“A... baby...?” Tejara frowned in confusion, “since when can a man get pregnant?”
“Your physician is no man. She is a liar and a hack!”
Mei’nin’sa put a gentle hand on the old physician’s elbow and produced a small pouch of money from between the separate layers of her skit and pushed it into his hand. “Thank you for your help. Please accept this as payment and do not speak a word about my cousin or else...” she glanced at Tejara out of the corner of her eye.
Tejara, while still quite confused, knew that signal well. She put a hand on the old man’s shoulder, gripping hard and pushing down until he winced. Mei’nin’sa continued talking, “we will be forced to protect our own.”
The old physician scoffed and gritted his teeth, forcing the pouch back into Mei’nin’sa’s hands. “No, I will not be silent about a woman pretending to practice medicine,” Mei’nin’sa’s ever present smile faded into a look of confusion, then into one of cold fury. The old bastard kept talking, “even in the red-light district.”
And then he turned to look at Val’lin’r and Keh’dor’rin. Val’lin’r turned to face the old man, blocking in front of Keh’dor’rin. The old bastard sneered, “And I’ll tell the young lord’s family what kind of cross-dressing pervert their son has impregnated!”
“They already know...” Keh’dor’rin pushed himself up on his elbows. HIs skin was so pale it looked nearly transparent and his eyebags were darker than ever before. Tejara’s heart lurched into her throat when she saw his arms shake with the effort of holding up his upper body.
She grabbed two fistfuls of the physician’s collar and slammed him against the wall. She had a million threats on the tip of her tongue but she held back on them, Mei’nin’sa and Keh’dor’rin were better with words.
Gripping onto the pouch until her knuckles turned white, Mei’nin’sa said, “as Val’s family already knows... there will be no profit to you if you spread the secrets of a brothel’s physician and if you aren’t careful with your words you may accrue the wrath of Val’s family.”
The man laughed, which turned into a cough as Tejara pressed him into the wall, her fists digging into his chest. “You don’t think a noble house would have enemies that would pay for a scandal like this?”
At that moment, the door to Keh’dor’rin’s office opened and Madam Minn glided in. She looked at Tejara and her hands on the old physician, then at the furious Mei’nin’sa, then the glaring Keh’dor’rin and panicked Val’lin’r, then, finally, back to Tejara, “I’ll handle this from here.”
