The Exorcist Doctor

The room Maeve had reserved for her mother sat at the far end of the surgical chamber, almost tucked away by the medicinal cabinets flanking the door on both sides. Very few people came in either way. She was really the only one who did aside from Cara, who came in sometimes to change the curtains and swap out the flowers on the vases around the room, but she probably preferred keeping it that way. She liked finding her mother exactly where she’d left her the day before, and the day before, and the day before.

But maybe that was a cruel thought, so today, she punished herself for it by smoothing the blanket across her mother’s waist for the third time in five minutes, finding the wrinkle offending the sanctity of the room.

“... So three nights ago, I found Fergal groaning outside his office in the Patchwork Tenements while I was grocery shopping in the area,” she said, holding her mother’s hand as she shuffled around on her bedside stool again. “Apparently, some hoodlums from the old tanners’ block have been trying to upstage the Saint’s Hands. They painted their symbols over fifteen of our clinic’s notices and announced themselves as the new rulers of East Blightmarch. Fergal was having trouble figuring out how to kill them—slow or fast—so I told him I’d handle the situation in his stead, since he seemed like he was busy with other things. I swear, I didn’t know the man could look so relieved not having to bust out his torture tools.”

Her mother’s steady breathing didn’t change.

“Anyways, I went to speak with the hoodlums,” Maeve continued, shrugging. “I was going to break at least all of their legs, but the moment they saw me, they apologized, repainted the clinic notice themselves, donated money to Miss Alba’s noodle shop, and swore to the Saintess they’d never do it again. Can you believe it? Am I really that scary?” She allowed herself a small laugh. “I still broke one leg from each of them, though. Who knows how many people they hurt by painting over our notices and stopping people from coming to our place? Besides, I guess it wasn’t like they apologized the moment they saw me. They tried… to fight a little bit at first. It was self defense.”

Her mother’s steady breathing didn’t change.

“Evelyn’s been doing well, too,” Maeve said, her smile gentling. “She still acts as if every errand’s a turf war and every delivery route’s a declaration of a blood feud against the wind, but I think she’s mellowed out a fair bit. Last week, she helped me deliver medicine through the old gallowglass alleys after some coffin-cart drivers decided the street belonged to them. What’s up with all the upstarts lately, actually? Whatever, though. I was going to break their legs too, but it was Evelyn who—pretty politely, I’d say—told me to just throw a smoke bomb into their hearse. The old her would’ve cracked their skulls, I think. Maybe it’s because she knows Liorin doesn’t like her when she’s too violent.”

Her mother’s steady breathing didn’t change.

“Oh! But speaking of Liorin! He’s become very popular with our neighbors!” Maeve said cheerily. “The children who come to our clinic follow him around whenever they see him carrying seedlings in and out of the botanical garden. I heard one of them call him the Flower-Prince of Blightmarch, which makes him so embarrassed. He dragged me off to hunt for a particular exotic seedling two weeks ago when he couldn’t take being stared at by the girls anymore. The seed was supposed tohelp him purify some ‘bad soil’ in the garden, but… uh, we didn’t find it. I think he might’ve lied to me. I think he was just scared of Evelyn glaring daggers at him while all the other girls were swooning over him, so he wanted to get away from the clinic for a bit.”

Her mother’s steady breathing didn’t change.

“Vivi’s adapting well to Bharncair, too. So is Jin. There’s not a lot of Myrmurs to hunt around here nowadays, but the two still wake up sharp at eight in the morning, patrol for four hours, come back for lunch at twelve, then go out to patrol some more until it’s time for dinner. Then they spar at night for an hour before going out for one more round of patrols—and they do this every day. Every. Day. And I don’t even wake up until eleven these days. Talk about discipline, right?” Maeve chuckled, shaking her head. “I pray that Vivi snags Jin soon enough. We’ve all made bets on how long it’ll take for them to get together, and I put down ten thousand in a fit of drunken arrogance. I’m never drinking again.”

Her mother’s steady breathing didn’t change.

“Cara has also been teaching me some of the financial work that goes into running the clinic!” Maeve said, reaching for the small notebook she’d been carrying around on her belt. She flipped through the pages quickly, showing her mother all the notes, charts, and diagrams she’d been drawing. “It’s really tough, actually! There’s medicine contracts with small business owners to mind, production routes to mind, protection fees to the Saint’s Hands to mind, and I have to memorize the signatures of every last one of our investors so I can recognize their letters instantly whenever the ravens bring them in. How does she do all of it alone? I guess she’s also training some of the Saint’s Hands to help her with it, and I guess she’s also been doing it with Fergal, but… she’s cool. She’s always… just… been…”

Her mother’s steady breathing didn’t change.

It never changed.

And sometimes, she couldn’t help but wonder if it ever will.

She’d been doing this every week for the past two years—talking to her mother about all the things she’d been doing, all the things she’d been not doing, and all the things she wanted to do—but today, she didn’t have it in her to keep talking.

She fell quiet.

Silence curled around the room gently at first, then with weight. Her hand tightened around her Alana’s. Her throat moved once, but no sound came out. She’d been speaking for so long, filling the air with stories of her errands and her friends and her foolishness, yet the… the thing beneath all of it had waited patiently for her to tire herself out.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Now there was nothing left between her and the thought she’d been avoiding since Bleakhearth.

She bent forward and pressed her forehead to her mother’s hand. The skin was warm. That should’ve helped with how cold she felt inside, but it didn’t help enough. When she closed her eyes, the darkness wasn’t empty—it had black feathers. It had screaming streets. It had flowers too large and lively to just be flowers.

She saw the Raven again, with his umbilical cord-like leather strands trailing from his sleeves and coat. She saw the Raven again, with his giant parasitic flowers spreading through her neighborhood, climbing through bricks, splitting every window, swallowing every door and devouring everybody with their saw-edged petals. That Raven who’d devoured her parents that day was undoubtedly the same one who’d rescued the Breeder in Bleakhearth, so… what?

What was she supposed to do about that?

“... Hey, mom,” she whispered. “Do you remember what I was like when you first took me in?”

Her mom’s steady breathing didn’t change.

“I know I wasn’t always easy,” she said. “Even though you took me in because you wanted a successor, you still gave me dresses, dolls, and little tea sets at first, and… and I tried to be grateful. I think. But I mostly wanted your training manuals and your exorcism records. I wanted to know how to hold a blade properly. I wanted to know how you killed your monsters. I also… wanted to know who that Raven was.

“Did you know this?

“Between our lessons, I’d sneak into your dusty archive rooms and read your field reports. When I couldn’t find any mention of any Raven with cord-like strips of leather, I went to the old clerks in some of the Church branches and asked for names, ranks, witness accounts, and all that stuff… but nothing turned up. Everybody I spoke to knew nothing, or claimed to know nothing, or suddenly looked very, very scared before telling me to leave the past where it rested. It made sense, I guess. Of course the Church doesn’t want people to know one of their hounds bit their own hands on their own turf, and information suppression is only one of the many things House Thornebed excels at.

“So eventually, I… stopped looking.

“Training became harder, so I had to focus more on that. Then there was the initiation examination. Then there was the incident in the catacombs, and then… well, I came down here and met Gael.” She smiled a little, but she still kept her eyes closed and her forehead pressed against her mom’s hand. “After that, I’d kinda pushed that Raven aside as just another fragment of my past. In my head, I’d categorized him as… a storm. I thought him an inevitable force of nature that just came, swept my parents away, and left without a word. And with everything that was going on down here, bless the Saintess? There was just no time to think about him. No time at all.”

Then her mouth softened.

“But now he shows himself before me?” she whispered. “After all these years, picking at the… the little nuggets of blood at the back of my head, he reappears just like that? What am I supposed to think? Why’d he do it? What was he trying to achieve? What was he trying to achieve back then? And… is he really Gael’s dad?”

For the past half a year, she’d been stepping on eggshells around Gael. What a ridiculous skill to use against her own partner—and a shameful one. She could still discuss clinic supply, exorcism routes, Vile Eater placements, and anything related to the clinic with him, but the moment Gael himself stood at the center of her thoughts, her head would ache a little, and she’d manage to find an excuse—one way or another—to get away from him. Getting away from him was ridiculously easy nowadays, anyways. If she didn’t have to fight any Myrmurs, she only really had to reattach their bloodshackle during bedtime so Gael could detoxify her toxic blood, which meant they could now practically spend two-thirds of their days apart without any significant issues.

Of course she knew Gael had nothing to do with her parents’ death. He’d been a boy just like her when they died. He hadn’t even known about her existence back then, so it was utterly pointless to avoid him like he was the one at fault.

Even still, whenever she saw him wear his upper half of his green-lensed Raven’s mask, some small, terrified part of her saw the red lenses, and she wouldn’t be able to stomach being around him anymore.

It was for this same reason she hadn’t been wearing her lower half of his Raven mask, and she’d just been going around with a standard-issue Saint’s Hands mask for the past six months.

But…

“... But I can’t keep running away, right?” she whispered. “I’m not a little kid anymore. I’m not… that little girl you found in that forgotten ward of the clinic anymore. I’ve found a new home now. I’ve got new friends and family now. I’ve got neighbors who wave at me when they see me down the street, merchants who try to overcharge me less than they overcharge others, and gangsters who call me ‘Miss Maeve’ while they hide their cigarettes behind their backs as if I’m their mother, and… I love them back. All of them.”

Her voice softened.

“And I love Gael, too.

“So before we go to Wraithpier and nail that piece-of-shit Breeder once and for all, I have to clear the air with him, right?”

No answer.

So Maeve sat up straight, teary-eyed, and squeezed her mom’s hand tight.

“... Please wake up,” she said, her voice shaking terribly. “I need you, mom. I… I want to spar with you again. I want to hear your voice again. Just… please, mom. Wake up.”

Her mom didn’t move.

Not an eyelid twitch. Not a finger lifted. The Heartcord Clinic was a house of healing, but the statue of Saintess Severin outside had a crooked head, so miracles weren’t god-given here.

Men made miracles here.

Not gods.

For a moment, Maeve just sat there, holding her mom’s hand and refusing to let go. Even asleep, her mom’s hand was still so warm. So incredibly warm. There was nothing else in Bharncair that could give her the same amount of warmth.

Then someone knocked on the door behind her, and she flinched so hard her stool scraped against the floor.

She turned around, heart kicking. “Yes? Who—”

The door cracked open, and a black-gloved hand slipped through the gap, opening and closing like a puppet’s mouth.

“Hello, dearest wife,” the puppet hand said in a squeaky, stupid falsetto voice. “This is your husband’s hand speaking. The rest of him was tragically deemed too handsome for direct entry and has been detained outside for public safety, but he told me to tell you that he has somewhere he wants to go before he sets off for Wraithpier, and he would like you to come with. Wanna come with?”

Maeve stared at the puppet.

Just this morning, she would’ve said no immediately. No, she had work, no, she had to help Cara, no, she had to check incoming supplies—her excuses had grown aplenty over the past six months, and she still had more to spare.

But she swallowed that cowardice with a heavy gulp, glancing back at her mom only one more time.

… I said no more, didn’t I?

What’s a promise of an Exorcist worth?

So she took a deep breath, turning back to the puppet.

“Where are we going?”