The Book of Maladies Boxset

by D. K. Holmberg

  “It still doesn’t make sense,” Alec said.

  “What doesn’t make sense? You saw—and experienced—the way that foxglove works.”

  “I did, and I also saw how quickly you recovered from your dose.”

  “And you didn’t recover that quickly. You were out for nearly eight hours,” she said.

  Eight hours? He’d not been told how long, nor had he asked when he awoke in the hospital. The other man—the one who had been poisoned by foxglove—had been out at least that long.

  There was a way to test it, but that meant he had to find this thistle root.

  Not only that, but he had to find the man to test it on.

  “I’ve seen that look in your eyes before,” Beckah said.

  “You’ve not seen any look before.”

  “Sure I have. You have a look to your face that tells me you intend to do something you think is stupid.”

  Alec shrugged. “Maybe you have seen that look on my face before. But that doesn’t mean I will do something or that it’s stupid.”

  “No? What do you intend to do then?”

  “I want to know why I had the reaction I did and why that man remains unconscious. Unless he’s regained consciousness in the last eight hours.”

  Beckah shook her head. Alec was not surprised by that but had the man awakened, it would have changed his thinking a little bit. He would have had no choice but to accept that what Master Carl told him was accurate. That it was just an overdose of foxglove.

  And why shouldn’t he believe that?

  “I’m going to visit my father,” he said.

  “You know what time it is?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Does it matter? My father will be happy to see me.” He hoped that was true. But given the hour, his father might not even be in his shop.”

  “Good. I have wanted to visit one of the famed apothecary shops found in that section of the city.”

  Alec looked at her askance. “Famed apothecaries?” he asked. “There’s only my father’s shop.”

  “That makes it easier. I don’t have to visit quite so many.”

  Alec sighed and shook his head, but had to admit to himself that having company—especially Beckah—would make the trip across the city more palatable.

  15

  In the Apothecary

  “This is where you grew up?” Beckah asked in a hushed tone.

  Alec glanced over. She had grown increasingly quiet the farther they got away from the university section and approached some of the outer sections. With each bridge they crossed, they went farther and farther away from the center of the city, and closer to a place that Alec had long considered home. He still considered it home, even though he hadn’t resided there for many months.

  “This is where,” he said.

  “You’re practically lowborn,” she said before clamping her hand over her mouth. “I mean, it’s a nice merchant section.”

  A hint of a smile crossed his face. “Practically. We never considered ourselves that when we were here, but the more I’ve gotten to know other people in the city, and other sections of the city, I’ve come to realize that I really was practically lowborn.”

  Sam wouldn’t see it that way. Sam saw herself as lowborn and saw anyone else anywhere near the inner sections of the city as highborn. It was an endearing quality about Sam that he’d always been amused by. She tended to pay more attention to things like that than Alec ever did, though in her defense, she had never been anything other than a lowborn. He had the advantage of being raised in a place where he might have been viewed as between classes, but he was much closer to highborn than he was to lowborn.

  “Why would your father choose this section to establish his apothecary?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he likes the people. Maybe he liked the access.”

  “Access? What kind of access do you get all the way out here?”

  “You know, there are other sections of the city.”

  “I know. You can go far beyond this, and you get deep into those lowborn sections. Kyza knows what would happen to you if you weren’t careful there.”

  “Nothing will happen to you there. I’ve spent a lot of time all the way out in Caster, and rarely did I feel threatened.”

  “You’re a strange man, Alec.”

  Alec shrugged as he turned down the familiar street toward his father’s shop. He glanced at the nearby buildings, wondering who might still be awake. Mrs. Rubbles had a lantern lit, so he suspected she was awake, but no other shops were. Even his father’s shop was darkened.

  “Which one is yours?”

  Alec led her to the apothecary and knocked on the door. He waited but doubted his father would be there. He tested the handle and found it locked. Thankfully, since his last visit, his father had given him a key. Alec fished it out of his bag and unlocked the door, pushing it open to the soft tinkling of the bell over the door, and stepped inside.

  Beckah hesitated and watched him for a moment before following him in.

  Once she’d joined him inside, he closed the door and locked it. He didn’t want someone entering the shop while they searched for the thistle root.

  “It’s so dark,” Beckah said.

  Alec fumbled forward, trying to use his memory of the new shop’s layout, thankful that it was somewhat similar to the one he’d grown up in. This one was different, but it was similar enough that he was able to find his way to the tables in the middle of the shop. He suspected he would find a lantern there.

  He did. Alec fumbled a moment until he managed to get it lit, casting a soft orange glow over the room.

  Beckah’s eyes widened as they adjusted, and she peered around, holding her breath. “This is an apothecary shop?” she asked.

  “It is. This is the kind of apothecary shop that my father runs. I don’t know what others might be like.” He hadn’t actually ever been to any other apothecary shops. What need would he have?

  She stopped at one of the shelves, and her hand ran along the row of jars there. “All of this is medicine,” she said.

  Alec laughed softly. “Yes. What did you think we would have?”

  She glanced over at him. “I never expected you to have the same capabilities as they have in the hospital.”

  She tapped one of the shelves and lifted the jar. “They don’t even have some of these in the hospital, do they?”

  “My father has unique sources for various things. I don’t think many at the university have the same access he manages.”

  Beckah continued along the row of shelves, stopping at a few before continuing on. Every so often, her breath caught, and she muttered something softly to herself, though he never was clear what that was. She slowly made her way through the shop before coming back to the center and leaning on one of the tables.

  “It seems I’ve underestimated you,” she said.

  “How so?”

  “Well, when you’ve spoken of the things you’ve seen and done, I think part of me has always believed that maybe you weren't entirely honest.”

  “Everything I’ve said has been the truth.”

  Beckah grunted. “Yes. I can see that now. What I’d like to know is how your father managed to obtain such supplies. Some of the things here are obscure, things that the masters would love to have access to.”

  “As I said, my father has a unique ability to acquire various medicines. I think he takes a strange sort of pride in being able to find things that the university believes impossible to source.”

  “Such as thistle root.”

  Alec shrugged. “Things like that,” he agreed.

  “Well?” she said.

  Alec arched a brow. “Well what?”

  “Does he have any?”

  Alec hadn’t looked yet, he’d been preoccupied watching her explore the shop. “Why don’t we take a look?”

  Alec walked over to one wall. He wasn’t certain if his father even had thistle root here. But if it was going to be anywhere, Alec su
spected he would find it along this row. This was where his father stored a variety of roots, though Alec didn’t have the entire row of plants memorized, not as his father did.

  Most of them had labels, and the labels were really for Alec’s benefit, not so much for his father, who had no need for labels as he was often the one who had collected them. Alec scanned the row of roots before finding what he sought. He pulled it out and glanced at the jar. The root was a deep black and strangely twisted. There were small forms along the edge, and he had no idea how it was used to counteract the foxglove.

  “He has some?” Beckah asked.

  “He has some, but now that I have it, I’m not sure exactly how we would use it to counteract the foxglove.”

  “Wouldn’t it just be ingested the same way as the foxglove?”

  “Not necessarily. Sometimes, with different treatments—and especially with roots like this—they have to be crushed, pulverized into a powder before they are effective. There are some that need to be juiced, squeezing out the oils from within them to make them effective.”

  “If your father has these here, wouldn’t it make sense that he might have some record of how it would be used?”

  “Oh, my father keeps meticulous records. It’s just that finding anything within his records is a matter of patience and perseverance.” And most of them had been destroyed in the fire.

  She smiled. “How can they be meticulous, but also require patience?”

  “Come with me, and I’ll show you.”

  Alec led her toward the back of the shop, behind the counter where his father often did most of his accounting and nodded to a row of thick bound books. There were over a dozen, each written in his father’s hand, each detailing knowledge he’d accumulated from several months of treatments.

  “My father has an organization, but it’s one that fits with his mind. He remembers where and when he saw something before and can find it in his notes. Without knowing when he treated a particular ailment, it’s not always possible to know—or find—what he did for that person. This is all since the shop was rebuilt.”

  Beckah reached for one of the books and glanced up at Alec, seemingly waiting for permission. He nodded. It wasn’t that there was anything secretive in any of his father’s books. They were records, no different from the records that were kept at the university, only they were records of his father’s preferred treatment attempts.

  “This is… amazing,” Beckah said, looking up. “He’s detailing the symptoms, what he has come up with as a diagnosis, and whether the treatment worked. Can you imagine if the journals at the university were anything like this?”

  Alec chuckled. “That might be part of the reason I have had such a hard time at the university. I understand the master physickers have a different way of documenting, but it’s hard when it’s so different from what I grew up learning.”

  “How much of this were you a part of?”

  Alec flipped the book closed, noting the date scrawled across the front. “This one? Not much. These are since I left for the university.”

  “Any of these?” she asked, waving her hand toward the other volumes.

  Alec crouched down, looking at the volumes that she’d indicated. “Some of these I had a hand in.” He grabbed one of the books and flipped toward the end, pointing to his notes.

  Beckah leaned over the page, reading what he’d written. “You sound like him, you know that?”

  Alec chuckled. “I don’t think I sound like him.”

  “Well, you document like him. Does that make you feel better?”

  He shrugged. “He trained me. It’s his style I’m using.”

  “And the first thing you showed me was a case of diarrhea?” She wrinkled her nose as she said it, and Alec grinned.

  “You wouldn’t believe how much diarrhea comes through here.”

  Beckah pulled her hand off the book, and Alec laughed. “That’s the side of healing that I’m not quite sure I’m ready for. I am great with the theoretical aspect of it, being able to work through a problem and come up with a solution, but applying it—especially when it’s disgusting—isn’t something I am certain I’ll excel at.”

  She turned her attention back to his father’s books. “You don’t think there’s any way to search through these books to find where your father might have used thistle root?”

  “Short of asking my father, or searching through each section? No.”

  “He had to have indexed it in some fashion.”

  “His indexing is by year. He documents because that is what he’s always done, but he never needs to reference his notes because he remembers every treatment he’s ever administered and every patient he’s ever treated. His records are mainly for… me, I guess. So, he only compiles indexes annually. And after the fire…”

  “But you studied them, didn’t you?”

  “I did study some of them, but it’s one thing to observe and record symptoms, and another to look back and try to find where my father might have documented something from years past.”

  Beckah stood and tapped her chin. She had a slight hunch to her shoulders, and leaned over the table, peering at the book, unmindful of the fact that she was shoulder to shoulder with Alec. She smelled of flowers, mostly lilacs and roses, both of which were used at the hospital for various healing concoctions.

  “What other way would you have of searching this?” she asked him. “I think you’re right. Searching through all the volumes here would be far too difficult, but if there was another way to do it, perhaps somehow triggering your memory of something related to where you might have seen a reference to thistle root.”

  “I came across it once, but…”

  Beckah bit her lip. “To have come across it, wouldn’t you have likely been reading about foxglove?”

  “Maybe,” he agreed. Alec tried to think about when he would have read—or written—about foxglove. There was a time a few months ago, when one of their neighbors came into the shop, complaining of something in their chest. His father had taken a listen, done a brief exam, and ultimately chose to administer foxglove.

  “Grab me that one,” he said, motioning toward one of the volumes on the nearby shelf.

  “This one?”

  He shook his head. “The one next to it.”

  Beckah pulled the book off the shelf, and Alec opened it and started flipping through the pages. As he did, he remembered seeing many of these ailments. The descriptions took him back, practically putting him in front of the patients he and his father had treated so long ago, and he recalled them vividly.

  He suspected that, more than anything else, was the reason his father documented in this way. It was easy to recall a diagnosis and to recall what they tried. It was much more difficult to remember all the different faces and people they’d seen over the years, though his father would have managed even that.

  Alec turned the pages, feeling the thick paper in his fingers, reminded of the easar paper. Not for the first time, Alec knew that his father would have interest in the easar paper, and he could only imagine what his father would do were he to get his hands on it, enough to document all of the ailments. Would he ever consider creating a record of healing, one that was similar in some ways to what the Thelns had with their Book of Maladies?

  About halfway down the page, he came across the cluster of symptoms that he remembered. His finger paused, held just above the surface of the page, and he traced down, looking to see if there was reference to thistle root here.

  “Did you find what you’re looking for?”

  “I found what I remembered of foxglove,” he said. He looked up, meeting her gaze. “There was a man who came into the shop, and he had been complaining of pain. My father determined that it was from his heart and gave him foxglove.” He tapped the page, the marker where his father had documented the need for foxglove.

  “Any reference to the root?”

  “Unfortunately, not. It’s only about the foxglove, the dose
needed to slow the man’s heart. My father never intended to stop his heart, and hadn’t worried about that the fact that he probably wouldn’t have been able to slow it enough to stop it without significant amounts of foxglove, anyway.”

  “Well. It seems that since we have no way of learning from books, it’s time for an experiment.”

  Alec shook his head. “I don’t think I can take foxglove again. The last time—”

  Beckah smiled. “Not you. I wouldn’t put you through that again, even if I thought that was a good idea. You’re clearly sensitive to it.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And sensitive about many other things as well, it seems. I’m only suggesting that we take the thistle root and see if we can’t figure out the best means of administering it.”

  Alec picked up the jar, noting the amount of root inside. There didn’t seem to be an enormous amount, though he didn’t know how much was necessary to counteract the effects of the foxglove.

  “Where? Back to the university? If we get caught taking foxglove out of Master Carl’s supplies…” Alec didn’t even want to think about what the master would do.

  “Why would we have to go back to the university when we have a full apothecary around us?”

  Alec looked around his father’s shop, realizing that her suggestion made a certain sort of sense. They could test thistle root and determine the best means of administering it, and then could return to the university, and attempt to find Master Carl’s patient.

  “I’ll get the foxglove and thistle root. Maybe we start with swallowing it whole to begin with.”

  Beckah lifted the jar and stared through the glass. Alec could practically see her mind working, trying to decide if she’d made a mistake volunteering herself, as she noted the thorns on the side of the root. “I’m not sure I like this idea so much anymore.”

  Alec smiled. “Well, it was your idea.”

  16

  The Test

  They laid out a row of foxglove leaves on a small table that Alec pushed up next to the cot along the back of the wall. He’d carefully removed the thistle root from the jar, and cut off a few small sections of it, uncertain whether it was harmful to handle. Some of the various medicines his father collected were caustic and would be dangerous if handled without gloves on.