[ORP] Retrieving What Was Stolen

[Imperial_Fortune]

The Good Doctor followed the urchin into increasingly noisome surroundings. When he squeezed through narrow passages, he did good not to consider what sort of fluids befouled his bag and coat. The Deck was obsessively curled in the palm of his hand, protected despite it not being of corporal card stock which could be ruined by such mundane things. Instead, he held them in case he needed to Cast for his immediate defense. Men with inimical glares and shifty-eyed children which he and the urchin hurried past indicated the presence of a clean, well-off person was viewed with interest, but not the sort of interest he was eager to entertain. Even the copper whores looked him over and spat to the side, sneering at him as they whispered lewd comments to their friends. He often hired their ilk for various reasons, but these ones he had no desire to return to later as the Deck wasn't always the best defense against a dagger in the side.

At length the urchin darted through door frame covered by a filthy length of cloth. This he pushed aside with his forearm and squinted at the interior of the dim, musty room. He exhaled against a waft of putrid air, bedside manner schooling his face to impassivity despite his body's reflexive desire to gag.

"Here. Over here, doctor." The urchin scurried over to a pallet laid against the wall in one corner of the room as if he could not see its occupant was in need for himself. The father lay limp except for when he hacked wet coughs, curling into a pained ball a moment before sagging in exhaustion. Sitting near the foot of the pallet, the child hugged her knees and looked at him with beseeching eyes. "Please, help. You can..." She sucked in a sob. "Do what you want with me after."

Rastus looked at her and shook his head. "Be quiet, kid, and let me look."

She nodded and slunk backwards to watch from a few feet away.

By the sweating, pale complexion of the man, he did not think there was much life left in the man. Still, he set his bag down and went to one knee beside the pallet. The putrid smell was stronger here and he guessed there was some sort of life-imperiling wound concealed under the scant blanket and thin clothes the man wore.

Unconsciously, he shuffled the Deck between his hands with rapid, deft motions of his fingers. It hid how torn he was. To Cast to hope for a cure, he would need to spend most of the available Deck which would jeopardize his mission, but he could not ignore this cry for help. It was what his heart hungered to do.

Therefore, he fanned out the Deck between his hands. Shamelessly he was putting on a bit of a show for the child, but she was too worried to be beguiled by the display and he could feel her worried gaze, fearful that he had lied about being a doctor. He had not, but he was simply not the sort of doctor which she knew.

With the cards fanned in one hand, he carefully plucked the blanket aside, steeling himself against the smell which rose as he shifted the fabric. It was bad enough for him to wish for a cloth over his nose, but he endured. This removal gave him no insight, but allowed him to touch the man's wrist between thumb and finger, feeling for the pulse which was as weak and skittering as he feared.

"Can you help him?"

He glanced over at the urchin before concentrating on the Deck in his hand and the feel of the pulse between the fingers of his other hand. "Shh. Patience." That was doctor code for he wasn't sure he should even try or just wait out the inevitable.

[Imperial_Fortune]

The great misfortune and greatest fortune of his craft remained the ever fickle nature of his Lady. There was no gaurentee that even if he put all of the Deck into the Cast he could that there would be a possitive result. Still, the Lady did not favor hesitation. Therefore, he gathered the Deck into one hand and thumbed forth two cards which fell towards the ground, but disappeared before touching it. A diagnosis did not usually require a stronger Cast.

The Devil followed by Justice. Musing, he shuffled the the Deck, not of necessity to reorder them, but for the tactile sensation and the motion to give him time to consider.

"Do you need anything?"

Shaking his head, he did not otherwise answer the girl's question. By now she was likely wondering if she'd hauled in a drunk that was trying to play cards with a dying man. In his defense, his power did appear that way to the uneducated eye.

The Lady indicated that something in the situation was justly deserved from some form of excess. What excess one could indulge while in such squalor he could guess as some were his own favored vices. He didn't doubt that there was some invisible debt floating above this household, soon to fall and crush it. Now, his was the risk to assume an interference which would be violating justice or appeal to something yet hidden in the cards.

"Is he a drunkard?" The girl gasped lightly, but only nodded which he saw out of the corner of his eye. "Does he hurt you when he drinks?"

"No! Never!"

"Good." He smiled, but kept the thought to himself that he would have left the man to die in his own filth if so. "Did he stop drinking lately?"

She was silent a few moments before she whispered, "After the big fight in the mine and it collapsed on some of the other miners and he was blamed for starting it, so none of his friends want to drink with him."

"Was he hurt?"

"He limped for a few days, but then was better."

Rastus thought it more likely her father had hid his pain from her. "He stopped working in the mine after that, too?"

"Yes." She nodded. "He started working in the graveyard after that."

"He got worse after that?"

"No, he was fine for weeks and weeks."

He frowned, hearing this, as he was starting to think the man had gotten an injury infected by corruption from handling a corpse, but such would go quickly and not allow him to go for weeks. "Are you sure?"

"Yes... He even promised we'd move out of here soon, but this happened. Please, do something!" She leaned forward, pressing her hands together before she scrambled across to him on her knees and plucked his sleeve. "What is wrong with him?"

[Imperial_Fortune]

The Good Doctor was silent long moments after the girl asked the question. He couldn't say for sure what was the matter with her father, an awkward position for a doctor.

"Are you a fraud?" A bit of a quaver came to the girl's voice and she released him, looking at him like she didn't know what sort of manner of trouble she had invited into her already floundering house.

"What? No."

"Then why aren't you doing anything for him?! You said you'd help him!"

"Did I, now?" He looked at her, arching an eyebrow.

Pressing her lips together, she nodded. "Yes! You said you were a doctor and came! Are you going to help him or not? This is mean!"

He grimaced, granting her that point. It was cruel to raise her expectations that he would help and turn his back because the Lady indicated it was just for the man to suffer. He also doubted that it would be just for the girl to suffer if he died. There were many sorrows in the world he could not allieviate, so he could walk away from this one, but he could not say he had done all he was able. "I will try something, but make no promises that it will work." He held up a finger in front of his lips when she started to protest. "But, I will promise I will help you if it fails."

"I give my help to him!"

Releasing a half of a laugh, he shook his head. "I'm sorry, but that will not work. What will help you and what will help him are two different powers."

"So, make them the same!"

He didn't answer for she didn't know what she as asking. Attention returned to the sick man, he fanned the Deck between his hands, making a plan for how he would Cast to seek a cure. Summoning his faith in the Lady, he folded the Deck into a hand and stood. With the other hand, he started pulling cards from the deck and set them in the air over each of the man's limbs, his abdomen, and his head. The Cards spun so slowly that had they been a mundane deck of cards, back and face would have shown, but where the face was his Cards were blank.

"A magic trick isn't going to help him!"

Absently, he said, "This is not magic," as he shuffled the Deck between his hands. "This is Luck."