The Book of Maladies Boxset

by D. K. Holmberg

  He heard the staff splinter and the door flung open behind him.

  Alec turned from the window to face the brute. Shaking, he could think of nothing but how he might escape.

  “I know you, don’t I?” a deep voice rolled toward him.

  Alec shivered again. There was only one reason why would one of the Thelns would know him and that was if the same Theln who had attacked before had returned.

  Ralun.

  Alec had been far too involved in drawing their attention. He would rather have been anonymous; for that matter, he would rather have remained completely free of them and never have lost the apothecary.

  He gripped the windowsill, preparing to throw himself over the ledge. He wasn’t sure if he would survive the fall—there was no way he would hold up if he crashed to the cobblestones below—but jumping gave him a better chance than risking a fight with the Thelns.

  “You’re him, aren’t you?” the brute asked him.

  “I’m no one. Just let me be.”

  The Theln took a step into the room. There was a certain odor to him that was off-putting. Alec couldn’t quite place why it would be, but it was unpleasant.

  “You’re friends with Sam.”

  Alec paused. The Theln had said Sam and not some other derogatory name. That wasn’t what he had expected. Not Ralun, then. “Who are you?”

  The brute paused and remained shrouded in darkness. It gave him a more ominous appearance. He was probably a good foot taller than Alec, and weighed twice as much as he did. “She hasn’t mentioned me?”

  Alec blinked. What was this?

  The brute took a step forward and came out of the shadows. When he did, Alec realized he wasn’t quite as brutish as he had thought, though he still had similarities that made the connection to the Thelns obvious.

  “I’m Tray. I’m her brother.” Tray took a step forward. “Why did you break into Marin’s home?”

  Alec kept his hand on the windowsill, not wanting to move too quickly, but unsure whether he could trust Tray. Were Sam here, this would have played out differently.

  “Tray? Sam has been looking for you.”

  Tray blinked and hesitated for a moment. “Marin has asked me to keep an eye on her building.”

  “Why?”

  Tray shrugged. “I think she suspected Sam would break in.”

  Alec’s hand shifted on the sill, and Tray lunged forward, grabbing Alec by the wrist, holding him in place with an iron grip that Alec didn’t think he could break from were he to try.

  “If you try jumping from the window, you’re going to find that it’s a lot farther down than it seems from the street.”

  “From what I understand, your sister jumped from this height.”

  “My sister thinks that she can jump canals, too. Sooner or later, the staff will slip and she’ll get wet.”

  Alec stared at him, trying to decide if Tray was making a joke or not. Tray was nothing like his sister. Whereas she had an edge but also a certain naiveté, there was a deep intensity to Tray.

  “Why did you come here?”

  “I’m trying to find out some way to help your sister.”

  “Why would Marin have some way to help my sister?”

  Had Marin not shared with Tray what they were?

  Alec wasn’t sure that he should be the one to reveal it, not yet.

  But if he didn’t, how would he appease Tray?

  The much larger man stared at Alec, watching him with that dark-eyed intensity. Were he not Sam’s brother, Alec would have shivered. For that matter, even though he was her brother, he wanted to.

  “I… I thought Marin might have some books that would help me understand a few things that my father studies.”

  “What kinds of things does your father study?” Tray asked.

  “He’s an apothecary.”

  “Why would an apothecary need to break into Marin’s home in the middle of the night?”

  Alec breathed out heavily. “Because I don’t want your sister to know that I did.” That was as accurate as he could be without sharing with Tray what he was really doing here.

  “You’ve come here before?”

  “Your sister brought me here when you were imprisoned.”

  “Yes. Thank you for that.”

  “I’m not sure that I did anything.”

  Tray watched him. “Where is she?”

  “She’s safe.”

  “Safe? That’s all you’re going to tell me?”

  “Well, I’m not sure how much to share with you.”

  “You’re the one who broke into Marin’s home in the middle of the night.”

  “You’re the one who Marin has watching her home.” Alec couldn’t believe that he was arguing with Tray. Given his size, Tray would be able to easily harm him if he wanted to, and yet Alec was risking his anger?

  But from what Sam told him about Tray, he wasn’t the kind to get angry. He had compassion to him and a good heart.

  “Does she know?”

  Alec blinked. “Does she know what?”

  “Does she know the way you feel about her?”

  His heart hammered again just as rapidly as it had when he had been attempting to break into Marin’s home. This time, it was for a very different reason. “I don’t want anything to happen to her,” Alec said.

  “I can see that.”

  “I helped her when she was injured. After you were taken, she was attacked, and she stumbled to my apothecary. I was the one who helped restore her.”

  Tray’s eyes narrowed for a moment. “You were there for her when I wasn’t?”

  “I… I did what I could.”

  “And you’re the reason that she still lives. I guess I should thank you.”

  “It’s what we do.”

  “We?” Tray asked.

  “My father. Me. We’re apothecaries.”

  “But not physickers.”

  Alec shook his head, thinking back to when he and Sam had broken into the university. They were not physickers. He wasn’t sure that he would be able to be a physicker, certainly not with everything that he had seen while he was there. “Not physickers, though my father has some university training.”

  “That’s how you were able to help her.”

  Alec nodded quickly. That university training had been passed on to Alec, though he hadn’t known it. There was more—likely much more—that Alec could learn in the university, but he had to be content with the fact that he would never be offered that chance. Even if he were, would he want to take it?

  “What is it that you are after? I mean, what are you really after?”

  Alec looked around, trying to decide how he would answer. He decided that something near enough to the truth would be his safest bet. He didn’t entirely know how Tray would react if he wasn’t honest. “When we were here before, I saw a few old books on Marin’s shelves. Some of them are incredibly valuable, and since my father’s shop was destroyed, I thought…”

  “Why was your father’s shop destroyed?”

  “The same reason your sister was attacked.”

  Tray’s eyes narrowed.

  “You don’t know?”

  “I was in prison.”

  “Then ask Marin.”

  Tray took a deep breath and looked around Marin’s room. “Marin has been somewhat… unavailable. There are certain things that she believes she should shield me from.”

  “Maybe it’s for good reason,” Alec said. How could Marin explain to Tray that he was part Theln? He wasn’t even sure that he understood, and he’d seen the Thelns.

  “Sam likes to think that she keeps things from me for good reason. Most of the time, there isn’t one.”

  “All I know is that there was an attack on the city, and Sam was a part of stopping it,” Alec said. “Because of that attack, my father’s shop was destroyed, and we lost much of the documentation that he had collected over the last few decades.”

  “And you think that Marin has something that
might help?”

  “My father might have some university training, but he no longer has the same access,” he lied. He didn’t need Tray to know that his father apparently did still have some access to the university, though Alec wasn’t entirely certain about the extent of it.

  “Which books?”

  Alec blinked.

  “Which books are you after?”

  Would Tray actually let him take a look at them?

  That surprised Alec, but perhaps it shouldn’t. Sam felt strongly about her brother, and believed that he had a good heart. It was one of the reasons she had been so dedicated to do everything she could to rescue him.

  “There were a few. I don’t know what Marin would say if she knew that I came for them,” Alec said.

  “Take them. I can return them when you’re done with them.”

  “Just like that?”

  Tray shrugged. “If it’s going to help Sam…”

  Alec nodded quickly. “It will help Sam.”

  Tray stepped aside, and Alec hurried to the shelves and searched the books. It was hard to look through the titles too deeply with Tray standing behind him, watching. And he hadn’t lied. Several of the books were quite old, and would surely be beneficial. When he was done, he stuffed them in his pocket and straightened, looking over at Tray.

  “You should tell her,” Tray said.

  “Tell her what?”

  Tray grunted. “She likes to see me as her younger brother. Did you know that?”

  “I think she’s referred to you as her little brother, though I’m getting the sense that it’s not quite as she has described.”

  Tray chuckled. “I haven’t been her little brother in years. Watch over her.”

  “You’re not going to?”

  “I don’t know that I can, not anymore.” Tray squeezed his eyes shut, and when he opened them again, there was the same dark intensity to them that had been there earlier. “Now go, before someone else comes and begins to ask different questions.”

  Alec watched Tray for a moment before hurrying from the room and down the stairs and out the building. As he raced back along the street, he cast a few glances over his shoulder and had the sense that Tray watched him from Marin’s window.

  He patted his pocket and the books within it. He wasn’t sure whether they would provide him any answers or not, but after meeting Tray, he had more questions than he had before.

  4

  A Job Offer

  The augmentation didn’t last very long.

  Sam waited, crouching against the wall, her clothes torn apart, leaving her feeling dangerously exposed and thankful that Alec had been willing to leave a cloak to cover her. She wasn’t normally that shy, but there was something about him seeing her fully undressed—or nearly so—that left her flushed just thinking of it.

  He’d been gone quite a while. Did he go back to his section of the city to find her something to wear? Once the augmentation wore off, she could get some of her own clothes down the hall in the room where she slept most nights. Occasionally, Alec would stay with her, but for the most part, he returned to stay with his father in the rebuilt shop, presumably to continue his studies with him.

  Unlike many of the augmentations, Sam was aware that it wore off. It was the same each time, leaving her faded with the slow sense of the recovery. At least this time, she looked forward to the augmentation ending. That wasn’t always the case.

  Gradually, her limbs shrank back to their usual size, leaving her feeling normal, or as close enough as she could after having gone through something like that.

  Many times, she enjoyed the fact that she was given additional strength and speed. She probably should be more thankful to Alec for giving her the height that she lacked. Only… she would’ve preferred it to be not quite so dramatic. It was one thing to be granted a few extra inches and quite another to be turned into a giant that no longer fit into the room.

  As she returned to her usual size, she tried to bind the tattered remnants of her clothes back together, tying them into larger pieces in an attempt to cover herself as best she could. It probably didn’t matter how good a job she did. She realized she could scurry down the hall and grab her clothes without anyone else seeing.

  Why hadn’t Alec just grabbed that? And why had he been gone so long?

  Sam glanced down the hall, looking for movement, and wondered if she’d see him in the room he’d claimed on this level. The two of them staying here could raise additional questions. There was always the concern about what Bastan might say, and how much information he was able to glean from her presence here. She tried to conceal the fact that they were attempting to use augmentations, but Sam wasn’t sure how effective she was at hiding it. Bastan had allowed her to use this space, but she wouldn’t put it past him to keep an eye on her.

  Alec wasn’t anywhere along the hallway. She made her way down the darkened hall, quickly dressed in different clothes, and threw her cloak over her shoulders as she headed for the stairs.

  At the top of the stairs, she pulled the door open and looked down the alley, but saw no movement. If Alec had left—and it was looking increasingly likely—she hoped that he’d been smart about it. She had tried to teach him about moving quietly and keeping a low profile, something that was more important in Caster than it was in other places. At the end of the alley, she started back toward Bastan’s tavern. When she entered, there was a sense of vibrancy in spite of the late hour. Bastan managed to sustain quite a steady business at the tavern. There was a constant undercurrent of conversation, though a hint of a threat from the smugglers and other less reputable people typically hanging out in this section was always present. They were the people that she had long ago learned to be comfortable around.

  The kitchen door was propped open. The clamor of activity drifted out to her, along with the savory scent of food. Bastan prized himself on the quality of the food from his kitchen, and Sam couldn’t deny that his tavern had some of the best food in Caster. It might be better than anywhere else in the city.

  She took a seat at one of the tables near the back, near enough to the music so that she could listen to it. The mournful voice of the singer matched the haunting tones of the mandolin. Flames crackled in the hearth, sending offering a comforting warmth to the patrons. She huddled in the cloak, still struggling to get over the augmentation.

  Kevin appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, and he made his way over when he saw her. He was a solid man, probably near forty and had been a faithful servant to Bastan. Kevin was one of the best cooks at the tavern, though to hear him tell it, he had nearly as much skill with the sword.

  “You’re out late,” Kevin said. He had a soft voice, and he pitched it even softer. Somehow, it still managed to carry to her.

  “Is Bastan here?”

  “He’s here.” Kevin nodded toward the back of the room to a door that was closed. This was a different tavern, and a different office, but the layout was much the same as the one that had exploded and burned to the ground. Bastan was nothing if not predictable. “He’s in back, making another deal.”

  “What is it this time?”

  Kevin shrugged. “I’ve stopped asking. It’s probably nothing more than some new collection of art.”

  Sam smiled. She was glad she wasn’t the only one who found Bastan’s interest in art so amusing. “He does have a reputation to maintain,” she said.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.” Kevin winked at her and disappeared back into the kitchen. He was gone for only a few moments before reappearing with a tray of food laden with more than she could eat. She arched a brow at him, and Kevin only shrugged. “Can’t have Bastan’s favorite little thief being underfed, can I?”

  Sam grinned. “I don’t know that you would call me his favorite.”

  “You might not, but you should see how he talks about you when you’re not around. He respects your ability.” Kevin tapped the table and hurried off to another, speaking quietly to each person
that he came upon.

  She dug into her food, quickly getting through the stew. She started on a hunk of bread when Bastan appeared from the back. She wiped her mouth, but continued to chew the lump of bread, savoring each bite. After working with the augmentations, she needed the bread to help soothe her stomach. With each bite, she felt her strength returning.

  Bastan made a quick circuit of the tavern, almost as if intentionally avoiding her before spinning back around and taking a seat across from her. When he rested his elbows on the table, his dark eyes practically glittered. “Well, Samara. Tell me why you visit so late tonight.”

  Sam took another bite of bread and chewed it deliberately. She made a point of meeting Bastan’s eyes. Not doing so is what he expected. In this place, and in this world, Bastan was incredibly powerful. Since Marin had helped her, she had managed to buy her way free of his influence. That gave her the ability to defiantly meet his gaze, though she had done that just as often before.

  “Just a little food. This is the only place willing to serve me so late.” She took another bite and spoke through a mouthful of bread. “And Kevin runs the best kitchen.”

  Bastan harrumphed. “Kevin? It’s my kitchen. You know it’s open all hours. Most who come this late have other interests.”

  Sam finished chewing and glanced down at the plate. There wasn’t much left. “What kind of art deal were you making?”

  Bastan’s gaze flickered around the room before settling back on Sam. “Some people need to learn to be a little more circumspect.”

  “I’m not sure that I’m the right person to ask that of.”

  “Because of Marin?”

  Sam dragged the remaining bit of bread through the rest of the stew and took another bite. “Marin is barely around these days.”

  “So I have observed.”

  “I’m not sure where she’s gone, so it doesn’t make sense for you to even ask.” It irritated Sam that Marin had been gone, especially when she had as many questions as she did. Marin knew what it meant for Sam to be a Kaver, much as she knew what it meant for Alec to be a Scribe, but her disappearance prevented them from getting those answers.

  Bastan leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. For his age, he remained fairly muscular, and there were probably patrons in the tavern sitting around who would jump to his defense were she to do something stupid.