The Exorcist Doctor

Chapter 144 - Family Vacation // With Rifles Raised

Three more weeks passed by very quickly.

Gael spent most of those weeks in a chair that’d started to recognize the shape of his spine. All day and all night long, he chewed on blood-boosting food—mostly liver broth, ironleaf greens, and some distasteful marrow mash—just so he could keep drawing his own blood. Every morning, he bled. Every afternoon, he bled again. Vials, basins, and thin glass tubes lined up like teeth along his surgical chamber, and eventually he turned every last one of them into powdered symbiote elixir that the clinic could either store in the southern ward or send to the eastern ward.

Meanwhile, the clinic kept growing. New recruits came, new recruits left. The Saint’s Hands continued expanding their sphere of influence across Blightmarch, Maeve continued smiling at patients staggering through the front door, Cara continued teaching the young men how to handle the finances, and everyone else played their parts—so when Gael finally decided he was ready to leave Blightmarch again, he didn’t really feel like he was going to miss home.

He was bored.

Nine in the misty morning, he found himself standing before the Wild Bridge at the northern end of Blightmarch once again. The colossal, overgrown bridge was a sight to behold as ever, and he set the tip of his cane down with a solid thump, drawing a slow breath through his mouth.

Ah.

I will miss the air, at least.

Not clean air, not saintly air, not air that’d make a Vharnish lady faint from sheer lack of perfume, but it was relatively natural air that smelled like wet wood and moss. Compared to the hot, stuffy, metal-tinged air in Ironwych, Blightmarch really didn’t have it that bad with the Vile. He’d still say Wraithpier was the worst, but he wasn’t going to Wraithpier, and—

“I’m tellin’ you, you can’t just plant your metal flowers wherever you fancy!” Evelyn drawled to his left, tussling with Liorin already. “I bet they won’t like you doin’ that in Bleakhearth! Those folks see a vine crawlin’ up their fancy walls and they’ll start cryin’ like someone spat in their tea!”

“But who don’t like flowers?” Liorin said, tilting his head genuinely as he finished burying a new flower between a crack in the cobbles. “Flowers make the walls look happy. And they stop people from slipping. They’re useful.”

And to Gael’s right, Maeve, Cara, and Vivi stood in a small huddle whispering amongst themselves.

“I’m only saying,” Vivi murmured, “that if we are to enter Bleakhearth, we should… perhaps… adjust our conduct.”

Cara snorted quietly. “No need for that. Gael’s going to walk in smelling like alcohol and wolf grease. The only adjustment Bleakhearth’s getting is a new reason to gossip.”

“I mean, we should still try to be polite when we get there,” Maeve said. “Strangers deserve politeness even if they’re… strange.”

“Well, half the people in Bleakhearth are offended by everyone else breathing. If those suckers are going to have to suffer our presence either way, might as well make them suffer as much as possible.”

And to the far, far right, Jin and Fergal stood together.

“If you have to choose between a cleaver weighted for bone or a narrow piercing blade with reinforced spine, which would you trust in a confined corridor?” Fergal asked.

Jin thought for a moment. “Cleaver. Piercing blades depend too much on angle and wrist strength. In panic situations, blunt trauma with cutting mass ends fights faster.”

“Hm.” Fergal considered that. “Against plated targets, then?”

“Still cleaver. You break joints. Armor doesn’t protect tendons.”

There was a pause, then Fergal nodded once, satisfied. “That’s what they teach you in Exorcist school, huh?”

“There’s no such thing as an Exorcist school.”

“There’s not?”

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Gael squinted at his gang. After all, he was the one who’d said they should all go up to Bleakhearth together—the Saint’s Hands were well-trained enough to run Blightmarch even without their presence for about a month or two—but he was already starting to regret bringing them along with him.

Why do I feel like my wife and my boys are getting stolen from me?

He had been looking forward to a little bit of alone time with Maeve as well, because Bleakhearth was probably the best place a Bharnish could go to for a once-in-a-lifetime ‘luxurious retreat’. The western ward was known for its clean hotels, fine dining, and even finer accessories, after all—a little romantic escape wasn’t something he would’ve turned down.

Sighing, he began walking across the Wild Bridge before he could change his mind. The others followed automatically, though they were still talking, still arguing, and still causing a ruckus around him.

Oh well.

Just think of it as… an extended family vacation.

Besides, Bleakhearth wasn’t like Ironwych. Ironwych was openly hostile, messy, and honest about not liking people living in its guts. Bleakhearth was built to imitate Vharnveil—the Western Ward of Masks, where everyone pretended they lived closer to the sky than they really did. Even for children like Evelyn and Liorin, it was safer there.

On the surface.

And since he had another objective in Bleakhearth beyond sniffing out the source of artificial Myrmur Hosts, it wasn’t a bad idea to bring others from the clinic along. Especially Fergal. Even if everyone else ended up staying behind or getting distracted by polished streets and overpriced stores, Fergal had to come with him. The man’s status as the official boss of the Saint’s Hands was going to be useful.

By the time they reached the bridge’s midpoint, the Vile thinned and Umbracross came into view at the very end. They were close to the ward under Vharnevil's underbelly, and while Gael and Maeve had seen them enough times by now to be bored of them, the hundreds of shops dangling from chains in the sky were still a novelty to Evelyn and Liorin.

“Saintess, look at that!” Evelyn drawled, leaning over the broken railing to peer forward until Cara grabbed the back of her coat. “That’s a whole damn city hangin’ off the underbelly! What’s that?”

“The Hanging Market,” Gael replied.

“Are we goin’ there?”

“Where else are we going?”

Liorin’s face may be hidden behind his wooden mask, but he, too, stared at the Hanging Market so hard it looked like he was trying to burn the view into his skull. Gael sighed and let them admire the view. If this was how they reacted to seeing the hanging stores from afar, he couldn’t imagine how annoying they’d be once they actually entered the market.

And then, just for a breath, his gaze found Maeve’s.

They said nothing, but they did give each other a small nod before looking away.

… Since that lunch three weeks ago, he and Maeve had exchanged information about their new arrivals’ backgrounds. Ultimately, they’d made a choice not to tell either Jin or Vivi about each other. Vivi still didn’t know Jin’s past, and Jin still didn’t know Vivi’s. It wasn’t kindness. In a way, it was for Gael’s twisted amusement—seeing the two of them fumble and embarrass themselves around each other was ungodly entertaining—but considering Vivi wanted to make Jin fall for her because of her own charms, it’d be cheating if they just told her what Jin was actually looking for.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Jin wasn’t interested in Vivi at all, so shoving her past down his throat would only make him stiffen harder during meals. The man was barely talking to begin with. As much as Gael enjoyed seeing him squirm in uncomfortable situations, there was a limit to the amount of second-hand embarrassment he could tolerate.

If they want to know more about each other, they’d have to work for it themselves.

What are we, their parents?

Still, he couldn’t help but scratch his chin and glance back over his shoulder a little. It took him and Maeve six long months to accept they weren’t ever going to live without each other. How long would it take these two to accept that, for better or worse, they were actually chained together at the ankle?

Heh.

Maybe I’ll let slip a bit of Vivi’s background to Jin one day just to push things along.

Unfortunately, as they neared the end of the Wild Bridge and stepped into the eternal shadow of Vharnveil, they weren’t met with the sprawl of tightly packed buildings he was expecting in Umbracross. Not directly, anyways. The way forward was blocked by ranks of a few dozen Mortifera Enforcers in metal ant masks, and unlike the last time they appeared to harass Gael and Maeve, all of their index fingers were already on the triggers of their raised rifles.

Gael lifted his cane and stopped his extended family from walking straight into them, but his mood was already soured the moment he saw Captain Orsa standing at the front of the blockade.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said, giving the captain a smile that didn’t carry the meaning behind it. “What’s with the holdup again, old boy? We’re not here to cause trouble. It’s just that Bleakhearth is so nice this time of the year that I thought we could all—”

“We have reason to believe the traveling members of the Heartcord Clinic are carrying illicit substances into Vharnveil territory with the presumed intent of smuggling and trafficking,” Captain Orsa said, waving his boys forward. “Search all of them. Even the children.”