Only Villains Do That

Of course, it wasn’t as simple as jumping right to carving me up like a chunk of roasted beef, which was both good and bad, because while I enjoyed not being carved up, stretching out the anticipation wasn’t great, either.

Seven of the noblewomen-turned-bandit gang had come to retrieve me from the river, not including Twigs and Goose, but as we settled in to the ruined village more trickled in from scouting and guard duty. Others left to relieve them, and they didn’t all introduce themselves (I was going to need more than one round of introductions to remember all these names anyway), so I didn’t get a final headcount yet but I got the impression there were around twice that many overall. Hadn’t Maugro given me a number originally? If so, I couldn’t recall it.

What was more important for the moment was that they proved quite welcoming. Extremely curious about me, and some morbidly fascinated with my current status as a human repository of broken-off quarrels, but welcoming nonetheless. Clearly Twigs had done a good job of talking me up while she’d been gone.

Apparently the nearby spring was small enough that getting any quantity of water out of it took time; enough was drawn for me to generally rinse off and Nazralind to have a more thorough wash while I did that. As Goose pointed out, I was about to get covered in blood again, so it made sense to put off properly washing and just get myself clean enough that I wouldn’t get river sludge in all the incisions we were about to make. It would take a while to gather enough water for that anyway, so it worked out.

Which was my punishment for thinking the anticipation couldn’t get worse.

The ladies had already mostly set up camp but busied themselves getting things arranged for the night’s activities while Nazralind and I washed off to our differing degrees. It turned out the people were going to sleep in the open, because we could all be warned not to screw around among the poisonous khora, but gwynneks had to be housed inside the old buildings to make sure they had no accidents. And given the amount of space the creatures required, that filled the village’s surviving structures to capacity; even the bathing spots had to settle for being behind broken walls in terms of privacy. Food was prepared, though on Goose’s orders I didn’t partake as I was shortly going to have a knife applied to my organs.

That made sense and I offered no complaint, being too busy stewing in the stress.

I was, at least, offered a change of clothes, though obviously putting it on would wait until after I was done being sliced into and then washed off properly.

“Fortunately we’ve all grown accustomed to men’s clothing,” said Lady Ismreth, whose name had stuck in my mind during the round of introductions because it was by far the least pronounceable of them. “So much more practical for an outdoor lifestyle. If I’m any judge, these should fit you adequately, Lord Seiji. Though, with apologies, they may not be as stylish as what you’re accustomed to.”

“They’re certainly more stylish than what I had on when we met,” I said as cheerfully as I could manage, gesturing to the pile of blood-and-filth-soaked rags at the edge of camp which had been my outfit. I was currently sitting near the fire, draped in a couple of old blankets; given my only partially washed state, they had obviously given me the ragged ones they’d be willing to throw out. Which…was fair enough. At least I’d gone to Gwyllthean in the first place wearing a cheaper than usual outfit, in a futile gambit to avoid Lady Gray’s notice, so I hadn’t lost my nice red-and-black ensemble that I’d grown fond of. “Thank you kindly, my lady.”

“Tis our pleasure, my lord,” she said with a smile. “We’ll have no Ladnevin Foresters in our company. The accommodations may not be lavish, but a guest is a guest!”

“Plain speech, Izzy,” said a young lady whose name escaped me, a brown-haired girl who looked scarcely older than Yoshi. “Remember, you’re talking to Conzart in the bookshop.”

“Hey, hey, I recognize that one!” I protested. “Conzart’s the one who’s always doing something stupid!”

Several of them laughed and the girl who’d spoken flushed bright pink.

“Lhaenit was helpfully reminding us to be polite and not overuse literary references with someone not native to our culture,” said Nazralind, emerging from behind a building in fresh clothes and with wet hair. She gave Lhaenit a very flat stare as she stepped into the firelight. “It was a kind thought, which Conzart over there chose to express in the rudest, most ironic way possible.”

Lhaenit, now beet-red, made a complicated hand gesture at me (nobles seemed to have a bunch of intricate ones rather than the simple folding down hands I was used to) before fleeing into one of the houses where the gwynneks were stabled.

“Okay.” Goose’s low, even tone cut through the rising mirth; we all knew what it heralded. She rose from her seat on the other side of the fire, where she’d been carefully running a whetstone over her belt knife, which she’d already thoroughly washed and oiled. Clean and sharpened to a razor edge, it was now as close to a surgical tool as we were going to get out here in the wilderness. Goose being a surprisingly thoughtful sort for looking like such a big lug, she’d positioned herself where I didn’t have to see the preparations and could barely hear them over the soft hissing hum of the asauthec fire. Now she stepped to my side, knife gleaming in the firelight. “Looks like we’re ready. Let’s not put this off, Lord Seiji.”

“Yeah, the sooner this is done, the better,” I agreed, shrugging out of the blanket draped over my shoulders, which left me just in the one covering my pelvis for modesty. I had kept my Amulet of Final Luck on, since it wasn’t really in the way and if Goose slipped it might end up having work to do.

One of the noble bandits let out a wolf whistle, prompting several laughs and one exasperated “Really, Sadhith?”

“I’m sure you’re just trying to make me feel better, but I appreciate the thought,” I said, putting on a grin that I suspected looked more forced than my usual forced grins. I’m normally a top notch performer, if I say so myself, but the tension of this situation was getting to me.

Goose gestured for me to lie back on the ground and knelt at my side. “Okay, I’m gonna start with the two in your chest up here. I can tell you’re having trouble breathing, Lord Seiji, which means they’re in your lungs. Once we get these done you’ll be able to breathe properly, which’ll help you a lot, and also I expect these’ll be the worst to get out, so I wanna have ‘em out of the way as quick as possible.”

“Sounds good, I agree.”

“After that I’ll get these four here in your gut. Once that’s done and you can get something down without fucking up your insides, we’ll take a break to get some food and ale into you to give you energy and soften up the rest of this. Not too much ale, you’re gonna have to stay lucid enough to Heal after we’re done with each cut. After that, cutting the rest outta your arms and leg won’t be nearly as bad. Then you can get washed up properly and finish off the bottle if you want to, which I probably would if I was you.”

“Damn, Goose, and here I was thinking medical aid was my department. You sure you were never a doctor?”

She shook her head, smiling grimly. “Just common sense and an interesting life, Lord Seiji. I’ve had to cut into a few people I wasn’t trying to kill. Just takes a steady hand, which I’ve got. Okay, I know it’s asking a lot, but try to breathe slow and shallow.”

“I’ll do my best.” I watched the firelight gleam on the blade as it descended toward my chest, alarmingly close to my heart, and that was the point where I chickened out of watching. I’m not proud, but dammit, I refuse to be ashamed either. I looked away, barely suppressing a hiss when she began slicing the skin around the quarrel. Goose worked quickly, but that skin was attached to the akorshil bolt thanks to the effects of Heal, which meant it was a lot of detailed little cuts to avoid having to gouge a giant hole in me. Twigs joined her with a pile of rags and hot water, immediately working to sop up the blood that welled up.

And as always when I was stressed, I found myself flapping my yap without actually having decided to.

“So, how do you and Nazralind know each other?”

Nobody upbraided me for the foolishness of making chitchat during surgery; I think they understood. It was a poor substitute for anesthesia, but it was what we had.

“We were raised together,” Twigs said. Her voice was full of forced cheer, and I appreciated the thought even if she wasn’t very convincing. “I was one of Naz’s maedhlou.”

“No idea what that is.”

“Ah, it’s likely you wouldn’t!” Nazralind herself sat at my other side, joining in without hesitation. Not afraid of the sight of blood, this one. “That’s a custom among Fflyr highborn which has some antecedents in Lancor culture, but to my knowledge is unique to Dlemathlys. You see, Lord Seiji, when a Highlady reaches the age of six, she is assigned two maedhlou from families of lower nobility. They move into her home and for all intents and purposes, all three are raised as sisters. Well,” she added with an apologetic grimace for Twigs, “sisters who are never allowed to forget their difference in rank. Maedhlou are not exactly servants, but their role is to support and assist their highlady. And, ultimately, when she is married, her husband gains the two maedhlou as concubines in addition to a wife.”

I was trying not to breathe too heavily, and couldn’t really make faces as I was already grimacing. Goose was trying to work quickly, but trying harder to work carefully, which meant I had to feel her digging in little cuts around that shaft as she went down into muscle. A steady hand, yes; a surgeon, no.

“That sounds like something an isekai writer would come up with.”

Nazralind blinked. “Forgive me, I don’t understand the reference.”

“Perhaps it is good for your Ladyship to know what that feels like.”

She grinned in, as far as I could tell, genuine good humor, black eyes sparkling in the firelight. “A fair hit, sir. Reference aside, I do catch your hint of derision, and rest assured I agree. Hard.”

“Well, it’s not without its benefits,” said Twigs, still dabbing blood.

Nazralind stared at her. “Elemyn, of all people to defend this practice—”

“Oh, don’t mistake me, no one’s saying the tradition wasn’t set up so delicate men who’ve never picked up anything deadlier than a dinner fork could carry on like conquering warlords. But it does help the country. Maedhlou and the Convocation’s prohibition on family fighting each other are all that keeps the peace in this country. The Clans are all full of each other’s members, raising each other’s children. So they scheme and screw each other over at every opportunity but it’s never come to outright civil war. Not even once. Something set up for vile, selfish reasons can still yield positive benefits. In this case, the only reason Dlemathlys is stable at all.”

I really wanted to interject that Dlemathlys was about as stable as a house of cards during an earthquake, but I was feeling the undeniable sensation of a knife cutting into my lung, and Nazralind was frowning at Twigs with rising signs of open anger; I decided we all needed a distraction.

“What about—hh—the lower highborn—ow—men? How’re there—nngh—enough wives…”

“From this point I need you to stop talking, Lord Seiji,” said Goose, her voice apologetic but firm.

“That’s asking an awful lot,” my trusty familiar commented from where he was hovering above us. “Look who you’re talking to!”

“Come on, Biribo,” Twigs objected, frowning up at him.

“All part of the system,” Nazralind answered me. She had also picked up a rag and gently swabbed sweat from my forehead. “Lower highborn men very occasionally get the opportunity to marry up, if their Clan’s schemes can arrange it, but usually they wed women from foreign nobility, or wealthy middleborn families. It brings in fresh blood and money, and gives the lower-status Clans the opportunity to breed themselves up or down, depending on how good they are at arranging marriages. So we highborn aren’t as badly inbred as you might expect,” she said with a wry grin. “Certainly not as bad as the nobles of some countries. We don’t have much to boast of here in Dlemathlys, but we’ve got that! High literacy and less inbreeding than you’d think. They should embroider that on the flag.”

I had my doubts about how this system could result in anything but inbreeding, but I couldn’t focus my mind on the particulars. I could feel my flesh being cut into; I couldn’t breathe, my own blood was pouring into my lung, I was drowning in my own—

“Got it!” Goose held up the broken quarrel, its head still intact and crimson, with an alarmingly large chunk of flesh attached.

Heal!

Pink light blazed and I started to gasp for breath before the pain from the other side of my chest stopped me. Still, I could definitely breathe more easily now, at least on one side. Tentatively, I expanded my chest, trying to feel the motion. As far as I could tell, there was no fluid there… Did Heal fix that, somehow, or was I just wrong? It wasn’t like I had a stethoscope.

The sound of Goose throwing aside the crossbow bolt covered in eau de Seiji was muffled by the sound of one of the nearby women being violently sick.

“Hell’s revels, you honking geese!” Nazralind exclaimed in exasperation. “If you don’t have the stomach to watch a surgery, go somewhere else! Or do you really think what this situation needs is more bodily fluids being spilled?”

I was too focused on breathing to comment, but in fairness, it probably didn’t make much difference. Nobody looming over me was wearing a mask and I had my suspicions about how thoroughly they’d washed their hands. If not for Heal this medieval approximation of surgery would probably kill me as sure as getting shot a bunch of times was meant to.

“I’m sorry about that, Lord Seiji,” Goose said, grimacing as she wiped off her knife. “I think I fucked up a little, there. I was trying to be careful, but down in the… I mean, I couldn’t really see what to cut in there with all the blood and it ended up being a mess anyway. Your spell worked great, though!” She carefully wiped blood away from the incision site, shaking her head in amazement. “Not even a scar.”

“Yeah, Heal has some arbitrary limitations but I’m not a hundred percent sure of the rules,” I wheezed. “It doesn’t restore missing limbs or things like eyes, but… It seems to’ve filled in that hole just fine. On the next one, maybe focus on being faster? I mean, please don’t just hack me apart, but…”

“I get your meaning, Lord Seiji, don’t worry,” she assured me. “I think you’re right. Taking too much time just caused more harm than good. I’ll try to find a balance more toward speed without getting sloppy. Okay, here we go.”

“So,” I said desperately, clamping down on a spike of animal terror as the flashing blade descended toward my chest. “If you’re supposed to have two of these maid people, where’s…?”

Goose started cutting, and I bit down on my lips, resolving to simplify this by ceasing my talking earlier this time.

“That’s at the core of why we’re all here, really,” said Nazralind. Again, she stepped in to fill the quiet and distract my attention, though I could tell this subject had gotten harder for her. Twigs’s expression had suddenly gone distant, too. “Well, I had my marriage arranged, and… You see, it’s customary for a prospective groom to spend time alone with his fiancee and her maedhlou, but of course no sexual contact until after the wedding. Well, Highlord Rhanider didn’t care for that rule. Obviously he wanted his bride to be chaste for the wedding night, but why not sample the rest of the goods early?” Her expression was twisted in a complex blend of dark emotions. “Minyrit refused, of course. I don’t think anyone had ever refused that boy anything in his life; he went completely insane. He got his hands around her neck, and he just didn’t stop…”

Silence fell. I could hear the wet sound of Goose slicing my flesh, feeling the hot, bright pain of it. The distraction of her voice was sorely missed in that gap, but I couldn’t fault Nazralind for having to stop there. Christ, this couldn’t be much easier on her than it was on me.

“Our sister,” Twigs whispered, “the person closest to us in all the world… He killed her right in front of us. Right in front of us. And…and we just stood there. We were ladies. We just…went blank. Shut down. I couldn’t…I couldn’t…”

“It was a scandal,” Nazralind said in the cold, tired tone of someone who was far away in her mind. “Because…it would be embarrassing to Clan Aelthwyn if the details were known. So my uncle fixed the official story, that there was an accident. The wedding was to proceed as planned, and Highlord Rhanider received an extra dowry payment, since he was only getting one concubine out of the deal. They paid him for it.”

“That moment of realization is a hell of a thing,” Twigs said when Nazralind trailed off. “When you realize… This man is going to kill me. And all the people who are supposed to love me will just let it happen. He won’t even be punished. Highborn ladies are meant to be decorative and passive; we’re trained from the cradle to accept things and not…not make a fuss… It’s funny how different things suddenly become when it is literally life or death. Funny what suddenly isn’t unthinkable anymore.”

Nazralind grimaced, staring at me but, I think, seeing something else entirely. “Our escape did not go well. We only got as far as we did because Goose helped. She was our bodyguard; young highladies often get female veterans from the King’s Guild to help look after them. A lot would’ve just turned us in to our Clans, but Goose understood. Even with her help, though, getting away was… Well, obviously, they didn’t want us to go. There was a lot of money and prestige riding on us, you see.”

“We got separated,” Twigs whispered. “I thought you died. I’ve hated myself for leaving you…”

“It was the right call, and I’m glad you did,” Nazralind told her fiercely. “We both lived. You lived because the two of you ran, and stood by each other. I…found my own help, as I told you. If you hadn’t, we never could have met each other again. And I’ve built up all this, because…” She raised her head, eyes glistening with moisture, to look at the other ladies standing silently nearby. “I swore to myself it would never be like that again. The world may be full of nightmares, but I will never again be frozen, or indecisive. I will never again stand there and watch.”

My fingers scrabbled across the dirt and found her hand. The elf immediately grabbed it and held on, squeezing almost hard enough to hurt, just as I did her. The gesture wasn’t really characteristic of me, and I suspected not of her either, but in that moment it felt right. She was reliving a trauma while I went through a fresh one.

Sometimes, you just need to hold onto someone.

“It’s out!” Goose said, drawing in a breath she’d apparently been holding off in concentration. I felt a lightness in the agonizing spot in my chest where pressure was suddenly withdrawn.

Heal!

I inhaled deeply, fully. Sweet, blessed air filled my lungs. It wasn’t completely normal; the expansion of my chest caused little spikes of pain from the bolts still embedded in my diaphragm muscle below. But I could breathe again. I could breathe.

“You’re doing great, Lord Seiji,” said Goose, resting one big, callused hand over my forehead. “Need to take a break? This is some real shit, I know.”

“Are you kidding?” I croaked, grinning feebly. “I could do this shit all night. Try to keep up.”

Nazralind squeezed my hand once more before letting go. “Every woman here has a story like that, Lord Seiji. Hell, I suspect every living person in Fflyr Dlemathlys does. This country is rotten to its broken core; there have to be far more people here ready to fight back than otherwise. They just need someone to show them how, convince them it’s possible—someone who has the power to back up their promises. I was raised attending temple services just like anyone, hearing the Goddess’s dogma, but… Screw her, it’s not as if she’s ever done anything for us. I don’t care which Goddess you follow. If you can break this horrible system and build something just a little bit better, I’m with you. We all are.”

“Breaking things is a lot easier than building them,” I said, still breathing heavily. “I have absolutely no idea how to put a nation together, Nazralind. We still need to find the right kind of help for that.”

“We can…tell you a little about it,” she said with a wince. “Growing up close to power, you pick up a few tidbits from sheer exposure. But…yeah, you’re right. I was arrogant enough to let myself think I could be the one to save this country, but I was right in the process of learning how wrong I was when Elemyn and Goose found us. Oh, by the way, I forgot—thank you kindly for paying our protection money to that horrible goblin. Considering the trouble that was looking for us, you very likely saved all our lives.”

“Maugro’s not so bad,” I said, awkwardly patting her hand. “But you’re welcome. Okay, Goose. Let’s get on with tonight’s business before we move on to saving and/or destroying the world.”

I must’ve been tougher than I thought; it was a while after that before my Wisdom perk kicked in and I found myself elevated above the pain and trauma of the ongoing cutting, floating on a frozen cloud of logic and observing my suffering from a distance, as if it were someone else’s problem. What did it in the end was the smell, the sudden acrid stink of human shit as Goose accidentally opened my intestines while digging out a quarrel.

Nazralind was alarmed when I went stiff and expressionless, but Biribo hastened to explain. I was focusing fully on lying as still and breathing as shallowly as possible, because that was the rational thing to do in that situation and I no longer had anything else in my brain. It certainly made the rest of the procedure a lot more bearable. The Blessing of Wisdom: better anesthesia than tragic backstory.

The effect lingered; I declined food and ale when Goose finished with my abdomen, simply asking her to move right to getting the rest of them out of me. In that emotionless void, I couldn’t even feel properly celebratory when I was fully quarrel-free, Healed and whole again. It was in the same icy fugue state that I mechanically downed some refreshments, went behind a ruined house to properly wash myself with the aid of an Orb of Light and some surprisingly fragrant soap the noblewomen had, and rejoined the group by the fire, just in time for it to wear off.

Which was loads of fun, because I was still having an adrenaline crash at that point. The result was that I didn’t have much clarity as to the rest of what happened that night, but I sure as hell took Goose up on her offered bottle then, downing it almost fast enough to choke.

Someone gently guided me to a blanket on the ground and I curled up under it. Like a pillbug… Like an Immolate victim. Head spinning with alcohol and trying not to sob out loud. It was over, there was no need for this. So I told myself, but my body seemed to want to torture itself further and wasn’t cooperating with me. I just wanted to sleep…

Most of them had the courtesy to leave me alone at that point, though I could hear soft voices in my vicinity as my wobbling consciousness finally began to flicker out from fatigue and drink.

“Even after your warning, he’s…not what I expected.”

“But in a good way?”

“Yeah, I think so, mostly.”

Dead drunk, I couldn’t assign a face to either voice, but the deeper one which chimed in had to be Goose. “There’s a good kid in there, under all the layers of flamboyance and grumpiness. He’s a lot like you ladies. Wasn’t a noble or anything in his own world, but it sounds like it was a much easier place. You know what it’s like to be wrenched out of comfort and suddenly have to fight for your life.”

“Yeah. Yes, we do. I couldn’t speak for what the goddesses are up to, but I wonder if Virya hasn’t sent us exactly what…”

Finally, I disappeared into the darkness of sleep. It was a relief, at first, before the nightmares began.

I had some new ones now.