“Oh yes, Pace has mentioned it…” Ilva said slowly. “Your father had that—little apothecary in the low district, didn’t he?”
Helena gave a startled nod. Given that her father’s medical licensing hadn’t been recognised as legitimate in Paladia, the apothecary hadn’t been categorically legal. Medicine, like everything else in Paladia pre-war, was industrialised, modernised, and licensed, which rooted out would-be charlatans but had a tendency to raise prices. An amount considered trivial in the upper districts could be a month’s or a year’s wages in the water slums.
An unlicensed tincture might not be even half as effective, but it did have the added benefit of not sending the invalid and their family into debtor’s prison.
“He was a doctor, though, wasn’t he?” Ilva looked sincerely curious
