azdak

I don't think this is going anywhere, but it might get it out of my head. No. 2 in what appears to be a series of Lin Chen gets nearly-but-not-quite beaten up by a series of Discworld characters.


Many scholars seek knowledge and experience by wandering in the jianghu. Lin Chen wanders - elsewhere.

"I hope you know what you're doing with that, young man."

The end of a twiggy broom came down hard between Lin Chen's fingers and the unassuming (and extraordinarily rare) marsh plant he had been reaching for.

"I'll allow as the foxgloves you've got in your pack there *might* be for your girl, if neither of you had the sense you were born with. But put it together with what you've got there and you've got more than half a chance of making a very nasty poison by mistake."

"What about if I was doing it on purpose?" he asked, looking up past what felt like several yards of rusty black and a pair of bony hands to an equally bony nose, and eyes sharper than his knife.

"I suppose you want me to say it depends on who you're poisoning," she said. "I don't hold with that muck. There's enough ways of killing without us adding to them."

"Us?"

"You know what I mean. Stand up and look me in the face, I ain't getting a crick in the neck staring down at you all day."

Somewhat to his surprise, Lin Chen did so. She looked him up and down. "Hm. Count yourself lucky it wasn't Gytha who found you, I ain't sure you've got the stamina." He opened his mouth, and then closed it again. She nodded. "More sense than it looks like, apparently. Not that that's hard. Right, if you're not going to poison anyone with that stuff, what *are* you going to do with it?"

Well, what harm could it do? "It *is* a poison. But add the juice of a third plant, and seethe it with oak apples, and what you've got is... still a poison. But under certain conditions, for certain patients, it can strengthen the heart. For a time."

She looked at him grimly. "For a time. Alright. But leave the lower shoots so's it can sprout again."

He would have sworn he didn't so much as blink, but suddenly he was alone on the hillside with the bogwater seeping through his shoes.

Lin Chen returned in triumph with the ingredients for his potion. It had been an arduous search, he said, and if that encounter was somehow never related - well, there were some things not even Langya Hall needed to know about.