"The nameless moon presence beckoned
by Laurence and his associates. Paleblood"
"Seek Paleblood to transcend the hunt."
The air was heavy as the old man walked to the well, heavy and wet and stagnant with humidity, a dozen foul odors of the city's filth lingering without wind or rain to carry them away. His body felt damp and sticky beneath his clothes, his loose trousers and tattered robe clinging. The heavy gray scarf felt close, choking around his neck, its weight on his back physical, but also spiritual, a reminder of many memories of days spent.
The buildings seemed to press in close, leering, looming, watching as he shuffled forward. The old man's knee ached, slowing his pace, a reminder of the failings, the petty cruelties of the human body. He approached the well, then reached for the crank with hands wearing knitted, fingerless gloves. The gears and pulleys squealed; rust and corrosion had done their work, and no one had bothered to maintain the mechanism even before the current situation had made that pointless.
At last, though, the bucket reached the top. The old man reached forward and pulled the bucket up onto the stone rim of the well. The water inside was, perhaps unsurprisingly in this ward of the city, not as fresh as it could be, but it would suit.
"Hey, you! Old man!"
He turned slowly to face the voice, almost hearing his sinews creak in protest. There were four of them, each wearing a canvas smock over threadbare shirts and trousers, as well as crude hoods with holes cut out for eyes and mouths. Butcher-men, they were, processors of the dead and sometimes the living when cupidity outgrew decency. It was, he thought, one of those things that transcended time and place. Men like this were all but inevitable where there was rampant disease.
They stank, he thought. Blood and putrilage clung to them as if it had fastened on their very souls.
"There's a toll here, hey?" the lead butcher went on. "My friends and me, we keep this place safe. Keep it so you don't have to trip over the dead and the dying on your way to get water. Time you showed some appreciation for that."
The men drew nearer, spreading out in a shallow arc to close in on him. They carried the tools of their trade, knives to flense and saws to cut, together with heavy bludgeons for when a grieving family member wanted sentiment to interfere with medical necessity. A grim business, weighty and laden with meaning, so that in truth the old man found the butchers' turning of their instruments to the petty cruelties of robbery and extortion to be banal, even common by comparison.
Even so, they were still there before him, and banal or not, they were fully intent on claiming their desired prize.
"We'll have it one way or another," the lead butcher said, "so why don't you make it easy on yourself?"
The old man shrank back, his body bumping up against the well. The butcher reached out past him, poking the bucket with the tip of his bludgeon and knocking it back into the well. The rope spiraled out, the spinning crankshaft groaning with every turn, until the bucket hit the water below with a splash.
He didn't have any choice, not really. He pushed his hand under his robe, fingers seeking out the pocket sewn into the cloth to keep valuables tucked away.
"I ought to ask you the same question."
The butcher troupe swung away from the old man at the sound of the voice. It was young, strong even if faintly muffled, things that were almost out of place in the dingy ward. The lead butcher looked the single figure up and down, raking the woman with his gaze.
"This ain't your business, doctor."
That she was a doctor was self-evident. The high-collared black leather coat with its double-breasted front, the boots showing beneath, and the gloves of kidskin so fine they seemed to be a second skin, fit for the handling of delicate instruments, these were all a uniform. What truly marked her, though, was the mask: bone-white in hue, with a long, slightly curving beak and black crystal lenses for eyes, worn beneath a shrouding black hood that let no single hair escape; it turned her from a woman to a figure of mystery.
"The health of every inmate of the Plague Ward is my business," she replied. "His...and yours."
The lead butcher took a step towards her, commanding her attention. As he did, though, the man to his far left began to ease out from the arc, slowly side-stepping to get around towards her side.
"That's supposed to mean something?"
"Robbery and extortion are still crimes."
The butcher-man gave a loud snort.
"Crimes? There's no law here. No one's seen a constable here in two months, not unless someone tries the gate to leave. Then we see them, right enough."
"In here, though? We're the law," the butcher to his right said, his voice oddly shrill.
"So how about you move on, doctor, before we charge you a toll for passage, too? Ain't like your kind's done anything but watch people die, then handed 'em over to us."
She shook her head, the crow-mask moving slowly, mournfully.
"Let him go, and be on about your business. It's not like there's any lack of the dead to earn your keep from lawfully."
"I gave you the choice," the lead butcher grunted, and the attack came—not from him, but from the butcher who'd crept out to the doctor's right flank. He came at her, swinging a walnut-handled bone saw with both hands as if it was a sword or an axe.
The plague-doctor's right hand whipped up, though, and while the old man had seen faster in his day, it was still impressively quick, particularly as the hand held a wheellock pistol. She pulled the trigger, the wheel struck sparks, and the explosion of black powder sent a heavy lead bullet into the attacking butcher's chest, blowing a bloody hole through it. He shuddered, his momentum stopped cold by impact and even more by shock, and his corpse toppled over onto the cobblestones.
The plague-doctor was already in motion while the three butchers froze in surprise. The empty pistol dropped from her hand, and she pulled out a long-bladed silver dirk from a sheath at the small of her back. In almost the same motion, her left hand came up and she hurled her heavy doctor's bag full into the lead butcher's face, its contents rattling loudly as it struck home.
She surprised the old man and the butchers alike yet again in the next second when she went left despite her weapon being in her right hand. The move caught the shrill-voiced butcher flatfooted. He feebly cut at her with the knife in his left hand, more in a crude defensive attempt to block her blade than an attack, but missed completely. She did not, her knife punching through his smock and the clothes beneath to pierce his upper chest.
Doubtless the plague-doctor's medical training told her at once that the blow was not a fatal one. Even as she yanked the dirk free she was ducking and stepping back to elude the wild swing of the wounded man's club. He tried to follow, coming in with a low knife-thrust of the kind that was hard to avoid, but his movement was too slow, hampered by his injury. She pivoted to her left, away from the knife, and crashed her boot against the back of his right knee. The leg buckled, and as he went stumbling forward her dirk came up again, stabbing up under his bearded chin, nine inches of silvered steel puncturing into the butcher's skull.
Blood coughed from the dying man's mouth with his last breath, spattering the right shoulder of her coat. The old man knew the entire point of the plague-doctor's garments were to be impervious to blood, pus, or other tainted fluids they might encounter during their work.
In a way, it reminded him of home.
The masked woman shoved the dying man away as she tore her blade free, thrusting the sagging body into the path of the butchers' leader. He pushed the corpse aside, then came for her with a bellow of rage. It looked like she'd expected the body to impede his progress more than it had; she was a moment slow getting into a position to react to him and took a hard thump to the ribs, letting out a grunt of pain even though the heavy coat must have at least somewhat cushioned the blow.
Her reaction was quick, though. The butcher tried to use his backswing to ward her knife-arm back, keep it under control so he could make his next attack, but she seemed to anticipate it, going with the swipe by turning her right side away, giving him what he wanted—while driving the knuckles of her left hand into his throat. There was a sharp crunching sound on impact, and the lead butcher reeled back, strangling on his crushed windpipe.
His hands came up almost reflexively to protect or clutch at his damaged throat, and he took advantage of the opening. Her dirk plunged into his belly, angling up under his ribcage so that the point opened his heart with surgical precision.
The fourth man looked at her, then at his fallen compatriots, and bolted, running for the nearest alley-mouth. The plague-doctor made no move to follow. She turned the cold, unblinking gaze of her black-lensed eyes on the old man, and despite the forbidding mask her voice was gentle.
"Are you all right?"
"They didn't lay hands on me, if that is what you mean."
Her gaze rested on him for a long moment, measuring and understanding what he'd said.
"It's some of what I mean, but not all."
He let out a breath.
"I'm not so young any more. Things that would have left a mark in my earlier years are more familiar now. Besides, these days life is hard to hold dear." He nodded towards the fallen. "They certainly didn't."
"No, not if they turned to extortion. There are some people who, if you give them a little authority, they start taking pleasure in using it against others. Or they know it already and seek out those positions on purpose. But still, let's see..."
She bent and wiped the blood from her dirk on the shrill-voiced butcher's body, while with her free hand she tugged off his mask, revealing his scraggle-bearded face. Whatever she was looking for, she didn't find it, so she turned to the next corpse, the leader's, and removed his mask as well.
The old man could not resist a shudder. The butcher's face was covered with swollen, blister-like pustules, their color ranging from a deep red to an ugly near-black. Several had burst open, leaking a fluid that paradoxically was a pale yellow-white hue. The virulence of the disease was horrific.
"The pain he must have been in," the old man said, if a bit needlessly.
"That might have been what made him fight clumsily. Good for us both he did, but even so..."
She made a noise like she was clucking her tongue beneath her mask.
"This one, too," she remarked, pulling off the last corpse's mask.
"How can you tell?" The dead butcher's face was unmarked.
"It starts in the eyes, before any growths appear on the face and body. I can see the lesions starting to form." She picked up her dropped pistol and tucked it away without reloading, then her doctor's bag, which she opened. "Ah, that's good. Nothing broken. I'm glad I got the model with individual padded pockets for bottles and phials."
She closed the bag with a snap, then straightened up, took a last, lingering look down at the dead man, and shook her head.
"I think the worst of this plague is how it seems to eat at the spirit. The signs appear and so often the victim is crushed by despair. They give in, quit fighting. Some will just lie in a corner, weeping for days on end. Others are like these. They give in to their every filthy impulse, not caring about right or wrong."
"I suppose that if they believe they're as good as dead already, there's nothing to restrain them."
"You're not wrong. Well, I need to find some honest compatriots of theirs to attend to the cleanup, and then how about I stand you to a drink? I know that I certainly could use one."
The tavern she led him to was called The Old Bell, though some would-be wit had scratched out "Old" on the dangling sign and hacked the word "Death" into the wood. It wasn't much of a joke, but the old man supposed that in the face of these kinds of circumstances even gallows humor was better than nothing. A town that could laugh, even at itself, still had hope, rather than sloughing like rotting debris away into nothingness.
The plague had first come fourteen weeks ago. It started in the slums, spreading quickly through the tight-packed Old City, into middle-class sections and merchant neighborhoods. Sometimes it would take one or two people out of ten, other times it would strike down whole families, but the quick corruption and brutal death rate led to panic, chaos, until the city governors felt they had no choice but to slam and bar all entry, barricade the Old City in a quarantine of over fifty thousand people and pray the deathly spectre did not breach the gates.
Thus far, it had not, though the old man imagined that the lurking fear of what might happen plagued those outside, from the immigrant slums near the dockyards to the great houses of nobles and ministers. All of them, desperately trying to hide the terror that the great leveler would come to balance the scales between them, fear every bit as real as the despair of the dying.
Despite the fear inside and out what they were now calling the Plague Ward, life still went on and people clung to their small comforts. Two flagons of cheap wine, deep and red, were plunked down and the old man and his rescuer took them over to a small table in the corner.
The plague-doctor pulled off her mask and tugged down her hood. She let out a deep sigh, breath rushing out of her, and the old man could smell the faint, familiar tang of blood.
"Dear gods, that's better." She tapped the mask's beaked nose. "These masks are packed with herbs to filter out the miasmas—not to mention the smell, which it's better at—but it's hard to breathe in them, particularly when fighting. More importantly, to the best of what we can tell this plague isn't airborne. Not like the kind of disease where people cough and even just breathe out and are turning the very air around them into poison. Still, it's part of the costume, and it's not like other diseases magically stopped just because this one is running wild."
"Symbols are powerful things," the old man agreed. He took a mouthful of his wine. Indifferent would have been a compliment to the drink; it was almost sour. Still, it contained alcohol, stinging the tongue with its potency, and that was all, he thought, that most of its drinkers cared for.
"True. Though I wonder if this outfit brings any comfort. I feel more like a harbinger of death most days when I'm called to a patient's side. I want to find a cure for their condition, but most times all I can do is to watch the process of them dying, dissect their remains, and hope to glean the barest hint towards an ultimate answer." She took a gulp of her own wine. "I'm Theresa, by the way. Tera to my friends."
"And are we friends?"
"These days, I call anyone friend who's not run altogether mad."
He offered her a grin at that sally.
"Well said. I'm Arne."
"A pleasure to meet you."
Her voice was tired—whose wouldn't be?—but there was a vigor to it, energy lacking in the soft talk coming from around them, from the other patrons of the half-full tavern. The others sat hunched over their wine, as if hunkering away from whatever life was going to throw at them next.
"It's still hard to believe that you jumped in to protect me like that."
"It's my job, isn't it? To care for and try to save the lives of victims of the plague? The breakdown of order might not be a direct symptom, but it's caused by the disease all the same, a direct result. The butchers' existence at all, and the corruption into crime of that group, are all directly traceable."
Arne gave her a smile.
"That is certainly an...expansive interpretation of a doctor's role."
She took another drink, then made a little pout of distaste, a surprisingly girlish expression.
"This really is awful. These past months have taken their toll on the supply."
"So many here are limited in what work they can do, or cut off entirely. Without earnings, they have nothing to spend. Without income, merchants cannot resupply."
"And bartenders buy what they can afford, knowing that people need what comfort they can find." She fixed him with a sharp gaze. "Don't make me out to be some kind of selfless hero."
"I didn't—"
"You were edging around to it."
"You put yourself in direct physical danger for another person's sake—my sake. It was a situation in which you were obliged to kill three men in defense of another's life—my life." He smiled, chuckling. "Forgive me if I assign some degree of selflessness to your actions. And speaking of which, I could not help but notice your quick facility with weapons."
"I suppose you find that strange in a doctor, a learned woman pledged to heal and preserve life."
"Strange? Oh, no, not at all. As a matter of fact, I was thinking that it reminded me of home."
"Doctors wielding weapons are typical of your home, are they? It must be an interesting place."
"Oh, yes, most interesting indeed."
The candlelight played across the table, casting odd shadows from the drinkers and their cups. The candles were needed, not just due to the tavern's narrow, grimy windows, but because of the close-set buildings in the streets outside that turned the cobbled lanes into a maze of shadows. Decades of smoke and soot had risen to the ceiling above, leaving arcane patterns in the trails of ash between the beams.
Sometimes, Arne thought, there were secrets hidden in such seemingly innocuous randomness, if one had the wit to see it.
"You reminded me of a Hunter. Not quite so quick, not quite so ruthless, but a reminder all the same."
"The way you say it, you make it sound like you mean more than someone who pursues beasts."
"Well, yes, but also no."
Tera quirked an eyebrow at him, unamused by what likely seemed like wordplay to her.
"Was that supposed to make sense?"
"It would, in Yharnam."
"That's where you're from, then? I've heard rumors about that place."
"As a doctor, I expect that you would."
She frowned at the reference to medical practice.
"You mean blood ministration, then. Yes, I've heard of that. Specially-treated blood used in transfusions that supposedly has miraculous healing properties."
It was Arne's turn to chuckle.
"You make it sound like some potion sold by a street-corner quack."
"Isn't it?"
He wagged a finger at her.
"Oh, no. A man's secrets aren't purchased so cheaply as that. Fair trade, Doctor Tera. And we were talking about you."
She shrugged.
"There's little to tell. I was born to a well-off merchant family. I grew up secure in our social position and closeted myself with books. I wanted to be a scientist, you see. To study and analyze the human condition. Then my mother's enemies schemed against her and when an investment went awry, they took the opportunity to strike, unleashing a chain of cascading failures."
"That must have been harsh."
"Harsh enough that we lost everything. The nouveau riche have only money, after all, not the honor of title and position and generations-old ties to the land to carry them when that money is gone. She shot herself. When my father found her, his heart stopped from the shock. I was seventeen and left with crushing debts as my inheritance, so I took a contract in the Delve." She smiled again, and this time the only humor was a self-directed cruelty. "They're always looking for doctors willing to go into the pits, you see. I started as an assistant, as I'd had some teaching, and then earned the full position in two years."
She brushed her gloved fingertips over the mask. Arne had heard of this place, of course. Who hadn't? The savagely wounded earth was the source of the city's wealth. The blood of the land itself, different from the blood that made Yharnam's fame spread, but all one and the same at their hearts.
Arne had no trouble imagining the kind of life Tera had led in that place. Weeks, he'd heard, without seeing the sun, in an atmosphere choked with crystalline dust. He understood now the hint of blood on her breath. Understood, too, the calm facility with necessary violence.
The only thing he didn't understand was why she'd told him. Perhaps some things just had to come out, sooner or later. They would emerge inevitably, regardless of human will.
"A cruel fate," was all he said. "Though, perhaps, you were left the stronger for it."
She slid her wine-cup in little circles while she talked.
"There was a plague there, too. That one was airborne, not that it matters. I suggested countermeasures. The delvers didn't like it; it went against their values, stepped on what little core of pride they kept at their hearts. The bosses didn't care for values or tradition or pride, and after their overseers shot a half-dozen of the stubbornest, the delvers decided they didn't, either. My employer claimed I saved them an entire vein. They gave me a share, so I guess they meant it. It paid off all my debts, so here I am."
"Indeed. And was it by choice, or by chance, I wonder? But then, sometimes I ask myself if there is any such thing as chance at all. Perhaps we are but pieces in a cosmic game, moved about at the will of players greater than ourselves."
Tera picked up her cup, then tipped her head back, draining the wine to the dregs.
"Rot," she said flatly, actually startling Arne a bit with the firmness of her statement. He opened his mouth to ask her for an explanation, but she cut him off, providing one anyway.
"The universe is a lot messier than that. On, there's rules to it, right enough, but some kind of guiding hand showing us the way to our destination? Nonsense. If there's a god showing us the way, then they're just as confused as we are, probably just trying to find their way through their life as best they can. No different, really, than a king, a judge, a pit boss...even a doctor, I suppose."
"That is an unusual attitude."
"I've seen too much to think otherwise. My own life, the Delve, the Plague Ward, those aren't part of some grand scheme meticulously mapped out. Maybe there's a road to follow, but if so, we keep running off it by our own will."
She looked down at her empty cup.
"And now I'm talking about metaphysics. This wine is nowhere near good enough for that."
Arne took a drink of his own wine.
"I don't know. Back in my university days, metaphysics was a common enough topic, and the wine we students could afford was barely better than this. We'd sit chatting long into the night about things that were the purest flights of fancy and yet which seemed more real and meaningful than our tangible world"—he knocked his knuckles on the table in illustration—"until the barkeep would throw us out and we'd have to drag ourselves through the woods in the wee hours of the morning, only to face the provost's wrath when we got back."
He could remember those student days like they were yesterday. It was perhaps part of aging, he thought, to see the distant past painted in clear detail while the present melded into a cloud of gray. What would it be like, he wondered, if he were able to cut himself off from that past, to plunge into a dream where there was only the now? Would he even be the same man? Or another entirely wearing his skin? Would he be better or worse, and would he lead or follow?
A passing whim only, he thought. It was not his place to dream.
"But then, in Yharnam," he went on, "the practical and the metaphysical walk hand in hand. How could they not, when our secrets of medicine are in our very blood? Certainly there are fundamental physical properties, but too, what could be more fundamental to the self than blood? It carries our very will, nourishes us, flows to every part of us. Every cell in our bodies is sustained by the blood; without the blood we die, and what the blood brings to us shapes what we become.
"He was one of us once, do you know, the Founder was. A student. A scholar, even. Provost Willem's brightest pupil! But he left the university to bring blood ministration to the masses, and when he did, he did not do so as a scholar. The Healing Church! Medical practice and divine worship, hand in hand."
Tera favored him with a moue of distaste.
"That sounds incredibly suspicious."
"The street-corner quack again?" Arne said, managing a chuckle.
"You have to admit, a medical church sounds like an odd combination."
He shook his head.
"Not at all, not once you start to think, truly think. Can the body, the mind, the soul be carved part from part? Do they not make up the whole man? The communion of blood and the healing of blood are all one and the same, nourishing us in different ways—can anything, indeed, truly be called nourishing at all unless it feeds us in all ways? Why, Master Laurence's greatest discoveries were not made until the end of his life, when he went beyond rigorous, scientific medical research and approached his work with a leap of faith. It was only then that he glimpsed it at last...Paleblood."
He'd said the word with overtones of portent, and while Arne had meant to do so he also had not been able to resist. But it was not that word which Tera heard most strongly.
"Master Laurence, is it?" she said. "I take it that you're one of the followers of this church?"
Arne nodded. He knew the admission marked him out in this foreign city with its foreign beliefs, but this was only one person.
"I am. As a matter of fact, I served the Church for many years." He plucked at the Holy Shawl, tattered from the years but still there, wound around his neck each morning as an unshakeable part of daily routine.
"I suppose that explains it. But what brings you here? You're no missionary; I'd have heard talk about someone preaching a foreign faith long before now."
Arne nodded.
"True. In these times, people will flock to anything that offers hope, no matter how remote or even mad it sounds. But that would be pointless for anyone who truly follows their path, for I would have nothing to offer—snake oil or otherwise."
"Blood ministration is a medical procedure requiring both skilled personnel and the right equipment, I take it, in addition to, of course, the Church's specially treated blood?"
"Exactly so. And while people could be trained, and equipment obtained from the suppliers of scientific apparatus once the necessary devices are explained, the blood...now, that is something different entirely. In Yharnam, the Church raised 'Blood Saints' who could donate the proper kinds of blood. The gracious gift of their healing blood was the most persuasive argument that could be offered in support of blood ministration and communion."
"You're telling me that Yharnam's blood ministration was effective in healing the sick to the point that it withstood public scrutiny?"
Arne leaned forward.
"Exactly. It saved people as surely as you saved me."
Tera pinched the bridge of her nose as if she was getting a headache. Maybe she was; Arne felt like he was pushing a bit too hard. It was difficult to restrain himself. This young woman had, after all, rushed into combat without hesitation for the sake of protecting him and had done so with nearly the instincts and grace of a hunter—or at least as near as an ordinary person might get. The link between hunters, a doctor, and the blood was so obvious to him that it was hard, so hard to keep reminding himself that she had no frame of reference for anything he was thinking.
That, worse yet, if he tried to give her one it would only do the exact opposite of what he hoped. Doubtless she would dismiss it all as the ravings of a frenzied brain.
He took a deep beath, slowing his pace, both of his words and his racing mind.
"And this explains why you haven't tried mentioning this to anyone else?" Tera prompted him.
"Who would be willing to sit down and have a casual conversation about such things? There's no point in saying so to my neighbors. It would only give rise to false hope, or to seem like a cruel jest by asking as if there was hope only to promptly snatch it away. And the doctors...forgive me, but your compatriots do not strike me as the most open-minded of men and women."
She favored him with a wry smile.
"Can you blame them? Ministration with unknown blood is hardly medical orthodoxy. And we all have our hands full doing our best work to try and save lives with what we do know, and what little bits of knowledge we can learn."
Arne nodded once, twice. And in truth, he held no contempt for the plague-doctors of this city as doctors. Indeed, they were most learned folk. It was only that his own concerns lay beyond the mere constraints of physical medicine.
"In any event," he said, "there are two significant obstacles to any 'miracle cure' being offered."
Tera chuckled, doubtless at the use of the word miracle in connection with something originating with a church. Arne took advantage of the natural pause to dip his hand into his pocket and take out a pipe and cracked leather pouch. He filled the pipe with the aromatic mixture he'd grown fond of since coming here. He was almost out; such amenities were not readily available in the Plague Ward, but he felt it was justified under the circumstances.
He struck a light, watching the flame curl and dance at the vesta's tip, then touched it to the tobacco so that the edges of the first few leaves curled and burned. Arne took a deep puff, savoring the taste of the smoke on his tongue, before exhaling in a long stream.
Tera watched him curiously, doubtless intrigued by the sudden pause in his narrative. She waited patiently, though likely wanting to ask if he was doing it for the sake of dramatic effect.
"Two?" she finally asked. "I understand the problem of physical transport, but I can't see the second issue."
Arne took another puff, letting the smoke stream from his nostrils.
"You're quite right—the question of logistics is the first concern. Someone would have to travel to Yharnam; one cannot simply place an order for blood ministration by post. Ideally, arrangements could be made for the blood to be produced here, but that would take effort and expertise, to say nothing of time. And even then, there is the second problem."
"Which is?"
"The virulence of this disease."
"I don't follow."
He didn't answer directly, but instead began to illustrate his point with a story.
"Some years ago, Yharnam, too, fell victim to a plague. The Ashen Blood, they called it, a poisonous corruption that transformed the blood itself. We...the Healing Church...did all we could, but in the end there was nothing that we could do. All of our treatments failed, both via conventional medicine and blood ministration. The plague spread virulently through Old Yharnam, the village at the city's roots, making more and more people ill, sometimes killing, sometimes...worse." He shook his head, his whole posture screaming of regret. "In the end, there was nothing that we could do but seal the gates.
"Only when it was far, far too late did we learn what might have saved them."
Tera had no trouble in following the point of his story, as he'd expected.
"So it's possible that 'ordinary' blood ministration, whatever that means, would be unable to cure the plague here or halt its spread?"
"Correct."
Across the room, a patron left the tavern. The draft of air from the door's opening and closing made the curl of smoke from Arne's pipe dance.
"But there was something, something that did work."
"Indeed. A true panacea, for all that ails mankind. The great truth that Laurence guided us to at last. Paleblood."
He all but breathed out the final word. In that moment he was not a doctor dispensing medical advice, a scholar discussing some scientific fact.
No, Arne was a prophet divulging revelation to the blessed.
Tera visibly recoiled. She was obviously uncomfortable with his intensity. The deepest truths should bring discomfort, but it was not what he said but his manner, he himself, that was the problem and Arne fought to backtrack, regain some of the ground that his enthusiasm had lost. He eased back in his seat, sipped more wine, did whatever he could to silently suggest that the moment of fevered intensity had passed.
It was, of course, a lie, told not in words but in manner. How cruel it was, to be so blessed yet unable to express it, to give voice to the fullness of his joy, lest everything the gods had guided to him be snatched away through his own poor choices.
He hoped that Tera could not see the way in which his fingers tightened on the bowl of his pipe, the whiteness of his knuckles revealing his strain. She measured him with a long look, and he sat, scarcely daring to breathe yet forcing himself to do so for the sake of his facade.
Eventually, though, she spoke, and when she did Arne knew that he had won his gamble—that, or else her intellectual curiosity, her passion as a doctor, a scholar, had overcome any other misgivings she might have had.
"Paleblood, you say? I take it that this is a particular kind of refined blood? Some complex process over and above the regular sort of thing done in ministration?"
He let out a breath, then drummed his fingertips on the rough wood of the table-top.
"That's not so easy to answer," he at last settled on.
"Oh? I thought it was a simple yes or no."
He shook his head.
"No. Explanations are required. In the most literal sense, the answer is no. Paleblood isn't like the pure blood of specially nourished Blood Saints or the carefully refined product of one of the city's medical clinics. It is much more esoteric than that."
"Esoteric isn't a comfortable word, Arne, when discussing medical topics."
"I understand. Truly, I do. We're scientists, you and I. We deal in facts, in reason. Our stock in trade is what can be proven and tested and verified in repeatable experiments. But Paleblood is, in its way, the entirety of what the Healing Church was seeking, their entire purpose for existing. Paleblood is..."
He broke off, desperately hoping for a way to make her understand.
"It is a hunt, you see. The Healing Church's fundamental purpose was to pursue it, searching ceaselessly for the true panacea, that which could cure all human ills. That is what Master Laurence and his associates were able to find in his final days. But it wasn't a medication that could be mixed up in a chemical laboratory, no matter how well-stocked. That was the false path that the Church had started on, you see."
Tera steepled her fingers in front of her.
"You're referring to a naturally occurring cure, then. Something that can't be duplicated but must be taken in the form in which it comes."
"Believe me, I understand. Your reluctance is what we all thought. We'd spent decades since our Byrgenwerth days researching the esoterica of blood ministration, all of the possibilities and promise that the blood offered, but in the end we were proven arrogant fools. We believed that we could take some of what the ancients had discovered, reject the rest, and apply our own modern reason and methods.
"It was pure hubris. Folly. We learned nothing from the Ashen Blood plague except what we did not know. The limits of our own arrogance. The hunt for knowledge, for truth, for the betterment of humanity can only begin with the acceptance of our own ignorance."
"I like that metaphor," Tera admitted. "The eternal hunt for knowledge. It feels proactive, like there's a defined goal."
"You have a goal, do you not?"
He pointed the stem of his pipe at Tera's mask where it lay on the table.
"Why not go to Yharnam, young seeker? Learn what it has to offer. Find Paleblood, and transcend this hunt. Find the cure to all our suffering."
The urgency had crept back into his voice. It had not quite risen to the intensity of the previous time, but it was not possible for him to fully restrain himself. Not now, not when, he thought, he had found a candidate at last worthy of sending to Yharnam, of taking up the work after so long.
That urgency, though, betrayed him. Tera's eyes narrowed.
"Why?" she asked him bluntly. "Why is this so important to you?"
Arne could not suppress a laugh, wheezing and dry. If only she knew, he thought. If only she knew.
With luck, with diligence, and with the blessing of those above, she would soon know.
What he said, though, was chosen with eminent practicality.
"The plague-doctor asks a resident of the Ward why he finds it important that someone goes and seeks out a method of treatment?"
"Fair enough," she allowed. It was eminently logical, that a man would want to save his life, if he thought that he had the answer to a deadly threat. Yet he could tell that she was still suspicious. Doubtless Tera's instincts found it difficult to reconcile firm practicality with the kind of spiritual fervor he'd shown earlier.
Arne understood well enough. He knew from his days in Yharnam that cold, self-centered purpose did not motivate the truly devout. Their eyes were on things greater than surface utility, and if they were driven by avarice it was greed for something much less mundane than physical benefit. The venal and the ephemeral rarely shared a soul.
Still, she knew Yharnam's reputation. And she cared too much to miss her chance.
"Come with me," she said. "You know Yharnam; you know the Healing Church. Doors will be open to you that reject me."
"I would like nothing better, but I regret that it is impossible. I'm an old man. My back is bent, my legs are weak. I don't know how you intend to make it out of the Plague Ward, but sneaking through the night, climbing walls, crawling through sewer tunnels—whatever it is you intend, they'd be far beyond me."
She frowned, scowling darkly, and the pause went on long enough that Arne realized Tera was actually planning it out, how she would escape the sealed Plague Ward, then get out of the city, and what it would take to reach the northern lakes where Yharnam was to be found. She'd have to abandon her distinctive costume, of course, and likely travel in secret, by cover of darkness—word of the plague would have spread quickly and would make her origins suspect. Beyond that, Arne didn't know.
He wasn't, after all, a hunter.
"You're right," she finally said. "I hate it, but it's true. You'd never make it, and I might fail in the trying."
"Do not worry," he reassured her. "You have the instincts of a hunter, and they will not fail you. They will guide you to the blood, to ministration and communion, and, I am certain, to Paleblood at the last."
"Seek Paleblood, and transcend the hunt," she said.
"Exactly so."
She pushed back her chair and stood.
"Then I hope you'll excuse me." She picked up her mask and fastened it back in place. Her movements were crisp, purposeful.
"Of course. It may still be early, but the night will come sooner than we expect it."
"Then I bid you farewell, Arne, and hope for a happier meeting in future times."
"May the good blood guide your way," he said, as farewell and benediction both.
Tera strode from the tavern without looking back. There was no question of payment; coin was offered in advance at The Old Bell these days. One did not plan for the future in the Plague Ward, not even to the extent of running a bar tab. Arne watched her go, then set about finishing his pipe and his wine at leisure.
It was nearly two hours past when he'd come in when he finally left, but he could not tell it from the sky. The close-set buildings hit much of the light so that morning could hardly be told from afternoon save for that sliver of time when the sun was directly overhead. It suited Arne; he was more comfortable by twilight, anyway.
He wanted to laugh as he set off down the lane. He'd finally found them! Five months, and he'd finally found the one he sought, found them when he hadn't even been looking. Surely this was a sign of favor, of a blessing bestowed?
Arne was so caught up in his emotion that he did not hear the footfalls. Perhaps he would not have anyway; the shoes were soft-soled and, as he'd thought when with Tera, he was not a hunter.
The steel of the knife laid against his throat was not cold, but rather warm, warm with the hot sticky air, warm with the heat of the body it had lain near, tucked within clothing until taken out at need. Warm like it, itself, was a living thing, blood pumping through its length.
"You killed them, you bastard," a voice rasped in his ear, a bitter voice spat through dry, crusted lips.
He knew who it was even before the knife was pulled back so the man could spin him around and thrust him up against a stone wall, the shock of pain sharp through Arne's spine and shoulder blades. The canvas mask and smock proved him right; it was the fourth butcher, the one who'd run—but not, it seemed, run too far.
"I been waiting, watching for you to come outta that tavern," he spat. "Now you're going to get yours."
Arne sneered at him, despite the knife-point leveled at his face. His hand slipped into his pocket, curled around what he found there.
"Coward."
The rheumy eyes visible behind the mask widened.
"What's that?" the butcher growled at him.
"Coward," Arne repeated. "If you've been watching, waiting for me, then you surely saw her when she came out well before me. But you didn't creep after her, did you? You didn't try to take revenge on your associates' killer. You knew what would happen then. All you could do is sneak around and come after your would-be victim, as if finishing your crime would somehow make their deaths less futile. Well, be of good cheer, then. Though worthless and pathetic in life, their ends have been to greater purpose."
Arne's hand came out of his pocket. The flesh was soft between his fingers, yet strangely resilient despite its age. If anyone had been there to see, they would have watched a vision from an eye that saw elsewhere flash into existence for a moment, a chunk of glass-like crystal glowing a pale blue blast through the butcher's chest, leaving only a smoking hole eight inches across where his heart had been.
"Yours, in contrast, was as pointless as your birth."
He moved away, his walk stiff and slow yet with new energy, free of his burden. His work here was done—a good thing, too. Despite his best efforts the plague-doctors of this city were diligent and educated. He had not missed Tera's remark about how the disease was not transmitted through the air, or her lack of panic in cleaning the blood and fluids of the dead from her uniform. Manipulate it as he could, they would fasten on the water sooner or later, and even though the toxin lingered only a few days, allowing a source to become clean and escape testing, escape patterns, sooner or later the truth would be found once they looked in the correct direction.
Now, though, there was no point in going on. He didn't even need to finish his errand of that morning, the one the butchers had interrupted.
She would finish what had begun those long years ago when Master Laurence had called the red moon. She would hunt, she would transcend, and she would do what Laurence had failed to do: she would open the way for them all to follow.
"Yes, good hunter," he murmured aloud. "May the good blood guide your way!"
And for a fleeting moment, there rang out joyful laughter in the warrens of the Plague Ward.