“My apologies for the intrusion,” the lieutenant’s voice boomed, cutting through the night air. “But General Natthawut sends his regards. He wishes to court the woman who so bravely saved his life.” Air hitched behind my ribs. *Court me?* The commander, whose very shadow was prophesied to wipe my bloodline from the annals of Wiangthara, wanted to *court* me? This was not part of the plan. This was the opposite of the plan. This was a plan to accelerate my family’s ancient, looming demise with the efficiency of a well-oiled guillotine. Maliwan’s gaze, sharp and assessing, darted from the lieutenant’s impassive face to my own. Her eyes narrowed, a silent question. *What now, Chailai?* My thoughts, typically a labyrinth of interconnected plots and escape routes, became a frantic, sputtering candle. The officer, Phairoj, if my intel was correct, was a man of unshakeable discipline. Logic wouldn’t work. Begging would be useless. A direct refusal would only pique Natthawut’s dangerous curiosity further. I needed something… viscerally repulsive. Something that would make even a seasoned warlord recoil. “A moment, please!” I squeaked, my voice higher than a hungry bird, pushing past Maliwan. She shot me a bewildered look, but her hand, still clutching the dagger, didn’t falter. Inside the small, cluttered safehouse, my eyes landed on a basket of freshly dyed silk threads. Vials of concentrated pigment – vibrant orchid, sullen indigo, sickly chartreuse – sat beside them. My specialty. My salvation. A grin, wild and desperate, split my face. This was it. My most effective form of social repellent: a plague. “My apologies, General’s man,” I called out, injecting a tremor into my voice. “But I… I fear I am afflicted.” Phairoj raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Afflicted with what, weaver? A sudden bout of shyness?” “No, no! Worse!” I rummaged through the dyes, uncorking the grimiest, most unsettling shades. A smear of muddy ochre, thick as river silt, went first, blotched across my cheek. Then, a dollop of mottled moss-green, dabbed with precision to mimic weeping sores. A splash of fiery vermilion around my lids gave them an alarming, raw appearance. The sharp, metallic tang of vinegar and gum arabic filled the tiny room. Maliwan, watching my impromptu transformation,’s mouth dropped open. “Chailai, what in the name of the Ancestors are you–” “Just… roll with it!” I hissed, grabbing a small, broken mirror to check my handiwork. Perfect. I looked like a particularly aggressive form of fungal bloom had decided to make my face its permanent residence. I even added a touch of luminescent, shimmering blue-purple to suggest a deep, festering infection beneath the skin. I threw open the door with a theatrical groan, leaning against the frame as if my bones were dissolving. Phairoj, who had been peering curiously, stiffened. His stoic expression cracked, replaced by a flicker of genuine revulsion. He took an involuntary step back, his massive hand instinctively reaching for the hilt of his sword. “Forgive my appearance, honoured soldier,” I croaked, trying to sound congested. “The… the ‘Boiling Blossom’. It’s terribly contagious. Spreads through the air. You wouldn’t want to catch it. It makes your skin… slough off. Like old parchment.” I gave a convincing shudder. Phairoj’s eyelids, typically as flat as polished stone, twitched open. He glanced down at the brass mask in his hand, then back to my horrifying visage. The mask, a beacon of my former clumsy heroism, now seemed terribly out of place next to my alleged affliction. “Perhaps… perhaps another time,” Phairoj mumbled, retreating a further step. His voice, typically a resonant boom, was now a strained murmur. “I shall convey your… condition… to my lord.” He backed away, slowly, gingerly, as if I might erupt into a shower of contagious spores. He turned, then practically sprinted down the narrow, creaking boardwalk. I let out a triumphant, if somewhat congested, cackle. “Works every time!” “You look like you wrestled a patch of sentient swamp algae and lost,” Maliwan said, her initial shock giving way to a grudging admiration. She was about to offer a high-five when a quiet click echoed from the window frame above us. Not a rap on the door, but a sound of something unlatching. Before either of us could react, a figure dropped lightly into the room, landing with a soft thud on the woven reed mat. Natthawut. His tunic, the colour of twilight, was impeccable, his posture easy, almost languid. He moved with the predatory grace of a jungle cat, his presence filling the small space, eclipsing the very air. He carried no weapons visibly, yet the sheer force of him made the dagger in Maliwan’s hand seem like a child’s toy. My triumphant cackle choked down into a desperate wheeze. *He bypassed the door!* And he was… entirely unbothered by my facial catastrophe. His gaze, dark and intense, didn’t even flicker over the lurid boils and weeping sores of my improvised plague. He took a step towards me, then another. Maliwan tensed, her eyes darting between him and me, a silent question in her stance. Natthawut, however, ignored her completely. His focus was solely on me. “I believe,” he said, his voice a low, resonant rumble that vibrated through the very floorboards, “my aide misinterpreted your ailment.” He reached into his tunic, pulling out a pristine, damp cloth woven from the finest river-lotus silk. The sudden intimacy of the gesture, the way his eyes held mine, rattled my bubbly facade. This was not the dismissive disgust I had anticipated. This was… something else. Something terrifyingly gentle. He raised his hand. My instincts screamed for me to recoil, to run, to invent a whole new, even more virulent plague. But I was frozen, mesmerized by the sheer calm in his eyes, the subtle scent of sandalwood and rain that clung to him. His thumb, surprisingly calloused yet impossibly gentle, brushed my cheek. The silk cloth followed, wiping away the muddy ochre. A trail of cool dampness was all that remained where the fake sore had been. He meticulously wiped away the moss-green, then the fiery vermilion encircling my eyes. Each deliberate swipe was a slow, agonizing unraveling of my defenses. The luminescent blue-purple, the final touch, vanished under his ministrations. His gaze, unwavering, seemed to see right through my charade, past the layers of dye and forced cheer, straight to the frantic, lonely woman underneath. The tension between us pulled taut, raw and terrifying in its sudden heat. The pulse in my throat fluttered, frantic and unguarded. “There,” he murmured, his voice closer now, the scent of him enveloping me. “Much better.” He dropped the soiled cloth into a discarded dye pot, his eyes still fixed on mine. “I prefer you without the… theatrical embellishments.” My mind, still reeling from the unexpected intimacy, scrambled for an escape. Panic threatened to overwhelm me, to reveal the desperate woman beneath the bubbly facade. I had to push him away. Instantly. Irrevocably. And what better way to repel a high officer than to be utterly, mind-numbingly *boring*? “Oh, yes! Theatrical embellishments!” I babbled, my voice bright, too bright, a thin shield against the tremor in my hands. “They’re all the rage in the Lower Cascade districts, you know. To hide the price gouging on the Katai silks. Oh, the Katai silks! Did you know the latest batch from the Vesper Weavers is up another ten percent? The carmine dye is particularly egregious. And the indigo! Don’t even get me started on the indigo. The seasonal deluges have been too harsh for proper mordant setting, you see, so the yield is down, and the traders are capitalising, of course, because they always do, don’t they? It’s a whole affair. A supply chain knot, you might say. Very complex. Much like the tariffs on the imported Sunstone threads. Dreadful, really. Completely ruins the bazaar for small independent artisans like myself. I mean, how are we supposed to compete? It’s an outrage, an absolute scandal, I tell you!” I prattled on, a relentless stream of merchant gossip and fabric trivia, waiting for his eyes to glaze over, for him to sigh with boredom and make his excuses. But he didn’t. He merely watched me, a faint, almost imperceptible smile playing on his lips. It wasn't the smile of a man who was bored, but one who was… amused. And something else. Something fiercely, unnervingly possessive. “An outrage indeed,” he finally said, his voice laced with an amusement that made my cheeks burn despite myself. “Such a keen understanding of trade. And its injustices.” He turned, his gaze sweeping over the small, unassuming safehouse, then out towards the bustling Silk Quarter. “It would be a pity for such a… vibrant… mind to be left unprotected in such a precarious industry. Particularly after your recent act of bravery.” My stomach dropped into hollow void. *Unprotected?* Oh no. No, no, no. This was not going in the direction I wanted. This was accelerating my demise at warp speed. “To ensure no further… mercantile disasters… befall you,” Natthawut continued, his voice firm, leaving no room for argument, “I’ve already dispatched a detail. Two of my finest guards will be stationed outside your shop, day and night. For your protection.” He gave me a knowing look, a hint of steel beneath the amusement. “They’ll be quite diligent. Should you have any… *unforeseen*… business fluctuations, they’ll be there to assist.” He inclined his head slightly, a gesture of finality. “Good evening, weaver.” And then, with the same silent grace as his entrance, he vaulted back out the window and disappeared into the moonlit night. My mouth remained agape, suspended in the middle of a sentence about silk-worm yields. Maliwan stood frozen, her dagger still clutched in her hand. The silence he left behind felt heavier than a hundred sodden squalls. *A guard detail?* My information hub. My sanctuary. My only link to the city’s underbelly, now under constant surveillance by the very general I was prophesied to avoid. My attempts to push him away had only drawn him closer, wrapping me in a silken web of inescapable, thrilling destiny. Later that night, huddled beneath a thick blanket in my cramped room above the shop, the rhythmic creak of the guards’ footsteps on the boardwalk a constant, maddening reminder of my predicament, I finally pulled out the stolen ledger. The mercenary’s coded notes, commonly a challenge, were child’s play for me. My fingers flew over the pages, translating the cipher, mapping the names, the dates, the locations. Each symbol clicked into place, painting a grim picture of illicit shipments, compromised officials, and targeted assassinations. The seal at the bottom of the ledger showed a stylized, blooming flower with razor-sharp petals. The Crimson Lotus syndicate. Maliwan’s syndicate. The syndicate I was trying to dismantle. I flipped to the back, to the hastily scrawled list of targets. A chill prickled the nape of my neck, sharper than river spray. The first name, meticulously crossed out, was that of General Natthawut. And the second, written in the same precise, chilling hand, was mine. The poisoned dart in the alley wasn't meant for Natthawut. It was meant for me.

A Plague of Convenient Boils