Doing the Gods' Work: A Former Killer Becomes a Healer in Sanctuary
Book: Thieves’ World: Turning Points Editor: Lynn Abbey Series: Thieves’ World New Series, Book 1 Publisher: Tor Books, 2002
Previous: Ring of Sea and Fire
The Man Nobody Knows
Every story in this anthology deals with the past haunting the present. But “Doing the Gods’ Work” takes that idea and makes it literal. Jody Lynn Nye gives us Pel Garwood, an apothecary and healer who set up shop in a ruined temple on the Avenue of Temples. Nice guy. Makes potions. Fixes people’s backs. Charges fair prices.
He was also a priest of Dyareela, the Bloody Mother. He was called Wrath of the Goddess. He killed people for years in the name of a death cult.
Yeah. That’s quite a career change.
How You Get From There to Here
The backstory Nye weaves in is some of the best character work in the anthology. Pel didn’t just wake up one day and decide murder was wrong. It happened slowly. He watched the cult spiral from “punishing the wicked” into killing anyone for any reason. He watched his fellow priests take offerings from people and then kill them anyway. He watched the sacrifices become random and meaningless.
And then the worst thing happened. His wife, a fellow priestess, caught what they called the blood fever. She pulled their own daughter from the pits where they kept captured children and sacrificed her on the altar. Pel watched his child die. That broke something in him. Not gradually. All at once.
He fled Sanctuary. Walked until he collapsed at the door of an old healer named Loprin in a tiny village. Loprin asked no questions. He just gave Pel soup, a blanket, and silence. No obligations. No demands. Just basic human kindness from a total stranger.
That part of the story is quietly devastating. Pel had never experienced generosity without strings attached. Everything in Dyareela’s cult came with conditions. But Loprin just let him sit against the wall and exist. It took weeks before Pel could even speak again.
Building a New Life
Loprin worshiped Meshpri, a minor Ilsigi goddess of health and healing. He taught Pel his craft. Herbs, timing, proportions. Which water to gather under which moon. How much of a dose turns medicine into poison. Pel spent five years learning everything the old man knew.
But first, he had to deal with the tattoos covering his entire body. Every inch of him was marked with the symbols of Dyareela. Including his scalp. Including his hands, stained red from elbow to fingertip. He couldn’t show his face in public without giving himself away.
Loprin performed a ritual to Meshpri. Pel lay on the altar under a new moon. The tattoos faded over six months. His hair grew back in black and white where the designs had crossed his scalp. He wore it long to hide the pattern. He was a new man. Inside and out.
When Loprin died, Pel took his place as village healer. But eventually he realized he missed Sanctuary. Which is kind of wild when you think about it. He missed the city where he’d committed atrocities. But that’s the point. Running away hadn’t healed anything. Going back might.
The Apothecary and His Customers
The daily life sections of this story are genuinely charming. Pel runs his shop out of a crumbling temple. His customers pay in trade because nobody has cash. A sawyer named Carzen pays with roof joists instead of money. A carter named Siggurn needs a potency potion and drinks the whole week’s supply in one night, leading to three very eventful days. Pel can’t stop laughing about that one.
Nye has a great ear for the rhythms of small-town commerce. Pel’s workdays, where patients come to do manual labor on the temple instead of paying cash, feel completely real. The scene where Cauvin shows up and starts bossing everyone around on the construction site is funny and grounded. Cauvin tells Pel he should have shored up the pillars before working on the roof. Pel admits he doesn’t know anything about construction. Classic.
There’s a wonderful thread about Pel building community without anyone realizing it. The workdays bring people together. They build something instead of tearing something down. For Pel, that matters spiritually. He helped destroy this city. Now he’s helping rebuild it, one crumbling temple at a time.
The Past Comes Knocking
And then a hooded figure shows up at one of the workdays. A man wrapped in blankets. He wants the jewelweed potion. For potency. But the way he talks sends ice down Pel’s spine.
The visitor talks about “the Mother” with a capital M. He makes a gesture Pel hasn’t seen in a decade. A finger pointed at the temple, a sign of the Bleeding Hand. Under those blankets, Pel knows, is a body covered in tattoos and red stain. Just like his used to be.
A priest of Dyareela has survived. The Bleeding Hand wasn’t completely wiped out when the Irrune swept through. And this priest needs the potency potion because he’s gathering new followers. Mostly street children. Girls old enough to bear children but no boys old enough to father them. He wants to breed a new generation of cult members.
This is horrifying. And Pel is the only person who knows about it.
The Moral Puzzle
Here’s what makes this story genuinely interesting. Pel can’t refuse to make the potion. He promised to serve anyone who asks, as long as they can pay. That’s his oath to Meshpri. He also can’t go to the authorities. If he reports the priest, the priest will denounce him as a former Servant of Dyareela. They’ll both die.
He can’t kill the priest. He’s a healer now. He can’t use poison. He spent his whole life in a cult that forbade it, and even after leaving, that line still holds.
So what does he do?
He makes the potion exactly as promised. It will absolutely work. The priest will be able to perform. But Pel adds one extra ingredient. A rare herb found near graves. It won’t affect potency. But it will make the priest permanently sterile.
The potion works. The priest can mate. The priest cannot father children. No new babies born into the cult. No new sacrifices. Problem solved without breaking a single promise or spilling a drop of blood.
Why This Story Works
I think this might be the most thematically complete story in the anthology. It asks a real question: What does redemption look like when you’ve done truly terrible things? And it gives a real answer. Not a dramatic one. Not a violent one. A quiet one. You rebuild a temple. You heal people who can’t pay. You make clever potions for embarrassed men. And when the darkness comes back looking for you, you outthink it instead of outfighting it.
Pel is never going to be innocent again. He knows what he did. He remembers hauling a young Cauvin out of the pits for punishment. He recognizes the stonecutter and is grateful Cauvin doesn’t recognize him. He carries all of it. But carrying it doesn’t have to mean being crushed by it.
The last line of the story is perfect. “Babies who were never conceived would never die.” It’s cold and warm at the same time. Practical mercy. That’s what doing the gods’ work actually looks like in Sanctuary.