Yadugara grumbled on for a while about how he’d been at the guild office at the crack of dawn, preparing all the documents for his shameless student and getting nothing in return but displeasure in place of gratitude.
“You’ve had enough from me! I picked you up as a homeless thief whose fate was the mines, brought you up in my own house, taught you all I know, gave you a roof over your head, food, options... And this is how you repay me? We’re done, Penant, you may go! Gather your things and get out of here,” the master finished. “If you find a donor, let me know and I’ll help you perform the procedure properly. Oh, Two-horns! Mo, Reyna, wipe those tears off his face!”
Pen’s face was already covered in tears as he cried over his lost years. While Aunt Mo wiped away the soup he’d spilled on the table, Reyna used a kitchen cloth to clean the old man’s face in disgust. The abundance of stinking odors made Pen throw up all over Aunt Mo.
“Two-horns take you!” the woman swore. “You son of a flea-bitten mutant-raped sheep! Chinils, may the Sacred Mother forgive me!”
Under a stream of profanity from the people who were apparently the closest to him in the world, Penant threw up even more.
“Enough!” Reyna shouted, throwing the rag to the floor. “I’m not cleaning up his blubbering any more!”
Penant looked at her from under his furrowed brows and gasped. Nobody would have thought the girl over the age of sixteen. That bastard had given her a transfusion too? From him?
Yadugara approached Pen and carefully slapped him on the shoulder, trying not to get anything on his hands.
“You’ll get your years back, why so glum?”
Why so glum!? Was he joking? He was seventy years old now, if not more! He was a doddering and worthless old man, and his shaking hands wouldn’t let him hold so much as a spoon, let alone a surgical instrument! His life was over!”
“Give me back at least five years,” Pen mumbled. He’d lost a few teeth in the morning. “I won’t be able to practice, I have tremors...”
“Have your brains completely dried out?” Yadugara asked, looking at the old man thoughtfully. “I’m not a donor. The transfusion won’t work.”
They spent some time in silence. The master distantly drank his grain brew, Reyna smiled at something, Aunt Mo clattered around as she washed up, and Pen’s will was so crushed that he could think of nothing. Practice? Where? Pen didn’t even realize that he’d asked the questions aloud.
“Are you sure you need to practice?” Yadugara bowed his head, making as if he was thinking. “Pen, my friend... Why don’t you just stay and live out your final years? Maybe we could find you a donor in time and make you young again...”
“What the hell do we need him for, master?” Reyna hissed. “Drink out what he has left and throw the rest to the chinils!”
“Oh, there’s an idea!” Nestor said and laughed as he saw Penant’s terrified face. “We’re joking, simpleton. Gather your things.”
“Where do I go?” Pen asked vaguely.
“You will get a hundred gold pieces as a reward for your years of service. Reyna will give them to you. It will last you a while, then you’re on your own. You have a license. Start by earning a living as a healer among the peasants. By the way, I advise you to use any excuse to analyze everyone you meet! Who knows, you might get lucky and find a donor. If so, bring them to me...”
On that very day, Penant found lodgings at the market inn The Happy Bear and Anchor. The innkeeper had been his main fence for stolen goods back when he’d worked the market. The man didn’t acknowledge him, of course.
It wasn’t hard to make the choice — Pen didn’t plan to stay there long. He suddenly accepted that all his life’s plans had been swept away by his bastard teacher, who had kept him around all this time as a mere back-up plan, just a skin of young and fresh blood that he could use to refresh himself when he needed it.
His mind reeled from dozens of ideas: from complaining to the healer’s guild to revealing what had happened to the public, from poisoning Yadugara to reporting everything he knew of the healer’s secret transfusions to the palace inquisitors, but he formed no specific plans until he recalled the master’s upcoming award.
He spent the previous night sleepless, tossing and turning and thinking of how he would go to the palace — and thanks to his healer’s license, that was now a possibility — and demand to speak. Right before the declaration of the winner, Chief Imperial Medic Lentz would ask if anyone present had any objections. And then Pen would stand up and speak of how his master had treated him... But when he thought of what would happen next, he got scared and shivered.
After thinking it over, Pen discarded that idea. He wanted to live life to the full for at least the few years remaining to him. The idea of publicly exposing his former tutor wouldn’t get him anything — they were all like that. More than likely, they would quietly and subtly deprive him of his healer’s license, kick him out of the guild and... Who would care about the corpse of a poor old man found in a ditch? There’d be no investigation, not with the Empire in its current state. No, it was best to keep a low profile and try to find a donor for now. Pen also consoled himself with a thought he’d once read somewhere, that vengeance is a dish best served cold.
Waking up bright and early, he felt emboldened and rested even though he’d dozed just a couple of hours. For the first time in his adult life, he was fully and entirely dependent on himself. Pen ate breakfast greedily, gaining strength and thinking of what to do.
Feeling another loose tooth with his tongue, he frowned and decided to order false teeth from the tooth craftsman, but before that he went to the workshops and paid for a sign reading ‘Penant the Healer. Healing for Ailments and Maladies,’ agreeing in advance with the innkeeper to lease a room with a separate entrance. The innkeeper loved the idea of the establishment having its own healer.
He even brought the healer his first patient, a brother suffering with gout, and Pen managed to ease his pain. So he went to Yadugara’s award ceremony with every right to call himself a healer.
They looked for him in a list of invitees for a long time at the entrance and failed to find him. But once they confirmed that he was a guild member, they let him in anyway. Pen ground his teeth as he saw how well and young his former master looked, and he barely held back from declaring him a thief. A thief that stole Pen’s life.
Deep in thought, he didn’t notice a heavy hand descend on his shoulder. Gasping in fright, thinking he was about to be thrown out, Pen raised his head and saw the frowning face of a palace guard.
“Senior Apprentice Penant?”
“Yes. I mean, no, I’m a healer now. I’m a guild member! Here’s my license...
“It doesn’t matter. Come with me, his imperial majesty Ma Ju Ro the fourth wishes to speak with you.”
Chapter 37. Yadugara’s Award
FILLED WITH ANXIETY over the upcoming ceremony, Lentz panicked when he learned that the emperor had left to speak to someone. But Luca felt it was important to learn the details before he personally placed around the bloodsucking healer’s neck the gold medal “For Services to the Empire,” which came with the title of best guild member. The emperors had always valued them and separated them into a privileged caste, without which the ruler’s life would have been far shorter.
Luca barely recognized Senior Apprentice Penant in the crooked and wrinkled old man, half-blind and squinting, staring at the emperor’s face through watery eyes. If it weren’t for the verdict of the DNA analysis from his metamorphosis, he’d still be in doubt. The transfusion procedure hadn’t just taken decades of life from the boy. Luca didn’t know how exactly it was possible to so age a man in so short a time, even pulling teeth without damage? He saw several missing in Penant’s mouth. There was something in all this that belonged to evil and dark magic, of which, however, there was no proof in this world.
Nonetheless, mages practiced in the Empire; plains shamans, Desert Seers, black warlocks from the pi
rate isles, and many others, but even the uneducated among the populace looked at them with skepticism, in spite of the fact that the people burned a warlock or spellcaster at the stake occasionally, just in case.
Penant was taken to a small room intended for household purposes. There wasn’t even enough space to sit down. The emperor awaited him, standing motionless by the wall, alone, without a guard.
“Hello, Pen,” Ma Ju Ro said once the guard had left them alone.
“Your majesty... You know me?”
“Yes, and far better than you think.”
“But how?”
“I’m the emperor, remember. It is my business to know my subjects. We don’t have much time, let’s dispense with the formalities. I’m sure that until very recently, you were far younger, and I know that your ageing and the flourishing appearance of the respected Yadugara are the consequences of one and the same event, something you call transfusion.”
Pen nodded, dumbfounded.
“Then answer one question for me, Penant. What did Nestor Yadugara promise you for you to give up your life for him?”
“He... he...” The old man swallowed a lump in his throat, twisted his lips. “He tricked me. He said he’d take two or three years, but he... he...”
“I understand,” Ma Ju Ro said gently. “Let’s talk after the ceremony.”
The emperor left. Penant followed after him, wondering what awaited him now. Nothing good, he was sure of that. It was entirely possible that he would be wrung out and drained of the remainder of his life for the sake of this fat know-it-all emperor. That must be it. Yadugara had given Pen away like a gift.
In the meantime, Ma Ju Ro stopped at the massive doors to the hall, engraved with a gilded monogram. There was a high chance that his first public appearance would show that he was no emperor at all.
The guests who weren’t guild members were waiting for the official part in the anteroom, a ceremonial waiting area outside the entryway to the hall, which was reserved for huge events. They noticed right away that the emperor had come in with just three imperial guards, a never-before-seen occurrence. Usually he was surrounded by two dozen, or even more when he went out into the city.
The guard remained at the entrance, and the emperor marched briskly through the full hall to the dais. The walls were decorated with a red material and flowers, and not just any flowers, but ones widely used in medicine, although this escaped Luca’s attention. He was collected and focused.
An orchestra began to play when the emperor appeared, and scattered applause rose up and died in the audience. Casting a glance around the hall, Ma Ju Ro counted at least a hundred people and it occurred to him that in its greed for wealth, the guild had completely forgotten that not only the aristocrats and their families live in the capital, but so did a million common people. Alas, the guild was too small to pay attention to them no matter how much it might want to. Conveniently, it also refused to increase in size.
The guild leader Veronimus and the advisor Lentz sat upon a specially installed high dais. They rose to greet the emperor. Ma Ju Ro took his seat between them, recalling Lentz’s words about the ceremony program. A welcoming speech from Veronimus, the declaration of the winner by Lentz, and the awarding of Yadugara by the emperor. The official part ended there, and the head of state would leave the event while the healers stayed behind to talk amongst themselves; to exchange gossip and rumors, and just to have a good time eating their fill of the palace kitchens. It seemed the invited guests, performers and dancers would be let into the hall by then, but that didn’t interest Luca.
“His Imperial Majesty Ma Ju Ro, the Fourth of His Name, Overlord of the Entire World, chosen by the Sacred Mother to defend all her people and the living world, bound by blood to the founder of the Empire, Ma Ju Ro the First, Sire and Vanquisher!” the master of ceremonies announced loudly.
A whistle came from somewhere in the hall. The emperor found the brave heckler with his eyes, and he reddened and ducked behind the back of the one sitting in front of him.
“I didn’t know that the guild practices the whistle as a new method of healing,” Ma Ju Ro noted.
Although he was speaking to Veronimus standing next to him, everyone in the hall heard it — the acoustics were excellent. Laughter broke out.
“Your majesty, he did not whistle for that purpose,” a richly dressed man from the first row said laughingly. The emperor nodded to him, and the man rose and introduced himself. “Grade-five Healer Raimondo, your majesty.”
“Go on, Raimondo.”
“We’ve all heard of the free clinic that’s opening. They say it was your idea. If I may ask, what are you trying to achieve in that? All labor must be paid for!”
“The labor will be paid!” Ma Ju Ro answered. “From the imperial treasury. Any other questions?”
“Where is the money coming from?” someone shouted from the back rows.
“From the same place as all the money in the treasury. From taxes paid by citizens. And if any of you wishes to stick your nose in and count my money, I am ready to answer in kind. A more important question: would you like specially appointed tax collectors to start counting your real incomes and comparing them with those you indicate in your reports? Good idea, Raimondo, I like it!”
None of it was going to plan. Luca himself didn’t want to say too much, and Lentz had demanded that he not allow himself to be provoked, but it went the other way. Luca remembered well how it took him several hours to claw his mother back from the abyss of Two-horns even with all his abilities, while these bloodsuckers were more concerned with how to heal any rich person for as long as possible — he’d overheard Yadugara’s conversations. And transfusion? When he thought of that, Luca frowned and clenched his fists, throwing a foreboding across the gathering of healers. None dared to answer him. All lowered their eyes before the firestorm burning in the emperor’s gaze.
The blushing Veronimus suppressed a smile, and waved fastidiously at Raimondo to get him to sit down and shut up, then turned to emperor.
“Your imperial majesty, you have a wonderful sense of humor! Please forgive our colleague Raimondo, he is overly... ahem, excited by the occasion of your visit. I suggest we don’t stand on ceremony, since we’re distracting you from your day, and your time is so precious...
Luca twisted his shoulder, throwing off Veronimus’s plump hand. He quieted the alarmed Lentz with a quick nod and stood up.
“I am pleased to greet the worthy healers of the Empire within the walls of my,” he emphasised that word, “palace! Very soon we will move on to that which you have gathered for, but I want to take advantage of this rare opportunity to tell to you all about something important. Perhaps the most important thing in the history of the Empire!”
The healers had, in their time, seen the emperor sleepy, exuberant, lecherous. A couple of years ago they’d seen an angry and annoyed emperor, when he slammed his fist down on the stand and demanded a donor from them at once. But this — a calm, confident and steady emperor wanting to talk about ‘something important’ — this had never been seen. All present leaned forward in curiosity, and some even raised themselves up.
“The greatest riches of the Empire are not its lands, but its people. People, master healers! In your race for profit, you have forgotten this. You have forgotten that, as students of the university’s famous medical faculty, founded by my honored ancestor Phlamma the First, you gave an oath. An oath to do all in your power to save the lives of others!”
“We do so!” Raimondo shouted, deciding that if everyone else would be quiet, then he would be the voice of the healers’ community.
“You do so...” Luca repeatedly dryly. “As much as you might want to, you are unable to provide healing to all those that suffer! There are too few of you, and you carefully keep your numbers low so that you don’t get too many competitors, the abyss forbid that might happen. Someone who might take a slice of your pie. Dozens of graduating healers each year remain unemployed. Those
that you take into voluntary slavery as so-called apprentices are glad of it, and yet you take from them what you wish? You have split all the rich families of the country up amongst yourselves, but you forgot that the clothes you wear, the bread you eat, was created by the hands of common people. Tell me, Lentz, how many newborns were there in the capital last year?”
“Twenty seven thousand, not counting unregistered births,” Lentz answered without missing a beat. “Of them, around eight thousand were stillborn. Less than six thousand lived to be a year old.
“And how people many died last year?”
“Nobody has the precise figures, your majesty. But by our humble estimations, over fifty thousand people.”
“The Empire is dying. From hunger and sickness. We aren’t fighting anyone, the Capital hasn’t known war for several centuries. But our citizens are dying! It is within my power to eliminate hunger. It is within my power to give free healing to all regardless of whether the guild is planning to help me do it or planning to get in my way. And I will do so!” he spoke the last words with such depth and volume that they bounced off the walls.
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