Remy had been minding his own work that morning, seated beneath the broad shade of an oak at the edge of the inn’s courtyard. The branches above him shifted with the slow breeze, scattering patches of sunlight across the pages lying open in his lap. Jehan sat cross-legged in the grass beside him, her satchel emptied, books and a wax tablet arranged around her with a sense of order.

  He had been teaching Jehan Latin again. She struggled with the language’s structure, not because she lacked intelligence, but because Latin demanded patience. Latin was a language built like stacked stones, and Jehan’s mind preferred quick roads sometimes.

  “Declensions,” Remy said, pointing with the end of his quill toward the line she’d written. “You’ve written puella here as if it were nominative. But the sentence calls for genitive. Do you remember the form?”

  Jehan frowned at the wax tablet. “Puellae,” she said, hesitant.

  “Good. Now say the entire line aloud.”

  She straightened a little and repeated it in careful syllables, stumbling only once. Remy corrected her rhythm with a small tap of the quill against her wrist, a light reminder, nothing more.

  “You’re reading it as if each word stands alone,” he told her. “Latin flows. Think of it like reins in your hands. You guide the meaning, not chase it.”

  Jehan nodded, then repeated the sentence again, smoother this time. She had a stubbornness to her, the kind that made her push through difficulty by sheer will rather than natural instinct. Remy admired that more than he said.

  He was about to shift the lesson to vocabulary when a shape darkened the edge of his vision. Remy looked up.

  A man approached, hesitating before he came fully into the circle of shade. Remy had never seen him before. The stranger wore a scholar’s coat, stained faintly with ink around the cuffs, and the skin beneath his nails was blackened the way scribes often looked after long hours with quill and lamp. He moved stiffly, bowing in a way that suggested his back was used to desks, not saddles.

  “Milord,” the man said, and attempted a bow again. It came out crooked.

  Remy switched to Hungarian without thinking. “Speak. What do you want of me?”

  The man blinked, startled at hearing his own tongue. That recognition steadied him a little.

  “Milord,” he said, “there is trouble we hope a learned man such as yourself might help us with. My lord, my employer, has come across a man of the Crescent, one who tried to seize his goods while traveling from Serbia. But fever struck the man. And my lord, who wishes to gather information from him, would prefer he lives.”

  Jehan looked up from her wax tablet, brows knitting.

  Remy’s attention hardened. “How long has he been sick?”

  “Two weeks, Sir.” The scholar’s voice shook slightly when the knights nearby shifted, their armor clinking. Even resting, they looked like a threat waiting to happen.

  Remy gave them a small gesture to stand down and rose to his feet. Jehan moved quickly, gathering her materials and tucking them into her satchel with practiced motions.

  “Then lead on,” Remy said, glancing at the sky. It was still early. He would lose nothing by the effort. “I have no work that cannot wait.”

  “Thousand thanks, milord,” the scholar breathed.

  Remy whistled once. Morgan lifted his head from where he had been lazily nosing at a patch of grass and came over with a huff, ears flicking in faint irritation. The mare Jehan rode followed without being called, loyal in her own silent way.

  They left the courtyard and followed the winding streets of Buda. The scholar rode a mule that matched him, dour, unimpressed with the world, and likely older than either of them realized. Its hooves clopped against the cobbles, steady but spiritless.

  Remy observed their surroundings out of habit. Buda in winter’s retreat smelled of thawing stone and river mist, the streets narrowed unpredictably, bending around houses built to stubborn whims rather than any plan. Merchants shouted half-heartedly from booths under tarps, and a handful of children tailed the procession for a moment before losing interest.

  The scholar guided them to the eastern quarter, where the houses grew larger and spaced more generously apart. Finally he stopped before a two-story home with a wide courtyard behind its walls. The ground floor was entirely stone, thick and cold-looking, while the second level had been raised in ochre bricks that hadn’t quite matched since the day they were laid. Paintings and symbols decorated the exterior in a clumsy imitation of noble heraldry.

  Remy recognized it for what it was, a man who bought status rather than inherited it.

  He dismounted. Jehan slipped from her saddle and took both horses, leading them toward the courtyard’s side where water troughs waited.

  Inside, Remy found the noble, broad-shouldered, well-fed, wearing a belt too ornamented for a man with real responsibilities.

  “Sir,” the noble said, bowing with the confidence of someone who thought himself generous for doing so. “While passing through Serbia, I was attacked by men of the Crescent. After examining them, one survived, I suspect they had other motives. We found this letter as well.” He lifted a folded scrap of parchment delicately. “I was informed you know their language.”

  Remy kept his expression still. “I am here to heal the man. We speak of other matters later. Time is the only thing that matters now.”

  The noble opened his mouth, clearly ready to insist. But something in Remy’s tone, or perhaps the plain finality in his eyes, made him swallow the urge. He nodded instead.

  They led Remy down a corridor lined with tapestries that smelled faintly of mildew. The house was warm, too warm with fireplaces stoked high out of season, likely for the comfort of the family but disastrous for an infected patient.

  When they reached the chamber, the smell hit him first.

  Stale sweat. Lingering decay. A heaviness in the air that spoke of unwashed linens and fever left to its own devices.

  Remy stepped inside.

  The man lay on a bed low to the floor, blankets piled badly around him. His skin carried the grey-yellow hue of someone balancing between life and death. Beads of sweat clung to his brow. His breathing rasped shallowly, each inhale a struggle.

  Two weeks. That alone made Remy’s jaw tighten.

  He set his satchel down beside the bed and knelt.

  Jehan slipped inside behind him, silent as a shadow. She always stayed back until he needed her.

  Remy checked the man’s pulse, tracing two fingers to the spot beneath the jaw. It was weak. Erratic. The kind of pulse that told him the body was fighting but losing ground.

  He lifted an eyelid with care. The sclera was clouded. Pupils slow to respond. He pressed a hand to the man’s chest and listened to the breath, crackling, thick. Infection had settled deep.

  “Has he been like this the entire time?” Remy asked without looking away.

  The scholar hesitated. “He worsened last week, Sir. At first we thought he might recover.”

  “You thought incorrectly.”

  He reached for the man’s wrist and checked it again, confirming what he already knew. The fever had not broken. It had simply grown tired of raging and chosen instead to gnaw.

  Jehan came closer when he gestured. She handed him his pouch of herbs and medicine, already organized from earlier lessons. She had learned quickly how to sort what he needed without asking. That alone saved him seconds, sometimes more.

  Remy set about his work. First, he ordered the windows unlatched. The noble’s steward hurried to obey, wrinkling his nose at the sudden, honest air.

  Then he stripped back the heavy blankets. “Fever suffocates,” he murmured. “Warmth is for the dying, not the living.”

  He prepared a mixture, bark shaved into fine fragments, a pinch of bitter root, dried leaves he crushed between his fingers to release their scent. He asked Jehan to fetch clean water. When she returned with a jug, he poured some into a small clay bowl and mixed the herbs with deliberate precision.

  Jehan watched, memorizing the motions.

  “You see his breathing?” Remy asked her quietly. “Shallow. Listen.”

  She leaned in, brow furrowing at the sound.

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  “That is the infection choking him from inside,” Remy said. “This mixture will not cure it, but it will break the fever long enough for his body to fight.”

  Jehan nodded once.

  Remy tipped the man’s head slightly and coaxed the mixture between his lips. The swallow reflex remained, weak but present.

  Good.

  Next came the linen dressing the man’s chest, wrapped too tightly, trapping heat. Remy cut it away. Fresh air reached the man’s skin at last.

  Behind him, the noble cleared his throat. “Sir… about the letter. If the man was carrying correspondence—”

  Remy did not turn. “Later.”

  He took a cloth, dipped it into cool water, and placed it across the man’s forehead. The fever flinched at the touch, heat trembling under the cold.

  Jehan looked at Remy. “Can he live?”

  Remy studied the man again, weighing the answer. “He can,” he said at last. “But he’s closer to death than your nobleman understands.”

  “She wants him for questioning,” the scholar murmured. “There was fear he might die before, well, before your arrival.”

  Remy rose slowly, wiping his hands on a cloth. “Question him after he breathes like a man, not a dying beast.”

  He looked once more at the patient, already adjusting in small ways, the breath easing fractionally, the pulse no longer stumbling quite so violently. A thin thread of strength clung to him.

  But two weeks of neglect left a debt.

  Jehan moved beside Remy, her gaze steady. She carried no fear in her stance, only readiness.

  “Will we stay?” she asked.

  “For now,” Remy said. “Until I know whether he climbs back from the edge.”

  He stepped back from the bed, mind already turning through possibilities of herbs they might need, signs he would watch for, the long hours ahead. Healing was never a single act. It was a vigil.

  Behind him, the noble shifted, clearly dissatisfied to wait.

  Remy ignored him.

  He had work to do, and the dying did not care for noble impatience.

  Remy sent Jehan to deliver the message to Sir Gaston and the Company that they will have an extension of their stay in Buda. The knights wouldn’t like it, but they would accept it. Gaston most of all. The old knight never questioned Remy when the matter involved sickness or the sort of danger that could not be fought with steel.

  Jehan left at once, boots thudding lightly against the floor. Remy remained where he was, seated on a plain wooden stool beside the fevered man. The room was quiet save for the shallow, uneven breaths of the patient. Every few minutes Remy dipped the cloth in cool water and laid it across the man’s brow again. Small actions, repeated, steady as a monk’s litany.

  Jehan returned not long after, her satchel heavier than when she had left. “Sir Gaston understands,” she said. “Sir Raimund grumbled, but Bernat silenced him.”

  Remy nodded. He expected as much.

  She set his tools beside him, carefully wrapped metal instruments, dried herbs, and the small mortar he carried despite its weight. Remy adjusted them with a practiced precision. Everything was in its place. Everything was ready.

  Jehan lingered nearby, arms folded lightly, her posture suggesting a question she wasn’t sure she wanted answered. She watched him as he checked the man’s breathing again. The question eventually broke free.

  “Why do you care about this Saracen so much, Sir Remy?”

  His hands didn’t pause. He only answered quietly, “I am a doctor, Jehan.”

  She waited, expecting more.

  “Our Lord was a carpenter,” Remy continued, “and a teacher. But also a healer. If He treated strangers, beggars, lepers, and those despised by their own people, what would I be if I abandoned a man simply because he prays differently?”

  Jehan frowned. “He is a killer.”

  “Perhaps,” Remy said. “But it is not for me to judge him. That belongs to the God he believes in, and the laws of this land. It is easy to decide a thing is evil. Understanding it, trying to learn, takes more effort. And,” he added, “I still hope those I treat are not murderers or rapists.”

  Jehan considered that. The tiny line between her brows deepened. “Then you think he is innocent?”

  “No,” Remy said plainly. “I don’t. I looked at what he wore. What he carried. I found trinkets only Christians use. A man like him should have been sold into slavery long before reaching Hungary.”

  Her eyes widened slightly. “Then why help him?”

  Remy lifted the cloth again, cooling it, wringing it, placing it back with gentle care. “Because it is decent. Because it is kind. That is all.”

  Jehan looked at the wall instead of him. “Your mind…” She shook her head. “Truly hard to fathom sometimes.”

  Remy nearly smiled. What he considered simple morality, basic, ordinary, was in this century something closer to heresy. He saw it in the way people reacted when he refused coins, or helped strangers because they were sick and not because it benefited him. He had lived long enough among these people to accept that compassion was strange to them. Even though they saw it as being a Good Christian.

  But still, it surprised him sometimes.

  Jehan fell silent after that. She sat on the floor, knees drawn up, polishing her dagger while watching him in that attentive, hawk-like way of hers. She didn’t ask another question, though he could see several forming and dissolving behind her eyes.

  Three days passed like that. Remy hardly left the chamber except to wash, drink water, or fetch more herbs. Jehan stayed with him, tiring herself by refusing to abandon her post. Twice Remy had to order her to sleep. Both times she obeyed reluctantly. As if the man he treated could ever hurt him.

  On the morning of the third day, the fever finally broke.

  Remy saw the change immediately. The sick no longer clung to the breath as if wrung between two worlds. The patient inhaled more deeply, and when the cloth touched his skin, it no longer steamed with excess heat.

  Jehan noticed as well. “He’s waking.”

  “Slowly,” Remy said.

  Minutes later the man stirred, groaned, and blinked at the ceiling. His gaze drifted, lost, until it settled on Remy.

  “You…” His voice cracked. “Why am I alive?”

  "Because they saw value in keeping you," Remy moved the stool closer and answered in Turkish, “Are you an Ak?nc?? Do you still have pains?”

  The man’s eyes widened with suspicion, then surprise. “You speak my tongue?”

  “I do.” Remy studied him calmly. “Judging by your dialect, Western Oghuz, yes?”

  The man swallowed, astonished. “You know our dialects, infidel—” He halted, then winced. “Forgive me, physician.”

  “Habits are hard,” Remy said. “I take no offense. But I would advise you, man of the Sunni, to speak softly. These walls have ears.”

  The man let out a weak, bitter snort. “I do not believe I have chances left.”

  “Perhaps you are right.” Remy’s voice remained steady. “They think you are a thief. A murderer. A rapist.”

  “And you do not?” the man asked, half-laughing, half-coughing.

  Remy’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Do you want me to answer that?”

  “No,” the man muttered. He shifted but immediately grimaced from the pain. “They beat me nearly to death. If I had strength, I would take their heads. It is right.”

  “Perhaps,” Remy said again. “But if you want to live long enough to see your home again, you must show decency. Repay the kindness shown to you, if only with quiet cooperation.”

  “I will not betray my kin,” the man rasped.

  “That is your choice,” Remy said. “But choices have prices. The merchant who dragged you here spent coin on your survival. He may work you as a servant. Or he may have you flogged in a market square to entertain the crowd. I cannot say.”

  The man lifted his head slightly, eyes narrowing. “If you wish to threaten me, physician, why heal me at all?”

  “I am not threatening you. I am speaking truths.” Remy folded his hands. “As your physician, I advise you. I cannot give more than that.”

  The man’s breath stuttered. He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again, calm settling over him.

  “You carry steel,” he said quietly. “You have the hands of a healer and the speech of a scholar. A strange man. I cannot best you. And yet you choose mercy.” His voice thinned. “May you have peace… and the mercy of Allah. I will think about what you say.”

  Remy bowed his head slightly. “Aleyküm selam, karde?.”

  Something like a smile, small, humble, real touched the man’s lips. It was pitiful and honest in equal measure.

  Remy stayed with him for another day, checking his pulse, his breathing, the strength returning or failing to return to his limbs. Jehan watched all of it in silence this time, her earlier doubts balanced with something closer to understanding.

  By the following evening, the man could sit without fainting. Remy decided that was enough. He washed his instruments, packed them carefully, and stood.

  “You will live,” he told the man. “If you choose to.”

  The man nodded, his expression solemn.

  Jehan shouldered her satchel and followed Remy out of the chamber, out of the damp hall, and into the cold air of the courtyard.

  The noble who had summoned him did not appear again, not to question, not to pay, not to thank. That suited Remy fine.

  But the scholar, the ink-fingered man who had first approached him, met them the next morning. His face held genuine relief.

  “My lord has struck a bargain with the man,” he said. “You have our thanks, Sir.”

  Remy only inclined his head. He asked for no reward. And none was offered.

  As he mounted Morgan and Jehan tightened the mare’s reins, he felt the quiet weight of the moment settle to him. One more life pulled back from the edge, one more corner of the world where brutality did not win by default.

  Jehan looked at Remy as they turned toward the road. She didn’t speak, but her expression held the question again of why? Why bother?

  Remy didn’t answer. Not aloud.

  He didn’t heal because it was rewarded. He didn’t heal because it was wise. He healed because mercy was a choice. And he would keep practicing it, even here, even now, even when the world thought him a fool for it.

  He had seen a future burn because it lacked kindness.

  And he did not wish to repeat it.