Morning all and welcome to the Fifteen Minute Novel. Here I take the start of a story idea and work on it for fifteen minutes a day. I started with an old writing prompt that interested me, cleaned it up a bit to fit the basic outline of the story I want to write and then set aside fifteen minutes each week day to see it grow. Each morning’s writing starts with the last sentence of the day before. And so now we have the story of Kasca…
Day 117: Kasca let her magical sight roam through the city.
Kasca let her magical sight roam through the city. Kasca found the various sites of apothecary shops easily. There were laws in this city about the signage displayed and this gave the shops a certain uniformity. She knew it was so the city could keep track of it’s healers, but it also helped people find them. Now, the uniformity helped Kasca find them.
‘Or at least the buildings,’ she told herself. The apothecaries and healers themselves were harder to find. She searched the city, finding building after building in exactly the same numbers and locations as she would have expected for a city this size. However, each of the buildings she found was empty. There were no other healers, magical or otherwise who had sops that were occupied.
Part of the laws here required that an apothecary or healer live on the premises. It could be the healer themselves or it could be an apprentice who lived above but someone had to live on site so that if there were an emergency in the middle of the night someone could be found. The apprentice might be woken and have to send a runner to the actual healer’s residence, but there would still be an apprentice on site.
Yet Kasca found none. Shop after shop, apartment after apartment Kasca found empty and shuttered. ‘I can’t be the only healer in the city,’ she thought. She thought of the wealthy lord who sent his carriage. He should have gone elsewhere. She should have been too low on the social strata for him to consider consulting unless his regular apothecary called her in as a specialist. As she had magic if his regular shop didn’t have a magical healer they would give a reference.
‘Except there is no regular healer for his district.’ The three most likely shops she could find were all shuttered. Thinking of the boy she allowed her scrying sight to slip into the Lord’s residence and up to the sickroom.
It was the same as she saw before. This time she looked more at the furnishings. She even peeped into the wardrobe. The clothes of a grown man, probably the Lord himself, hung inside the wardrobe. This was not the child’s room.
She supposed the Lord’s own bedroom would have been the most secure and would have allowed them to contain any contagion. It was a logical reason for the placement. She looked in on the patient. His breathing was slow and steady as he slept a natural sleep. The fever seemed to have abated and his skin was taking on a healthier look. Kasca had seen many through this particular illness and had no doubt he would come through as well.
Thus far the Lord had not sent payment for her services and she assumed he would wait until he was certain the child was in recovery. ‘If I haven’t heard from him in a few days I will send a bill,’ Kasca thought. She sighed to herself. ‘Assuming I can find the right price for the concoction.’
As she thought of where to next search for the set prices, Kasca allowed her sight to roam the house, curious if the boy was moved away from other children or for some other reason. Surprisingly she couldn’t find any other children.
She found the lord of the house was sleeping in one of his guest chambers. She found the housekeeper and her husband the butler sleeping in their chamber. She found the staff quarters for the few servants that lived in. She found no other children. She didn’t even find the boy’s regular bedroom. In fact, there was no sign of any child in any part of the household.
