. The lame brute ducked and hobbled away in front, across
the glistening cobbles of the square.
'Oelph! Kindly keep a civil tongue in your head,' the Doctor told me, grabbing
her medicine bag back from me.
'But mistress!' I protested. At least, though, the Doctor had waited until our
limping guide was out of earshot before chastising me.
She screwed up her eyes against the lashing rain and raised her voice above
the howl of the wind. 'Do you think we can get a cab?'
I laughed, then turned the offending noise into a cough. I made a show of
looking around as we approached the lower edge of the Square, where the lame
child had disappeared down a narrow street. I could just make out a few
scavenging people scattered along the eastern side of the Square, flapping
back and forth in their rags as they collected the half-
rotted leaves and rain-sodden husks which had been blown there from the centre
of the
Square, where the vegetable market had been. Not another soul to be seen.
Certainly not a cabbie, rickshaw puller or chair carrier. They had more sense
than to be out in weather like this. 'I think not, mistress,' I said.
'Oh dear,' the Doctor said, and seemed to hesitate. For one wonderful moment I
thought she might see sense and return us both back to the warmth and comfort
of her apartments, but it was not to be. 'Oh well,' she said, holding the top
of her cloak closed at her neck, settling her hat more firmly on her
gathered-up hair and putting her head down to hurry onwards. 'Never mind. Come
on, Oelph.'
Cold water was creeping down my neck. 'Coming, mistress.'
The day had passed reasonably well until then. The Doctor had bathed, spent
more time writing in her journal, then we had visited the spice market and
nearby bazaars while the storm was still just a dark brew on the western
horizon. She had met with some merchants and other doctors at the house of a
banker to talk about starting a school for doctors (I was consigned to the
kitchen with the servants and so heard nothing of consequence and little of
sense), then we walked smartly back up to the palace while the sky clouded
over and the first few rain squalls swept in over from the outer docks. I
fondly and quite mistakenly congratulated myself for escaping back to the
comfort and warmth of the palace before the storm set in.
A note on the door to the Doctor's rooms informed us that the King desired to
see her and so it was off towards his private apartments as soon as we'd put
down our bags full of spices, berries, roots and earths. A servant intercepted
us in the Long Corridor with news that the King had been wounded in a practice
duel and hearts in our mouths we made quickly for the game halls.
'Sire, a leech! We have the finest! The rare Emperor leech, from Brotechen!'
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