“I’m not sure that was a success,” Elena muttered underneath her hood as we walked down the road.
Though Cutlass was hardly a safe place, the main streets weren’t particularly dangerous during the daytime. The food stalls selling simple meals and shops selling cloth and thread were important for the inhabitants’ daily necessities, after all. Most of the shops were under the jurisdiction of one of the four factions, and the shop owners looked haggard, no doubt in part due to the considerable protection fees. Not only that, the high prices kept most customers away. Many resorted to theft and robbery to survive, and I had to constantly glare daggers at people to keep them away from Elena and me.
“Maybe,” I said, nodding. “But we don’t have a lot of options.”
We were selling potions for coin, yes, but for connections as well. To leave this town and make the journey to Kal’Faan, we needed to join merchant caravans that knew the roads well. For that purpose, we needed trust and large sums of money.
I’d made high-grade potions from materials found in the desert using uncommon recipes my dark elf mistress had left me, so they had no degradation. By selling them, we could make ourselves important. That came with its own set of risks, but if we played our cards right, we could use it to our advantage.
Still, Elena’s doubts likely stemmed from the Kiluri man we’d traded with. He felt greedy—and not just as a merchant.
“Should we sell directly to the Hogroth?” Elena asked.
“The Kiluri supply the Adventurers’ Guild with potions. We’ll draw their ire if we sell our own potions in large quantities,” I replied.
“Then let us pray for now that the Kiluri don’t do anything foolish.” She paused, looking puzzled. “Alia? Is something the matter?”
“I smell death,” I said, my gaze fixed on a certain point.
Cutlass might have been dangerous, but it wasn’t as though corpses were left to rot on the main streets. Quite the contrary; because people here were used to death, they quickly disposed of bodies to prevent diseases from spreading. Yet here we were, on a main street that smelled like death.
But corpses weren’t the only thing that had that stench—in fact, fresh corpses didn’t smell like death at all. Humans who died of illness and such, meanwhile, often gave off a much more pungent odor.
“Look, Alia, over there.”
I used Boost to focus my eyes and looked over to where Elena was pointing: the corner of a dim alley, where a small figure lay collapsed.
“A child,” I said. “Still alive.”
Elena let out a soft gasp.
What to do? We didn’t have the luxury of getting involved. But to ignore a dying child would only wound Elena’s heart. For a brief moment, our gazes met, and I knew what to do. I headed toward the alley, and she hurried after me.
She tried to rush over to the injured, ragged child, and I grabbed her shoulder to stop her.
“But the child—”
“Don’t. They may be sick.”
The child was injured, yes, but the smell was the more significant warning sign. I didn’t want Elena to potentially be exposed to anything contagious. I took high-proof distilled alcohol out of the pouch at my waist, put a few drops on my palms to disinfect them, then approached the child.
A dark elf boy, it looked like. Now that I thought about it, I realize I hadn’t seen any small children since coming to this town. This one seemed to not even be ten years old yet, even taking into account an elf’s lifespan. As I looked over the boy, I realized he was indeed sick, but likely not from anything contagious. He seemed to have been bitten by local insect monsters.
Since the disease wasn’t airborne, the boy was safe to approach—though infection was still possible from prolonged contact with his blood.
“High Cure,” I chanted.
His visible wounds closed thanks to the Level 3 light spell. Elena would’ve likely prioritized potency over speed, unlike me, but this would suffice. Either way, any illness that couldn’t be cured through rest and recuperation couldn’t be cured with recovery magic either.
“Alia, this boy...”
“We need to move him somewhere clean,” I said. “Wash off the blood first.”
Though the boy’s illness was the result of insect bites, his wounds were not. Considering how advanced the disease was, it was likely that someone—family or a neighbor, perhaps—had been alarmed by his condition and, afraid of contracting whatever he had, had beaten him up and dumped him here.
But we could investigate later. I’d treated his wounds, but the disease needed separate intervention. Daily potions could keep him alive, but there was something else I wanted to try.
Thankfully, I’d stocked up on hemp cloth upon arriving here, so I used some to wrap his entire body and avoid touching his blood. Then I gently lifted him into my arms.
“Should we take him to the inn?” Elena asked.
“No, let’s go farther this way.”
We hadn’t seen any children around, so I assumed they could probably be found in the slums, away from the main streets. As we headed that way, a familiar figure came running toward us from the opposite end of the alley.
“What are you going to do to him?” the figure asked, breathless.
“How is that your business?”
The figure—Camille, the dark elf we’d met before—narrowed his eyes and drew his daggers.
“Hand him over...!”
That was interesting. He’d never shown us any emotion, never been interested in us at all, yet here he was, evidently irritated.
“And if I don’t?”
“Then I’ll cut you down!” he snapped, one of his daggers flying at me like an arrow.
Camille’s anger was such that the boy stirred slightly. At that moment, I moved away from Elena and ran up the alley wall with the boy still in my arms, clicked my heels against the sandstone, and kicked out to block Camille’s follow-up swing with the hidden blade in my boot.
A shrill metallic clash echoed in the air.
“You’re going to kill this boy, you know,” I said.
“Let go of him!” he demanded.
He was fast. At the mere implication that I was using the boy as a shield, Camille swung even faster. I used the blades on my heels to climb farther up the wall and dodge his attack, then, with quick flicks of my wrists, drew knives from within Shadow Storage and threw them at him.
“Tch!”
Camille dropped low to deflect the knives, likely realizing that physically pursuing me was futile. He really was powerful, though. I figured he surpassed me in raw stats. That wasn’t what got me about him, however—what was really threatening was...
“So the secret lies in those blades of yours.”
Camille’s eyes widened.
The discomfort I felt from him was small, almost insignificant, like the nagging feeling of having forgotten to cut one’s nails. He had weighted chains and, being a dark elf, could probably use sorcery too. But those were not options because of the child. Was he secretly soft under that prickly exterior? Most people would’ve wagered that. But someone as strong as him had to have more than one way to handle this situation.
For how threatening he was, he seemed to lack experience in true bloodshed. His secret, I noticed, lay in those crude daggers he wielded and the aether they were imbued with.
“Here,” I said, throwing the child in Camille’s direction as he began to climb up the wall.
He reflexively wrapped his arms around the boy and lost his footing.
I erased my presence, moved behind him, drew my knife, and raised it high—
“Stop this right now!” came Elena’s sharp command, just before my blade touched Camille’s neck.
I kicked off the wall immediately and landed next to her.
By then, Camille—holding the boy—had put some distance between us and was glaring at me.
Elena sighed but said nothing to me as she stepped forward. “The child is bloodied, but we’ve treated his wounds,” she told Camille. “We didn’t harm him. Quite the opposite. We couldn’t bear to leave him to die.”
Camille was silent for a moment, then gave the boy a suspicious look. After a few moments, he likely noticed that there were indeed no wounds underneath the blood and, realizing he’d misunderstood, grimaced and gritted out, “Sorry.”
“Apology accepted,” Elena said. She looked at me. “Our actions certainly didn’t help the misunderstanding.”
I gave a small nod.
While I didn’t necessarily think Camille or his companion Ron were evil, I couldn’t say whether or not they were trustworthy either. Elena probably took Camille catching the boy as a sign that he could be trusted, at least to an extent...but doubtless she thought I could’ve been more conciliatory in my approach.
But we couldn’t afford to show weakness.
Neither Elena nor I liked acting in such a dishonorable manner, but she had a duty to return to the kingdom, and I had reasons to protect her. I’d thrown away my softness to shield her body and her spirit.
“Do you have a way to cure his illness?” I asked.
Camille stopped at a safe distance away from us, still holding the boy, and threw my words back at me. “How is that your business?”
“It’s not. I just happen to have the means to do it myself.”
He looked at me again.
I had no intention of making friends with him. If he could handle it himself, I wanted no further involvement with this. But the boy was innocent, and I still wanted to save his life—ideally while keeping everyone else at arm’s length. That was the most I was willing to concede.
Camille was a wary person by nature, so it would be difficult for him to trust me. Unsurprising, given how I’d just behaved. That was why I wanted to give him an out to avoid owing me anything as well.
“I’ll pay,” he said after a long pause.
“Works for me,” I replied.