Poisoned: The Book of Maladies Read online

  17

  Into the Morgue

  The inside of the hospital was darkened. At this time of night—practically the middle of the night—no lanterns were even lit. Any physickers who were on duty had long since retired for the evening, and Alec suspected that whoever was here wouldn’t wake up unless they made too much noise.

  “We need some light,” Beckah whispered.

  “Do you know of any way to produce light that won’t get us caught?”

  “You and your fears about getting caught all the time.”

  Alec looked over, but she was nothing more than a blur of darkness. “In this case, I think we’re both equally concerned about being caught here.”

  She shuffled off into the darkness, and he heard a soft clunking sound before she returned. She lifted her cloak, and a faint light shone out. “See? We can try this.”

  “We can try, but even that much light is probably enough for someone to notice us.”

  “Probably, but it’s not enough for us to be caught by anyone monitoring the halls. That’s what I’m more concerned about. If they find us in here, there’s not much we’d be able to do to convince them that we didn’t know where we were. The smells alone should have steered us away.”

  She started off between the cots, flashing the lantern briefly at each patient before hiding it away again. She made her way quickly around the hospital, after making a circuit of the hospital, she returned to stand next to him. “He’s not here,” she whispered.

  “Where else would he be?”

  “What happens if the foxglove doesn’t wear off?” she whispered.

  “I suppose you die.”

  Beckah nodded. “And if that’s what happened to him, I suppose they’d take him with the rest of the bodies.”

  Something about that troubled Alec. Master Carl had brought him to the classroom, making a point of demonstrating that someone could have an appearance of death, but not actually be dead. “Could he still be in the lecture hall?”

  Beckah shook her head. “I don’t think so. I stopped by there before coming to your room. There wasn’t any sign of the cot or the patient.”

  “Why did you stop by there first?”

  “I thought I could find something out about our patient, but…”

  “What if Master Carl took him somewhere?” He asked.

  “Master Carl wouldn’t keep a cot with a nearly dead man someplace hidden, would he?”

  Alec shrugged. “I don’t know what Master Carl would do. I don’t have much experience with him. All I know is that he didn’t seem too impressed with me or my observations.”

  “That’s only because he doesn’t know you yet. You’ll impress him soon enough.” She grinned at him.

  Alec shook his head. “I don’t think that anything I do will impress Master Carl, especially if I make the mistake of breaking into his classroom.”

  “It’s not going to be his classroom.”

  “That’s even worse,” Alec said.

  “We could check the morgue,” Beckah suggested.

  “I don’t know where to find the morgue.”

  “It’s a good thing you have me.” With that, Beckah hurried down the hall, leaving Alec watching her back. She moved confidently, her back straight once more, striding with a purpose that compelled him to follow her. How could he not when she seemed so determined?

  She reached a set of stairs that angled down. It was a hidden stair toward the back of the university where few people would ever come unless they had a reason. He hurried after her, trying to keep pace, not wanting to have her disappear into the darkness of the stairs. There weren’t any lights shining here, and it would be all too easy for him to lose sight of her.

  When he caught up to her, he grabbed her arm, and she took his hand.

  Alec didn’t draw away but felt a hint of guilt at the fact that he didn’t.

  “The morgue is below ground?” he asked.

  “Way below ground. Moisture used to be a problem until the engineers managed to seal off the walls.”

  Alec ran his hand along the wall. It was damp, and he could only imagine the difficulty of trying to suppress moisture seeping through the walls, especially the further underground they got. The pressure from the canals could continue to build, and he could easily envision seepage through the cracks in the foundation of the university.

  “This has the potential to be quite disgusting,” Alec said.

  “There’s potential, but it gets better the farther down you go.”

  Alec glanced over at her. Every two dozen steps or so, there was another lantern, each one flickering faintly, but enough to give light for him to make out her features. “You know this for sure?”

  “I might have ventured this way in the past.”

  She hurried down more steps, and Alec had no choice but to follow her.

  The stairs continued down, changing directions every so often, heading deep beneath the ground. The walls were stacked stone, and faint cracks traced through the rock, leaving a hint of dampness in the air.

  Surprisingly, the farther they went, the less that scent of dampness was present. It faded before disappearing altogether.

  Alec touched the wall and realized that it was dry here.

  Beckah noted what he did and nodded. “Like I said, the engineers managed to secure the lowest levels of the university. They’re less concerned about higher up, for some reason.”

  The stairs ended, and she led him to a door along a narrow hallway. Alec half expected the door to be locked, but Beckah opened it and stepped inside.

  The appearance of the morgue assaulted him first. The inside of the room was simple. Solid stone surrounded him from floor to ceiling. Metal cots were arranged in rows, and bodies were set on top of them. There were dozens here.

  Then he noticed the smell. It was overwhelming. The foul stench of decay filled his nostrils, and it was obvious that no attempt had been made to preserve the bodies. How long had they been left here, rotting? The walls didn’t allow any moisture through, but that didn’t prevent decay of the bodies.

  “You’ve been down here before?” Alec asked.

  “I’ve had to come,” she answered.

  “What possible reason would you have to come down here?”

  Beckah turned away from him, ignoring the question.

  “Beckah?”

  She sighed. “I’ve come down here to assist in the postmortem evaluations.”

  “I don’t understand why you would do that.”

  “You don’t? What better way is there to learn the body than to study it? I’ve been given access to use the morgue to continue my studies.”

  “How were you given permission?”

  “We’ve already talked about how everyone has a connection to the university. I’m no different.”

  Alec waited, thinking she might expand on that, provide him some details, but he was mistaken.

  “Now. Let’s see if Master Carl’s patient is here.”

  Beckah made a circuit of the morgue, much like she had in the hospital above. She moved quickly, with a comfortable stride, and stopped on the opposite side of the morgue to wave Alec over.

  When he joined her, he realized that she’d found the man. He looked no different than he did before. His skin still had decent turgor to it, and there were none of the typical signs of death present. Alec once more checked him for a heartbeat but found none. There was no pulse present in his wrist, or in his neck when he reached for the primary vein there.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “He doesn’t look any different than he did before.”

  “By that, you mean he’s still nearly dead.”

  Alec shrugged. “The foxglove didn’t have a prolonged effect like this. Whatever poisoned him has lingered longer.”

  “Unless he is actually dead.”

  Alec bit his lip, trying not to breathe through his nose. “Yes. Unless he is actually dead.”

  “There’s only one way to
see if your theory is correct.” She held her hand out to him, waiting.

  Alec pulled out his jar of thistle root and fished out a long section. Then he changed his mind and pulled out all that was remaining. If it was to have any chance of working, he needed to use as much as possible. With Beckah, a small cutting hadn’t been enough. He’d needed much more to have any effect.

  Taking out his folding knife, he sliced up the thistle root, smashed it into a pulp, and stuffed it into the man’s mouth.

  “Now what?” Beckah asked.

  “Now we wait.”

  “How long do we have to wait?”

  “With you, it took a bit of time to take effect, but once it did, you became fully conscious quickly. If it’s going to work on this man, given how long he’s been in this state, it will likely take much longer, if it’s going to work at all.”

  “Well, if it’s going to work, it had better happen before morning.”

  “Why before morning?”

  “That’s when they begin to incinerate the bodies.”

  Alec looked at the man and wondered if he somehow had to get it into the man’s digestive system. He stroked the throat, trying to force the thistle root down into his stomach. Would it make a difference?

  And if it didn’t, what did that mean?

  It meant that he hadn’t been poisoned by foxglove, or if he had, it had been in such an amount that it stopped his heart permanently.

  “This… is a little anticlimactic.”

  “You were expecting it to happen rapidly?” Alec asked.

  “I don’t know. I was hoping he’d sit up, look around the room, and thank us for saving him.”

  “What if he didn’t want to be saved?” Alec asked.

  “Why wouldn’t he want to be saved?”

  “Not all people want to live.” He’d seen that often enough in his time with his father and recognized that there were plenty of people who had no interest in living. Some had traumatic events happen to them and became depressed, others simply lost the will to live. His father had often tried various combinations of medications, but rarely had he ever been successful. It was one failing of the types of medications his father knew.

  “I don’t know how much longer we should stay here,” Alec said. More than that, he wasn’t sure how much longer he could tolerate being in the morgue. The stench was nearly unbearable.

  “What if he wakes up?”

  Alec watched the man and shook his head. “If he wakes up, it will seem as if the foxglove wore off. Probably nothing more than that. But if we’re caught here, especially this late at night, there will be other consequences.”

  “None of the masters care that we’re here. All they care about is that the bodies are properly disposed of.”

  “I think that if they find us here in the middle of the night, they’ll have different opinions about whether or not we should be allowed to be here.”

  Beckah looked around, and a sly grin crossed her face. “As in how they might think we’re into some pretty strange things?”

  “I’m not interested in finding out what the masters might think of us,” he said.

  Alec checked the man’s pulse again, waiting to see if there might be any sign that the thistle root took hold, but nothing had changed.

  Beckah gave him a strange glance before nodding and leading him away from the morgue. Alec followed her, wanting nothing more than to get out of there, feeling surprisingly uncomfortable around all the bodies. Considering the amount of time he’d spent with his father, time spent healing, it surprised him that he should be uncomfortable around death.

  Maybe it was the fact that nothing had been able to be done for so many of these people. The physickers had failed them. Or maybe, it was something else. Either way, he was relieved when they closed the door behind them and started back up the stairs.

  18

  Searching for Marin

  Sam jumped canals here with ease, no longer paying attention to how much space she gave before making the leap, simply reacting. At one canal, as she flipped up, she felt the staff begin to wobble beneath her. Sam pressed up, balancing briefly, before realizing that she was doing just as Thoren had taught her.

  She kicked, carrying herself over the canal, landing once more on the solid shore. This side of the canal was protected and had dozens of shops, most of them barely highborn. A merchant section. It was situated between the lower sections of the city and those that were traditionally considered the upper-class sections. She wasn’t far from the section where Alec’s father had his shop.

  Sam didn’t remain there very long.

  She hurried along the edge of the canal, ignoring the scents here, and paying no attention to the barges pushed along the canals. There had been a time not so long ago when she would have avoided the barges, not wanting to draw their attention, but what did it matter anymore? Now she had papers in hand and could easily use those to hop on one of the barges and take that toward the palace.

  She passed another couple of canals before finally landing in Caster.

  After months away, she had been here several times in the last week.

  She wandered along the street, making her way toward Marin’s house, deciding on impulse to take a look at it. She had already examined the woman’s house herself after Marin had disappeared, so a return wouldn’t matter. How could it? Marin was far too clever to leave anything incriminating behind.

  The building was one of the oldest in the Caster section. It was well-constructed and as fancy as anything found here, nice enough that she half expected someone to have attempted to move in since Marin had been absent. But the entire complex had an air of disuse to it.

  Sam paced around the outside of the building, circling the perimeter carefully before using her canal staff and leaping up to one of the neighboring rooftops. From there, she crouched, waiting.

  There was no movement.

  She watched it for a few long moments, ready to disappear if she saw any sign of someone within. Knowing Marin, she would likely keep her home monitored by someone. Maybe even Tray. Then again, had she kept her home monitored, Sam expected that Bastan would have been aware and would have said something to her. That he hadn’t mentioned it suggested there had been no sign from Marin.

  Sam slipped down from the rooftop and crept toward the building’s front door. In times like this, she wished she had an augmentation. She wasn’t sure what she would use in this circumstance, but Alec would probably have had an idea. He could make her small, small enough that she wouldn’t be noticed. Maybe he had some way of turning her into a wisp of smoke, though Sam wasn’t sure that she cared for what risks might be involved in something like that.

  If she only had her cloak, the cloak that she’d once taken from Marin, she would be able to hide. Instead, she was forced to rely on her own stealth.

  It had been months since she had needed these skills. Now that she did, would they be rusty, or would she fall back into her familiar patterns?

  Making certain there was no one moving along the street, she hurried forward and reached the door front door to the building. When she tested the handle, it was unlocked.

  Sam frowned as she slowly opened the door and went inside. That was not typical for Marin. As far as she knew, Marin was the only one who lived in this building, the woman having bought out everyone else, and she was a stickler for keeping her door locked. Sam doubted that anyone else would have broken in and left it unlocked.

  Had she hurried away so quickly that she hadn’t taken the time to secure it?

  That didn’t fit with what Sam knew of Marin.

  The entryway was quite nice for anyplace in Caster. The walls had evidence of fine craftsmanship, though it was aged and more ornate than was common these days. Even the lanterns on the walls were nice, though she had no idea how long it had been since the lanterns had been lit. No one but Marin lived here for as long as she could remember, and she had never lit them.

  Sam crept up the steps
, keeping her feet light, not wanting to disturb the silence within the building. When she reached Marin’s door, she paused a moment, listening for sounds on the other side. There were none.

  She forced the door open. Unlike the door out to the street, this one was locked. It took a bit of effort, no longer carrying the lock-pick set Bastan had given her, but she managed to pick it open and stepped inside.

  As she had suspected, the room was empty, though not completely so. There was a cot along one wall, and the shelves that had stored Marin’s collection of books remained, though none of the books were here. Had Marin come back and collected them? Had she sent someone else after them, possibly Tray?

  She made a slow circle of the room and stopped in the center, looking around. There was no evidence that Marin had been here in months.

  The wind rattled the window. Below her, something thudded.

  Sam froze. Was that the wind, too?

  It has certainly been windy enough when she had come here, but she didn’t think that sound was the wind. How could it be so gusty all of a sudden? It hadn’t been nearly that gusty when she had been up on the rooftop, and if she had felt it anywhere, that would have been the place.

  That suggested there was another answer.

  Was there someone else in here with her?

  She thought she’d been careful and had paid attention to activity on the street around her, surveying the area around Marin’s building, looking for evidence that anyone else might have been watching, and she hadn’t seen anything—had she?

  There hadn’t been anything obvious, nothing that would have told her she had been spied but was it possible that she had missed something?

  Sam hesitated, listening, and the rattling came again. This time she was certain that it wasn’t the wind, but there was no questioning that the window had rattled and that whatever had caused it was leading to a building pressure.

  Below her, she felt a thudding again.

  She’d felt something similar in the past, hadn’t she?

  Sam approached the window slowly, taking a closer look, but didn’t see anything that would tell her why she was feeling the pressure here.