The Diagnostic Apothecary
(2026)(The first book in the Threadneedle Lane series)
A novel by Dominic Hale
Six months since her last licensed brew. Three weeks until the lease lapses. The Verolan Cleric's Guild expelled Sera Wexton at thirteen for diagnosing a senior cleric's hidden curse during evening service — and she has been running her grandmother's apothecary on Threadneedle Lane ever since, the wrong way.
The Guild sells diagnoses by tithed subscription and waits six weeks before audience. Sera reads a patient's soul-state and compounds the cure live in front of them. Two stats run her whole class: Diagnosis (what is observable, weighted by what she has been taught to see) and Compounding (what her hands and the herb-jars and the mortar can build in fifteen minutes flat). She can be wrong. The System keeps a Casebook. Black ink for correct. Red ink for misdiagnosis. Grey ink for outcomes she never learns.
In chapter one, a beggar named Cole walks in with a temple-curse no licensed cleric will read — because reading it would implicate the Guild — and pays her in a wax-sealed token bearing the personal seal of the Verolan High Arbiter himself.
Across twenty-five chapters, fifteen cases of varying disease shape, three tier increments, one disastrous misdiagnosis that goes red ink in the Casebook, and a Charter inspection that does not arrive when expected, Sera identifies Cole's curse-caster as a senior cleric in the Guild ''' and discovers that the Guild has spent eleven years pretending Cole did not exist.
This book was produced with the assistance of AI.
Genre: Fantasy
The Guild sells diagnoses by tithed subscription and waits six weeks before audience. Sera reads a patient's soul-state and compounds the cure live in front of them. Two stats run her whole class: Diagnosis (what is observable, weighted by what she has been taught to see) and Compounding (what her hands and the herb-jars and the mortar can build in fifteen minutes flat). She can be wrong. The System keeps a Casebook. Black ink for correct. Red ink for misdiagnosis. Grey ink for outcomes she never learns.
In chapter one, a beggar named Cole walks in with a temple-curse no licensed cleric will read — because reading it would implicate the Guild — and pays her in a wax-sealed token bearing the personal seal of the Verolan High Arbiter himself.
Across twenty-five chapters, fifteen cases of varying disease shape, three tier increments, one disastrous misdiagnosis that goes red ink in the Casebook, and a Charter inspection that does not arrive when expected, Sera identifies Cole's curse-caster as a senior cleric in the Guild ''' and discovers that the Guild has spent eleven years pretending Cole did not exist.
This book was produced with the assistance of AI.
Genre: Fantasy
Used availability for Dominic Hale's The Diagnostic Apothecary