Lucius awoke while the stars still shone. He sucked in the cool sea air and sat up from bed, letting a gust of cool air slip beneath the covers. Aisha grumbled, rolling over and cocooning herself in the thin sheet as he left her side. Dormant insects clung to the mesh across the window, imitating sleep as they waited to be burdened with morning dew. No one in all the Misty Isles but him seemed to be awake.

He stole out from the bedroom, wearing a light toga. In the hall, he could hear the light echo of stirring pots, of a crackling stove. He arrived at the kitchen as quiet as a ghost, lest he wake someone, and nearly started the old maid. “M’lord,” she said, bowing her head to him as she stood over the bubbling pot.

“Tea?”

“Ocha.”

“Is it good?”

The woman stared back at him, then fetched a cup without saying another word. She filled it for him, a meager water barely tinted by the brew, and he slipped out from the room rather than badger an old woman who didn’t speak his language. It warmed his hand and brought a spot of vigor to him as he skulked over to the guest hall. He settled in against one wall and sipped his drink. From where he stood, he could see out a window to a changing hue of warmth. Slowly, the temperature changed, and all the little critters of the land noticed the sunrise.

PEW.

The first frog croaked like a church bell. A bed jerked, sheets flying.

PEW. PEW.

Lucius sipped his tea and grinned. The cacophony of pew frogs grew with the rising of the sun, filling the town with their customary wake up call. All of the locals began to wake and to move, to get themselves ready for the day. The one person new to the Misty Isles sprang out of her bed screaming. “What is going on!?” Kajsa demanded, throwing open her door in nothing but a nightgown.

She spun about, one foot in the hall, her hair flying in every direction. Her eyes landed on Lucius, casually leaning against the wall with a drink, and she flinched back. That something was amiss struck her immediately, and she noticed his smirk despite the darkness. “What?”

Lucius shrugged. “We don’t have roosters here, no need.”

“What the heck is going on?” she demanded, brushing some of her hair back out of her face. Some other people stuck their heads out of their rooms, servants and Lupin notably. Many of them chuckled and turned away.

Lucius grinned. “Want to see?”

Donning a coat over her nightgown, Kajsa followed behind him and the two of them walked past the guard training grounds to the treeline. After a moment of inspection, being verbally accosted by their territorial cries, he was able to point one of the little devils out to her. She watched the gut inflate, doubling the critter in size, before bursting out in noise. At once her frustration switched to curiosity. She fell to her knees and snatched up the frog. The thing creaked, belching out a half breath and squirming in her grasp as she turned it this way and that.

The researcher in her brain had full control, and there was no concern for decorum, for keeping the mud off her dress. She was like a child playing with a new toy and trying to get it to croak once more.

Lucius kept his laughter to himself, finally enjoying the display at someone else’s expense, and watched. By the time he finished his cup of tea, Lexa marched across the field and saluted him. “You wanted to see the body, sir?”

“Body?” Kajsa asked, and lost the frog. In her moment of surprise, it leapt from her hands and into the foliage. “Damn it!”

“There was a criminal,” Lucius said. “It’s why I had to run off last night.”

“In the manor?” she asked.

“Not anymore, I don’t think. But, it’s not something you should concern yourself with. Why don’t you get breakfast with Aisha?” he offered. When he saw her disgusted face, he added, “If she gives you a hard time, tell her I won’t let her join the trip this afternoon.”

“Is your family really fine with you taking a foreign mistress?”

Lucius stopped, half turned to join Lexa. “My family?”

Kajsa rose with a scowl and dusted her knees off. “Shouldn’t a nobleman’s lover be more… demure about her place?”

“Well, we met in the middle of a war. Wouldn’t you expect her to be a bit rough around the edges while stuck in a corner of the world?”

Kajsa twisted her lips into a pout and watched the two of them go. The walk was short, merely to one of the unused barracks rooms. The cots inside clearly hadn’t been used in a long time, and Lucius noted, “We need to recruit more.”

“Good luck finding people worth the coin.”

“We’ll have to burn the rot out and start fresh,” he said, and stood next to the stripped body. The chef had been utterly unremarkable. His body appeared like a retired farmer. Long limbs that seemed to stretch out in bone and sinew, ending in tough nails and calluses. The face was drawn out with thin lips and boxed in by a bushy beard kept from his face. His gut protruded up from the table, bloated and hairy, rather it had prior to the Y cut that had split the chest cavity open.

Sammy wiped his hands off with a rag and yawned. “I thought you were crazy when you asked for an autopsy on a hanging victim.”

“Thank you for staying up… What am I looking at?”

The doctor pulled out a short stick and began poking around. “See this?” he asked, prodding a lump of fat circled in black lines. “This is his heart. Twice the size it should be. I’m amazed he didn’t burst one of his blood vessels and die just walking up a hill. I’ve never seen these black rings before though. The liver is similarly engorged. Both are relatively common in older and sicker people. He obviously fed himself well.”

“Have you ever dissected somebody with a stigmata before?”

“Do you count?”

“You haven’t dissected me yet.”

“No, but I’ve seen the wizard’s diagrams of your insides, in case you end up with tumors again.(1) I got a look inside several men at Rackvidd whose injuries required surgery as well, and yes, I know what gets mirrored within as without. But this man didn’t have a stigmata.” Sammy pushed the cracked rib cage over to reveal the sagging skin: hairy, but bare of marks.

“Then it’s someone else’s stigmata,” Lucius said.

“I didn’t know that was possible.”

“Neither did I. I’d love to ask Amurabi about it, but he’s on the mainland. I’d bet money that this man didn’t know the boon, whatever that was, came with a kill switch.”

Lexa stuck her chin out at the corpse and said, “So, this is the work of some kind of mage then? Voodoo?”

“You could say that,” Lucius said with a nod. “Apparently this demon onf yorus can make stigmata for a price. Sammy, is there any way to tell who has been afflicted like this without cutting them open?”

The boy sighed. “Not that I could find so far, but I do have a theory. I opened up his lungs to take a look,” he said, gesturing to the blackened organ. He had removed it from the body and sliced it open like a feast day roast. The inside may as well have had maggots crawling through it. The flesh oozed pus even half a day after death. “I’m pretty sure you would be able to hear the infection, but I’m not sure this is a consistent… symptom. There is documentation that this occurs to most people who smoke heavily.”

“So, you need another sample.”

“A live one, preferably.”

Lucius crossed his arms and nodded. “I can arrange that I think. I just have to make the proper opportunity.”

Lexa snorted and paced the room. “Sounds like you’re going to use somebody as bait.”

“I am,” Lucius said.

“Fair enough, if it gives us a chance at the demon, my brother or I–”

“Not you,” he said with a shake of his head. “I’ll be the bait. Trust me, I’m very good at not dying.”

The young soldier arched an eyebrow at him, but she had seen him fight, so she shrugged and bowed her head to him. “Will this be soon?”

“Today, yes. I think I’ll try to make it happen while I’m at the mine. If that doesn’t work, I’ll try something new tomorrow, and the next day. I think I can actually make myself quite productive like this if the demon doesn’t feel like taking my offer.”

Sammy yawned. “Right, well, if it’s all the same to you, the sun has come up, according to the noise of the frogs, and I’d like to finally get some sleep. I wonder if Sera is already up.”

“Sorry Sammy,” Lucius said, slapping a hand on his shoulder. “Sera is coming with me to the mine. You’re going to have the bed to yourself.”

The doctor scowled up at him. “You’re gunna have to make this up to me, you got that?”

“I will, I will. Once the gold is flowing, I’ll throw a festival, alright? It’ll be great.”

They emerged from the barracks as the rest of the guards had begun to get dressed. They moseyed about, stretching and grumbling curses at the frogs. Fires were kindled and crude meals prepared for the men. The sad reality of the situation dawned on everyone present as their stomachs growled for breakfast. The chef had been killed. Only one old maid staffed the kitchen, and that was hardly fit for everyone. Lucius turned to Sammy and asked, “Are you any good at cooking?”

“Don’t even think about it.”

The crisis had already been averted however. Lucius entered the kitchen prepared to embarrass himself in front of the cookpot, and found Aisha working with Isalin. The two of them were speaking rapidfire in the Giordanan tongue, so much so the maid had thrown up her hands and left. That seemed to please Aisha perfectly, for she had her hair tied up, and an apron about herself. She worked three pots at once, seasoning a concoction of rice, eggs, and a vegetable hash. The caramelizing onions had Lucius’ mouth watering as he slunk in between the two of them. He peered over Isalin’s shoulder as the man plucked a scrawny chicken and soon was working a blade through the bones so fast he nearly lost a finger.

“I wasn’t expecting this,” Lucius whispered over Aisha’s shoulder.

Aisha huffed. “Well, it’s something I can do to help, isn’t it? More useful than singing for a merchant, isn’t it? Not like a temple girl like Kajsa would know how to cook.”

“And the daughter of a merchant does? When did you have time to learn between all your music lessons?”

“Shockingly enough, it isn’t very hard to learn how to cook, and yet almost everybody–men especially–refuse to do it!”

Isalin grumbled, “Hey.”

Aisha apologized in Giordanan, and continued, “My mother taught me, she wasn’t a merchant’s daughter from birth and she was smart enough to pass it on to me… she always said that it’s easier to apologize to someone after they’ve had a good meal.”

“People are more agreeable when sated, yes. I know I can be a bit of a grouch when I’m on the emaciated side of things.”

“It’s too bad you can’t always get someone to have a meal and talk the problem over.”

Lucius put his hands on her shoulders, working his thumbs into her muscles. “Sometimes you need steel… but today, leave the danger to me, alright?”

She stiffened. “I’m coming with you.”

“Yes, yes, you and Sera, but that doesn’t mean I want you in the thick of it. Okay?”

“Fine, now, let’s eat.”

“Aisha, my love, you have saved me from the tortures of an empty stomach. Let us hope we can root out this demon before I get recalled.”

“So that we might actually have some free time?”

“Me and you on a beach, wading in the cool waves… sounds like a grand idea.”

“Yes it does, but after we’ve gotten rid of the assassins, yes?”

As answer, he planted a kiss on her neck, and only half of his mind sat upon the problem of how to lure out the improvised killers.

At this time, it had only happened once, but we later determined they were cysts. The way his stigmata reacted to debris it couldn’t eject was to pocket them in inert flesh. I had initially misidentified the scar tissue as a tumor, though I maintain the difference is semantics. Too many of them and his organs would get squeezed.