The Exorcist Doctor

Chapter 149 - Under Table Deals // Golden Compromise

The Master of Masks primary expressions shifted as Gael spoke—happy turning neutral, neutral turning sad, sad turning happy again, as if they didn’t know what mood they wanted to cycle to. The gold-masked puppets that suddenly lowered onto every audience seat around the theatre did, though, and they started clapping, making Vivi and Evelyn flinch hard enough that they nearly stepped into each other.

“... Raven of Blightmarch,” the Master rasped. “Surgeon of Rot. Brewer of Blood. The Exorcist Doctor. You march through wards as though they are all your corridors, and you smile as though every law is merely a suggestion. You have brought your flock to our theatre and answered our questions correctly, and thus we do you the courtesy of speaking plainly—but pray tell, could this ‘business proposal’ of yours anything like the one the winds say you have made with that old fossil in Ironwych?”

Gael kept his chin up and his grin crooked. “Kinda. It really depends on what the winds actually told you, though. Half the time it’s just farting through alleyways.”

Maeve and Cara immediately kicked the back of his knees, but the Master of Masks laughed, and the sound did not come from the giant mask over their heads. Every masked puppet in the theatre laughed, stomping the floorboards in an irregular beat as they did.

“We would be fools to make deals with a Raven,” the Master said. With that, several puppets around the theatre stirred. Some of them wore Raven masks as they enacted different scenes: swaggering down streets with a cane, engaging in a weapons deal with some shady merchants, and dragging a coffin up a mountainous slope… amongst other equally peculiar scenes. “Ravens are the pinnacle of volatility and instability. Deals with them are promises written on wet paper. They are signed with a laugh and broken with a scientific inspiration. One day, they can bring you coin, and the next…”

The Raven puppet with the cane slashed once and demolished the entire block around them. The Raven dealing in weapons decided to immediately test their new wares by firing into the very merchants they bought the weapons from. The Raven with the coffin opened the lid and poured a river of fuming skulls down the mountain, laughing as the dead rose and devoured the village below.

Jin and Fergal’s gazes stayed forward, cold and unreadable, but their shoulders tightened by a fraction. Evelyn and Liorin’s brows knit with worry. Vivi looked like she was about to be sick watching a Raven puppet devour an infant whole off to the side, but Cara and Maeve glared up at the Master of Masks defiantly, looking almost offended on Gael’s behalf.

A noble reflex, but totally unnecessary. Gael waited until the final Raven puppet finished robbing a bank—sending physical coins raining down upon the theatre—before he lifted a finger.

“Correction: I’m not gonna be the one making any deal with the Three-Faces,” he said. “And technically speaking, you—and just about everyone in Bharncair—keep getting something wrong: the Heartcord Clinic is just a normal-ass clinic in Blightmarch with no real influence outside our immediate district. We make medicine, we treat people, and we keep folks from dying when they stumble through our doors. That’s all we really do.”

Then he jerked his thumb back at Fergal.

“The Saint’s Hands are the ones with actual influence over Blightmarch. They’re the ones with boys and supply routes and information channels across the wards, which is why I’m proud to introduce Fergal, the boss of the Saint’s Hands, who’ll be the one to actually enter into a business arrangement with the Three-Faces. That way, you won’t have to claim to accept the ‘volatility’ of a Raven, right?”

Fergal already knew about Gael’s plans, of course—they’d had a talk about it before coming to Bleakhearth—but the Master of Masks stayed quiet long enough that the theatre’s hush became physical. Even the puppets were still, wooden bodies held in perfect posture.

It took an even longer while before the Master of Masks tilted their head the other way. New puppets immediately dropped from the ceiling to replace the old ones, and these ones no longer wore elegant golden masks. They wore, instead, the clothes of various trades: perfumer puppets with vials, jewelers with vice, tailors with needles and lanternsmiths with soot on their sleeves. It was like the theatre was suddenly full with the class of the working man.

“The Three-Faces have eyes and ears in many industries, little Raven.” The puppets acted it out as the Master spoke. Perfumers poured tea into cups, jewelers weighed their trades, masks were sewn with blood and iron, and lanternsmiths hammered their crafts with their bare hands. “We own mothlight distilleries and velvet mills. We fund opera troupes and silk-binders. We count coins in banks that pretend to be honest. We curate pleasures for the poorest rich and the richest poor. We purchase secrets in tidy parcels and sell them back as gossip with ribbons on, but if we can name one domain—and only one—that we have never, ever touched, it would have to be medicine.”

Gael raised a brow. “Oh?”

“Vharnveil is strict about who they teach their practice of medicine, natural or bioarcanic, and the Church of Severin is even stricter about who can practice the practice of life and death,” the Master said. “Answer me this: do you know how many Vharnish nobles are in this theatre right now, watching a show without having told their families they were even coming down to Bharncair?”

“Uhhhhhhhhh—”

“Sixteen. Answer me this: do you know how many Vharnish barons are engaging in hedonistic, carnal pleasures within seven blocks of this theatre right now?”

“Sixteen, perhaps?”

“A hundred and fifty-six.”

Gael let out a low whistle. “Busy night.”

“Not at all. The poor Vharnish love Bleakhearth,” the Master cooed. “It is a cheap place to taste sin, and they can return to their perfumed beds in the sky with lies still warm on their tongues. And, while they may be poor and lacking in status in the City of Splendors, they are still Vharnish—they are a people we Three-Faces have very, very, very close business ties with.”

The Master of Mask lowered even further, swapping to a squinting face.

“The Church of Severin will never tolerate the Three-Faces openly supporting the distribution of medicine that has not been approved,” they said. “We also know the Saint’s Hands bear the fingerprints of your Heartcord Clinic. Whether you are two distinct entities, officially or not, does not make it so associating with either of you openly will help us maintain our show.”

“Show?” Gael smiled. “What show?”

“... Answer me this, Gael Halloway: what do ‘we’ value the most?”

Gael thought about it for a moment, but only for a moment.

The answer was evident enough to anyone who’d so much as even stolen a glance at the ward.

This text was taken from NovelBin. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“... Peace,” he said. “The Three-Faces value ‘peace’ above all else, and that is the ‘show’ all of you put on.”

The puppets around the theatre quickly pulled on happy masks and started laughing. So did the Master of Masks.

“Correct!” they said. “There is peace in Vharnveil, so there must also be peace in Bleakhearth. Absolute peace. It matters little what you offer us. An open medicinal arrangement invites scrutiny. Scrutiny invites inspection. Inspection invites… disruption.”

But then the Master of Masks lowered even, even further, until the tip of their nose was just about to touch the top of Gael’s hat.

He couldn’t even really see their expression now, and he certainly was thankful he wasn’t any taller. Otherwise he’d have to be like Fergal, craning his head slightly just to not get crushed by the giant mask.

“... But,” they whispered, “that is only if we agree to an ‘open’ medicinal arrangement.”

Gael smirked.

“Yeah?”

“As we said, we value peace above all else,” the Master explained. “Bleakhearth must remain a paradise for the poorest rich and the richest poor. Entertainment and comfort are the ward’s lifeblood, and while you may never see them, the sick and the parasitized still lurk in the shadows of our golden lights—we simply discard the rotten masks to preserve the peace for the rest of us.”

“So, what about those bandits we stopped earlier?”

“Of course we were monitoring them.”

Five spotlights snapped on at once, stabbing into the audience seats off to their left. It was only now that they were being highlighted that Gael and the rest of them turned their heads to look.

Five wooden puppets stood upright there, wearing the bandits’ rags, but the heads were the decapitated heads of the real bandits instead of any wooden replica.

“... Well, you guys are fast, I’ll give you that,” Gael muttered, glancing back up at the Master of Masks.

“There was no heist, and there were no bandits.” The Master laughed. “Yet again, today’s crime rate in Bleakhearth is zero percent, and it must always be zero percent. Do you understand?”

“Sure. And your point is…”

“There are many in Bleakhearth, rich and poor, Vharnish and Bharnish, who would pay their childrens’ lives for medicine that amounted to anything more than a cough drop for a sore throat, and amongst the catalogue of medicine your clinic offers to business partners, there is a particularly strange medicine we covet,” the Master said. “A medicine that—or so the winds say—frees men of parasites without killing them.”

Gael couldn’t help but let out a loud whistle now. “Well, well. You really have eyes and ears in every drawer. I don’t think even Vharnveil’s caught wind of it just yet.”

“Who do you think has been keeping that information from leaking to the Spiders, or to any of the few hundred physicians and scholars up in Vharnveil who would die to get even a taste of your ‘symbiote elixir’?” the Master said. “We have been directing the flow of information about the Heartcord Clinic and the Saint’s Hands for longer than you have realized, all for this single purpose—for if there is a choice we can make to aid the sick and cleanse the parasitized instead of pruning their masks, we shall always, always prioritize peace in our lands.”

The Master of Marks finally turned back around to look at Gael in the proper orientation… not that they were far enough for him to see their whole mask, anyways.

“Your medicine—and your symbiote elixir in particular—would satisfy a great many of our highest-paying patrons. It would be in our best interest to bless your medicinal ventures in Bleakhearth under the table.”

Gael blinked. “Oh. Cool. Then let’s shake on it now and—”

“But there is one condition,” the Master of Masks cut in. “Unlike your deal with the Steelborn to set up Saint’s Hands storefronts and outposts in Ironwych, the Three-Faces will handle everything here. You will not set up storefronts. You will not be responsible for medicinal distribution. We will decide who to sell your medicine to, how to sell it, and at what price. All you would have to do is deliver regular supplies to our masks in Umbracross, and we will share with you a portion of our earnings. Refuse, and Bleakhearth will remain closed to your clinic.”

“Win-win. Deal.”

“Oh. Cool. Then let us shake on it now and—”

“Wait,” Maeve snapped. Both Gael and the Master of Masks turned to see her glaring sharply at the puppets around them. “So you guys want to decide who you can sell our medicine to, and you get to decide how much you’ll sell them for?”

“Correct.”

“You’ll gouge their prices, then. The people who need them most will be turned away—”

Gael clamped a hand over her masked mouth and grinned back up at the Master of Masks. “We’ll take the deal. What about Fergal stay here so he can hash out the details of the arrangement with you?”

“Leave Cara Halloway here as well. Her knowledge on your clinic’s financial and production proceedings will be useful in the discussion.” The Master of Masks finally began to ascend once again, taking on the happy mask as they hummed in delight. “In the meantime, please do enjoy the luxuries afforded by our beautiful Bleakhearth. As long as our peace is not disrupted, the show will continue.”

Now every lantern and spotlight snapped out at once, plunging the theatre into a suffocating black. A heartbeat later, a neat line of white spotlights flicked on along the isle, illuminating the path back towards the exit .

That was their cue to leave.

Gael grabbed Maeve by the hand and tugged her away from the stage. Everyone else but Cara and Fergal followed, and those two waved at them casually before they all stepped out of the theatre and into the dimly lit hallway once more.

“Don’t have too much fun without us,” Cara called lazily.

Fergal gave a short, awkward lift of his hand. “We’ll sort out the numbers.”

Gael tipped his hat to them both—but mostly to Fergal, who he gave a wink. “No, you have fun.”

He swore he saw Fergal looking a little flustered being left alone with Cara, but fuck if he wanted to see anything more about the two of them. He simply ushered the rest of them through the hallway, gripping Maeve’s hand tightly as he did.

“Most of Bleakhearth’s citizens are either former proud Vharnish or soon-to-be proud Vharnish,” he said quietly. “The one thing they hate more than being poor is looking poor. Free handouts? Charity? To them, that’s humiliation dolled up as kindness. They won’t even get close to free or cheap medicine. If they can’t afford our medicine at the prices the Three-Faces set, they’d rather grind themselves down to the bone working to afford them than beg and plead for help.”

Maeve’s brows knit together. “But some of them won’t be able to afford it.”

“Well, if they’re willing to swallow their pride, walk to Blightmarch, and step through our doors, we’ll still give them the discounted price. This is simply as good a deal as we’ll ever get in Bleakhearth. The locals’ll still have their medicine, the Three-Faces’ll get to make some good coins, and we’ll have the Master of Mask’s blessings to walk around with. And we also lower the Myrmur parasitization rate in Bleakhearth. It’s a win-win-win.”

Maeve walked in silence for several steps. She didn’t look entirely happy about it, but they’d been through this before, and she was a Bharnish now. She knew ideals here came with bruises.

“... It’s a different ward,” she muttered.

“Different ward, different control,” he agreed. “We’re the foreigners. We play by the Three-Faces’ rules, or we don’t play at all.”

After another moment, she finally sighed.

“I just hope they don’t make our medicine too expensive to buy,” she said quietly.

“We did our part.” He nodded, lifting his cane forward at the exit to the theatre. “And now we finally have the Three-Faces’ approval to do what we actually came here to do.”