Duty Calls

Subject: Re: Duty Calls Sat Mar 12, 2011 4:26 pm

( Yeah, that's what was presented to me, so we can assume a report will have been made to the appropriate authorities to deal with the problem at the docks. Thanks! )

Subject: Re: Duty Calls Sat Mar 12, 2011 3:39 pm

((Awesome Kate. What a wonderful job of taking it and running with it. Hmmm....plague huh? Hmmmm))

Subject: Re: Duty Calls Fri Mar 11, 2011 11:39 pm

(Wow!!)

Subject: Duty Calls Fri Mar 11, 2011 2:04 am

The dark of night, the city sleeping. A slight figure stands at the edge of the palace grounds, where they merged into the marketplace. His hood was up, fair head covered against both cold and curiosity. He normally enjoyed his forays into the city and citizens, but this time he needed to be quick, expedient and unhindered.

Julien had been ready to dismiss the ramblings of the man at court, more than ready given the sizable migraine he’d brought with him. His stubborn dismissal of assistance had been both troubling and troublesome. Bleeding from the nose and stabbing pains, imbalance – he could have been having a brainstorm or some other mental breakdown, not some nebulous fit of prophecy.

Oh he knew the Sight existed, academically speaking. He just didn’t put much credit in its accuracy or usefulness. Sometimes, certainly, it worked fine and gave good information. Other times… it was just so tedious.

So when this… Vex… started speaking to him about a girl but couldn’t tell him anything more, he was ready to put it down to charlatan’s trickery and possible mental distress.

Until he noticed the Queen. Unseeing of the room, but something in her eyes was seeing something the rest could not. It made the hairs on his neck stand up.

And then his division commander issued him an order to follow up on the man’s ranting. Duchess Reinhardt did seem to know him, so he had to trust her intuition and follow orders. He’d left before the end of court, and here he waited, braced against the night’s chill.

Somehow he was to find a random girl in a random bakery in the city at night. Not impossible, but certainly not easy. Or pleasant.

There was one way he knew he had a chance to find this supposedly sick child, and he had paused here, steeling himself against it. He was up to the task, he had to be.

He was empathic, sensing emotions and sensations as easily as others detect changes in temperature. He usually kept it locked well away except when healing or otherwise medically helping someone. Aiding BJ without pain deadening techniques was a trial, but he managed. Now he only hoped he could go through with what he must do.

He leaned against the announcement board, making sure to lock his stance, and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly… lowering his shields with it.

Dimly, in the back of his mind, he was glad he remembered to steady himself first. A feeling like being caught in a stampede… or a runaway river… slammed through his mind and heart. Love, hate, anger, passion, fear, pain… so much pain… every moment of the human existence filling his being all at once. His Self slipped, cowered slightly underneath it. He felt the wounds like his own, the illness, bruises, scars… he had to help them, he needed to help… to fix… to repair… replenish…

No. He gulped a deep breath of air and steadied himself, separating himself from it as much as he could. It wasn’t his, and right now he had a mission. He noted them all, trying to filter through the chaos.

He shunted away those that felt like inflicted wounds, sharp pinpricks over his skin. Ailments of age, like itching in his bones, also shoved to the background. Then the illnesses… common colds, weather related sicknesses. These all felt like an oncoming sneeze or cough. Away. They were not gone from his awareness, but rather at the edges of it. Now he could try to find the more serious.

He could feel a few things. The gnawing-flickers of the cancerous, the limb-fire of someone in untreatable pain, the stink of impending death. These he knew, these he couldn’t help, not now.

There it was… a tendril, the faintest hint of nausea and he opened his eyes. He was looking toward the docks… more specifically the dockyard storefronts. A quick check that his legs had caught up with his mind and he was off, winding through the darkened streets. He absently noted pockets of emotion, violence or deception and his steps took him well away from potential trouble. He followed the path of emotion, dark and murky, as though it were a clear path marker. He felt the damp of the inlet before he arrived at the docks and he allowed his eyes to focus more in the here and now.

He raised most of his shields once more, damping down the rabble of emotional noise the city couldn’t help but have.

He stood before a bakery, the sign overhead proclaimed “The Twin Loaves” with a painted image of two identical loaves of bread. The building was at the very end of the final row of merchants before the shipyard began. A faint glow from a banked fire filtered through closed shutters, and he stepped up, knocking firmly on the door, grimacing at the thought of intruding at such a late hour.

It took three or four times knocking, progressively louder before he heard the bolt thrown back and the door cracked open. A rumpled, ire-filled man stared back at him, lantern held high in his hand.

“Eh, what do ye want? We don’ truck with cheats nor vagabonds. Go away.” He started to close the door again and Julien stuck his foot against the frame.

“Excuse me, good sir. I apologize for intruding at such an hour, but I’ve a reason to believe I’m needed here.”

“Needed?” The ire turned swiftly to suspicion. “What ye mean? I’m calling the constables.”

“No, please sir.” He pulled his hood back, letting the lantern light fall on his features. “I am a healer, sent from the castle. Is there someone sick here?”

“Sick… well… yes.” The man frowned, looking him over. “They know bout that, how? You’re a healer?” The expression had lost little of its disbelief, but the door opened a little further.

“Yes. For how they know, I’m not rightly certain, but I was sent to help if I can.” He held out his hands, empty and unthreatening. The man seemed unconvinced, but a faint cough from further in seemed to decide him.

Just as well, at that sound Julien was nearly ready to push his way in.

He followed the lantern, shutting and bolting the door behind, and waited in the common room while the fire was stoked and the man disappeared to a room at the side. He returned with a robe covering his bedclothes.

“I hope ye forgive my concern, lad. Down here at the docks, night visitors do not usually bode sa well. An ye being so young, ye’d be an easy foil for a gang." He nodded at that.

“I can understand entirely, and I apologize for disturbing your well-earned rest. There was an… incident at court this evening.”

“Court! Ye been to court, even.” The man’s eyes widened. “A courtier right here in my bakery.” Julien cleared his throat politely.

“And I was directed to find a sick child, a girl, in a bakery here in the city. I am hoping I’ve found the correct place.”

“Aye, that. My daughter has been sick for a few days now. Seems like only the winter sickness on her, though. Ye can really help that?”

“Indeed, and many other things.” He unlatched his cloak of many pockets, setting it within easy reach across a chair and smiled reassuringly, though he did not feel reassured. Influenza, while problematic, did not give him the black sick feeling in his gut that was pervading this house. “May I see her?”

“She’s sleeping up the loft, sir… ah…” He faltered and looked curious.

“Julien. Julien Evermore. And you?”

“Baker. Jonas Baker. Amys… that’s my girl… she’s right up there.” He pointed at a narrow ladder leading to a small cubby. Julien took the lantern and climbed quietly, peering in. On a stuffed pallet slept a small child, no more than six or seven. Her cheeks had hectic fever spots and she had kicked her blankets off, as though overheated despite the inevitable chill. He felt the insidious touch of whatever was plaguing her, and knew with certainty that this was not ordinary winter sickness.

“Baker?” He called down softly.

“Yes, sir healer?”

“I must bring her down, can you please clear the table and spread a clean cloth on it?”

“Oh… ah… I suppose yes…” He heard feet pattering off as he looked back, touching a hand to her forehead. Fever, for certain. She was burning up with it. Her skin was clammy and she sighed a little, eyes opening, focusing on him. He smiled reassuringly again.

“Hello. My name is Julien. I hear you’re not feeling well.” She nodded, confusion warring with slumber on her face. “Is it okay if I pick you up to bring you down. Your da is downstairs waiting.”

“Okay…” A soft response, a light cough following it and he slid his arms beneath her shoulders and knees, easing back down the ladder with her slight body cradled against him. She was shivering, and he took the moment of direct contact to extend a wisp of power, assessing her condition.

A swift intake of breath as he reached the floor below, pausing and looking in her face, brows furrowed. A niggling thought tickled the back of his mind, and he let it simmer for a moment, setting her instead on the table prepared by the baker and his now wakened wife. She watched him with more concern than the baker had, not terribly surprising, but he was focused instead on the child, who had already fallen back to sleep in his arms.

“I’ll need a kettle of water boiled and clean rags or cloths.” Often a healer’s trick for getting worried relatives out of the immediate work area, if what he feared was correct, there would be a need and they would be lucky if he could catch it in time. He looked to both of them directly.

“I am going to go into a trance of sorts. Before I do, I need to know a few things about her sickness.” The baker’s wife looked deeply worried, her hand stroking her daughter’s hair. The baker looked confused but nodded.

“We’ll answer as best we can.”

“Has Amys been complaining of itching or bites, or has she had any pets she should not have?”

“Pets? None I know of.” He looked to his wife and she shookher head.

”Nah, none of tha…” she paused, her brows furrowing. “She did say she got bit by a dock rat, making a delivery, but it was a shallow thing so I didn’t think on it.”

“How long ago was this?”He tried not to frown. A rat bite, even a shallow bite, could carry all sorts of problems in its wake. And dock rats came from all over the great world, carrying any number of diseases.

“Two days gone.” Worry building in her eyes. “What is it, what could be gone wrong from it?” He tried to find the right words.

“I…” stifling a sigh, his shoulders slumping slightly. “My fear is that it seems to be more than a simple bite. It looks very much like the plague.”

“The Black Death!?” Her eyes filled with tears and she pressed her fingers to her lips. “I’d meant to bring her to an apothecary, I did! But it got so busy, and she wasn’t complaining….” Her husband wrapped an arm protectively about her shoulders.

“But ye can fix her, can’t ye?” He looked back down to his daughter. “Ye must, she’s our only… she’s our darling…”

“I cannot make any promises, but… I will give her all of my abilities and do what I can.” He saw their faces crumple as they nodded and a piece of his heart died a little. He knew what he could do, only two days in he might still be early enough to stop the disease from blossoming. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to give them hope that may prove false.

“So… water boiled. You may want to change her bedding entirely. I am going to treat her bite and then trance to see if I can heal the damage within.” A curt nod as they both reluctantly set off to the tasks he set. He looked to the sleeping urchin and reached into his cloak for clean gauze and a pot of salve. He also took up another clean cloth provided and saturated it with fresh, hot water.

A quick touch to her hand and he was able to locate the bite easily, a stinging at the ankle. He examined it gently, prodding. It was swollen, hot and dry to the touch. It had been cleaned some, but children were always into something. He cleaned it carefully with the wetted cloth, taking care not to press too hard, extending a small touch of healing gift, encouraging it to expel whatever poisons it had taken in. A quick dip into his salve jar and he coated over the puncture marks, wrapping her entire ankle in the strip of gauze.

That should do for the immediate injury. Now for the tricky work. He stood at her head and set his hands gently on hers, eyes closing as he drew on the clean, sweet energy of the earth beneath the city. Healing earth, rich from it touch on the water.

He drifted on a sea of muddy greenish black. It was faint, coating her aura, her organs within. He set his gift loose on it, opening fully. He did not usually, could not heal anything in an instant. He had to chase it down, sending tendrils of healing through the natural pathways. It was slow going. For every system cleared, another would roil up under attack. He faintly noted his legs and back cramping, stiffening from extended immobility. His body chilled….

…no, her body chilled. A deep breath below and he felt a shift within. A retreat. A surrender. The oil slick of disease vanishing, her fever was breaking. He followed it out, sending his mind through twice more to be certain.

Yes, that was it. He opened his eyes, slightly gritty as though he’d been sleeping for hours and cleared his throat. The baker was dozing in a chair, his wife still watching vigilantly. Both looked to him expectantly as he began to move, slowly removing his hands from the child’s, surreptitiously shifting his knees and stretching his shoulders.

“I think… we may have done it.” A stifled whimper from the baker’s wife and she was immediately at her daughter’s side, checking her cheeks for fever, kissing her forehead lightly. “How long…”

“Hours. Hours upon hours. Oh my sweet child, however can we thank you, sir?” He smiled lightly.

“Keep that wound clean, wash it twice a day at least.” He fished out more strips of gauze and left them rolled up on top of the jar of salve. “Treat it with this and wrap it every time it is cleaned for at least two days. Take care of her, that is all you can do to thank me.” He stepped back, retrieving his cloak, knees shaky beneath him. He could see the hints of sunrise peeking through the shutters and his brows raised in surprise.

“I will call you a carriage, sir healer, to see you safely back.”

“Oh.. no… no I’m.. n… okay.” He acquiesced as a spasm ran from tailbone to neck, muscles protesting his sudden movements, and he muttered “áigh*.”

The baker was already out the door, flagging down a runner. It seemed a matter
of moments before he heard the clatter of wheels on cobblestone. He paused at
the door.

“Please listen around the docks, if you hear of anyone else complaining of bites, fleas or sickness like your girl’s… refer them immediately to the Healer’s Tower for… oh… treatment.” A yawn caught him at the end of his statement, but they nodded vigorously.

“Thank you, sir, thank you so…” He smiled and waved a little dismissively.

“I am glad I could help.” With that he hauled himself into the carriage a little clumsily and leaned out to speak to the driver.

“Sheehan Tower, if you please,” settling back onto the seat, letting the rocking of the journey lull him to his rest.

*áigh - Irish gaelic for ouch

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