The Exorcist Doctor

A week after the slaughter of the Repossessors, Gael sat on the belltower of the Heartcord Clinic like a gargoyle that drank instead of brooded.

The chair he'd dragged up here was listing on one lame leg, but who really gave a shit? Bottle number fourteen sweated in his palm. It was a brutal, honest 86% spirit that did no one any favors, and he loved it for that. He tipped it back, let it run molten down his throat, and exhaled into the night.

From way up high, he saw the southern ward moving. Ropes were strung between facades, scaffolds were growing out of skeletons of stores he'd torn in two, and handheld street lamps bobbed as neighbors ferried planks, bricks, and gossip all across Blightmarch. The city was good at pretending it didn't hurt. Only a week had passed, and it was like a tiny war hadn't even happened down here.

Super sorry, y'all, he thought, downing his fifteenth bottle, but think of rebuilding as a community bonding effort, you know? Festivals are expensive, but demolitions are free, so—

"Gael!" Cara hollered from far, far below. "Get down here in fifteen seconds or Evelyn's gonna scoop up all your favorites!"

He blinked once.

Then he bolted.

His chair scraped and skittered. He vaulted over the railings with all the grace of an upended casket, but his left foot failed to get over the railings completely, so he tripped and dropped straight down with a regretful 'ah'.

He hit the roof, rolled, slid five meters, then discovered a spot as weak as his resolve and went through the roof in a burst of dust. The attic received him briefly. Then he fell through the attic as well, pinballed through the rafters, insulted a family of bats, and the last beam politely cracked under him. He fell the final ten meters down and crash-landed across a long bench in the prayer hall, smashing it into two smaller, less faithful benches.

The crowd in the prayer hall was indifferent, though someone did murmur 'Saintess bless you'.

Thanks.

He lay there for a heartbeat, ankle chain kinked and all tangled up. It'd be a pain in the ass to have to backtrack the way he fell just to untangle it later, but oh well. It was a future problem for future Gael, so he groaned as he pulled to his feet, powdering himself off like pastry.

Lanterns had turned the prayer hall into one big party. A dozen tables ran like little rivers between the benches, all bearing stations run by whoever had declared themselves chefs tonight. Pots hissed, cauldrons burped, bread steamed, and laughter almost made him forget this wasn't a normal dinner, but a victory feast on the corpse of a gang.

He started beelining through the crowd of fifty or so with a drunk's precision.

The first and only station he planned on stopping by was Miss Alba's noodle stand. It'd become a small war in her corner of the prayer hall. Three stoves glowed with righteous fire as Miss Alba and her two children ladled broth, primed bowls, and flung noodles around like fish out of a net. Maskless Evelyn had already declared herself lord of the station—the girl sat on the chair smack dab before the center of the table, hogging three seats' worth of space just to fit more bowls for herself.

Gael slid in, snatched her bowl mid-slurp, and said, "Mine."

Evelyn punched him in the ribs so hard his eyes hiccuped. "Thief!"

"Just be patient. I'm hungry—"

"Thief! Thief! Thief!"

Gael ignored her, already cackling as he tilted the bowl back and let salty, oily, peppered life roll into him. "Miss Alba, please continue to enable my decline. This is divinity. I require more divinity."

"Return that to Evelyn," Miss Alba scowled, striking his wrist with her ladle. "You've got two hands and no manners."

He dodged the lacquered justice, kept slurping, and endured more of Evelyn's small and miraculous fists. As he did, he glanced around the hall, dialing the rest of the crowd into focus.

Liorin had claimed the entrance as his throne. The four three-headed hellhounds lounged there like gates of living stone, and the boy sat astride them as if it were the most natural seat in the world. His flower mask was tilted sideways so he could stuff his mouth with fruit, and in between bites, he tossed hunks of raw meat to the hounds. The hounds lolled their tongues, eyes content, each head arguing with the other two over which of them should get the pleasure of chewing.

Even Grimlet likes Liorin more than me.

Traitorous hound.

He kept looking.

His eyes drifted to the back corner of the hall. Fergal and his five goons stood there, bowls in their hands, slurping their noodles without bothering to sit. A handful of ex-Repossessors circled them like moths to a lantern. Some of them stole quick, nervous glances back at Gael, only to snap away the instant they realized he'd caught them looking.

Fear still inked their faces. He grinned wider just to sharpen it, and across the room, Fergal lifted his chin in a simple nod.

Gael heard a few ravens whispering the past few days that Fergal and his men weren't about to resurrect the Repossessors. They weren't going back to debts and limb-robbings—as if they hadn't learned that lesson already—but they were going to make a new gang. Someone had to fill up the power vacuum left in the wake of the Repossessors, and it was best not to leave it all up to the Rot Merchants or any smaller gang, so Fergal figured there might as well be one that was properly affiliated with the Heartcord Clinic this time.

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He'd be lying if he said he wasn't just a little bit eager to see what breed of beast Fergal's gang was going to grow into, and how he might be able to profit off of it.

He kept looking again.

Three Gulchers crouched like gargoyles on the rafters over the far corner, the child-sized one he'd helped months ago parked between two rangier silhouettes. They were silent as drowned bells, masks humming faintly as they drew single noodles up through their filters with long, slow slurps. One strand at a time. No chatting. No blinking that he could see. Just noodle asceticism.

He squinted up at them, baffled as always.

"Who invited you lot?" he muttered, half to himself, half to the Saintess. As if the rafters might answer. "The fuck do you guys really want, anyways?"

He turned away. Most of the hall was packed with neighbors from the surrounding lanes, since Cara advertised this open feast to everyone who could make it. Between most of the civilians, though, were Rot Merchants in tidy suits, speaking to tradesmen about refinancing timber and slate or arguing trade tables with fishmongers, trying to talk up new supply lines now that the Repossessors had a vacated a few markets by dying all at once.

Never missing a business opportunity, these guys.

And naturally, most of the Rot Merchant had formed a polite circle to bother Old Banks. The old man sat in his own corner, legs crossed, cross-shaped greatsword across his knee and shadowing a scowl that could curdle cream as the business-minded tried to curry contracts with him—so when Gael's gaze met his, Old Banks didn't blink. He only sharpened his scowl and gave a small, imperious jerk of the chin that probably meant 'come save me from these polite wolves already'.

Gael mouthed, very clearly, 'deal with it'.

Old Banks's scowl deepened like a storm. It was beautiful.

Gael kept scanning. The Cleaner was here—of course he was—leaning against the stone skirt of Saintess Severin's statue, eating noodles with such tidy patience it looked sinister. Hood low, face shadowed… Gael had half a mind to march over and tug the hood back just to see what kind of face sat behind that iron mask.

But then he shuddered and thought better of it. No. Curiosity killed better men than him.

Best to not know anything about that creep.

Behind the statue of the Saintess, the Vile Eater chugged in a steady, wet rhythm, drawing the ward's toxic air through its ribbed channels. He may have popped the core with the Myrmur out to make his Vile Canister, but he'd returned it since so the clinic could breathe. If he ever needed the core again, though, he'd just take it back out. No big deal.

He let his eyes sweep the benches one more time and found Cara sitting mid-row, legs crossed at the ankle, hands around a glass. For how laid-back and casual she looked, nobody was talking to her. Nobody even seemed to notice her. She took that in stride and merely watched everyone with a small, private smile.

When she noticed him staring, she raised her glass.

He raised one back—the closest one, which happened to be Evelyn's. He lifted it high with great ceremony:

"That's mine!" Evelyn said, punching his ribs again.

"You're too young to be drinking," he said solemnly, clinking his glass toward Cara.

Cara's smile tipped a little wider.

He wondered if the smile meant what he thought it meant.

'Dad would've liked to see this.'

… Probably not, sis.

He hated alcohol.

With a silent cheer, he downed his glass before handing Evelyn the empty glass.

As she fumed in scientifically measurable outrage and he ruffled her hair, he glanced through the crowd to find the other half of his Raven mask, but Maeve was loud by absence. His chain was still tangled up because he fell through the roof, so following that was no use… but then he let his gaze climb to the dim windows of the surgical chamber upstairs.

He didn't have to be sober to guess where she'd vanished to, so he patted Evelyn's head again, softer this time.

"Thanks," he said.

"For what?" she asked, brows hitching.

He flicked her on the forehead and turned away. Bumbling and stumbling through the crowd, he eventually reached the altar, the statue of the Saintess, and gave the Cleaner a little nod—receiving one in return—before climbing the stairs to the surgical chamber.

Halfway up, he paused and tapped the railings with his fingers.

There was something he wanted to get out first.

"... I know what you did."

The shadows under the stairs shifted, and Juno's laugh came out cool and low, steel on glass. "I haven't the faintest idea what you're muttering about."

"The assassins who attacked the clinic that first night. Lorcawn sent his own, sure, but yours intercepted his first and made sure to come at me with even more men than he'd sent," he said. "I did a little digging. Those blades wore the colors of the Ashen Choir, but the Choir was bought out not long ago by the Thirteenth Ledger, and wouldn't you know? The Ledger answers to the Rot Merchants."

Silence stretched for a beat.

Then Juno sighed like she'd finally set down a heavy mask. "Welp. Curtain's pulled, then."

Gael tilted his head back, grin faint but feral. "Wasn't hard to figure out either way. You wanted to make sure me and the Repossessors were at each other's throats so you could clear the board without bleeding a drop yourself. Understandable enough. I wanted Lorcawn gone, you wanted cleaner streets, and in the end—look at us. We both got what we wanted."

"That's just business," Juno said lightly.

"Sure is. But you do know what I'll do the next time I see another knife—staged or not—tossed at my door and at my people, right?"

Her laugh drifted up the stairs, amused and unbothered. "I'll etch that warning into my bones, Raven. Now, isn't there a wife and mother-in-law waiting on you? I'd hate to keep the family hungry."

He blew air out his nose and rubbed the back of his head. "Yeah, yeah," he muttered, turning away. "I was gonna drink the night away, but I suppose I can do that after the surgery."

"Suppose?" she echoed. "What an extravagant verb. Now don't let me keep you, Doctor."

He didn't.

He climbed.