The Curse Giver

by Dora Machado

“The size of a cherry.”

  “How long ago?”

  “About two months ago.” Severo shifted impatiently. “Why do you ask all these questions?”

  “Were you anywhere near the kingdom’s Deadlands?”

  Clio gasped.

  Severo scowled. “What are you now, a damn seer?”

  The woman raised her brows. “Well?”

  “I scouted a lead out there seven weeks ago,” Severo admitted. “I wasn’t there very long.”

  “I gather you traveled across the mudflats?”

  His hackles went up. “How could you know that?”

  “Yeah,” Clio said. “How can you know that?”

  “Well, if you must know,” she said, “two years ago, a mother brought her child into my store, looking for a remedy to cure a strange swelling above her son’s ankle. The child limped, not because of the pain, but rather because his foot felt numb, he said. It turns out the child had traveled with his father to the Deadlands a few weeks before.”

  “And?” Severo said.

  “It was a mud mite.”

  “A mud mite?” The words ran through the little crowd like flames on tinder.

  Severo’s attention was riveted to the woman. Was there really a way to cure his horse?

  “The mudflats harbor this particularly nasty critter,” she explained. “It likes to steal into healthy bodies and mooch off blood.”

  “You mean like a leech?” Severo said.

  “Only it likes to live inside the body.”

  “Can you cut it out?”

  “If you try, the critter will dig itself deeper in the flesh, until you can’t reach it at all.”

  Severo’s hope died as quickly as it had been born. “So my horse can’t be cured?”

  “Not with a knife, it can’t.”

  “I knew you’d be useless,” he muttered.

  “Poor Severo,” the woman said in a teasing tone. “By your expression, one would think this horse is your firstborn.”

  Severo glared at her. He didn’t like being mocked, but in a way, she was right. After giving up his homeland, his kin, and his young man’s dream of having a plump wife and tidy estate in order to join the Twenty, his horse was the only thing he had left that was his.

  He took pride in the beast, and yes, why not, he had affection for the noble animal that had carried him half way across the world. A lame horse would have to be put down. If his horse failed him, he would be failing his lord. Aye, the woman had been cruel to give him hope.

  She flashed him a smug smile. “You happen to be sailing on just the right ship,” she said. “There are a few casks of limber lout root right beneath us in the hull.”

  Severo frowned. “That stinking, expensive root healers use to induce vomiting?”

  “I can make a poultice out of it. You might gag at the stench, but your horse won’t care. The mud mite, on the other hand, might be bothered.”

  This time, Severo wasn’t proud about asking. “What will it cost me for you to make the poultice?”

  “A bath.”

  “A bath?” Severo scratched his head, knowing for sure that she was both strange and mad.

  Chapter Forty-one

  THE POULTICE WAS DIFFICULT TO MAKE. Lusielle had to handle the root carefully, because the juice was poisonous to the skin and the vapor deadly to the lungs. She wrapped a cloth over her nose and mouth and put on gloves before she began to grate it.

  “We can help, mistress,” Elfu said. “We can do the foul grating.”

  “No, thanks,” she mumbled through the cloth. “This is tricky. Stay away from here.”

  Her eyes watered with the sting, but at least she managed to grate the root without poisoning herself. She packed the gratings into her strainer and pulled down the lever to squeeze out the reminder of the toxic juice. She funneled the yellow liquid into one of her little bottles and capped it tightly. She wouldn’t waste all the work that went into separating solid from liquid, especially when a drop or two of the juice could be helpful someday.

  Now came the nastiest part. She boiled the foul gratings into a hefty thickness. The stench poisoned the wind. By then, with the exception of Carfu and Elfu, everybody else on the barge was avoiding the awning and walking around with kerchiefs pressed against their noses. Lusielle was feeling a little light-headed, but she was almost done. She checked the texture. It looked good.

  She cooled the mixture with a half cup of water and dashed to the back of the barge, holding the little pot before her at arm’s length. People were dodging every which way as she passed. By now Severo and his men had a very good idea of why she had required the bath as her only price.

  She brushed the stinky poultice on the swelling and smeared it up and down the horse’s leg. Within moments, the swelling rippled beneath the horse’s skin. The beast barely took notice. The growth bulged, stretching towards the horse’s knee then back towards the hoof. It froze at the fetlock and began to quiver until suddenly a pair of long serrated antennae broke through the distended skin, followed by the well-fed body of the largest giant mite she had ever seen.

  The mite launched out of the lesion. Lusielle ducked, tripped and fell on her bum, scooting backwards. The massive bug lunged for Lusielle’s foot. She kicked, but the mite kept coming. It locked its clicking jaws onto her boot’s heel, stabbing the tough leather with an oversized fang as if the sole of her boot was but a thin layer of butter.

  Lusielle shook her foot. The stubborn mite held on. The little beast’s long antennae tickled the exposed skin above her ankle. Sensing the vulnerable spot, the bug charged. A vision of the mite boring into her leg and crawling beneath her skin had Lusielle screaming.

  Crack. Severo stepped on the mite. A burst of gore splashed on the deck. The horse’s ordeal—not to mention Lusielle’s—was over.

  “Um, thank you,” she mumbled, still shaken.

  “No,” Severo said, extending a hand. “Thank you.”

  Lusielle took Severo’s hand and got up. Unsteady on her feet, she stumbled back to her brewing awning and dropped the little pot in a basin of vinegar water. She started to clean up, but the world swirled as if the barge had been caught in a powerful eddy.

  “Mistress?” Carfu’s face swelled and shrunk before her eyes. “Are you feeling sick?”

  Awning. Sail. Sky. That’s what she saw as she toppled over.

  “Are you all right?” Severo’s face came into her line of vision.

  “It happens sometimes.” She managed to sit down. “The bath?”

  Off they went, Lusielle carried by a host of brawny arms to the improvised bath site the men had fashioned behind the cabin. She stumbled through a curtain of cloaks. After undressing, she bundled up her clothing and, sticking it between the cloaks, handed it off to Carfu.

  “Boil it, please.”

  She climbed onto the barrel and lowered herself into the blessedly warm water. She dunked her head underwater several times until her mind began to clear. When her stomach settled and her lungs stopped burning, she noticed the additional offerings. A blob of soap, a pot of river sand, a sponge and a drying rag sat on a stool next to the barrel.

  She suspected Carfu and Elfu had contributed the rarer offerings, including the bowl of lavender petals they had probably fetched from below and a splotch of the freshly mixed nut milk and rosemary oil-based cream she liked to use when she washed her hair.

  She was beginning to breathe with ease again when a pair of hands landed on her shoulders and shoved her underwater. Lusielle tried to scream.

  Instead, a rush of lavender-scented water gushed down her throat. The barrel’s dark planks swam before her eyes. Her breath streamed out in a surge of bubbles.

  She planted her feet on the bottom and tried to leap out, but the strong arms holding her down didn’t yield.

  She kicked on the barrel walls. Hard. She kicked again. The water sloshed all around her. The barrel teetered. She kicked a third time. This time, the barrel keeled over, spilling the
water—and her—onto the deck.

  Gasping for air, she heard the sound of someone scrambling over the gunwales and shortly after that, a splash as someone dove into the river.

  Severo got tangled in the curtain of cloaks. Carfu reached her first. He snatched one of the cloaks and threw it over her. Together, they stumbled on the soapy deck and made it to the gunwales in time to see a man thrashing toward the shoreline. Severo skidded to a stop next to Lusielle.

  “What just happened?”

  Carfu looked up at the towering Severo. “Someone just tried to kill the mistress.”

  Chapter Forty-two

  HATO LINED UP THE BALANCE OF the Twenty and walked down the row, glaring into each man’s eyes. Most of the men stared straight ahead. Severo looked particularly nervous. None of them could conceal their embarrassment.

  “The Lord Brennus charged you with the protection of this barge, including goods and lives,” Hato said. “You knew the crew to be a murderous lot. What do you think he’s going to say when he returns and finds out that, while under our watch, that filthy cook tried to kill the woman?”

  Everyone winced in shame. A few pair of eyes shifted to the floor.

  “What if the murderer would have targeted our lord instead?” Hato said. “What if he had succeeded? We wouldn’t be standing here like a bunch of buffoons, would we?”

  Severo took a step forward. “I was in charge of the watch. I should be punished.”

  “That’s up to our lord. He’ll decide who should be punished and how. But let me warn you. If something else goes amiss on this barge, I won’t wait for our lord to dole out discipline. I’ll do it myself, and whoever is the recipient will regret it sorely. Understood?”

  Hato noticed some of the men prodding Severo to speak up.

  “My lord.” Severo hesitated. “On behalf of the Twenty, may I speak?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Would it be so bad if the woman died, my lord?”

  “Come again?”

  “She’s slated to die anyway. She’s just a distraction to our lord. Wouldn’t it be better for my lord, for all of us, if she was out of the way?”

  Hato stared at Severo, then at the rest of the men. He reminded himself that they were men of honor, that through their pledge they were deeply engaged in their lord’s venture and that they had his best interest at heart. They were far from mutineers. They were thinking highborn who loved Laonia and their lord and who understood failure’s catastrophic implications.

  Hato slapped Severo’s face, a hard, loud whack.

  Severo staggered, holding his cheek in shock.

  “That blow serves as a reminder,” Hato said, “so that you won’t forget—will never forget—that this is our lord’s plight, his hunt, his test, his trial. We are at his command. Think if you must. Speak up as honest men do. But don’t forget: It is our lord who decides who dies and when, for it is he who must do the killing.”

  Chapter Forty-three

  LUSIELLE SAT ON THE STOOL, TWISTING the water out of her hair. The day’s events replayed in her mind. After hearing the tales of all involved and accounting for every man on the deck, Hato had concluded that the greasy cook, a close confidant of his pirate captain and the man that Carfu and Lusielle had seen thrashing in the river, had tried to kill her. Murder was fitting revenge for thugs like the captain and his cook.

  Lusielle glanced out of the porthole. Dusk was in full progress. The barge had been anchored south of the port town of Anean for over three hours. Bren had been gone for a long time. She worried. What urgent matter had sent him and his men out in such precipitous haste?

  A shiver ran the length of her spine when she recalled waking up next to him. She had been so contented in his arms. He too had seemed different. The half-grin on his lips had softened his features, imbuing his face with a kinder expression. For the first time since she had met him, he seemed younger, lighter, as if some unseen weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

  Had that been the moment in which he had decided to forgo her murder?

  By the gods, she was losing her wits. She had to put an end to this, and soon. It wasn’t going to lead to anything good, for her or him. She was baseborn. He was highborn. She was banished. He was betrothed. He was Lord of Laonia, she mistress of nothing. He worshipped the Twins. She worshipped the Thousand Gods.

  How much different could two people be?

  A knock at the door interrupted her thoughts. Lusielle tied the belt of Bren’s robes, a garment she had borrowed while her clothes dried. Clio stood at the threshold. His face was flushed crimson.

  “May I come in, please?” he more or less begged.

  Lusielle waved him in.

  “Sorry to bother you, ma’am.”

  Well, at least she had acquired some sort of a civilized address from Clio out of the stinky poultice affair.

  “I’ve got a problem.” He wrung his hands. “I thought perhaps you could help, on account of the horse today.”

  “Thanks for your confidence, I think.”

  “I’ve got the burning bumps,” Clio blurted out. “They’re killing me, mistress. It’s torture when I ride. Might you give me some of that stinking potion to get rid of them?”

  Lusielle managed to keep a straight face. “These bumps, have you had them for long?”

  “They started when I joined the Twenty.”

  “Are they small?”

  He shrugged.

  “Are they watery?”

  “Well, with all the men around, putting my head between my legs is out of the question.”

  “I understand,” Lusielle said. “I can’t recommend a cure unless I know what ails you. I’ll need you to drop your trousers, please.”

  If his face had been red before, it was now purple as well. “I don’t think the lord would like that.”

  “Do you want the burning bumps gone?”

  Clio sighed and, after turning around, undid his cords and bared his arse for her inspection, apologizing all the while.

  “Hmm.” The lesions weren’t large but they were inflamed and widespread and therefore capable of causing great discomfort. An infusion of comfrey, calendula, yarrow and oats should work well—

  The cabin door opened and shut with an alarming slam. Bren stood there, hands cocked on his hips, looking at her, as if he had just found a demon pissing in his pot. The expression on his face would have been frightening if it wasn’t incongruent with the sight of a red-haired toddler clinging to him like a cat dangling from its claws.

  “What’s this?” he said in a stern tone.

  “Well ….” Lusielle tried not to laugh. “In case you haven’t noticed, it appears there’s a child attached to your person.”

  “I know that!”

  “Hush, you’re frightening the boy.”

  “He’s a brave boy,” Bren said. “He’s not easily frightened. What’s Clio doing here?”

  “Poor Clio has a burning itch.”

  “Why are his trousers down?”

  “‘Cause they were covering the troubled location?”

  “I don’t like you looking at other men’s asses!”

  “Oh, well, err … my lord may remember, I’m a remedy mixer. I get to look at people’s parts all the time.”

  She thought for sure his head was going to explode.

  “Get your ugly ass out of my sight,” he barked at Clio, whose face had gone from red to white in a snap.

  “S-sorry, m-my lord.” The young man snatched his trousers back on and, tripping over his feet, lunged toward the door.

  “Don’t go,” Lusielle said.

  “No?” Clio froze, staring from Lusielle to his lord in obvious confusion.

  “I’m not done yet,” she said firmly. “Have you been wearing underpants under your trousers?”

  “What kind of question is that?” Bren said.

  “An important one,” Lusielle said, turning her attention to Clio. “Well?”

  Clio stole a look at his lo
rd.

  “Answer the question and get out!”

  Clio shook his head.

  “I thought so.” Lusielle selected the packets she needed out of her remedy case. “Boil these ingredients in water then let them cool before you sit in the mix every day for a few moments. Afterwards, pat your seat dry and spread a thick coat of this salve where it burns.”

  “Thank you,” the mortified young man said.

  “Clio?”

  “Yes?”

  “Those leather trousers you wear might be nice to look at, but they rub too hard on the skin. Don’t forget to wear your underpants, especially when you ride.”

  “But the others said that a true rider only wears underpants—”

  “—when the horse he rides wears a skirt,” Bren said. “How many horses have you seen wearing skirts, Clio?”

  “None, my lord.”

  “Which it’s about the same amount of riders you’ll find not wearing underpants among the Twenty, minus one.”

  Clio gawked. “A prank, my lord?”

  “It only goes to show that you really belong.”

  Clio’s tenuous smile spread on his face. “You think so, my lord?”

  “I do,” Bren said. “Now, for the last time, get your ugly ass out of my cabin.”

  “Yes, my lord.” Clio stepped out of the door. “Thank you, my lord. Thank you, ma’am.”

  The door closed. Lusielle made a show of washing her hands. The boy hanging from Bren’s neck made no sound.

  “How are you feeling?” she inquired politely.

  “I was fine until I got back and found out that in one single day you’ve managed to get bitten by a surly horse, almost killed by a filthy potion, attacked by a giant mud mite, and nearly drowned in a barrel of water.”

  “News travels like the plague around here.”

  “As if all of that wasn’t enough, I find you kneeling behind Clio’s bare ass, only to have you defy my commands in front of one of my men?”

  “I wasn’t finished, that’s all. I thought you’d be safer if all your men were healthy and ready to ride at your command, instead of squirming in the saddle like badly diapered babies.”

  The glower in his eyes flickered. In a blink, it turned from angry into something else.