“That’s great!” I said, feigning enthusiasm. “One point, however, you’ll remember I said your Oath would be magically enforced. That comes in two parts. First, you swear loyalty to me,” I said locking eyes on him. “Second, you swear to be truthful in all your dealings with me, just as I will with you. That second part means that once you’ve sworn and I ask you if you had any intentions to fuck me over, like, oh I don’t know... if you’d planned to take the Memories and Skills and rob me, or harm my people, you’ll be forced to tell me the truth. At that point, I’ll strip you of citizenship, and I either give you to my minion, Bob, here…” I said, gesturing to Bob, who made a point of flexing his enormous taloned hands and opening his mouth to show his pointed teeth off to best effect.
“Or, if I decide I’m really angry…I’ll deal with you myself.” I said, my naginata beginning to glow and pulse with power as Oren spoke up.
“Aye, an’ remember tha’ Lord Jax just fuckin’ killed a SporeMother. On his own. Ye dinna want to see ‘im pissed off! I’d be hopin’ Bob’d make it quick, ‘cos I’ll tell ye, he be the one more likely to be merciful!” The four slowly melted back in the cage, pushing others in front of them.
“Yeah, I thought so.” I shook my head before looking at the oldest of the ship’s crew. “You have a question?” I asked, catching his gaze on me again.
“Ah, yes, Lord. I was the helmsman of Agamemnon’s Pride. I live to fly, but you said you’d give us a home? I saw you before, you and your wisp. You were healing people!” he said, stepping forward and gripping the bars of the cage with gnarled and weathered hands. “I…well...”
I grimaced, seeing his fingers, bent, and twisted with arthritis, and I held up a hand to stop him.
“Oracle, where are you?”
“I’m in the hold; be right there…”
A handful of seconds later Oracle came flitting out of a porthole and flew across to me, perching on my shoulder like an insanely attractive parrot.
“Will our healing spell, the focused heal-all, have the ability to fix his arthritis?”
“His fingers?”
“Yeah.”
“It should; simple physical damage like that should be easy to fix…”
“Good. I thought this would be embarrassing if it didn’t work!”
I lifted my hands, slowly building the spell, making sure I had all the sections and various weaves right, investing a lot of mana into it, until I’d nearly bottomed out my reserves. I wanted this to prove a point as well as help him.
When I released the spell, it latched onto him, and his fingers gripped the bars of the cage even tighter, opening and closing spasmodically, as he gasped and shook like a fresh landed fish. His spell-shrouded body hovered a foot off the deck, his scraggly white hair brushing the top of the cages.
The light show of the magic caused a mass stampede to the back of the cages, all ten feet of them, and as each layer of the spell completed, slowly rising and falling in his body like a magical version of an MRI, tendrils of mana flowed in and out, targeting individual issues and repairing them as they went.
It lasted almost a full minute. The entire time, he gasped and twitched, and I was starting to feel concerned that I’d overdone it, when it finally dissipated, and he dropped to the ground with a gasp.
Silence reigned for what seemed like forever, broken only by the gasps as he got his breath back and slowly raised his hands to stare at them.
He flexed his fingers, tears suddenly flowing down his cheeks as he crouched down, then popped back up.
“They’re fixed!” he whispered, before shouting at the rest of the people in the cages. “Do you see this? He fixed my hands! And my knees, and…” he patted at his crotch and whimpered. “I’m right again, I can feel it…” Others moved around him, his friends stepping forward to examine his hands, observing the way he stretched, his hands moving to his back as though stunned, searching for a pain that had been a part of his life so long, it was no longer even acknowledged. He spun around, pushing others aside as he got to the front of the cage and locked eyes on me.
“You fixed me, you healed all of it! My old body feels like I’m twenty again! I’ll swear to you… I’ll damn well live and die for you for this! You don’t know what you’ve done, but I do! Tell me the Oath Lord, and I’ll swear it right now!” Tears still ran unbidden down his cheeks, but the old helmsman stood straight and tall, practically glowing with health, and I grinned at him.
“I’m glad you like it; it’s one of the advantages of citizenship!” I said, “But don’t worry about the Oath. I’ll ask all that want to join to swear it together soon. For now, does anyone else have any questions?” I looked at them all, searching for the one in coveralls that had asked about leaving. Before I found him, he spoke up, stepping forward.
“Lord, will you do that for all of us, for our families?” he asked, gesturing at the helmsman who now stood surrounded by his friends who were peppering him with quiet questions.
“I’ll help whoever I can of our people, but I’m also going to be training a healer. They’ll be free for all of our people. Nobody will have to pay for healing.”
“My daughter…” he said, closing his eyes and swallowing hard. “My daughter got run over by a cart. She can’t
