Tiny Raven

The morning sun cut through the canvas in stripes that crawled across her cot like accusing fingers. She had counted the water stains on the ceiling seventeen times. She’d named them. She had attempted to teach Queen Dottie, Stella’s doll, how to speak Mother Tongue, but she was a terrible student. Kept throwing herself off the bed.

The stitches itched. The confinement itched worse. Being a ‘military asset’ apparently meant being treated like a sword left in a scabbard too long. Polished, valuable, and completely useless while rust set in.

She was twisting the silver signet around her thumb when the tent flap snapped open with particular violence that preceded only one person.

“Still breathing, unfortunately,” Alessia called out, not bothering to look. Her voice sounded like she’d been gargling sand, but it was steady. “Come to lecture me about the therapeutic value of lying still while my brain rots out my ears?”

“You’ve mistaken me for someone who lectures,” Patrian said, his voice dry as dust. He entered with his usual economical grace, though the tent flap still shivered from his passage. “Or for someone who believes lying still is therapeutic. It’s not. It’s merely convenient for the healers.”

He stopped at her cot, eyes flicking over her face with surgical precision, taking in the pallor, the restless fingers, the way she was holding Odrian’s signet like a talisman against idleness. Without asking, he reached down and checked the pulse at her wrist, his thumb pressing firm and brief against the bruised vein.

“Good. You’re not festering,” he muttered. Then he dropped a woven basket onto the crate beside her. It landed with a heavy thud, releasing the pungent aroma of dried herbs, lichen, and things that looked suspiciously like withered organs.

“Since Askarion seems determined to keep you horizontal for another day, and since you’re clearly deriving no benefit from the rest,” he said, settling onto a stool with a creak, “you can organize these. Separate the woundwort from the nightshade, the comfrey from the hemlock. Try not to poison yourself out of sheer spite. The scout three cots over is trying to sleep. Corpses make notoriously poor company.”

He picked up a dried leaf, turning it between his fingers, his gaze meeting hers with sharp brown eyes.

“Idle hands pick locks, Thief. And you’ve exhausted your suture quota for the week. Be useful instead.”

Alessia stared at the basket as if it had personally offended her. The scent hit her nose sharp and green, raw as a fresh wound, and for a dizzying second, she was back in Ellun’s slums, crushing dock leaves to stop a beating.

“You’re trusting me with hemlock?” she rasped, arching a brow as she picked up a dried leaf that looked suspiciously like death on a stem. “Bold choice for a man who just accused me of spite-poisoning myself. Unless this is a test, and you’re waiting to see if I organize them into ‘heals’ and ‘kills’ or just dump the whole lot into Askarion’s morning wine.”

She shifted against the pillows, careful of the stitches pulling at her ribs, and picked up another sprig, turning it in the light. The leaves were serrated, dark green, familiar in a distant way.

“Woundwort. Grew in the cracks behind the Salt Gate docks. Fishermen used to chew it when the hooks bit deep.” She flicked it toward the ‘safe’ pile with more confidence than she felt. “The one that looks innocent enough to poison a king? No idea. Could cure dropsy or explode my liver. Dockside apothecaries used to sell them in the same jar. Charged extra for the ambiguity.”

Her fingers found the silver signet where it sat against her chest, warm from her skin.

“I’ll separate your killers from your cures, Patrian. But if I make a mistake and this scout wakes up speaking in tongues or growing extra fingers, that’s on your educational curriculum, not my moral failings.” She glanced up at him, sharp and dry. “Consider it vocational training. If the Council decides I’m more useful as a corpse, at least I’ll know which leaves to line my cup with.”

Askarion shoved through the flap with the subtlety of a battering ram, arms laden with a stack of linen bandages that teetered precariously against his chest. His gaze found Alessia immediately—propped up, fingers stained green, playing with dried leaves like she was casting fortune bones—and his lip curled into a familiar sneer.

“Oh, wonderful,” he grunted, dumping the linens onto a crate with a sound like collapsing sails. “The wounded jackal is sorting my stores. That’ll end well.”

He crossed to her cot in three strides, not bothering to ask permission before peeling back the dressing at her ribs with fingers calloused from decades of needlework. His touch was light as he probed the fresh sutures, checking for heat, for swelling, for the telltale softness of infection.

“Stop fidgeting,” he snapped, though she had barely moved. “You’re pulling the catgut. And that—” he jabbed a finger at the pile she had sorted, “—isn’t woundwort, it’s dockweed. One heals infection, the other gives you a rash that’ll make you wish you’d bled out on Nomaros’s floor. Try not to confuse them unless you want to spend the next week scratching yourself raw.”

He straightened, wiping his hands on his apron, and fixed her with a glare that would curdle milk. “Patrian’s idea of occupational therapy is idiotic, but at least it keeps you from climbing the tent poles. You’re healing—barely—which means you’re still useless to me as a translator, a fighter, or even a decent conversation. So sit there, keep your hands busy, and try not to poison the scout in the corner while you’re pretending to be helpful.”

He turned, then paused, glancing over his shoulder at the silver signet resting against her chest. His voice dropped, gruff but not unkind.

“And stop clutching that ring like it’s a shield. You’re safe enough here, girl. Even if you do smell like a compost heap.”

Patrian plucked the innocent-looking sprig from Alessia’s fingers before she could consign it to either pile, holding it up to the light filtering through the canvas. “Cowbane. Related to hemlock, less polite about killing you.” He dropped it onto a separate scrap of linen, distinct from both the healing and toxic heaps. “Third category. ‘Useful only if you know exactly which nerve you want to paralyze.”

He settled back onto his stool, folding his hands in his lap with the stillness of a man waiting for a wound to reveal its depth. His gaze flicked from the signet at her chest to the green stains on her fingers, cataloging the tremor she tried to hide when she reached for another leaf.

“You’re wrong about the curriculum,” he murmured, accepting a suture needle from Askarion without looking, threading it with catgut in one economical motion. “If you poison yourself, it isn’t a moral failing. It’s a data point. We note which leaf you chose, how much you took, how long it took your heart to seize. Then we tell the next fever-mad scout not to make the same choice.” He tied the needle with a sharp tug, setting it aside. “You didn’t survive seven years because you were righteous. You survived because you were accurate.”

He reached across and adjusted the pile she sorted, moving three leaves from ‘heals’ to ‘kills’ with unerring precision.

“Dockweed, not woundwort. Foxglove, not comfrey. You’re sorting by leaf shape and childhood memory. Stop.”

His hand hovered over the basket, selecting a dried pod that looked like a desiccated thumb.

“Crush this between your fingers. Tell me if it’s bitter, acrid, or sweet. That’s your first lesson in not dying by taxonomy.”

Alessia scowled at the pile of misidentified leaves, the dockweed smirking up at her like a green, rash-inducing insult to her intelligence. Seven years of surviving on instinct and street knowledge, and she couldn’t tell a healing herb from a skin irritant.

Pathetic.

“Fine,” she muttered, reaching for the desiccated pod he offered. It sat heavy in her palm, rough and papery like the husk of some insect, and when she crushed it between her thumb and forefinger, it gave with a dry, satisfying crack.

The scent hit her immediately, sharp and acrid, burning the back of her throat like the fumes from Ellun’s tanneries, but underneath there was a sickly sweetness that clung to her tongue. She didn’t flinch, though her eyes watered slightly, and she held the crushed fragments up to the light, examining the oily residue staining her fingertips.

“Bitter as bile, acrid enough to strip paint, and sweet underneath like fruit left too long in the sun,” she reported, wiping her fingers on the rough linen of her cot. Probably not the best idea, but Askarion had already declared her a compost heap, so what was a little more toxicity. “Smells like something that either cures a fever or causes one violent enough to boil your brain in your skull.”

She flicked the crushed remains onto the ‘uncertain death’ pile, the third category Patrian designated, and fixed him with a look that was half defiance, half desperate curiosity.

“So which is it? The fever or the boiling? And if you’re so keen on data points, tell me—did your previous subjects scream more with the cowbane or the hemlock? I like to know the volume expectations before I accidentally season the scout’s dinner.”

Her hand drifted back to the signet, rolling it between her fingers as she reached for another leaf, slower this time. She actually looked at the vein patterns instead of just the shape.

“And if I’m going to be your walking… sitting experiment, the least you can do is tell me what I’m actually handling. I spent six months guessing which mushrooms wouldn’t kill Stella if we were desperate enough to eat them. I’d prefer not to play ‘poison or pickle’ with your supplies when my daughter’s liable to wander in demanding to help.”

“Stop! Stop touching everything with those fingers you absolute menace!’

Askarion moved faster than a man his age should, snatching her wrist before she can grab another leaf. His grip was iron-tight, smelling of yarrow and old blood.

“That’s dried poppy, not ‘pickle or poison,’ you fool girl, but both depending on whether you’re counting grains or pinches!” He glared at the smear on her cot linen like she had just spat on an altar. “Bitter latex for pain and fever. Too much stops the lungs cold. You don’t scream with poppy. You drift off soft and quiet and die in your own vomit. Which, I admit, has certain appeal when a patient won’t shut up, but since I just spent two hours stitching your ribs, I’d prefer you didn’t overdose on my watch while contaminating your own bed!”

He released her with a shove toward the water basin, scrubbing his own hands on his apron as though she had infected him by proxy.

“As for your ‘subjects’—they were soldiers with gangrened limbs, and the only screaming came from me when they thrashed. Poppy’s for quieting the dead and dying, not for flavoring scout’s stew.” He jabbed a finger at the tent flap. “Keep the small one out. She licks your fingers or mistakes the cowbane for greens, and you’ll find out exactly how loud I can scream while stitching a child’s stomach. Understand?”

He kicked the linen she contaminated toward the tent flap.

“Burn that. Wash your hands. Then get back to sorting—slowly, and without painting the furniture with toxins. I haven’t got enough sutures to keep saving you from your own idiocy.”

Patrian retrieved the crushed poppy fragments from the linen with tweezers and deposited them into a small clay jar without looking at her.

He sealed the jar with a cork, setting it on a high shelf beyond casual reach, then turned back to her. His gaze flicked to her hands, green-stained and trembling slightly, before he selected a dried root from the basket. It was gnarled, brown, faintly lichen-spotted.

“Licorice root,” he said as he pressed it into her palm without ceremony. “Sweet. Safe. If the scout wakes screaming from his dreams, you’ll shave this into his tea. Not the poppy. The root coats the throat and calms the stomach without stopping the heart.” He released her hand, his own retreating with surgical precision. “Your daughter will not die from touching this one. She may, however, demand more honeycakes.”

He settled back onto his stool, folding his hands in his lap like a clerk balancing accounts. “Sort the rest. Learn the bitter from the sweet.”

He paused, gaze drifting to the tent flap where Stella’s laughter filtered in, distant and bright.

“Keep your hands clean before she enters. The poppy residue on your fingers won’t kill her, but it will make her sleep so deep she won’t wake for supper.”

Alessia turned the licorice root over in her fingers and scraped a thumbnail against the bark to release the scent. Sweet, dark, familiar. Not the sugar-candy sweetness Stella craved, but something deeper, older. The kind of sweet that follows bitter.

“I’ll keep the licorice handy for the screaming.”

She set the root down carefully, separating it from the dangerous heap, and wiped her fingers on the clean edge of her blanket. Once, twice, checking for the telltale brown stain of poppy latex. Her hands still trembled slightly, exhaustion humming beneath her skin like a plucked string.

She glanced down at her fingertips, still faintly green from the dockweed, and she resisted the urge to touch the signet hanging against her chest. Instead, she reached for the water basin Askarion indicated, plunging her hands into the cool liquid and scrubbing methodically. The water turned faintly cloudy.

“And don’t worry. This Mama knows to wash her hands before handling her cub. I’ve spent five years keeping poison off her skin. Not about to stop now just because your poppy’s prettier than Walus’s tinctures.”

She picked up another leaf and shot Askarion’s retreating back a dry smile.

“See? Educational and only mildly toxic. I’m practically a healer already.”