Authors: Scott Lynch
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the time being was a rented suite in the Villa Suvela, an unadorned but scrupulously
clean rooming house favored by travelers who came to Lashain to take the waters of
the Amathel. Those waters were said to cure rheumatism, though Jean had yet to see
a bather emerge leaping and dancing. The rooming house overlooked a black sand beach
on the city’s northeast shore, and the other lodgers kept to themselves.
“The bastard,” said Jean as he threw open the door to the suite’s inner apartment.
“The motherless Lashani reptile. The greedy son of a piss-bucket and a bad fart.”
“My keen grasp of subtle nuance tells me you might be frustrated,” said Locke. He
was sitting up, and he looked fully awake.
“We’ve been snobbed off again,” said Jean, frowning. Despite the fresh air from the
window the inner apartment still smelled of old sweat and fresh blood. “Zodesti won’t
come. Not today, at least.”
“To hell with him, then, Jean.”
“He’s the only physiker of repute I haven’t got to yet. Some of the others were difficult,
but he’s being impossible.”
“I’ve been pinched and bled by every gods-damned lunatic in this city who ever shoved
a bolus down a throat,” said Locke. “One more hardly signifies.”
“He’s the best.” Jean flung his coat over a chair, set his hatchets down, and removed
a bottle of blue wine from a cabinet. “An alchemical expert. A real smirking rat-fucker,
too.”
“It’s all for the good, then,” said Locke. “What would the neighbors say if I consulted
a man who screws rodents?”
“We need his opinion.”
“I’m tired of being a medical curiosity,” said Locke. “If he won’t come, he won’t
come.”
“I’ll call again tomorrow.” Jean poured two half-glasses of wine and watered them
until they were a pleasant afternoon-sky color. “I’ll have the self-important prick
here one way or another.”
“What would you do, break his fingers if he won’t consult? Might make things ticklish
for me. Especially if he wants to cut something off.”
“He might find a solution.”
“Oh, for the gods’ sake.” Locke’s frustrated sigh turned into a cough. “There is no
solution.”
“Trust me. Tomorrow is going to be one of my unusually persuasive days.”
“As I see it, it’s cost us only a few pieces of gold to discover how unfashionable
we are. Most social failures incur far greater expense, I should think.”
“Somewhere out there,” said Jean, “must be an illness that makes its sufferers meek,
mild, and agreeable. I’ll find it someday, and see that you get the worst possible
case.”
“I’m sure I was born immune. Speaking of agreeable, will that wine be arriving in
my hands anytime this year?”
Locke had seemed alert enough, but his voice was slurring, and weaker than it had
been even the day before. Jean approached the bed uneasily, wineglasses held out like
a peace offering to some unfamiliar and potentially dangerous creature.
Locke had been in this condition before, too thin and too pale, with weeks of beard
on his cheeks. Only this time there was no obvious wound to tend, no cuts to bandage.
Just Maxilan Stragos’ insidious legacy doing its silent work. Locke’s sheets were
spotted with blood and with the dark stains of fever-sweat. His eyes gleamed in bruised
sockets.
Jean pored over a pile of medical texts each night, and still he didn’t have adequate
words for what was happening to Locke. He was being unknit from the inside; his veins
and sinews were coming apart. Blood seeped out of him as though by some demonic whim.
One hour he might cough it up, the next it would come from his eyes or nose.
“Gods damn it,” Jean whispered as Locke reached for the wineglass. Locke’s left hand
was red with blood, as though his fingers had been dipped in it. “What’s this?”
“Nothing unusual.” Locke chuckled. “It started up while you were gone … from under
my nails. Here, I can hold the glass with my other one—”
“Were you trying to hide it from me? Who else changes your gods-damned sheets?”
Jean set the glasses down and moved to the table beneath the window,
which held stacks of linen towels, a water jug, and a washing bowl. The bowl’s water
was rusty with old blood.
“It doesn’t hurt, Jean,” muttered Locke.
Ignoring him, Jean picked up the bowl. The window overlooked the villa’s interior
courtyard, which was fortunately deserted. Jean heaved the old bloody water out the
window, refilled the bowl from the jug, and dipped a linen cloth into it.
“Hand,” said Jean. Locke sulkily complied, and Jean molded the wet cloth around his
fingers. It turned pink. “Keep it elevated for a while.”
“I know it looks bad, but it’s really not that much blood.”
“You’ve little left to lose!”
“I’m also in want of wine.”
Jean fetched their glasses again and carefully placed one in Locke’s right hand. Locke’s
shakes didn’t seem too bad for the moment, which was pleasing. He’d had difficulty
holding things lately.
“A toast,” said Locke. “To alchemists. May they all be stricken with the screaming
fire-shits.” He sipped his wine. “Or strangled in bed. Whatever’s most convenient.
I’m not picky.”
At his next sip, he coughed, and a ruby-colored droplet spiraled down into his wine,
leaving a purplish tail as it dissolved.
“Gods,” said Jean. He gulped the rest of his own wine and set the glass aside. “I’m
going out to fetch Malcor.”
“Jean, I don’t need another damned dog-leech at the moment. He’s been here six or
seven times already. Why—”
“Something might have changed. Something might be different.” Jean grabbed his coat.
“Maybe he can help the bleeding. Maybe he’ll finally find some clue—”
“There is no
clue
, Jean. There’s no antidote that’s going to spring from Malcor or Kepira or Zodesti
or any boil-lancing fraud in this whole tedious shitsack of a city.”
“I’ll be back soon.”
“Dammit, Jean, save the money!” Locke coughed again, and nearly dropped his wine.
“It’s only common sense, you brick-skulled tub! You obstinate—”
“I’ll be back soon.”
“… obstinate, uh, something … something … biting and witty
and thoroughly convincing! Hey, if you leave now, you’ll miss me being thoroughly
convincing! Damn it.”
Whatever Locke might have said next, Jean closed the door on it. The sky outside was
now banded in twilight colors, orange at the horizons giving way to silver and then
purple in the deep bowl of the heavens. Purple like the color of blood dissolving
in blue wine.
A low gray wall sliding in to the north, from out of the Amathel, seemed to promise
an oncoming storm. That suited Jean just fine.
SIX WEEKS
had passed since they’d left the little port of Vel Virazzo in a forty-foot yacht,
fresh from a series of more or less total disasters that had left them with a fraction
of the vast sum they’d hoped to recoup for two years invested in a complex scheme.
As he walked out into the streets of Lashain, Jean ran his fingers over a lock of
curly dark hair, tightly bound with leather cords. This he always kept in a coat pocket
or tucked into his belt. Of all the things he’d lost recently, the money was the least
of his concerns.
Locke and Jean had discussed sailing east, back toward Tamalek and Espara … back toward
Camorr. But most of the world they’d known there was swept away, and most of their
old friends were dead. Instead they’d gone west. North and west.
Following the coast, straining their lubberly skills to the utmost, they had skirted
Tal Verrar, swept past the blackened remains of once-luxurious Salon Corbeau, and
discussed making far north for Balinel, in the Kingdom of the Seven Marrows. Both
of them spoke Vadran well enough to do just about anything while they sought some
new criminal opportunity.
They left the sea and headed inland, up the wide River Cavendria, which was Eldren-tamed
and fit for oceangoing vessels. The Cavendria flowed west from the Amathel, Lake of
Jewels, the inland sea that separated the ancient sister-cities of Karthain and Lashain.
Locke and Jean had once hoped to buy their way into the ranks of Lashain’s nobility.
Their revised plan had merely been to weigh their boat down with stores for the voyage
up to Balinel.
Locke’s symptoms revealed themselves the day they entered the Cavendria estuary.
At first it had been nothing more than bouts of dizziness and blurred vision, but
as the days passed and they slowly tacked against the current, he began bleeding from
his nose and mouth. By the time they reached Lashain, he could no longer laugh away
or hide his increasing weakness. Instead of taking on stores, they’d rented rooms,
and against Locke’s protests Jean began to spend nearly every coin they had in pursuit
of comforts and cures.
From Lashain’s underworld, which was tolerably colorful if nowhere near the size of
Camorr’s, he’d consulted every poisoner and black alchemist he could bribe. All had
shaken their heads and expressed professional admiration for what had been done to
Locke; the substance in question was beyond their power to counteract. Locke had been
made to drink a hundred different purgatives, teas, and elixirs, each seemingly more
vile and expensive than the last, each ultimately useless.
After that, Jean had dressed well and started calling on accredited physikers. Locke
was explained away as a “confidential servant” of someone wealthy, which could have
meant anything from secret lover to private assassin. The physikers too had expressed
regret and fascination in equal measure. Most had refused to attempt cures, instead
offering palliatives to ease Locke’s pain. Jean fully grasped the meaning of this,
but paid no heed to their pessimism. He simply showed each to the door, paid their
exorbitant fees, and went after the next physiker on his list.
The money hadn’t lasted. After a few days, Jean had sold their boat (along with the
resident cat, essential for good luck at sea), and was happy to get half of what they’d
paid for it.
Now even those funds were running thin, and Erkemar Zodesti was just about the only
physiker in Lashain who had yet to tell Jean that Locke’s condition was hopeless.
“
NO NEW
symptoms,” said Malcor, a round old man with a gray beard that curled out from his
chin like an oncoming thunderhead.
Malcor was a dog-leech, a street physiker with no formal training or license, but
of all his kind available in Lashain he was the most frequently sober. “Merely a new
expression of familiar symptoms. Take heart.”
“Not likely,” said Locke. “But thanks for the hand job.”
Malcor had poulticed the tips of Locke’s fingers with a mixture of corn meal and honey,
then tied dry linen bandages around the fingers, turning Locke’s left hand into a
padded lump of uselessness.
“Heh. Well, the gods love a man who laughs at hardship.”
“Hardship is boring as all hell. Gotta find laughs if you can’t stay drunk,” said
Locke.
“So the bleeding is nothing new? Nothing worse than before?” asked Jean.
“A new inconvenience, yes.” Malcor hesitated, then shrugged. “As for the total loss
to his body’s sanguine humors … I can’t say. A close examination of his water could,
perhaps—”
“You want a bowl full of piss,” said Locke, “you can uncork your private reserve.
I’ve given quite enough since I came here.”
“Well, then.” Malcor’s knees creaked like rusty hinges as he stood up. “If I won’t
scry your piss, I won’t scry your piss. I can, however, leave you with a pill that
should bring you excellent relief for twelve to twenty-four hours, and perhaps encourage
your depleted humors to rekindle—”
“Splendid,” said Locke. “Will it be the one composed primarily of chalk, this time?
Or the one made of sugar? I’d prefer sugar.”
“Look … I say, look here!” Malcor’s seamy old face grew red. “I might not have Collegium
robes, but when I go to the gods they’ll know that I gave an honest damn about lending
ease to my patients!”
“Peace, old man.” Locke coughed and rubbed his eyes with his un-bandaged hand. “I
know you mean the best. But spare me your placebo.”
“Have your friend remove your bandages in a few hours,” said Malcor testily, shrugging
back into a worn frock coat that was spattered with dark stains. “If you drink, drink
sparingly. Water your wine.”
“Rest assured, my friend here waters my wine like a virgin princess’ nervous chaperone.”
“I’m sorry,” said Jean, as he showed Malcor outside. “He’s difficult when he’s ill.”
“He’s got two or three days,” said the old man.
“You can’t be—”
“Yes, I can. The bleeding is worse. His enervation is more pronounced. His humors
are terminally imbalanced, and I’m certain an examination of his water would show
blood. I tried to hearten him, but your friend is obviously undeceived.”
“But—”
“As should you be.”
“There must be someone who can do something!”
“The gods.”
“If I could convince Zodesti—”
“Zodesti?” Malcor laughed. “What a waste of a gift in that one. Zodesti treats only
two ailments, wealth and prominence. He’ll never condescend to do so much as take
your friend’s pulse.”
“So you’ve no other clues? No other suggestions?”
“Summon priests. While he’s still lucid.” Jean scowled, and the aged dog-leech took
him gently by the shoulders. “I can’t name the poison that’s killing your friend.
But the one that’s killing you is called hope.”
“Thank you for your time,” growled Jean. He shook several silver coins out of his
purse. “If I should have further need of these marvelous insights—”
“A single
duvesta
will be quite adequate,” said Malcor. “And despite your mood now, know that I’ll
come whenever you require. Your friend’s discomfort is more likely to wax than wane
before the end.”
The sun was gone, and the roofs and towers of the city were coming alive with specks
of fire against the deepening night. As he watched Malcor vanish down the street,
Jean wanted more than anything to have someone to hit.