Perl woke from sleep. Outside the window the sky hung low and leaden, as if the gods had drawn a gray curtain over the mortal world; even the air carried a trace of oppression.
She took the heavy black cloak from the wardrobe, settled it over her shoulders, and tightened the cords across her chest. The specially made high collar hid half her face, leaving only those eyes, black and deep as ancient wells.
“Troy!” Her voice echoed through the empty room. “I have an operation tonight. Don’t wait for me for dinner.” Perl picked up the brown medical bag and called into the house as she reached the door.
The moment she stepped over the threshold she stumbled over something underfoot—a large dead rat lying there. Instinct made her want to kick it aside, but a doctor’s sharpness noticed something wrong. With a gloved hand she pinched the rat by the tail and swung it gently in the air like a pendulum.
Fortunately this was the upper district of the Imperial Capital; sparse residents meant fewer prying eyes. Most of the nobles were still asleep and would not see the female doctor perform so undignified an act.
“What’s wrong?” Troy’s voice came from behind her.
Perl had lingered too long at the door; Troy came out from inside. She was still young, in the midst of adolescence, with long emerald-green hair falling like silk over her shoulders. She wore a thin white dress, a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles on her clean face, and behind the lenses a pair of lively azure eyes that stood in sharp contrast to Perl’s dead-black ones.
“This.” Perl held up the dead rat and let it swing.
“Ugh, disgusting.” Troy frowned. “Doctor, even if you’re wearing gloves, you shouldn’t pick something like that up with your hands.”
Perl shook her head. “The day you truly become a doctor, your hands will have to touch things a thousand times more disgusting than this.” Her tone was mild. “This rat appeared at my door… Are you certain the house was cleaned properly?”
“Of course!” Troy retorted firmly. “How can you suspect there are rats in our house? Until you’re willing to teach me to be a real doctor, my daily work is cleaning! Suspecting the only thing I can do is the same as denying the value of my existence!”
“I didn’t mean that.” Perl answered absently, her gaze passing over Troy toward the distance. There, white-robed men were escorting a line of chained mages; those once-proud spellcasters now looked as wretched as stray dogs.
She wondered when this so-called witch hunt would ever end.
“Someone must have thrown the rat here as a prank.” Troy’s voice cut into her thoughts. “When will you finally take me to the clinic for practical training? If I stay cooped up in the study reading books all day I’ll never become a doctor who can stand on her own.”
Perl turned and tossed the dead rat toward the nearby lawn. The small corpse traced an arc through the air and landed on the green grass.
“I spent ten years helping Bremer organize medical texts before I ever set foot in an operating room,” she said, her voice soft as a sigh. “You’re still far from ready. The books in the study are enough for a lifetime of study; that knowledge is more precious than you imagine.”
“Always the same lecture…” Troy stamped her foot in frustration, the heel striking the wooden floor with a dull thud. “Anyway, there are absolutely no rats in this house!”
“Then check again,” Perl said as she closed the door. “Carefulness matters more to a doctor than talent.”
Out of the corner of her eye she glanced once more at the rat’s corpse and noticed an unsettling detail—dark red blood seeping from the half-open lips. The color reminded her of the blackened, congealed blood on the executioner’s block.
The color of death was always so similar in this age.
——————————
This was the last operation Perl would perform that day.
Candlelight flickered in the operating room, casting dancing shadows on the walls. The willow-leaf knife in Perl’s hand gently parted the blood vessels in the patient’s abdomen, each movement precise as an artist carving marble. Her technique was as elegant as a pianist’s; all strength concentrated in her fingertips, the pen-grip hold turning every cut into a perfect note.
Whether the operation was major or minor, the surgeon who held the knife possessed absolute power—the power of life and death. Every turn of the blade pointed the way for a patient hovering between the worlds of the living and the dead. That power was heavy enough to suffocate; a single mistake would leave hands stained with a sin that could never be washed away.
Most doctors therefore prepared a hundred excuses for failure: no one is perfect, I did my best, the patient’s constitution was poor to begin with… But Perl never needed those excuses, because on the technical level error simply did not enter her calculations.
She was Bremer’s sole successor, the crystallization of his life’s work. In her hands technical mistakes never occurred, as surely as the sun never rose in the west.
What truly troubled Perl were the unavoidable problems: infection, blood loss, pain—eternal enemies that clung to the surgeon like shadows. Even when her technique was as precise as a machine, she remained helpless against them.
Recently, however, a drug called ** had appeared. It could temporarily separate the patient’s soul from the body, leaving only an empty shell for the doctor to work upon. Overnight the drug swept through the entire medical world, silencing the screams on the operating table and teaching countless “doctors” how to cut.
It reminded Perl of the cruel games boys in the capital played—catching sparrows, rats, even cats and dogs, then slicing them open with knives to watch the organs beat. The thought that those children might one day become colleagues made her blood run cold.
Unfortunately ** only solved the problem of pain; infection and hemorrhage remained. Mortality rates from surgery had not fallen; because the number of operations had increased, more people died. Of course this was only Perl’s conjecture. Since Bremer’s death she rarely went out and had lost interest in changes in the outside world.
Now she was the finest surgeon in the entire capital—perhaps in the entire empire.
The operation was nearly finished; only the wound needed closing. An assistant handed her a fine needle and cotton thread. Perl took them and, out of habit, held the needle tip to the candle flame, letting the tongue of fire lick every surface of the metal.
She knew the gesture could not eradicate infection, yet this simple act had reduced the mortality of her operations to one-eighth that of other doctors. Patients who underwent surgery in other clinics saw their seemingly healed wounds swell and fester within days, followed by high fever, chills, and finally the embrace of shock—Death’s arms.
People called the phenomenon the curse of surgery; only expensive healing magic could lift it. In Perl’s view it was merely an excuse born of ignorance. Light-attribute magic was powerful, true, but if the instruments were properly prepared beforehand many problems would never arise.
The last stitch was tied. With a light flick of the knife tip Perl snapped the cotton thread. She laid the fine needle gently on the assistant’s tray and declared the operation successfully concluded. The patient on the table, still under the influence of **, remained unaware of what had happened and simply breathed steadily. Though pale from blood loss, the vital signs were stable.
The assistants all wore masks, yet joy showed in their eyes. They had witnessed a perfect operation—rare in this age. It meant that medicine had once again scored a victory in its competition with magic, something worth celebrating.
The protagonist herself remained calm. Perl sat in a corner of the operating room and watched the assistants wheel the patient out and clear the instruments from the table.
From the black medical bag she drew a slender hand-rolled cigarette, removed her mask, and at last smoothed the frown from her brow.
The black velvet gloves on her hands were still stained with blood, rendering the already deep black even more mysterious. Blood had soaked into the cigarette’s filter paper, red and white intermingled like an abstract painting. She knew tobacco blackened the lungs—she had dissected the chests of enough smokers to confirm it—yet if she could not smoke one during a break, who knew how badly her hands might tremble in the next operation.
Perhaps she ought to find a substitute, but what did it matter.
Were her own lungs more important, or other people’s lives? Being able to restrain herself from smoking during surgery was already the greatest self-control she could manage.
When tense, people always need some ritual for relief: some rub their noses, some bounce their legs; she smoked. It was normal.
And after so many years nothing had gone wrong. Thinking this, Perl bit the cigarette and gave a few soft laughs; the sound echoed in the empty operating room.
“Doctor! Doctor Perl!”
A sharp cry shattered the quiet. A nurse burst through the door in panic, and the previously lively room fell instantly silent, leaving only the clear, cold clink of surgical instruments in the metal trays on the cabinet.
Everyone stared at the sweat-drenched, panting young nurse, waiting for a reasonable explanation.
“What is it?” Perl tucked the cigarette back into her clothes, her voice as calm as a still well.
“Emergency,” the nurse said, looking up, sweat plastering her hair to her face. “A patient came last night with a fever. The duty doctor gave him antipyretics and sent him home. But now… things have gotten worse.”
At that moment three rats suddenly charged into the operating room, staggering about like drunks and drawing startled cries from everyone. A bold assistant pinned one by the tail with his heel; the rat let out an even more piercing scream, and he hastily released it, allowing the creature to continue searching for a nonexistent exit among the feet of the crowd.
“Quiet!” Perl’s voice was not loud, yet it carried an irresistible authority. The cries ceased at once, leaving only the squeaking of the three rats. “Tell me the patient’s condition.”
“Swollen lymph nodes, multiple red patches on the body, pain in the internal organs…” the nurse answered, trembling. “He said it felt as if he had swallowed a piece of red-hot charcoal. We can’t be certain whether he’s still lucid, but he specifically asked for you—said you once cured his headache.”
“Take me to him.” Perl stood, stripped off the bloodied gloves and threw them to the floor, took a fresh pair from the leather bag on the table and put them on, then pulled her mask back up. “As for the rest of you—deal with these three rats, then find out who is responsible for hygiene and tell them to pack their things and get out.”
Her voice remained calm, yet everyone in the operating room tensed, listening carefully to every instruction.
Even Perl herself did not notice that the eyes visible above her mask had lost their peace; the brows that had just smoothed were now tightly knotted. The doctor who had always treated people gently seemed ready to erupt at any second, as if she might slit someone’s throat with a scalpel.
Rats in the house she could tolerate. Rats in her clinic, on her operating table—that was an entirely different matter.