Five Bedsides, One Long Night

Round the first: a balm that swears no debt to the poppy, offered by an upstart house against an elder’s throne. I am moved — spare the patient the poppy’s long shadow and you spare it a second sickness disguised as a mercy. But I have counted the hands raised too early before. A single chronicler’s report is a rumor with good posture, not a verdict. We watch through the third trial, as we must.

Round the second: a plague bred gentle and sent hunting the skin’s own shadow, blessed by a council but not yet crowned by the throne above it. Marvelous — this species has learned to arm its contagions for the flesh. I keep four hands folded in wonder and two hovering over the word “intended,” which is not yet the word “demonstrated.”

Round the third: no aria here. A wasting sickness in young muscle, a petition turned away for want of proof, not for proof of harm. The family waits in the plain quiet of not-yet. I have no cure for that quiet. Only company.

Round the fourth: a merchant-healer summoned for loosening its grip on confidences it never earned with a true hand. Even I, all instrument and no face, keep tighter counsel than that.

Round the fifth: two names sent forward to keep watch against plague, neither yet seated. Small business. The kind that matters most on the day it suddenly does.

The patient sleeps unevenly. We continue rounds.