The ingredients are punishingly expensive. The wingè berries, imported and coveted as a dessert delicacy, become something far more interesting when boiled down. The badu tree sap, a common sweetener, undergoes the same concentration. And the p’zae, toxic, addictive, and harvested from the excretions of bear-sized hive mind roaches that must be kept perpetually drugged on hallucinogenic flowers to prevent them from eating their captors, costs more than its weight in platinum on more than one occasion. But when Davilla processes it with silver and aqua vitae, it seems to lose some of its toxicity and is the only thing preventing her patient’s burns from becoming infected again.
Where all the clerics and priests have failed, alchemy and herbalism succeed. Every time Davilla tries to substitute something less expensive or less volatile, it turns out to be less effective. So she keeps working with what works and tries not to think about the cost.
Her assistant, Vanya, slips into the lab with the quick-footed eagerness of someone who has everything to prove. Barely out of her teens, she wears her youth like armor, a bit bold, unyielding, and just a bit reckless. Her dark curls, wilder than her mentor’s, are stuffed under a fraying scarf that smells of rosemary and smoke, and her ink-stained fingers are already reaching for the supply of fresh bandages.
“Ready?” Davilla asks, pulling on her gloves.
Vanya nods, hoisting the discard bucket. “Ready.”
They carry their supplies into the patient’s room. Starting carefully at the feet, Davilla begins unrolling the used bandages and tosses them into the discard bucket. The old ones will be burned later; they have learned the hard way that the p’zae residue attracts addicts. The first batch they simply washed and flushed resulted in a whole spate of people turning up sick from trying to drink the temple sewage.
Humming softly to herself, Davilla notes that her patient now seems to have toes instead of the stumpy, blackened protrusions that were there before. The skin is still dark, but the nail beds look healthy and pink. Progress, even if small.
Once her patient is free of the mummy-like wrappings, Davilla bathes her with the same solution she uses for the poultice. When she is done, she pokes her head into the hallway and grabs a third girl to help change the bed coverings. As they roll the patient over, Davilla finds herself nose to nose with a startling pair of green eyes.
“Well, hello,” Davilla says with a friendly smile. “This is the first time you’ve woken up while we were doing this.”
“Doing what exactly?” the voice rasps.
“Changing all of your bandages,” Davilla says agreeably. “You have quite a lot of them.”
“Why are they that color?”
“We put medicine in them to help you.”
“They should be blue,” the gravelly voice says with absolute certainty. “Put some woad in them.”
Davilla frowns. “What is woad?”
“See the dyers. They will know.” And with that, her patient is unconscious again.
Davilla and Vanya finish the wrapping in silence. Something about the way her patient has spoken, that flat certainty, as if correcting a child’s arithmetic, lodges in Davilla’s mind and refuses to leave. She leaves Vanya with instructions to complete the concentration of the wingè berry and badu tree sap and heads for the market.
Harito’s central bazaar is its usual riot of noise and commerce. Davilla weaves through the throngs of shoppers, laden pack animals, and shouting vendors to reach the herbalist stalls. None of them have ever heard of woad. It is a common temple prank to send someone to market for something that doesn't exist, and the herbalists sneer at her for being so easily swindled.
Then Davilla remembers: her patient said dyers, not herbalists. She turns on her heel and pushes deeper into the market.
The dye merchant’s stall announces itself from twenty paces. A faded sign tacked above the entrance reads: “Dyes of the Four Winds — Permanent, Potent, Possibly Regretful.”
Cautiously, Davilla steps inside. Everything is a riot of color, a kaleidoscopic oasis among the blander offerings on either side. Billowing silks in saturated hues flutter from the canopy like banners in a breeze, each one dyed in a shade more vivid than the last: crimson as fresh blood, indigo so deep it seems to drink light, saffron that glows like morning fire.
Inside, the space is tightly packed but meticulously arranged. Shelves carved from driftwood hold rows of clay pots, each sealed with wax and labeled in a careful, looping hand. Some contain powdered pigments, turmeric gold, beetroot blush, midnight ash, while others swirl with iridescent liquids that shimmer unnaturally, suggesting enchantment or at least mild danger. Hanging bundles of herbs and dried roots dangle from the support beams, and beneath them, an ancient copper cauldron bubbles gently, releasing a strange, cloying sweetness that makes Davilla pause. The scent is almost familiar, hovering at the edge of recognition, but she cannot place it.
A low table at the center serves as the workspace, littered with stained mortar bowls, dyed fabric swatches, and several brushes stiff with use. Near the back, a wiry boy of perhaps fifteen sits on an overturned crate, gnawing a strip of dried meat and watching the stall’s entrance with eyes that are a little too alert for someone supposedly doing nothing. He tracks Davilla as she enters, but does not move or speak.
Behind the counter, the merchant himself, a wiry figure with hands forever stained in vivid blotches of varying ages, chats amiably with another customer while folding lengths of violet-dyed silk into neat coils. His cloak bears the splashes of a hundred experiments, and his eyes have the sharp, appraising glint of someone who can tell you the difference between genuine lapis and diluted blueberry paste from fifty paces.
Davilla approaches him warily, hoping she is not being swindled.
“Do you know what woad is?” she asks.
Nodding, the man reaches into a cabinet and pulls out a deep indigo blue swath of silk. “This was dyed with woad,” he says.
“Do you have anything of the plant itself?”
“I have dye powder made from it,” he says, “but I must warn you, it’s somewhat expensive. All the blue dyes are. So many of the nobility favor darker blues, since it’s as close as they’re allowed to get to royal purple.”
Sighing with relief, Davilla negotiates with the merchant and successfully acquires a large quantity of the woad dye he has brought for this trading run. He promises to return with more on his next trip. The boy near the back has not moved the entire time, but Davilla notices he has stopped chewing.
On her way back through the market, she stops to tell the herbalists she has found her woad after all, and almost succeeds in not gloating at their stupefied expressions.
Smirking to herself, Davilla returns to her lab where Vanya is decanting the wingè berry and badu tree sap. Taking a small portion of the existing mixture, Davilla adds the woad. Something changes immediately. The smell mellows, earthy and herbal, with less of the sharp, cloying sweetness from the p’zae and badu sap. When she dips a bandage in it, the color is a deep, vivid blue.
She carries the new bandage into her patient’s room and unwraps an area near the shoulder. She applies the blue bandage to the charred skin and rewraps the rest. Her hands are steady, but her heart isn't. What if the patient is wrong? What if this does nothing? What if it makes things worse?
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
She forces herself to breathe. One experiment. One small area. If it works, she will know.
The next day, Davilla carefully unwraps the shoulder. Where she applied the woad addition, a bit of pink, healthy skin is visible in the center. Not much. But real skin. Living tissue where there has been only char and scar.
Davilla’s breath catches. She forces herself to work methodically, carefully rewrapping the area, even though her mind is already racing ahead to the implications.
Back in her lab, she prepares the next batch of poultices with a healthy dose of woad powder, then sets aside smaller batches with varying concentrations to find the optimal dose. Vanya watches her fill the different bowls and raises an eyebrow. Davilla explains everything: the market, the herbalists, the dye merchant, and the small pink patch of skin that has no business being there.
“I’m not sure exactly how it’s working,” Davilla says, turning one of the bowls in her hands. “But it’s doing something. Real skin growth. Pink tissue. It’s working, Vanya.”
Vanya leans closer, examining the bowls. “Do you think it would help if we make a paste and paint it on before wrapping? More contact with the skin?”
“Clever thinking,” Davilla says. “But I don’t have nearly enough woad for that. Not yet.” She sets the bowl down carefully. “The other temples might have supplies they’re sitting on. If we could reach out through the network…”
Vanya nods, already understanding. “I’ll take it to Gethin. He’ll know who to ask.”
As Vanya starts toward the door, Davilla calls after her. “Wait, one thing. What makes you so certain our patient is a woman?”
Vanya pauses, a slight blush coloring her cheeks. “Well… I’m mostly hoping it’s a her. Otherwise the regeneration work gets considerably more complicated when the clerics realize what they’re healing.”
Davilla snorts despite herself, swatting Vanya’s shoulder with a towel. “Go on then. Find Gethin. And Vanya? Stay out of trouble.”
After Vanya leaves, Gethin returns to his desk. He does not pick up his translation work. Instead, he sits in the quiet of his office, thinking.
He thinks about Melfyn ferch Ardan ap Draig, the finest general the Cymry ever produced. A man Gethin called friend once, before an injury took his status and his place in the Trials. Before Melfyn’s chosen one, a woman Gethin wanted for himself, married Melfyn instead. Before Gethin made himself small and useful in this temple to avoid watching them build a life together.
But mostly, he thinks about the girl who lies unconscious in the infirmary. A girl with Cymry tattoos extensive enough to indicate high rank. A girl who has woken from burns severe enough to have killed most people, and the first thing she did was give her healer precise instructions on how to save her own life.
A girl who, according to the Goddess herself, has been bound to a god. Has apparently broken those bindings. Has survived whatever it took to do that.
A god killer.
Gethin’s hands go very still. His leg aches, not from the old injury, but from something else. The weight of understanding what this means.
If word gets out, if any of the warlords, the petty nobles, or the ambitious military commanders scattered across Tassatung and beyond learn that there is an unconscious god killer in this temple, Harito won't burn. It will explode. Every faction with an army will come for her.
They will try to possess her, control her, weaponize her. And when they clash over her, the whole region will go to war. Melfyn’s granddaughter won't just be a casualty. She will be the reason for the war.
He reaches for the thread of connection to the Goddess that all her priests carry, a private line that exists between her and each one of them, like a chord struck in the depths of the soul. This time, his prayer isn't gentle.
“O Goddess,” he begins, his voice quiet but urgent, “our healers have come upon a novel idea but require your assistance. However, we must move with extreme caution. Please reach out to the other temples, but only to those you trust absolutely. Request the woad dye they have in stock and inquire about acquiring more through their local markets. No explanations. If anyone asks why, you say it’s for general healing purposes. Nothing more.”
He pauses, gathering his thoughts with the precision of a general planning a campaign.
“The girl may be who I suspect. If she is, her existence here cannot become common knowledge. One word in the wrong ear, one rumor that reaches an ambitious lord, and we have war. Tassatung burns. Harito burns. Possibly worse.”
He senses the Goddess’s attention sharpening, her presence focusing with sudden, terrible clarity. But there is something else in her presence now, something knowing, almost amused.
“Gethin,” Morrighu says, her voice carrying the weight of someone about to deliver information she has been sitting on. “I know what she is. I know what she can do. I read her memories while she lay broken in Rigan’s domain. I know about the pact, the agreement between her and the other Renunciates from the Great Houses to share all their House secrets with each other.”
Gethin goes very still. His breath catches.
“You know,” he says carefully. It isn't a question.
“I know she killed a god,” Morrighu says, her voice carrying something like pride. “I know Tassatung, maybe even all of Elia, would tear itself apart over her if they understood what she represents. And I know the other gods would move to either control her or eliminate her before she becomes more dangerous.”
Gethin processes this. She hasn't just rescued the girl. She deliberately went in knowing exactly what she was taking. This isn't mercy. This is strategy at the highest level.
“Why are you telling me this?” he asks.
“Because you need to understand what we are actually protecting,” Morrighu says. “Not just a girl. Not just a paladin. A god killer with access to the consolidated secrets of multiple Great Houses. Someone whose very existence could shift the balance of power between the gods themselves.”
Gethin absorbs this. “You knew this before you went to get her.”
“Yes. I understood what she was, what she could become. And I decided she was worth the risk.”
“And now?” Gethin asks carefully. “Now that she is here?”
“Now we ensure that no one tears her away from me,” Morrighu says, and her voice carries absolute certainty. “I didn't go into a dead god’s domain to pull her out just to lose her to ambitious warlords or panicking gods.”
Gethin thinks about the implications. “The other gods. If they find out what you’ve done…”
“They won't find out from us,” Morrighu says, her tone sharp as a blade. “And I am counting on you to make sure no one else does. This isn't just about keeping one girl safe. This is about preventing a power struggle that could destabilize everything.”
“Yes,” Gethin says quietly. “I understand.”
“Good. The woad request stays exactly what it appears to be: a healer pursuing an experimental treatment. Nothing more. The temples don’t need to know why. Ember doesn’t need to know why. Tell them it’s important to future plans, which is true. Tell them it’s a security matter, which is also true. But you don't give them the context that would make them understand how much is actually at stake.”
“Ember will sense there’s more to it,” Gethin says.
“Ember is a good soldier, but he is not a strategist the way you are,” Morrighu replies. “He will accept the order because it comes from you, and because I back you. He will compartmentalize because that is what soldiers do when things are classified. What he won't do is investigate further if you tell him not to.”
Gethin considers this. Cold and calculating, exactly what strategy requires. “And when Emlyn wakes up? When she starts talking? When she realizes she’s sharing a temple with people from other Great Houses, or when word starts spreading that a Renunciate is alive?”
“Then we will have a different set of problems,” Morrighu says. “But we will handle them from a position of strength, not weakness. Right now, my priority is keeping her alive while the window of ignorance is still open. Once it closes, and it will close, we move to the next phase.”
“And if Rigan’s allies come looking for her?” Gethin asks.
There is a pause. When Morrighu speaks again, her voice carries something ancient and dangerous.
“Rigan is dead. The god-killing blow came from her, not from me. That matters, strategically. His death-taint is on her, which means other gods will be cautious about moving against her directly; killing her could bring down consequences they don't want to risk. And anyone who comes looking will be looking for a weapon they can't actually control, not avenging their lord.”
“You have already thought this through,” Gethin says. “All of it.”
“I have had time,” Morrighu says. “I raided her mind, Gethin. I know her training, her capabilities, her connections, her oath-bonds. I made a deliberate choice to bring her here, knowing every consequence I can foresee.”
“But not all of them,” Gethin says.
“No,” Morrighu agrees. “Not all of them. That is where you come in. I need someone on the ground who understands Tassatung politics and the balance of power in this region. Someone who thinks like a strategist. Someone people trust.”
“You need me to prevent the fallout from being catastrophic.”
“Yes. And eventually, to help her understand what she has become. But first, she heals. First, we keep her existence quiet. First, we get the woad and whatever else Davilla needs.”
Gethin nods slowly. “I understand, my Goddess.”
“Good. Get the woad. Get whatever Davilla needs. And Gethin,” Morrighu pauses. “Keep her alive. Whatever it takes. I have plans for that girl, and I didn't pull her out of a torture chamber just to lose her to circumstance or stupidity.”
The Goddess withdraws, her presence settling like a weight lifted only slightly. Gethin sits back in his chair, his hands folded in his lap. His leg throbs, the old injury and something newer, something that feels like the pressure of responsibility settling onto his shoulders.
There are people he needs to speak with. Ember, the interim leader of the paladins, needs to understand that something significant is happening, without understanding what that something actually is. But first, Gethin needs to think through every possible way this could go wrong. Every loose thread that could be pulled. Every person who might suspect something. Every faction that might be watching.
Because if Melfyn’s granddaughter is what Gethin thinks she is, she becomes the most dangerous secret in Harito. And secrets have a way of getting out.
He reaches for his cane. The wood is worn smooth from decades of use, from the weight of a body that refuses to break even when broken. He leans on it, standing slowly, methodically.
Gethin has spent most of his life making sure his secrets stay buried. Now he has to bury someone else’s, and make sure that when it finally comes out, because it will come out, the pieces are positioned so that Morrighu can move to the next phase of whatever plan she has already laid.
He heads toward the door, already planning his first conversation with Ember. This time, the board isn't just regional politics. This time, the board is the gods themselves.