Merciful Hands and Bearing Burdens
Seventh Day of the Twelfth Month 293 AC
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"Thank you, milady, a thousand of 'em," the man said profusely, looking at his formerly half-desiccated arm like he'd been given a new lease on life.
Perhaps he had been, Mercy thought, before Viserys had come along, she expected it would have been given only moderate concern for their credibility, that the Lord risked losing when running this operation at any moment before all the proper precautions were finally in place, more in worry after his own profits than any expectation he would avoid at least some needless deaths due to laxity in management or downplaying the danger inherent to the work.
The man had acted as though if there hadn't been a few accidents, hiring mages to deal with preventable casualties would just scare off those risk-takers who would chance an encounter with strange magic if it meant steady pay and none of the usual toil involved with miner's work, even if the conditions were similar otherwise.
She favored him with a brilliant smile and handed him her kerchief, the man looking faintly scandalized to tarnish a piece of cloth with the after-effects of someone's limb nearly ripping away at the shoulder. "I'll get another one," she giggled, waving away the apology.
The man, Arnold, sighed, a grimace crossing over his face. "To think I was just warning off Polliver for messing around the Lord's Spines. I thought I was more careful than..."
"You were being careful," Mercy corrected, "It's the people working down here who have to worry about managing growth and making sure those crystals cultivated don't spread out of control. Part of the danger is keeping the junctions and tunnels perfectly navigable so that harvesting will remain time efficient. And you wouldn't have even gotten hurt in the first place if you weren't saving that boy's life." A dark look crossed her face, there was something to be said about Crown Law being passed over feudal wasteland, not the sort of place bereft of civilization or virtue as many a Magister or land-manager in Essos might expect, but rather without any union of secular authority and consistent and systematic judgement. Youths cannot be expected to take responsibility for their own well-being for exactly the reasoning that most of them view themselves as immortal right until the moment they have their first brush, oftentimes
last, with death.
"That's mighty kind of you to say, milady," the man began to excuse himself, "I need to go check on the men. It's a bad look, it is, having one of the foremen nearly catch his death down here. Supposed to be safer now what with the Lord having gotten us some healers for some of the little ills piling up. That Ser with you was down here just last evening, and he's got the poorest damn manner... not rude mind you, but he just ain't got a right notion of talking too much about things people ain't ready to hear."
Mercy let out a strained laugh, thinking about how that might have gone. Bedside manner was definitely not a near-academic like Denys' strong suit, for all his courteous words and chivalrous notions. After all, he also thought lying about something important was an ill-done thing. Truth be told, she was nervous to let him out of her sight lest he get dragged off task investigating some of the remedies and herb-lore the local fey employed, even if she thought it funny how utterly oblivious he was to the advances of one nubile forest maiden.
She did not rightly know who to feel more pity for.
***
She sighed, sighting the brooding expression on the still somewhat morose alchemist's face. That was part of the reason he got as strong a reaction from fey maidens of all things, or plenty of village girls or apparently even
princesses. The only saving grace that kept him from being as bad a philanderer as Theon Greyjoy, one of the King's wards, was how he was as likely to be buried nose deep in a book or experiment like he was now as Lya herself.
"Blood Crystal Experiments, Trial Fifty-Two commencing: The blood crystal sample seems to react differently during growth phase to varied environmental factors. If one is not careful, counter-resonance can take place, with deleterious effects to applications of both blood samples of mixed-heritage, ones which are more likely to lead to expressions of latent heritage after sufficient trauma has taken place or mental landscape is altered by ambient wild magic energies. Prospects for survival from repeated exposure in dust form...
poor." He recorded his thoughts with a stylus enchanted with a spell that would grant it limited mobility to move from page to page, but mostly the ink would spread from a single point and form words based on intent.
Not quite as effective as a dragon stylus, but they were so new to their role she expected it was only a matter of time before he either became a fixture at court and bureaucratic eye for detail forced one upon him or the King had one delivered to him themselves, if his quality of work was any indication.
Ser Denys leaned over to collect another crystal sample, restrained within a glass-work display glowing with subtle auras of magic to Mercy's second sight. "After two dozen clinical trials in controlled conditions," he spoke, substituting a Valyrian word where there was no alternative, as she had found many a researcher did, "Still no sign of metamorphic properties inherent to the crystals, but that is to be expected. Mutant strains not an existential problem to the operation's business prospects would not be a regular occurrence. If it happened even one time, however, I doubt the damn fools would sign their lives away so readily as they would if it were just a cave-in, because someone grew lax in their job setting up proper load-bearing supports." He sighed, refilling the quill, then jumped as she shuffled in place and cleared her throat. "Oh, Mercy." His defensive posture evaporated a moment later, about as wary around her as Tyene was around vipers,
actual vipers.
He sounded... tired, which was more cause for concern--
should he really be experimenting like that? Either now or soon enough he wouldn't have the excuse of lack of hours, a sustaining ring enchantment wasn't that expensive, and immaterial to someone working on the King's budget. "Ser Denys, you've been at this for the last week. Perhaps a change of perspective might help?" And allow her to get past his shell. She doubted most but his close friends might have bothered, but she found those closest to an issue of the heart or mind were the least likely to bring a necessary change to those suffering under burdens which must be faced alone.
The cluttered make-shift lab the lord had provided him wasn't a good place to get much needed sunshine, either.
"I came here to get away from the attention," he admitted a moment later, surprising her. He looked a touch annoyed at the reaction, however. "I'm not that blind, my Lady, I know I might seem absent-minded, but..." he sighed, and offered her a seat, which she accepted graciously.
"So not as likely to lose yourself in arcane experiments as her, then," she contented herself with a private jest, which prompted a confused smile from the newly minted knight.
"I didn't want to admit my worries to everyone," he admitted a moment later. "I agreed to the King's request specifically because I think it would be dangerous for me to be surrounded by plotting fiends right now, because," he bit down on the suddenly acid words, shooting her an apologetic glance. "Anything to expand my craft, to find a way to reach past death itself, without even thinking of the sheer vanity and presumption of the thought of turning aside death like it was just another obstacle or right to wrong." The wordplay, along with the admission, came spilling out, likely because he had been suffering under the weight of it completely alone. She felt a pang at the thought, she wasn't used to being alone and did everything to avoid the prospect, but she didn't have to fear it either as she had many friends and people to support and derive support by.
"I don't think it's very presumptuous," Mercy replied slowly, starting to put the pieces together all at once, realization striking her just then, "Ceria told you? About the Sundering and... everything else."
He let out a bitter laugh.
"That's a yes..." She sighed. "There's no guarantee it will work, so you did not want to get your hopes up, nor ask anyone else to make the attempt, even if it was just paying a priest in some planar metropolis to make the scroll for you." Denys nodded, not daring to look up from his work. "You can turn aside death? With alchemy?" She said with wonder.
"Theoretically. There's not many Alchemists who take the art as far as I plan to." He stopped, gazing up at her wonderingly. "Look how I sound," he said, voice strained, "Though am I wrong? I've bound true spells to my reactive materials before with little trouble. Mass produced explosives and potions are all well and good, but those have limitations I certainly don't have. It took me six months to replicate effects comparable to Third Circle spells."
Six months, she thought with some surprise, though little, she had heard the stories of his group's daring. But it was remarkable progress if compared to some of the memories of earlier times, when magic was still awakening.
"You're worried about reaching too far, too quickly," she responded slowly.
"Worried about... failure, bitter as the loss of my father at the Trident was. This life..." he looked at her, dead-on, a hollow look in his eye. "I was trying to end all the madness, but I looked no more than thirty feet in front of my nose this whole time. Those stakes I thought were highest are utterly laughable, now." He smiled, sadly, "The fact of the matter is, even in the days where I can bind spells of the sixth circle to my creations, I'll be so very small and have such little effect on that which the King contends with. What difference can I make, if our very souls start out forfeit or our Gods prove unworthy of their service after death? To swear for eternity in the moment when changes you cannot control can warp your circumstances irrevocably? Remind me not to ask Angels for advice," he said bitterly. "They are just as at a loss as I am."
Mercy scrambled for an answer herself,
where had he talked to an celestial after all? She had wondered, before it struck upon her that there had been one in Sorcerer's Deep and not at all being subtle about his presence.
But a good answer did come to her. "You can change the world more than you know, you're certainly changing it for these people, ensuring the effects of your research will last long enough to keep the workers healthy and the economy which grows around that success strong for generations after the fact, if the Lord responds to the Crown's economic policies like we expect them to. Moreover, you have done more work in a week than I expect any researcher used to near-unlimited resources and multiple attempts by cheating like Hell would have come up with. Only Wisdom Qyburn seems to be catching on any faster than you are."
His expression darkened, but not in anger like she might have once expected. This was a man who had to grow wise in the world far faster than others, for all that he was just now catching up. "I can't condemn practices which might save more lives anymore," he responded to the thought that must have sneaked its way onto her face. "It's our job to constrain his curiosity, though."
"He's behaved rather well," she said slowly, thinking about the reports from Gorgossos' flesh forge, though she hadn't visited it yet herself to see the work being conducted on the ruins, she expected she would to offer her skill as a healer to the Legion and colonists at some point. "But you're right, he's more of a mind that needs to know all limitations well in advance and the latitude they can operate with so they don't try to sneak anything under anyone's noses."
She took a deep breath, "You don't give yourself enough credit, is all I'm saying. I haven't known you long, but by reputation you are probably going to make the whole realm shake with your deeds, both in the field and entangled in the darkest plots, but also in discovery and innovation. Your notes have made integrating alchemy as a subject into the Scholarum even easier than Waymar thought it would be, and he's the only one I think can give you any fair competition for a thousand miles." She smiled, and after a moment's hesitation he returned it. "So... you're going to try bringing back your father?"
"...eventually," he said, less cagey about it now. "It's something
I have to do," he said, leaving out the fact that he was saying he had to do it by himself.
"Let me help you," she said then, surprising him. "Not asking for favors or anything of the sort," she tacked on quickly. "Just with the research and divining going into it. If something happened to impede the Calling, you have to promise not to shoulder whatever comes next alone." And she'd keep his thoughts on the matter a secret in exchange, it being implicit that his friends would move heaven and earth to get that weight off his shoulders as soon as possible rather than delay it a moment more.
"Alright," he said, not fighting her on it, again to her surprise. His eyes grew pensive. "You're sneakier than I thought you'd be," he said, the words almost light-hearted.
"What, just because I'm not like my sister Nuri?" She laughed. Everyone had cottoned onto that detail for how mysterious her and her soul-spun sisters' activities were shrouded in secrecy, both out of necessity and as part of the peculiarity of their existence where it wasn't immediately obvious which questions would be rude to ask.
"No, I meant you were especially so, not in exception to everything else," he replied immediately. "I think you're probably the sneakiest of them all."
"Why?" She wondered, truly curious.
"Kindness genuinely meant can the greatest mask for selfishness there is."
To that, she had no other words. Just a nod.
