Chapter 49 - The Farm in Irttat
Chapter 49: Flame in the Swamp 05
All three were still foggy with half-sleep, watching stone-faced as a crowd of people carrying wooden sticks surged inside and began ransacking every corner.
They had let their guard down.
In ordinary times, commoners dared not offend those of higher standing, not because the privileged were inherently superior, but because the privileged had guards and knights to protect them. Only the threat of violence could guarantee absolute authority.
In the present era, the middle classes moved about in the city districts in relative safety because they had the city's law and order to rely on.
The three of them had neither. They were entirely on their own, and in possession of a lifesaving supply of medicine. It would have been strange if no one had set their sights on them.
And for the poor, having endured endless exploitation and oppression their whole lives, a sudden act of generosity from someone of higher standing triggered wariness before gratitude.
Better to strike first than to wait for some hidden plot to unfold. Especially now, with the city's law and order collapsing and no one left to guard them, this was the moment to seize the medicine by force.
Whatever those fine people had been handing out yesterday, it had done something extraordinary, something beyond anything these slum residents had ever witnessed.
A sickness no doctor had managed to cure, a sickness so catastrophic that even the lord of the city had been helpless, turning Grande into a dead city, and it only took a bowl of decoction to relieve it?
Having searched fruitlessly through every corner, the intruders' attention gradually turned to the three women themselves.
None of them were particularly alarmed.
Setting aside the fact that all three were in their prime and in good health, the crowd facing them were gaunt with illness and prolonged weakness, looking as though they might collapse in a stiff breeze. Beyond that, Kelsey's swordsmanship was exceptional, Lucita was half of a long-lived race in reflexes and constitution, and even Stasia could hold her own with a tempered iron sword if she had to.
The crowd closed in around them.
The leader gripped her wooden stick in both hands, eyes menacing: "Talk. Where have you hidden the medicine?"
No one answered. Kelsey drew her sword first.
That single motion of drawing steel drove the crowd back two full steps.
These intruders had no iron weapons. Most carried wooden sticks, and some were plainly curtain rods, worn smooth and polished from years of use.
Faced with a real blade, the instinctive dread was always there.
Kelsey held the sword level in front of her, not advancing a single step.
She was about to speak when Lucita asked suddenly: "Did you receive medicine yesterday?"
The leader, not knowing what she was getting at, nodded with some suspicion.
"How was it? Did it work?"
The leader looked more confused still, and felt somehow that Lucita had seized complete control of the exchange. She said with irritation: "If it didn't work, why would I bother coming to rob you?"
"But we've already been distributing medicine to you. Why would you need to steal it?"
"Who knows what you lot are really up to? Can your kind actually do anything good?" the leader said roughly, "Since you were going to give us the medicine sooner or later anyway, you might as well hand it over now and put our minds at rest."
The leader had finally said something sensible.
Lucita gave a cold smile: "Give it to all of you, or give it to you? We were distributing it perfectly well, and now you suddenly show up to seize it. Isn't that just so you can keep it for yourself? When we distribute medicine, we follow a principle of fairness. Everyone gets their share. What about you? If you took it, how would you divide it? How would anyone trust you to do it fairly?"
A buzzing murmur went through the crowd.
The leader faltered for a moment, then shouted back: "Trust you, some outsider? Is that better?"
"At the very least, yesterday we distributed medicine for an entire day." Lucita smiled calmly, "One bowl per person, no more and no less. Everyone here saw it with their own eyes. Anyone who queued received their dose."
"I'd invite everyone to think it over for themselves. Who should you trust? Her, or us?"
"If anyone continues to make trouble today, there'll be no avoiding swords and blades. To have a chance of recovering with one bowl of medicine a day, and instead lose your life here, that would be a terrible shame."
The buzz through the crowd grew louder.
Then, all at once, a scrawny youth in her early twenties clutched her curtain rod and bolted out the door.
Her flight inspired a few others, who couldn't help but follow.
The loosely assembled crowd scattered like startled birds.
In the courtyard, Lucita turned to the leader with a look of genuine regret: "You see. Everyone's eyes are open to the truth. What a pity. Your share of medicine is forfeit."
Her voice was not loud, but it carried clearly to every ear.
Those who had fled breathed quiet sighs of relief. The leader's face went the color of ash.
"Greed always exacts its price. Don't you think?" Lucita said, her tone quiet but pointed: "The truth is, we're rather afraid of being continually harassed. If it comes to that, I'm afraid we truly won't dare linger here."
After the crowd dispersed, they made an inventory of the damage to the small courtyard.
A broken-down wooden gate, a toppled water vat, a smashed old flower vase……they tallied it all up, calculated the cost in silver coins, and doubled it, sending the sum back to the young daughter of the house, Dalila, to pass on to her mother.
Dalila looked somewhat indignant on their behalf, and also somewhat pleased about the silver coins. Her expression shifted through several changes before the joy of the coins won out, and she couldn't help breaking into a grin.
Stasia asked Kelsey: "What were you going to do when you drew your sword just now?"
Kelsey answered without a moment's hesitation: "Make an example of one to warn the rest."
“......” Stasia fell silent for a moment, suddenly recalling that in the final years of Eaton, Crown Prince Kelsey had been known for precisely this kind of iron resolve.
She had accomplished everything she had set out to accomplish, intimidating the nobility, upholding the law, strengthening the nation's defenses, even protecting innocent elves, and introducing legislation prohibiting their abuse.
But to have done all of that in just three short years, there was no telling how much blood had stained her hands.
Stasia stayed quiet for a long time. Kelsey turned her head in surprise.
She pressed her lips together, hesitated briefly, then said: "She clearly had no good intentions…… Are you afraid of me?"
Stasia shook her head.
"You always have to choose between the fate of the few and the fate of the many, even when the choice itself seems almost wicked. But I know that isn't your fault."
That afternoon they set out their medicine stall as usual, leaving Lucita and the household's young daughter Dalila to keep watch, while Stasia and Kelsey went to the main city district.
Their destination was every apothecary in the city.
According to Stasia, the human world had a great many ordinary plants with medicinal uses, a diverse variety growing in all manner of environments, covering a range that Irttat alone could never fully provide. After all, Irttat was only a small town of modest size.
By this point, the human world's medicinal herbology had been fairly thoroughly mapped, and in a major city like Grande, an apothecary could usually supply most varieties of herb.
These were the materials Stasia needed to attempt to substitute the magical herbs currently in the formula.
Their supply of medicine was nowhere near sufficient for an entire city. It could only serve as an emergency stopgap.
A lasting solution to the plague could only come from Stasia developing a workable substitute formula.
Lucita saw the black-haired, green-eyed woman again.
After her third encounter with the vision of the white-bone swamp, Lucita left the stall temporarily in Dalila's hands and called out to the woman: "Excuse me, ma’am……"
The woman turned, a puzzled expression on her face.
Lucita felt the approach was rather abrupt, but pressed on anyway: "I noticed you don't seem to be ill yourself. Are you collecting medicine for a family member?"
The woman looked slightly ill at ease: "Someone who isn't sick…… can't receive medicine?"
"No, that's not it at all," Lucita said quickly, suddenly aware of how much she sounded like a stranger forcing conversation. Still, at least the other person wasn't a man, "I was only curious. Who are you bringing it for?"
The woman lowered her head, as though something had come to her, and a brief, gentle expression crossed her face, "Ah. My daughter."
"I see. I hope she recovers soon." Lucita said, flatly, finding no further thread to pull the conversation along, and could only watch the woman walk slowly away.
Stasia and Kelsey returned with a great variety of herbs, manageable to carry only because of the storage necklaces.
According to them, almost every apothecary still in operation had armed guards posted inside, and the medicines were priced extortionately, clearly the property of certain nobles, profiteering from the plague.
They had spent some of their spice reserves to obtain these expensive herbs, and on the way back encountered two groups of vagrants attempting robbery. It was only because Kelsey kept her sword at her side that they made it home safely.
Stasia had brought her own set of laboratory equipment.
Back with the herbs, Stasia immediately threw herself into research, disappearing into the room and not coming out.
On the third day, Lucita saw the woman again.
But this time, she was not in the queue for medicine.
She had the old bone flute in her hand — the one she usually wore at her waist — and was playing a nameless melody, walking past the medicine stall.
The young girl Dalila murmured to herself in puzzlement: "A requiem?"
"What?" Lucita hadn't caught it clearly, and was staring steadily at the woman's slight retreating figure.
"It's a song popular in Grande. When a loved one or partner passes away, people walk along the streets playing this melody, hoping the spirit of the departed will find peace at last." Dalila was explaining, humming along softly under her breath, when she stopped short. "Wait, no, that's not it. I think it's a soul-summoning song……"
"And what is that?"
Dalila swallowed: "It's exactly what it sounds like. Some people……want the ones they've lost to stay close to them still……"
Lucita remembered the day before, the woman's gentle tone when she answered “my daughter”.
She took a few steps in the direction the woman had gone, then felt a sudden wave of dizziness.
The white-bone swamp again. Eternal night. Lucita was beginning to know it too well.
She narrowed her eyes slightly and looked ahead.
In the distance, a point of white light.
It appeared to be a small flame, flickering faintly, as though it might go out at any moment.
By its light, the old cracked bones, the foam churning across the surface of the swamp, all of it was dimly visible.
Strange. That flame……
There was no wind, was there?
She reached out a hand to feel, then suddenly remembered that she had no sense of touch lately.
So was that flickering flame stirred by some faint current of air?
She lifted her foot and tried to walk toward the source of the light, to determine the wind's direction and the light's origin.
Then the vision broke off.
The crowded street. The queue of sick people. The woman's retreating back, growing smaller in the distance.
Lucita watched that figure and asked Dalila: "Who is she?"
"I don't know her very well. She's an auntie from another street." Dalila answered dutifully, "I think she only has one daughter at home."
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