From every corner of the Therin world they came—merchants and criminals, mercenary captains and pirates, gamblers and adventurers and exiles. As commoners they entered the chrysalis of a countinghouse, shed vast quantities of precious metal, and as newborn peers of Lashain they emerged into daylight. The regio minted demibarons, barons, viscounts, counts, and even the occasional marquis, with styles largely of their own invention. Honors were taken from a list and cost extra; “Defender of the Twelvefold Faith” was quite popular. There were also half a dozen meaningless orders of knighthood that looked marvelous on a coat lapel.
Because of the novelty of this purchased respectability to those who brokered it for themselves, Lashain was the most violently manners-conscious city Jean Tannen had ever visited. Lacking centuries of aristocratic descent to assure them of their worth, the neophytes of Lashain overcompensated with ceremony. Their rules of precedence were like alchemical formulae, and dinner parties killed more of them each year than fevers and accidents combined. It seemed that little could be more thrilling for those who’d just bought their family names than to risk them (not to mention their mortal flesh) over minor insults.
The record, as far as Jean had heard, was three days from countinghouse to dueling green to funeral cart. The regio, of course, offered no refunds to relations of the deceased.
As a result of this nonsense, it was difficult for those without titles, regardless of the color of their coin, to gain ready access to the city’s best physikers. They were made such status symbols by their noble clients that they rarely had to scamper after gold from other sources.
The taste of autumn was in the cool wind blowing off the Amathel, the Lake of Jewels—the freshwater sea that rolled to the horizon north of Lashain. Jean was conservatively dressed by local standards, in a brown velvet frock coat and silks worth no more than, say, three months’ wages for an average tradesman. This marked him instantly as someone’s man and suited his current task. No gentleman of consequence did his own waiting at a physiker’s garden gate.
Scholar Erkemar Zodesti was regarded as the finest physiker in Lashain, a prodigy with the bone saw and the alchemist’s crucible. He’d also shown complete disinterest, for three days straight, in Jean’s requests for a consultation.
Today Jean once again approached the iron-barred gate at the rear of Zodesti’s garden, from behind which an elderly servant peered at him with reptilian insolence. In Jean’s outstretched hand was a parchment envelope and a square of white card, just like the three days previous. Jean was getting testy.
The servant reached between the bars without a word and took everything Jean offered. The envelope, containing the customary gratuity of (far too many) silver coins, vanished into the servant’s coat. The old man read or pretended to read the white card, raised his eyebrows at Jean, and walked away.
The card said exactly what it always did—Contempla va cora frata eminenza. “Consider the request of an eminent friend,” in the Throne Therin that was the polite affectation for this sort of gesture. Rather than giving an aristocrat’s name, this message meant that someone powerful wished to pay anonymously to have someone else examined. This was a common means of bringing wealth to bear on the problem of, say, a pregnant mistress, without directly compromising the identity of anyone important.
Jean passed the long minutes of his wait by examining the physiker’s house. It was a good solid place, about the size of a smaller Alcegrante mansion back in Camorr. Newer, though, and done up in a mock Tal Verrar style that labored to proclaim the importance of its inhabitants. The roof was tiled with slats of volcanic glass, and the windows bordered with decorative carvings that would have better suited a temple.
From the heart of the garden itself, closed off from view by a ten-foot stone wall, Jean could hear the sounds of a lively party. Clinking glasses, shrieks of laughter, and behind it all the hum of a nine-stringed viol and a few other instruments.
“I regret to inform your master that the scholar is presently unable to accommodate his request for a consultation.” The servant reappeared behind the iron gate with empty hands. The envelope, a token of earnestness, was of course gone. Whether into the hands of Zodesti or this servant, Jean couldn’t say.
“Perhaps you might tell me when it would be more convenient for the scholar to receive my master’s petition,” said Jean, “the middle of the afternoon for half a week now being obviously unsuitable.”
“I couldn’t say.” The servant yawned. “The scholar is consumed with work.”
“With work.” Jean fumed as the sound of applause drifted from the garden party. “Indeed. My master has a case which requires the greatest possible skill and discretion—”
“Your master could rely upon the scholar’s discretion at all times,” said the servant. “Unfortunately, his skill is urgently required elsewhere at the moment.”
“Gods damn you, man!” Jean’s self-control evaporated. “This is important!”
“I will not be spoken to in a vulgar fashion. Good day.”
Jean considered reaching through the iron bars and seizing the old man by the throat, but that would have been counterproductive. He wore no fighting leathers under his finery, and his decorative shoes would be worse than bare feet in a scuffle. Despite the pair of hatchets tucked away under his coat, he wasn’t equipped to storm even a garden party by choice.
“The scholar risks giving offense to a citizen of considerable importance,” growled Jean.
“The scholar is giving offense, you simple fellow.” The old man chuckled. “I tell you plainly, he has little interest in the sort of business arranged in this fashion. I don’t believe a single citizen of quality is so unfamiliar with the scholar that they need fear to be received by the front door.”
“I’ll call again tomorrow,” said Jean, straining to keep his composure. “Perhaps I might name a sum that will penetrate even your master’s indifference.”
“You are to be commended for your persistence, if not for your perception. Tomorrow you must do as your master bids. For now, I have already said good day.”
“Good day,” growled Jean. “May the gods cherish the house wherein such kindness dwells.” He bowed stiffly and left.
There was nothing else to be done at the moment, in this gods-damned city where even throwing envelopes of coins was no guarantee of attracting attention to a problem.
As he stomped back to his hired carriage, Jean cursed Maxilan Stragos for the thousandth time. The bastard had lied about so much. Why, in the end, had the damned poison been the one thing he’d chosen to tell the truth about?
3
HOME FOR 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.
4
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, wh
ich 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.
5
“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—”