On the morning of the third day, the girl coughed.
It wasn't the weak, deflated-sounding cough she'd had before. This one rose from the bottom of her lungs with force behind it. Her whole body bent forward as she coughed, and Gran rushed over to support her back, patting it with a steady, gentle hand.
She coughed up a lump of gray phlegm.
It landed in the copper basin beside the bed. It looked like a broken piece of stone, coated in mucus. It rolled once across the bottom of the basin, then came to a stop.
"The first one." The cat merchant crouched in the doorway, holding a bowl of hot soup. His tone was as matter-of-fact as if he were counting inventory. "Six more to go."
The girl took a few breaths. Her eyes were red, but her complexion looked a little better than yesterday—the blue had left her lips, replaced by a pale pink with a touch of color. When she saw the cat merchant, she sniffed.
"Mr. Cat, it feels like something's crawling around in my chest."
"That's not a bug. It's the medicine doing its job." He brought the soup over. "Drink this. It'll make you feel a little better."
"Is it stinky again?"
"This one doesn't stink. It's just bitter."
The girl took the bowl and had a sip. Her face immediately puckered, just as expected. But this time she didn't complain. She lowered her head and finished the whole bowl, then handed it back and said very seriously, "Mr. Cat, could you bring a medicine that tastes good next time?"
"Good-tasting medicine can't cure illness."
"Then what does good-tasting medicine cure?"
"The illness of wanting something that tastes good."
The girl blinked, then laughed. She coughed a few times as she laughed, but there was strength in the cough now. It no longer sounded hollow like it had before.
Gran stood nearby, watching his granddaughter laugh. His eyes reddened too, but he didn't let anyone see. He turned away, pretending to tidy the things on the table.
The cat merchant glanced at him and said nothing.
By afternoon, the girl had coughed up three more. Each one was smaller than the last, and their color had faded from gray to pale white. Her breathing sounded noticeably different now. The harsh hiss was gone, as if the blocked passages in her lungs were opening one by one.
She had enough strength to sit up, and she even chatted with the cat merchant for a long while. She asked where he had been, what strange things he had seen, and whether he had ever met a dragon.
"I've never met a dragon." He sat on a low stool beside the bed, his two tails hanging down on either side, their tips lightly sweeping the floor. "But I once met a talking mushroom."
"How did a mushroom talk?"
"With spores. It sprayed spores in your face, and then you could hear what it was thinking."
"What was it thinking?"
"It was thinking, 'This person's face is so big. It'd make the perfect flowerpot for me.'"
The girl laughed so hard she started coughing.
The cat merchant kept her company until she fell asleep. Her breathing was much steadier in sleep, and her chest rose and fell more deeply. He pulled the blanket higher to cover her shoulders.
Then he stood and walked out of the stone house.
Gran was waiting for him in the doorway.
Night was approaching. The ore-lamp posts lit up, bathing the stone alley in warm orange light. From far away came the sounds of the forge closing for the day. The hammers had stopped, replaced by the clinking of dwarves putting away their tools and their deep, easy laughter.
"The last three will come out sometime between tonight and tomorrow morning." The cat merchant leaned against the wall and looked up at the strip of sky squeezed between the mountain walls. "The biggest one will be last. She'll spike a fever once, and once it breaks, she'll be fine."
Gran nodded. He was silent for a while, then said, "You're leaving tomorrow?"
"First thing in the morning."
Another silence followed.
"You still haven't taken the glowstone," Gran said.
"Right." The cat merchant pulled out his little notebook from beneath his cloak, flipped through several pages, and tore one out to hand to Gran. "Here. The formula for making abrasive compound from stone-eating bug shell residue. Your forge can use it. You can catch the bugs deeper in the mine yourselves. It's not difficult. I drew the method in the notebook."
Gran took the paper and glanced at it, one eyebrow lifting. "This is worth a fair bit."
"It covers the price of the glowstone."
"The glowstone was for treating her. I'm not charging you."
"Then consider it a debt." The cat merchant smiled faintly. "I'll repay you next time I come through."
Gran folded the paper and tucked it into the pocket over his chest. He looked at the cat merchant as if he wanted to say something, but in the end he only grunted.
"You do this every time. Stay three days, then leave quieter than when you arrived."
"A quiet guest is a good guest."
"You're not a guest," Gran said.
The cat merchant's ears twitched. He didn't answer, but the tip of his tail swayed lightly.
That night, he didn't sleep in the wagon. He sat on the stone steps outside Gran's house, his back against the wall and his two tails curled over his knees. Lolo lay at his feet. Two of the three heads were already asleep, while the one on the far right kept one eye half-open, standing watch with him.
Every so often, the girl's cough drifted out from inside. Each time she coughed, one of his ears turned toward the sound. Once he had listened and confirmed that everything was fine, the ear turned back.
Around midnight, the girl developed a fever. He went inside to take a look and touched her forehead with the back of his hand—it was hot, but within the expected range. He laid a cloth soaked in cool water across her forehead, then pressed a hand against her chest. The last and largest ore crystal was breaking apart.
"Almost there," he told Gran, who was keeping watch beside her.
Before dawn, the girl coughed up the final three. The largest one shattered into several pieces, and the gray-white fragments fell into the copper basin with a faint, delicate clatter.
Then her fever broke.
When she opened her eyes, she drew a deep breath—a full breath, without a single obstruction. She froze for a moment, then inhaled again, and tears spilled down her cheeks.
"Grandpa," she said. Her voice was still raspy, but it held something that hadn't been there before. "I can breathe."
Gran pulled her into his arms without saying a word. His shoulders trembled.
The cat merchant stood in the doorway and watched for a moment, then quietly turned and left.
He returned to the wagon and began packing. His movements were practiced: bottles and jars went back in place, the wagon boards folded up, and the leather satchel was hung securely. Lolo was already on his feet, all three heads alert, six paws stepping lightly against the ground as if he knew it was time to leave.
He finished sorting the harness and was about to climb aboard when footsteps sounded behind him.
More than one person's footsteps.
He turned around.
Gran stood at the mouth of the alley with his hands clasped behind his back. Kuhl stood behind him, followed by the dwarf girl who had brought the stone-slab cake and her mother. A few forge workers stood farther back. They weren't crowded together. They were scattered about, as if each had simply happened to be passing by and happened to stop.
No one spoke.
The cat merchant looked at them, and his ears slowly folded back.
Gran brought something out from behind his back. It was the Duskmark Glowstone, wrapped in coarse cloth. But an extra leather cord had been tied around the outside, the knot pulled so tight it was the kind of dead knot only a dwarf smith would tie.
"Take it." Gran walked over and shoved the glowstone into his hands.
"I told you, I can't accept—"
"It's not for you." Gran's voice was rough, but steady. "It's for the next person you have to treat. You, cat—you run into people who need you everywhere you go. This will do more good in your hands than it would sitting in my mine."
The cat merchant looked down at the glowstone in his hands. A faint, dark-purple light seeped through the coarse cloth, like the glow of a sleeping heart.
He put the glowstone in his leather satchel and fastened it shut.
"Thank you," he said.
Gran grunted and turned away. After a few steps, he stopped.
"She should be able to run by the next time you come through." He didn't look back. "She says she wants to bake you a stone-slab cake herself."
"I'll look forward to it."
The cat merchant jumped onto the wagon and patted Lolo's back. Lolo started walking, and the ghost wagon began to roll forward slowly. Its wheels passed over the gravel road without making a sound.
When he passed the mouth of the alley, the dwarves were still standing there. No one waved. No one called goodbye. They simply watched, like they were watching a season that passed through every so often.
When the cat wagon left the town, the cat merchant glanced back. Rockrun's ore-lamp posts gradually faded in the morning light, like a row of eyes slowly closing.
He turned forward again and pulled his little notebook from the leather satchel. He flipped to the slip of paper Gran had given him—not the one he'd given Gran, but another one Gran had tucked inside the coarse cloth around the glowstone.
It contained only one line, written in thick lettering with a forge charcoal pencil:
"Head south. A new town has opened up near Slime Marsh, and it's full of slimes. I hear they're looking for a medicine merchant who can treat acid burns."
The cat merchant tucked the note back into the notebook and closed it.
He touched the chest jewel.
The jewel was still covered in dull gray. But when the morning sunlight fell across it, he felt that layer of gray might have grown just a little thinner.
A very, very little.
As if someone had gently wiped it from the inside.
Lolo's leftmost head glanced back at him, then sneezed and kept running.
He smiled, pulled his cloak tighter around himself, and headed south.