There was an aura of expectant tension in the apothecary. Jerzy was sitting in a dark corner, picking at one of his scabs and listening to the rain. They should have been back by now. He winced and swore when he pulled off a piece that wasn't ready, and his arm started bleeding a little. He rubbed his hands on his pants, shifting nervously.

Shook was sitting on a stool, smoking out of a pipe and turning the pages of his records book back and forth. He tried to concentrate on the numbers, but he was nervous. He didn't know what had happened to Jasper, but whatever it was he didn't like it.

"Stop movin', boy. You'll only make it worse." He snapped impatiently. Jasper's ankle was swollen, and there were nasty cuts on his hand. Shook had sent Parrot to go get a healer. There was only so much he could do with this sort of thing.

The waterfront was long, and there were not many places he could go. Stumbling out of the alley swiftly becoming a river, he silently cursed for lack of souls in the street. He looked like a terror. Charitable souls in Old Rose were like fruit in a desert. How far had he gone? Hopefully not too far. His shoulder hurt. He felt his way along the waterfront shops with a machete hand clanking on doorways and slick wood for purchase.

A quiet lamp guttered in the dark, faintly illuminating a familiar store front. Apothecary.

He wavered in the water fattened street for moment, swaying in the sea breeze. He sagged against the doorframe, not trusting his feet. Freezing fingers could not be coaxed free of the pommel, so he just slammed the flat of the machete against the rickety door too.

Knocking was a necessity. Bleeding like a stuck pig or not, Havek still had his manners.

Jasper jumped up and then swore loudly, sitting back down heavily. He couldn't move. Instead, Shook walked towards the door and opened it. He let out a surprised gasp. "Hava?!" He couldn't get the rest of it out.

From behind him Jasper groaned. Really not who he was hoping for. As Havek came into the light, he looked even more terrible. The blood was leaving his face and he looked pale and sickly. Water was dripping down from everywhere and some of the water from the street had rushed into the apothecary. Shook helped him inside and ordered him to lay on the floor immediately. It was in the way, but the boy was bleeding to death. The old man was suddenly very glad he had sent Parrot to get the healer. He could do minor healing spells, but more often than not he messed them up.

When the rain had started to fall more steadily, Charlie had thought nothing of it. It was Loshis, after all-- what was a little rain to remark upon? So while he was a bit wetter than he had expected to be, it was nothing to drive him home. About an hour in, the water was pooling around his ankles and he was starting to have doubts about the brilliance of continuing to be outside.

He was further from his apartment than he was closer, so it seemed a rather good idea to seek out shelter elsewhere. As it was, the first place his sodden self happened upon that seemed at all likely to let him was the apothecary. Surely a man who frequented the establishment as often as himself wouldn't be turned away in weather such as this? Charlie frowned. Golly or not, it was raining fit to drown out here. Drown he would, if he didn't get inside. Drown, or die of a chill.

It did not escape him that not everyone would be upset by this happening.

Without any knocking, preamble or announcement, Charlie shoved his way through the door. "Hope you don't mind me coming in, the rain is really--"

Well.

There was that Mugrobi wick he remembered from the last time he was in the shop, looking rather worse for wear, and Jasper with his ankle, and the whole place all hung about with a tense expectation. Something inside him very hesitantly offered the idea that perhaps now was not the best time to be buying something for his cough.

Never in his life had Shook been happy to see a golly enter his shop. The feeling of anxious relief that was wafting over him was as close as he was going to get to it.

"Well! Don't jest stand there!" He snapped as he rushed back to grab a pillow to prop Havek's feet up. "Can ye heal? 'e's goin' into shock."

Jasper opened his mouth, about to complain loudly, but Shook silenced him with a look. The old man didn't look happy.


The door slammed open for the second time that night. Marigold ran in with Aye in tow, and crashed straight into Charlie's waist. She screamed and jerked back.

"JAAAaaasperrrr????" The girl managed to get out through her sudden fear. She could barely feel her arm anymore.

Shook's face was a mask of horror as he saw both of the girls' bleeding arms.

It was dark, and the water was so high that she could barely walk; it was making it hard to keep up with Marigold, and the girl stumbled along behind her. Then there was light and solid floor instead of just water. Aye scrunched up her eyes and sunk to her knees, too tired to stand. She crossed her arms and leaned down, laying her face sideways on the floor. Her arms were burning from the glass cuts, her hands, one burned and one smashed, hurt badly. Her pants were stained red from all of the cuts on her legs, it all stung; the wet fabric rubbing up against the wounds wasn’t helping her pain any, either.

She opened her eyes just a tiny bit, the light still too bright for her, and looked around the room. Some of these were people she had never seen before, but she recognized the galdor, and the man bleeding on the floor as well. She couldn’t remember the bleeding man’s name, but the golly’s she could. It would be hard to forget the drunken kiss he had given Henri.

She ground her teeth and sat part of the way up to see him better, it was hard to move; something was making her stomach hurt.

"C-Charlie?" she said surprised. She looked up at Marigold, and then at the others. What was going on?

All this moving and talking was a bit exhausting to watch. He wasn’t even doing it – just his yellow eye blinking up from the floor, swiveling after all the moving bodies and sounding voices. Loud and small voices, some more familiar than others. But he couldn’t see from the floor, though all the smoky dark, so there were nothing more than shades. Big shadows moving around each other and yelling at each other.

“What noisy cats you are.” Muttered on a shivery exhale, lost under all the other larger sounds.

Havek moved to press himself up to catch a glimpse of who or what was moving his feet, but his fingertips felt like they were scraping over clouds. That they weren’t there at all. Fingers like when a cold storm would blow in and your hands would curl damp and cold until they felt nothing but a dull hum of hurt. One arm felt watery-weak and the other just refused to move at all. Sitting up, then was clearly not an option.

So he lay his head on the cool damp floorboards, peering up to the ceiling and trying to pick out the support beams in the dark. Not-feeling-things was certainly not good. But as least he still had his hands. At least he still had his face. Well – a vast majority of it, anyhow.

He piped up again, lungs tensing in displeasure at the prospect of speaking.

“There’s...there’s a man in the ally. I do b’lieve he’s hurt.”

Charlie shook his head dumbly, a bit overwhelmed. Heal? Him? He was a man who could barely light his kitchen stove-- why else would he spend his time inventing things like the phlogiston exhibitor if he could do such things? No, healing was far, far outside his meagre realm of expertise.

Now two little drowned mice ran in through the door, and he thought he remembered one and her propensity to speak out of turn. The other, he was fairly certain, was foreign to him. They were injured too, and just little the both of them. Whatever business this was about here was foul, he was sure of it, and from the looks of things carried the possibility of injury besides.

He didn't like the idea of injury. But, as he turned his sight outwards to squint through murky glass at the sky above, there was little option for him to go home. He'd be swept up for sure if he tried. Perhaps his being there would dissuade them from more criminal inclinations-- while he was watching, anyway.

"Man in the-- Man in the alley?!" Jasper spat, trying to get up and swearing viciously. Marigold had run over to him and almost bowled him over. He yelped and pushed her away. "WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN?"

Shook was ignoring him, ignoring the loud sobs by the younger girl. Instead, he yanked on Charlie's arm and pulled him down to Havek's side. "He will die. Heal him. I will try to help." Havek looked incredibly pale, and his lips were turning blue. He felt very cold. Shook tore open the shirt he was wearing and exposed the wound. It was still bleeding, but not as much as before.

"Do something!" Shook spat at the golly, bringing bandages and pressing them to the wound.

Over his shoulder he asked Aye, "What happened to you two? Are you hurt?"

He could see the bruises and scrapes, but hadn't yet noticed the burns on both the girls arms. Aye was in extreme pain, and she was starting to feel very cold. The wind was chilling her.

She shivered and dropped her face back to the floor when Shook spoke to her; she wasn’t feeling good at all. Her mouth was numb and she couldn’t seem to get her lips working, speaking into the floor wasn’t making her any more understandable, either.

"buuuurrnss, ow my arm, th'bodies, kov!" she started crying as the images flashed through her mind. She shoved her hand out to show off the burn, she hadn’t looked at it for a while, and she didn’t want to. "'Jaaars," she sobbed, "th' jars of stuff an-" another sob, "th'key." Her crushed hand fumbled around in her bag, searching for the key she had gotten.

She sat up a little more, wrapping her arms around herself to warm up, it wasn’t working. The cold was scraping down her spine and making her eyes ache. She groaned and looked up at Shook.

"W-we-- I don' know how th'f-fire started-d. But I got the key!" she almost smiled as she held it up, but then the pain creeped back into her brain and she started crying again.

Havek moved as much as he could manage underneath Shook’s attentions – not quite dictated by thought, but by feeling, flinching back from the pressure of his hands. A ragged wound, how deep goes it? The last dregs of adrenaline were fading, just out of grasp, leaving him only awakening pangs of pain. Hot blossoming out from his shoulder, a deep ache from the bare bones of his ribs.

He will die. An old voice, that. Shook’s. There was a finality there that politely eluded him. The words rested on his awareness soft as old dust. He’d heard that before, somewhere. Dark hulls, rolling waves, the strong pang of something, somewhere, missing. Never quite believed it, no – but in this place of dust, damp, and dark it sounded entirely tangible. He wasn’t afraid of those words as he always thought he would be.

And the younger voice, shrill with anger. Both linking tenuously around the same idea: die, die, die. Havek will die. Naomi had a daddy, where is he now? There was a man in the alley. I believe he is –

Hard things snapping, hot things splashing. His frigid fingers pried free of the machete pommel, repulsed. His hand was still curled from the cold into a rigid claw. He nudged the blade away with his knuckles, weakly. Something cold and damp sticking on his palms like rime from a honeycomb.

“He will die.” Echo. He sounded old and quavering too. Havek’s voice was an alien creature to his own ears.

“Her father. Jara. Naomi, jara, father. He is hurt.”

Havek clenched his eye shut, the wisps of his brain reeling from all these rushing silhouettes. Unmoving darkness was better. Somewhere, something small was crying, crying, crying. He thought of dainty Mugrobi goatlings squealing and bleating at the scent of blood.

“Child? What child is this--?” The hard edge that flashed into his quiet voice strained his lungs too much, and he burst into a salvo of coughing.

Charlie flinched back from Havek's prone form on the floor. The man was dying, there was blood everywhere. He couldn't help and people would die. It wasn't that Charlie had never seen a dying man before-- he'd had relatives die, distant cousins and uncles. He'd attended their bedside, watched them slip from life into death. But they were old, and sick, and their deaths had been bloodless if not entirely peaceful. This was different. This was life, pouring out onto the floor and he was being asked to help, to do something, to save someone.

He just couldn't do it.

"I can't." He tried to smile but even he knew it was wrong for the occassion. For what he'd just said. "I don't-- I don't know any Living magic." His hands were upturned, fingers spread; it was a gesture of supplication. Begging for forgiveness because he couldn't heal a scraped knee, let alone a wound like this.

What did it matter, anyway? he told himself sharply. He was a wick, a godsdamn half-breed. If there was one fewer in the world, would they be so much worse off? He didn't even want to look at the children.

"Burns?" Shook asked, and swore loudly when he saw the girl's hands. He murmured the spell for Fix, and sniffed as the smell of wet grass drifted across the room. Aye's hands hurt a little less but they were far from completely healed. She felt better, and some of the blisters had subsided.

Jasper had latched onto one word. Key.

"Key?!" he was rasping, trying to shove Marigold out of the way. She was screaming. It was hard to hear over the rain.

Shook cast Root, and Jasper yelped when his feet snapped to the ground. The old man was glaring at Charlie like the damned glare at the devil. Hulali had sent them the one most useless golly in Old Rose.

"Is there anything you can do?!" He barked as he shuffled over to the stove and put the kettle in place. His face was pale and he was beginning to look overtired. The man was old, after all. He grabbed an ointment from the shelf and gave it to Aye. "Put this on your burns."

Jasper was trying to get to aye and gesticulating wildly. Marigold sat near one of the shelves, sobbing to herself. Everybody seemed to have forgotten about her, as they always did.

"Girl! The key! Shook! I need to-- LET ME GO! I need to get the key! Give me the key!"

Shook shuffled over to Havek and knelt. "Can you heal, boy? Can you heal yourself?" He asked over Jasper's racket, as he tried to massage some warmth into Havek's hands.

Aye sniffled and looked down at her hands; they did hurt less. She took the ointment and stared at it, before fumbling around with trying to open it.



She looked up at Jasper and flinched; the gesticulating was a little scary, she couldn’t handle much more scary. As it was she had had quite enough scary for one lifetime. Her mouth opened and closed a few times, before she looked over at Marigold. The girl had wanted a key at the beginning of all this, why should this scary Jasper guy get it?

Aye shook her head and crawled over to Marigold, careful with how she placed her hands on the ground. The other girl had gotten burned pretty badly as well; the only difference between the two was that Aye had gotten healing. She could just glance at Marigold’s burns and feel the pain again.

"M-Marigold wanted a k-key..." She didn’t look up at Jasper as she said this, she was almost afraid to look at him. She set the key in Marigolds lap and then finally got the ointment jar open. Her burns were still worse; Aye had gotten healing, Marigold hadn’t. She gently grabbed the girls arm, got a big glob of the ointment, and tried to rub some of it on her burns.

“I--”

His quiet hum of panic burgeoned to a roar. Up in his ears nothing but a blank roar, nothing but rain roaring and roaring. Havek had healed lots of things. Carved bullets from muscle, scoured shrapnel from fat, knit split flesh back together and put insides back inside with words that weren’t words. Witch mama had sliced open his palm over and over and made him practice those spells when he wasn‘t even old enough to marry. But it was never so--

There was never this much blood. It had never felt like pieces of him were disappearing before.

“Ea.”

Cold hands could feel the knobbly bones and faint warmth in the old man’s hands. He clutched hard, hauling himself up off the floor. He didn’t get far up at all, collapsing back against the high wood of the counter with a rattle. The slight movement coaxed a gasp, shoulders buckling, hunching up around his ears in a convulsion of pain. Hitching breath seethed from his lungs in a whistle.

He tugged one of his hands -- the one screwed onto the arm he could still bear to move -- away from Shook, movements jerky, stiff.

Couldn’t hear much, see much. More voices crowing, a field bristling, the phantom scent of sodden grass and dirt. The syllables were familiar on his tongue, almost kin to speaking his name. His hand crawled across his chest, working its way under the rags cloying together like warped honeycomb with his blood. It settled, shaking, over the hot pulp of the knife wound.

Havek hissed the monite for Big Fix.

Marigold's sobbing subsided somewhat, and she took the key from Aye. Jasper was swearing at her loudly, but the girl with ratty blonde hair had simply stopped caring.

"YOU DUMB--! I NEED THAT CLOCKING KEY! THAT'S WHAT THIS WHOLE BLOODY THING WAS FOR! GIVE ME--"

He didn't stop shouting insults at the pair as they huddled in a corner. Shook shouted something, but the sounds were lost to the static of the rain.

The air and a field tensed around everyone in the shop as Havek cast Big Fix. His spoken monite was well enough, but the mona had no direction, no goal besides closing the long knife wound.The wound closed over but failed to reduce the internal bleeding.

Shook could see the purplish undertone of the skin, could see it hadn't healed completely.

"Somethin's gone wrong..." He murmured under his breath. Gods curse it. He owned an apothecary, he wasn't a doctor.

Charlie winced, just a little, from all the shouting going on in the apothecary. He wasn't, by and large, too terribly keen on staying but he felt like if he tried to leave someone would, oh, lunge at him or something. Whatever it is that wicks did when they were displeased. Really, Charlie didn't know too much about trouble with wicks unless it involved someone's son or daughter. Otherwise, he mostly tended to get left alone.

"Not too much I can do, no," he said with a voice that was almost cheerful. Almost. Slowly he started to edge towards the door. Surely the rain couldn't be that bad, could it? Not as bad as burnt children and dying wicks and being shouted at. Dreadful business, this was, and he wanted no part of it. Nope, not him. There was even halfbreed magic being thrown about, now-- his cue to exit, surely? Maybe?

Oh clocking hell.

Aye cringed and gritted her teeth; why wouldn’t this guy stop yelling?! It was scary and annoying and she couldn’t think worth anything. What was the key for anyway? Why should he want it so badly? Shouldn’t he care that people were hurt and dying?! She dropped the jar of ointment and spun around one her knees to glare at him.

"I ent dumb!" She shouted at the top of her lungs. "You mung jerk!"

She huffed for a moment, almost at the point of crying some more. She wanted to grab something and throw it at him... Instead she looked over toward Havek and bit her lip. He didn’t look good. In fact, he looked so far from good that he almost looked good again.

"Is... Is he going to die?" She asked no one in particular. Her eyebrows drew themselves together low over her eyes, and her hands were squeezing themselves into fists. She didn’t even notice the pain that was causing her burns; she was focused on the possibility of a friend dying.

Soaked through and angry, Sophie looked at the apothecary front. She dragged Sale to an old post a ways off and lashed him to it. She trudged to the door. She was still foggy; what was happening to her didn't seem real. Had she really just lost her home? No, that was only temporary. She'd get Parrot and Jasper to fetch it, help her move it from the , they owed her that at least. Parrot. She was going to wring his neck.

Sophie forced open the door with a push that she didn't know she still had in her. She was not prepared for the sight inside, slick with blood. The kov that wasn't a little shit, Hava, he was in a puddle of blood--looked like his own blood. There were others, people she'd never seen in her life. A golly, some chips--what the clocking hell? How many people had Jasper roped into this little scheme of his?

She supposed they were as shocked to see her as she was to see them. She looked nothing like she did normally, in sodden, plain clothes and her bright hair out of sight under a scarf. She pushed up her goggles, gaping.

"Jasper, y'boch of a bitch! What sort of lunacy is this? What've you done to him?"

Fingers pressed at the thick swell of blood beneath the skin, a weary twinge of disbelief. How deep did it run? The names were misty, but he knew the pieces. Tissue paper thin skin gouged, little blood vessels, down into muscle, down into bone?

Perhaps. This whole business of actually feeling anything was becoming hazier by the minute. Some thick, fuzzy ache, originating up by his shoulder. Depth and severity were foreign ideas, not even in the realm of sensation anymore.

New voices. A rush of rain and wind from an open door, a new voice too. Where were they all coming from? Lots of people, all faintly familiar. Little voices, big voices. Twinged with shock and fear and nerves, all in reference to him.

"Akee, darling?" Dim suggestions of words. Puzzlement. His tongue felt so heavy he wasn't even sure he'd spoken. Cocked his head towards that littlest voice in room.

Tiny girl voice. Hazy hands, blind eyes shifting through a box of names. Old ones he didn't use anymore. Worn down around the edges so much they could bend to fit almost anywhere. Tiny girl voice. Akee. Small dark serious-faced. Ent knee-high to a cat. Sister, daughter, something. She was something.

His eye was wheeling around in its socket, looking at everything yet seeing nothing at all. Colors and shapes and things. Where was she now? Why she here?

"Get her..." wavering, breathy. Not harsh, or heavy. Murmured. "Get her out of here, would ya now? Domea. Pe'a, pe'a, pe'a.." Syllables breathed out soft over and over until they just trailed off into nothing but another rattling suck for breath.

[FML I'M SORRY IT'S TAKEN ME AGES]

"ME?!" The man roared, ignoring the child. "I'M STUCK TO THE CLOCKING FLOOR, YOU FOOL WOMAN!" Jasper was bright red with anger. Marigold was swearing at him actively through her tears.

Shook recognized another witch immediately, "Help! Can ye heal? He's gone into shock and there's naught I can do but watch!" The man said desperately, getting up and going to hold her hands. "Would help to have a hand. Sommat useful." He spat this out, hoping the witch could help him heal Havek's cut and maybe some of the other injuries. The younger girl's burns had looked terrible. He had yet to see Marigold's burns. As far as he was concerned, Jasper's leg could wait.

The apothecary was getting crowded. The rooms were small enough to begin with. Poltices, potions, and spices were falling onto the floor. Dust filled the air, and water was leaking in from the door. Shook ran and slammed the door shut, locking it. It wasn't warmer, but it was better than letting the wind cut them with the cold.

Aye bumped her hand into the wall and felt a stab of pain and the throbbing start all over. Her fingers looked three times the size of normal fingers. She had surely broken them when she'd tried to distract herself from the burning of her right hand. Her burned hand had cooled and was already aching less, which only made her left hand hurt more acutely.

"GOLLY! GET ME FREE! I CAN PAY!" Jasper was hollering.

"Serves you right!" Sophie snapped back, restraining herself from spitting on him. Jasper did not need to have a companion at his level. She turned to the golly. "Don't listen to that piece of spitch, he'll just rake you over."

Sophie knelt by Havek. She looked at him, taking in the extent of it. It was discolored, like internal bleeding, but whole--since he was covered in blood, she could only assume that the blood was someone else's or the healing had been botched, probably because the healer was the kov that was bleeding. She remembered, a long time ago, her father instructing her and Alko how to Fix. She remembered it like a dream. She hadn't used magic of any sort since she was fourteen and a grown witch and her father finally gave up on her.

"I know a little of what my dabeata taught me about wounds," Sophie said. She "Burns, cuts. I can set a bone in a pinch, did it for my brunno once. I'm not sure if I can remember the words if it's magic you want. For him, I could try. He's like to die either way."

"Well it seems the lady here thinks you deserve what you got," Charlie said, watery grin that was all teeth. He wanted a spur, or to escape. But Shook had locked the door and he didn't think he was getting out of this any time soon. The grin fell off his face just as suddenly as it had come.

"Only thing I could do for you is weld your bones back together, boy, and I hardly think that's what you want." Bony fingers scrabbled against his coat, looking for the spurs he kept there. They were there, and relatively dry, thank Alioe for that. He pulled one out, along with the phlogiston, and lit one. The deep drag of smoke in his lungs settled some of his anxiety somewhat. After all, whatever was going down here, he wasn't a part of it. Just an impartial observer to this strangeness.

"I say, is he going to die?"

(( sorry sorry i took forever ))

The girl frowned at Havek's voice and wondered if he was saying her name wrong. Could he be that bad off that he couldn’t speak names correctly? It didn’t occur to her that she hadn’t even told him her name, yet. She was drawn back out of her thoughts by a very sharp pain in her broken hand, a sharp pain that became an even worse ache it seemed. She bit her lip hard and tried not to think about it, and tried to ignore Jasper as well. He was getting very annoying.

Aye walked closer to Havek, and wondered again whether or not he would die. She wasn’t sure how she would react if he did die, and she didn’t want to think about that either.



Aye looked wide eyed up at Charlie, and then focused on Shook and Sophie. Maybe this Sophie woman could help Havek? The girl didn’t know it but she was close to crying now. It was a mixture of the pain from her wounds and the dying man that was causing it.



Aye looked down at Havek and then up at Sophie again, and blinked back her tears. Her eyes and nose were turning red from her tears, which were leaving pale streaks on her dirty face.

"Please," The girl sniffed and begged the older wick woman, "Please try and remember, please don’t let him die!" Her voice cracked as new tears came falling down.

She wasn’t really sure why she wanted him to live so badly. She didn’t have a real reason beside the fact that she didn’t like the thought of death. Maybe it was a feeling that she owed him one, she remembered a day when he had saved her life.