Vince clasped his hands together as if in prayer, and approached the beetle-eyed, stout-legged apothecary, repeating what he had been saying for the past ten minutes.
“I beg you, sir, I beg you. I’ll pay sir, I’ll pay the moment I am paid, I swear by the gods.”
The apothecary did not even lift his eyes, focusing on pouring a green liquid into a beaker of herbs and stirring. “For the hundredth time, boy, get out. I need no more street rats than I’ve got.” He shooed him with a hand, still refusing to look at him.
“Come no closer, boy.” He added, as Vince inched towards his desk.
Vince advanced heedlessly.
“Sir, I implore you, my mother is sick. She is sick and I don’t know how to help her; I’ve tried everything, just about everything, I swear it. Tea, rest, thyme, garlic. Everything.”
He could feel his own lips tremble. The apothecary cast a swift, dank glance at him, and in his eyes there was no reflection of a boy—there was instead, a scoundrel in disheveled brown hair, dirty, patched clothing, and the fist-marks of other boys on his skin.
“Have you tried letting nature take its course.”
Vince’s shoulders shook. He looked down at the wooden flooring, pressing his lips together till they turned white.
A thought came to him, a notion—he saw his pride where he had left it, a rotting carcass in the Circle of Swords, surrounded by leering boys with bored fists at the ends of their arms. He had abandoned it there, like a soldier abandons his brother under the hail of fire.
It was gone now. He had to economize its absence; he had to sink in order to float.
“Sir, I have no one else besides her, sir. Please, sir, I’ll pay you back, I promise, I only need a little of it, just a little. Surely you can spare a little? I beg you, sir, I beg you, have mercy.”
“Ha,” the apothecary scoffed, now adding a salt-like substance to his mixture. “He’ll pay me back, he says. The little thief says he’ll pay me back. How about you pay me for every stolen bottle I’ve lost this past year, eh boy? I’ll be damned if you even have a mother!”
Vince stared at him in disbelief. He opened his mouth, and his voice flew out. He hadn’t meant to yell but he realized too late that he was shouting uncontrollably.
“Sir! If I had wanted to steal why would I steal medicine, of all the shit worth coin in this Kingdom?! Why would I beg you for it, why would I grovel at your feet like a common whore, why would I promise to return its payment, why would I be here in the dead of day!”
He was shaking now, his shoulder blades spread in question, his breath rattling heatedly in and out of him as he awaited the apothecary’s reaction.
The stout man behind the desk raised the green solution into the sunlight, flicking the glass with experienced, stubby fingers. The light filtered through evenly, which pleased him, and for a span of time Vince smoldered in his shoes, unnoticed, as if he scarce existed in the shop at all.
“You see this,” the apothecary mouthed, his eyes not leaving the liquid. “This is the cure to the strain of Shifter going around with the peasants.” He chuckled to himself, “Soon there’ll be a whole goddamn line of little dirty boys like you outside my door.”
He was in his own world, one of numbers and colors, and scalding water.
“ Did you not hear me, sir.” Vince said through his teeth, further humiliated. There was a difference—a varying level of cruelty—between refusing to give a dying man a sip of water, and pouring the water at his feet.
