Quinn is entertained by a hurdy-gurdy playing man in the street, but notices the wretched monkey without its tail. Called devils, long-tailed animals, unless domesticated cattle or livestock, must be destroyed, or suffer the loss of the tail, due to the strict religious law of the country. That is the cause of so many maimed cats and dogs in the city and country, Quinn discovered. He buys the monkey and pays a kind shopkeeper to keep him in his walled garden the rest of its days, as there is no way to return him safely to the far south jungles. The cruel riverboat men, Quinn knew from experience, would take the monkey's travel fare and then throw him overboard to the man-eating fish!

Quinn the Bluebird encounters a blind boy in the Grand Suk, Sealtown's Covered Bazaar:

Quinn touches the boy's eye with a feather and a dried plant that heals many bad afflictions, taken from his hidden medicine pouch, and after a prayer the boy's eyes regenerate in their sockets, and he can see! The whole Suk comes running, a crowd gathers, but Quinn has already slipped away.

Hearing of Quinn's good deeds (who in the city has not heard the reports of this visiting medicine-man, though he is but a youth in age?), a high official sends the royal city governor to invite Quinn to a private conference in the Chief of Court Ceremony's garden pavilion, a kiosk-like summer house given him by the Sultan himself.

The reason for the private conference is that the official, the Court Cup-Bearer of the Nectar of Isma, has a very ill son, about to die, whom all the court physicians have failed to cure. But he has heard about Quinn praying over and touching sick people and they are miraculously healed. A desperate father, no matter who he is, will do anything that can possibly save a dying son, so he has called in the infidel and stranger, an Indian no less, to do what his physicians have all failed to do. The Laws of Isma, however great, can produce no miracles of healing, he knows. And doctors can only do the possible. What he needs for his son is the impossible--a cure.

Quinn is led to the garden pavilion of an estate perched high above the city-- and it is warm there, due to the warm springs that issue from the great mountain, producing warmth for pools and fountains and gardens. Not only is it pleasant all year round, but it is most private and desirable for interviews, being away from the great mansion where there are the eyes and ears of many servants and relatives.