Spies, Thieves, and Revolutionaries

Chapter 10

"Oh, my! What happened?" Vade exclaimed as he saw Dinah's bloody hand.

Dinah shrugged, "Fell down a cliff. It's alright now."

Xin, Vade's assistant, eyed her warily as he brought in an armful of bandages. He set them down next to Vade carefully.

Vade nodded in thanks at Xin, and poured a little of some medical liquid onto one of the bandages.

"This is going to sting," he warned and wrapped it around Dinah's fingers. She hissed. While it did burn, she could feel her skin repairing and fingernails growing back. It was a strange feeling, and she stared at her hand in wonder.

"It's a magical medicine called tiaside. Normally, it would take about six months for your skin to repair and your fingernails to completely grow back. But with the help of this," Vade held up the bottle, "It will only take about a week. Here, I'll give you it, just make sure to reapply it with a bandage every day."

Dinah narrowed her eyes, "Isn't magic medicine illegal? Something about unfortunate side effects?"

Vade picked up some bandages and laughed airily, "Oh don't worry about it. The King just doesn't like doctors using magic medicine, because he thinks it's too dangerous, so he's had those rumors spread around. But don't listen to them. I've used tiaside on myself more times than I could count, and I'm perfectly fine."

Slightly reassured, Dinah took the tiaside, thanked the healer and walked out of the tent. But before she could close the tent flap, she heard a snippet of conversation.

"Now, where are my bandages?" Vade asked.

"You're holding them," Xin replied boredly, like this was a daily occurrence.

Dinah looked down at her hand. No unfortunate side effects?

***

The steady drum of feet, both horse and human, felt like pounding on Dinah's head.

Her horse was in the middle of the front, with Walter close behind on her left. Rimmon was about 20 feet away on her left.

The poor boy looked sick, clearly unused to being on a horse this long. He had quietly joined the group after the viperpalm incident. Dinah had seen Hexwah stand next to him as he loaded up his horse, lecturing him on safety and what to do. She ended her lesson with a hug. Dinah had turned away then. In some ways, Hexwah reminded Dinah of her mother. And for that, she was glad to finally get away. It felt like the pain could be forgotten if she just kept those memories bottled up deep inside her, pretending like her mother never even existed.

Dinah carefully slowed her horse down a little to match Rimmon's, and rode over to him.

"Did you really not know you were a prince all this time?" Dinah asked.

Rimmon clutched his reins tighter, and stared straight ahead, "No. I don't know when Hexwah was planning to tell me, if ever. But," he glanced back at the people. Most were walking, some riding horses, and some were pulling along wagons. They looked tired and bedraggled, "I want to help them. Even in a small town like Irin, I could see the problems and corruption. My duty is to this country, even if I wasn't a prince. If there's a problem, I-I don't think you have to be anyone very powerful or important to want to fix it," He looked at Dinah.

Dinah eyed him warily.

"A-and you will fix the problems, won't you?" He pressed on eagerly.

Dinah's eyes widened and she laughed a little nervously, "I'm not the future king. I'll help you overthrow Charles and put yourself on the throne, but from then it's all you."