Chapter 4: The Blue Bottle

I turned around.

The royal healer stood in the doorway in his gray coat, silver whiskers, half-moon glasses on a cord.

He was younger than I remembered.

His hands were the same.

Clean, pink, steady hands that had held the bottle to my lips while two guards held my arms.

"The Holy Maiden," he said, and gave a little bow. "What an honor. The matron's put you to work already?"

"Gauze," I said.

My voice came out normal.

I didn't know how.

He followed my eyes to the shelf above it and smiled.

"Ah. Don't mind those. They're not for the ward."

"What are they for?"

"The royal household. Under the Healer's Writ."

He said it the way you'd say the linen closet.

"The Writ is still law?" I asked.

"Three hundred years, my dear. The King may ask me to end any pregnancy in his household he thinks unwise."

He reached past me and straightened one of the bottles so it lined up with the others.

"Very gentle. A cramp, a bad night, and it's done. Nobody has to make a fuss."

Nobody has to make a fuss.

I'd screamed the second time.

He'd told the guards to hold my head still.

"And if the woman says no?" I asked.

He chuckled.

"No one may refuse the Writ. That's rather the point of it."

I took a bottle off the shelf.

It was cool and smooth and fit exactly in my palm.

"Careful with that, my dear."

I walked out of the storeroom with it.

"Miss Fairlie?"

I walked down the corridor to the dispensary, where the matron was counting pills into paper cups at the long steel counter.

There was a sink at the end of it.

I broke the wax with my thumbnail.

The cork came out with a soft pop.

"Miss Fairlie!"

The healer had followed me in, his whiskers bristling.

The matron looked up.

I turned the bottle over the sink.

The draught was dark blue, almost black, and thick as syrup.

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