Jorm

by Alan Bayman

  Last and most importantly, I could manipulate the living alchemy within them through their augmentations. I was not sure how this worked, but if I touched the necromantic leg of a rat, I could put it to sleep, invigorate it, make it hostile, euphoric, or a variety of other changes. I could even enhance or subdue its own healing process. With a syringe of Miasma, I could enhance the reaction exponentially.

  With this in mind, I augmented several infant rats with enhancing their growth, health, and intelligence in mind.

  Enhancing their bodies and giving them perfect health was easy, but their brains were so small and the alchemy of the mind so complex to work with (apart from maximizing already present efficiency) that I gave up on enhancing intelligence until my knowledge of alchemy grew.

  The next day out of curiosity, I asked Tina if I could run some tests on her. She agreed, and I placed my hand lightly on her augmented face. It turns out that I could affect her just as well. Even more so because her body is more complex which makes way for a greater variety of reactions.

  With this new tool I used it to maximize her physical health, heal her bruises from the daily grind, and help her sleep when dreams troubled her. In time and taking the lessons I learned from the Dreamweaver, I offered to induce her into a relaxed state so that she could address her trauma.

  Again, she acquiesced, and I learned the whole of her story.

  “I was a prostitute,” she said, her voice relaxed and faint. “I hope you don’t hate me. I hope you don’t turn me away.”

  “Never for that,” I said. “Besides, you’ve earned your place here.”

  She nodded dreamily, her eyes half open.

  “Please continue,” I said.

  “My father was the captain of a trade galleon, and a priest of Kaos. With his prayers he was one of the few men capable of navigating the Tempest Sea. It made him very rich.

  “One day he told us he had a vision from the Goddess. I don’t know the details, but it ended up with him playing three games of dice with a beggar.

  “The first game ended with a tie, so he gave half of all his wealth to the beggar, in return for a moldy cloak. The second game he lost, so he sold his ship then and there, on the docks of this city, never to sail again. The third game was another tie, so he kept his wife, my mother, and sold me to a brothel, in return for the beggar’s soup spoon. I was their only child, as my brothers had died at sea.

  “He left me with an enormous sum of money and sold me to one of the highest paying brothels in the city. It made little difference. Within a year I had spent all my money on frivolous things, despite being paid as an expensive whore, and had debt collectors looking for me. I tried selling many of the frivolous things I bought, but the debt collectors took them as payment, saying it barely made a difference in what I owed.

  “So, during the winter festival I tried to sneak down to the docks and purchase passage on one of the ships. Three men from the collectors caught me.”

  She stopped. Her breathing grew heavy. I could keep her body relaxed but I knew her mind was under terrible stress.

  “We can stop here for now, if you like,” I said.

  “No,” she shook her head slightly. “I’m afraid that if I don’t speak now, I will be too afraid to once you stop calming me.

  “They pulled me out of the cart I was in and threw me in an alley. Said they were making an example of me. They then,” she paused, tears were running freely from her eyes, but I kept her relaxed.

  “They raped me. Two of them. The third one just started hitting me until I blacked out.” She was choking slightly, so I stabilized her. She sighed.

  “That’s all I remember. Thank you.”

  We sat there for a time, in my lab with my hand on her cheek. Me keeping her calm and relaxed while she collected herself. Eventually, when she seemed relaxed enough, I began to move my hand away from her when she said, “Wait.”

  I stopped, and settled down again, thinking she just needed more time. But she then spoke.

  “There is something I want to talk to you about, but I know I am going to be a mess once you let go,” she paused, biting her lip, then continued.

  “I have been here several moons now, and not once have you tried to lay a hand on me. Even though you’ve made me more beautiful than I was before,” her hand came up and touched her hair.

  “Surely, as a man who is both a healer and an alchemist, you are married?”

  I thought about Shailyn, and then after a moment, about Shan-lo.

  “It’s complicated,” I said.

  She nodded. “Yet I feel, a connection to you. I feel I can trust you, and you have proven it. I can talk to you like I can talk to no other,” she smiled at me, and the smile suddenly vanished.

  “But I do not want to be your lover. I don’t want any man, inside me, ever again,” she spoke slowly and paused. I knew it was taking her great effort to speak, despite my calming effect.

  “But can I love you? I will not ask for much. Maybe hold your hand some time, or to sit here how we are now, with you relaxing me so I can speak freely. You can have your wife, or consorts or lovers or whores, I don’t care. I don’t want that. Do this for me and I’ll give you anything you want. I can’t give you my body, but I can use my hands, or even my mouth-,”

  I held up my other hand to silence her. A searing pain of desire and pity flooded my chest until I stilled my heart again. I almost forgot to keep her calm, in calming myself.

  “We will not be physically intimate. I have problems with limitations once my passions become unfettered, so best not leave that to chance,” I paused. She would have been holding her breath if I allowed her.

  “I see no reason why we cannot do this,” I said. “There are others in my life, but as it stands there is room for you. I cannot say that I love you, or that I will, but we can have this.” I was suddenly reminded of the rats becoming docile to me after I augmented them.

  “It is possible that in mending you I created some sort of bond between us. I must research it. You must accept that at least some of what you feel for me is artificial.”

  “I think I know,” she replied. “I felt it as soon as I woke up in your lab. But it is not love. It’s a feeling of safety around you. It’s almost as though I can feel what you’re feeling, and I know you’re not feeling like hurting me.”

  I thought over what she said.

  “Has that feeling ever changed?”

  “A moment ago,” she replied. “For a moment it seemed like you were sad, and you wanted me all at once.”

  This definitely called for more research.

  At her request, we spent some time in silence, holding hands. Eventually I nodded to her, and slowly eased up on my calming effect on her mind. After a moment her breathing became rapid and she plunged into hysterics. I touched her face again and put her to sleep. In the morning, I would wake her with a mild invigoration, so that she could contemplate the nights unpleasantness while being well rested.

  While she slept, I continued my research, all the while thinking about the brothel I found long ago. The ladies residing there would all routinely suffer some fate like Tina’s. I knew I could not fix the world, but I was wondering if I could make it a little less terrible than it was.

  In the morning while Adan and I were preparing for our first customer and Tina took our linens to the washing women I turned to him and said, “You have noble blood, yes?”

  He gave me a sidelong look as he neatly laid out a set of knives.

  “There’s more vinegar in my piss than the average sorry sod, if that’s what you mean, yes.”

  “So then, you can buy property,” I said, still looking at him.

  He stopped and turned to face me. His usual scowl crinkled in amusement.

  “You looking to expand our illustrious business?” He said with no small hint of sarcasm.

  “Actually, I was thinking of us expanding into other businesses. Ones that would benefit from this one as well as increasing our inco
me.”

  He grew thoughtful at that and turned away to continue out preparations. After a moment he said, “What did you have in mind?”

  I gave him the address.

  “What, that old place? It’s a burned down whore house.”

  “It has potential.”

  Adan shrugged. “Everywhere in the slums ‘has potential.’ But you haven’t steered me wrong so far, so I’ll look into it. Partner.” He grinned a little.

  A few days later he came back from a trip to the realtors. Tina had taken to mending my clothes in the corner of the main room during slow times and was doing so while humming to herself. He glanced at her, smirking briefly before he spoke.

  “I checked out that property you mentioned. We could buy it for a song, but it just ain’t worth it.”

  “Why?”

  He sighed. Tina stopped humming, obviously listening in.

  “The foundation is soaked through. Anything built there starts to shift within a year. Entire buildings come down within ten years. That’s how the fire happened; part of the wall came down in the kitchen.

  “The last three times the place has been renovated it was used to fool some young noble out of his inheritance money. It would be built up out of some shoddy materials and then sold to someone who would then watch it fall apart in front of his eyes.” He gave me a hard look.

  “If that’s the kind of business you’re thinking of getting into, then you’re going in alone. I’ll have no part in it.”

  I shook my head. “We’ll rebuild it as a tavern, using decent materials. There’s a brothel there now. We’ll fix the girls up, and they can be tavern wenches.”

  Adan’s scowl deepened. “Did you hear anything I just said? I told you the foundation is soaked. You can’t just un-soak a foundation. You have to dig it all out, prop up the foundations edge, fill it with something watertight unless you’re stupid and want an underwater basement come next rain, and then hope you’ve dug deep enough and the whole damn thing doesn’t sink anyway. After all that it’s going to cost ten times what the property is worth.”

  “Buy it anyway. I have an idea. But don’t tell anyone. If everyone thinks we’re fools, the brothel that is there will be a cheap sell as well.”

  “We are fools,” he snorted, “or at least you are if you are going to try this out with an idea you’re not even sure will work.”

  I shrugged. “Fine. Then I’ll only use my money for it. But you’ll only get ten percent of the profit made.”

  He grimaced. “Twenty percent. My name’s on the deed, so anything bad that happens there comes down on me.”

  “Since when is a noble responsible for tavern brawls? Twelve percent.”

  “Fifteen, or no deal.”

  “Done.”

  We shook hands, and I realized that for the first time in my unlife and perhaps in my previous life as well, I had successfully haggled.

  Now, all I needed was my idea to work.

  “Oh, and don’t worry about the brothel,” he added. “They are squatters. The moment you buy the property, everything on it not legally there becomes yours, or so the city law says. I can have the city guards round them all up and arrest the men running it for trespassing if you like. It’ll cost you though, the guards don’t like going over to that part of town.”

  “I’ll take care of that,” I said. “Just get me a copy of the deed.”

  I took the copy of the deed, broke out my scrivening kit, and made an additional copy. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed writing. A steady, even hand, each curve of carefully drawn calligraphy, placed precisely so. The writer of the deed was quite skilled, and it was a pleasure copying his work.

  I found a peace in writing and scrivening that seemed to mimic some of my new meditations. It is part of why I am writing down these recollections.

  It was late in the evening as I watched the brothel work from the burnt-out kitchen. I had brought several extra vials of liquid Miasma with me, and in the dark of night I coaxed them into moving underneath the owner and his bodyguards.

  It was a slow night, with only a few patrons at this hour. As the last one walked away I approached.

  “Six coppers for ten minutes,” the owner said gruffly. “Pay up first.”

  He was sitting at a small table with a lamp in its center, dressed in thick furs to keep the night chill at bay. His bodyguards flanked him, one giving his usual intimidating glare, the other looking bored.

  With a mental gesture I cast a spell I had been practicing, channeling it through the dark Miasma pooled at their feet. All the men suddenly grew pale and began to shiver all over. One guard, no longer bored, put one hand on the table to stay on his feet.

  “Wh-hats, ha-happening,” the owner was struggling to rise while the other guard fumbled with his cudgel.

  “Some call it ‘The Wraiths Kiss’,” I said. “Orcs call it ‘The Dying Mans Winter.’ I prefer its Elven name; ‘I’than L’har’, or ‘The Lover Scorned’.”

  “What’d you want,” the owner said through clenched teeth. The guard holding himself up by the table collapsed to his knees.

  “Simple,” I said. “I want everything. Everything you own is now mine. Everyone who works for you now works for me.” I pulled out my extra copy of the deed.

  “All legally, of course,” I unrolled it and showed it to them while they struggled to breathe. The armed guard suddenly took a swing at me with his cudgel. I released the last of the Miasma he was standing on into him and he collapsed into a convulsing heap.

  “Anyone else?” I asked.

  “Please let me live,” the other guard choked from the floor.

  “Maybe, in a moment,” I said. The Wraiths Kiss wasn’t designed to kill, only incapacitate. But I found that if you overloaded the spell with Miasma it can be lethal. You just needed a lot of Miasma.

  As it stood, all that would happen to the remaining two is that they would be miserable for the next half hour until the spell wore off. But if I released the remaining Miasma under them into the spell, they would die. It was like the difference between making it hard to breathe and taking away all the air.

  I walked around the table to start going through the owner’s belongings. I noticed he was clutching a dagger in his hand. I deliberately looked at the knife, then back at him, and said, “Go ahead, try.”

  He glared at me, shivering, but dropped the knife on the ground. I made sure his other hand was bare then collected his and both bodyguards’ belongings onto the table. The surviving guard was curled up into a shivering ball on the floor.

  I put on my spectacles and began going through the owner’s stuff. Most of what he had was money. I looked up at the owner to comment on this when the spectacles whispered to me that his cloak was enchanted to ward off the cold and had several hidden pockets. I stripped it off him and he began to shiver violently, so I threw the dead guard’s cloak on him.

  The hidden pocket held a few elixirs for healing and curing disease, but also a ledger, and, to my utmost surprise, an enchanted slave collar. These things were ridiculously expensive. How could he have possibly acquired it?

  I put the slave collar on him and activated it. I then released the spell on him. He glared at me as he grew still.

  “Tell me how you got the collar,” I commanded.

  “Found it on a dead slave girl,” he grunted.

  “Did you steal it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you use it?”

  “I use it all the time.”

  “Tell me how.”

  The man got a wild look in his eyes.

  “I find a boy, a street urchin. And I have my men catch him and put the collar on him.”

  “Then what do you do? Tell me everything,” I said.

  “I take him up to my room and I bugger him. After that, I make him bugger me. After that I get all mad, so I drown him. I used to drown them in the canal, but then we dragged a horse trough-”

  As I have mentioned before, sometim
es I do not react well to surprises. I did not at all expect what he said. So, I had surprised myself, by picking up his knife and stabbing him in the chest. I briefly wondered why I didn’t stab him in a spot such as the neck, eye or heart and quickly realized I had chosen a place where he would expire in a slow, agonizing manner.

  That would not do.

  My heart was beating, and I had to spend a while calming it to stillness. He was bent over, coughing up blood while trying to pull the knife out. I took the collar off him (attacking a slave breaks the enchantment, but it can be reused) and using necromancy I severed the hand of the dead guard.

  Grabbing the owner, I roughly pushed him back in his chair, yanked the knife out of him in a spray of blood, and shoved the severed hand into the wound while molding it to the wounds shape. He gave a gurgling scream as he tried to shove me off.

  “No, you don’t get to die yet,” I told him as the wound sealed. It was imperfect. It probably hurt like hell, but it was enough that I could probably put the slave collar back on him, and the enchantment would work. Before he got too oriented I slapped the slave collar back on him and looked at it through the spectacles to see of it was working. It was.

  “You must have rope,” I said. “Tell me where you keep it.” He showed me one of the bottom rooms that still had a door where they kept various supplies. I grabbed several lengths of rope and tied up the remaining guard, and then collected as much of the remaining liquid Miasma as I could.

  By now, several of the women, alerted by the owner’s cries, were peeking around their blanket doorways at me. I waved them over, but they disappeared back into their rooms.

  For the next half hour, I commanded the owner to list me all his assets. He held no bank account but had a few hideaways in stashes or with people who owed him. I had him wait for me with the lamp off while I went and collected them, under the order to not free the bodyguard. It did not take long. His stashes comprised of a few coin purses full of silver and some extra sets of clothes. One stash, though, had a whole lot more money that the others.