“Not really,” Shannon replied. “The river can be dangerous during the flooding season, so most of the ferrymen don’t want to take their boats out. The few that would be willing to take us across are charging way more than we can afford. We need to decide what to do. We don’t have to cross the river, you know.”
“But it’s better if we do, right?” Raquel asked.
“If we cross the river, we’ll be in the outer regions of the kingdom. We’ll be much less likely to run into royal security forces, but there are a lot of other dangers out there because there aren’t royal security forces.”
The land on the west side of the Mosburg river was much less developed. It was technically still part of the Linevan Kingdom, but most of the land beyond the river was ruled by indigenous lords who swore allegiance to the royal family out of convenience. The king then provided the lords with knighthood, claimed the land as part of the kingdom, and for the most part let the lords do as they wished. Because of the ambiguity in the ruling party, the lands to the west of the Mosburg river acted as a haven for all kinds of outlaws and criminals.
“We have to decide which we’d rather deal with: royal forces, or bandits,” Raquel said.
“Bandits are much easier to handle, most of the time,” Shannon replied.
“Well then, why don’t we wait here for a few days? If it doesn’t seem like we can get across by then, we can go somewhere else.”
“Yay!” Pacifica stopped attacking Shannon and grinned at her siblings. “So that means we can stay at an inn tonight, right? We don’t have to eat awful dried food, and we can have a hot meal and sleep in actual beds, right? Right?!”
“You do realize that we’re broke, right?” Shannon replied wearily.
“Gah!” Pacifica clasped her hands to her ears. “I don’t want to hear it! I can’t spend another night sleeping on tree roots and eating dried fruit and getting rained on!”
“Listen to me, Princess.” Shannon scowled at her. “Could you please use half of your brain for five minutes?”
“Half of my brain?!” Pacifica shrieked. “I bet you don’t even use a third of your brain! If we opened your skull, we’d find the rest of the space filled with a piece of clay with the words ‘I’m lazy’ carved into it!”
“Yeah, whatever.” Shannon sighed. “Listen, we’re short on money. If we don’t save what we do have, we’ll end up starving to death on the street.”
Pacifica opened her mouth as if to respond, then shut it again. Shannon knew that despite her protests, she understood their situation as well as anyone. They needed to have enough money on hand to get their weapons and equipment repaired if anything broke… in lives like theirs, working equipment could mean the difference between life and death.
Shannon, Raquel, and Pacifica had been running from the Mauserist church for a long time, and they weren’t going to be able to stop running any time soon. Pacifica wasn’t the ordinary girl that she seemed; she was the Scrapped Princess, cursed daughter of the Linevan Kingdom’s royal family, prophesied to destroy the world on her sixteenth birthday. The church and the kingdom would do anything to hunt her down.
Since leaving their hometown more than a year ago, the Casull siblings had fought countless thugs, mercenaries, and soldiers, as well as a few otherworldly monsters. They’d been caught outside in the worst weather imaginable, and had to survive on traveler’s rations cooked badly over a fire.
Shannon looked at his moping little sister, glanced out at the wilderness where they would have to set up camp soon, and sighed. It had been a long time since he’d slept in a bed. Maybe they could find somewhere cheap?
“But I guess if it’s just for one night…”
“Excuse me,” a quiet voice interrupted them. The siblings turned to see a ragged, painfully thin girl about Pacifica’s age with short-cropped brown hair. She was holding out a wickerwork basket.
“Would you like to buy some medicine?” The girl’s voice was strangely bland, as though her mouth was working on its own while her mind was elsewhere.
“What?” Shannon replied, confused by the interruption. The girl seemed to focus on Shannon as a potential customer when he responded to her. She fixed her blank gaze on him and pulled several packets out of her basket.
“I have ointments, digestives, revitalizers, disinfectants, anesthetics—everything you could possibly need. Our products are guaranteed to work, and you can’t beat our prices. Travelers can’t have enough medicine; you never know what could happen on the road.”
She spoke in a droning monotone. It was obvious that she was reciting from a script. Shannon looked at her uncomfortably.
“Sorry, we have all the medicine we need.”
The girl was clearly selling black-market concoctions. The Linevan Kingdom was strict with drug control for a variety of reasons, not the least being the ritualistic drug use of Mauserist-decreed “heretical groups” that could lead to mental disorders. The kingdom had recently set up a registry for pharmacists, and in exchange for guaranteeing the quality of medicine, the kingdom imposed taxes and regulated market prices.
Unauthorized medicine sellers still got a lot of business, though. They could sell their wares for less than half the price of authorized medicine, which was definitely a draw.
Luckily for the siblings, they could generally avoid the entire system. Raquel knew how to make most medicines from scratch (which cost one-tenth of market price), and even Pacifica and Shannon had learned the basics of medicinal herbs from their father. They even still had medicine given as gifts from the people of Taurus.
“If you don’t need any medicine, would you be interested in… this?” The girl produced a bright red packet from the bottom of her basket; it didn’t look like ordinary medicine. She gave Shannon a significant look. “For your nighttime pleasure.”
“Wait, what?”
“An aphrodisiac,” she replied, deadpan as usual.
“An aphro-what?!” Pacifica cried, her cheeks turning pink.
“You can mix our powerful aphrodisiac into the meal of the person you have in mind, or you can drink it as a couple to enjoy a long, wild night. With one drink, even the shiest maiden won’t be able to keep her hands off you.”
The three siblings stared at her in horror.
“You’re not interested?”
Shannon regained his composure.
“We have all the… medicine… we need. Sorry, but you’re going to have to find someone else to sell to.”
She looked confused for a moment, then put the packets back into her basket and walked away without a word.
“I can’t believe she’s actually selling that.” Pacifica stared after the girl as she walked away.
“You mean the aphrodisiac?” Raquel broke in. “It’s fake.”
“Really?”
“There are many types of medicine that can influence human emotions in a general way, but sexual impulses are quite complicated and very difficult to control. Most medicines that are sold as aphrodisiacs are actually stimulants or hallucinogens. In other words, they’re drugs. Out here in these remote regions, there isn’t much regulation of substances, so they are often sold quite openly in public.” Raquel spoke as though she were reading from a textbook, but with her typically vague grin plastered on her face. “Some villages manufacture drugs officially because they’re so profitable. Father once told me about an operation he was sent on to bring one of those villages under control.”