The Book of Maladies Boxset

by D. K. Holmberg

  “This would be much easier if my father were here,” he muttered.

  “If you think he’ll return, we can wait until morning.”

  “I don’t know with him. There are times when he disappears for days, even weeks.”

  “Why does he disappear?”

  Alec shrugged. “Harvesting. That’s usually what he’s up to when he disappears. There’s no one else who can collect everything that he needs. I think that bothers him.”

  “He thought he’d have you with him?”

  Alec nodded. “He thought I would one day join him. Father and son running the apothecary shop together.”

  “Is that what you wanted?”

  “For a while.”

  “What do you want now?” she asked.

  It seemed a loaded question, one that Alec didn’t really have a good answer for. What did he want now? He wanted to continue to learn and study at the university. He wanted to know what it meant for him to be a Scribe, and how he could best use those, but that required him to have more time with Sam.

  “I want to help that man if I can.”

  Beckah nodded once. “Me, too.” She grabbed an entire leaf of foxglove and put it in her mouth and swallowed it.

  “Beckah—”

  “Better find an antidote.”

  Her eyes grew heavy fairly quickly, and she blinked at him, looking through half lids. “This might have been a mistake.”

  The words were thick, and Alec wasn’t sure that he heard her correctly but agreed that she’d probably made a mistake. She was impulsive, and if he failed to find some way of helping her, she might not survive.

  Alec grabbed one of the cut ends of the thistle root and handed it to her. “Chew this.”

  She opened her mouth slightly, and Alec shoved the small finger of thistle root into her mouth. She chewed on it, and her head began to bob.

  He didn’t know how long the thistle root took to work—if it even would in this manner.

  She stopped moving, and he quickly grabbed another section of the root and crushed it beneath his knife. The effect would be much like chewing it, but sometimes cutting it like this—pulverizing it—helped release various healing compounds from the different roots.

  A few more moments passed before he managed to get her to take that into her mouth. “Swallow.”

  Would she obey? She seemed confused enough that it was possible she wouldn’t. Thankfully, she managed to maintain enough focus to chew on the root and swallow it.

  Alec waited, watching her.

  He grabbed for her wrist, feeling her pulse. It slowed dangerously, dropping into a range where he knew she wouldn’t last long if it persisted like this.

  “Beckah—” he said.

  He had to do something different.

  The juice of the root seemed more likely to be effective than anything else, but he couldn’t exclude that the pulp might have some beneficial properties as well. Maybe they hadn’t used enough. After the first dosing, she hadn’t gotten any worse, but she hadn’t gotten any better. After the second dosing, she had definitely not gotten any worse, but she still hadn’t woken up.

  Alec cut off a longer section of thistle root. If this worked, they wouldn’t have much remaining. It might be enough to help restore the man at the university, but he would leave his father with no supply. Was that dangerous?

  Alec pulverized the section of root and slipped it into Beckah’s mouth. He had to force her to chew and then stroked her throat to encourage her to swallow. She did so, but reluctantly.

  It was all he could do. He sat back, waiting. If this worked, he hoped she would come around quickly.

  “Beckah?”

  She didn’t react. Was this what he looked like when he’d succumbed to the effects of the foxglove? With Beckah, at least he had the hope of an antidote, but at the university, they hadn’t had any thistle root. They had simply put Alec in the hospital until it wore off.

  Would he have to get Beckah to the hospital? He had no idea how long she might be in this state. Or if she’d ever come out of it.

  She took a quick breath of air and sat up suddenly, looking around the room as she blinked her eyes. “That was unpleasant,” she said.

  “Which part?”

  She licked her lips before glancing over to the cutting board where he’d diced up the thistle root. “Probably that most of all. It has a particular aftertaste that lingers. It is not pleasant.”

  Alec laughed in spite of himself. “Your heart seemed to have stopped, much like the man at the university. I don’t know if the thistle root made a difference, or if it simply wore off.”

  “I took enough foxglove that it should have taken longer to wear off.”

  “I don’t know. When you took a pinch of it when we were in class, it worked immediately, but it also wore off very quickly with you. This time might have been similar, but the greater dose could have extended the duration of the effects.”

  Her gaze drifted down to the foxglove leaves. “There’s only one way to test.”

  Before he could stop her, she pinched off the end of one of the leaves and stuffed it in her mouth and began chewing.

  “If the thistle root is truly an antidote, then this shouldn’t affect me,” she said.

  Alec smiled to himself.

  “What is it?”

  “Only that I wonder if we could have tested this differently. If the thistle root prevents the foxglove from working, then we could have gone about this in reverse.”

  Beckah barked out a laugh.

  “Anything?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not feeling anything yet. There’s a slight burning in my throat, but I don’t know if that’s the thistle root or the fact that I’ve now taken two doses of foxglove. It could be that all I’m feeling are the effects of the different ways I’ve tormented myself this evening.”

  “This time, you seemed to take about as much as you did at the university.”

  “Yes. I pinched off the end of the leaf just like I did there.”

  “There, you began to succumb to the effects fairly quickly.”

  “Right.” She grabbed her wrist and felt her pulse. “There’s no slowing. Nothing beyond the usual.”

  “That means it worked.”

  Beckah grinned. “Didn’t you think it was going to work?”

  “I wasn’t about to risk myself the way that you so willingly have done.”

  She waved her hand. “I wasn’t in any real danger. You were here with me.”

  Alec shook his head, unable to believe that she would so willingly place herself in harm’s way. “Now we need to go back and find where Master Carl left that man.”

  “That means breaking into the hospital,” she said. “Is that something you’re ready to do?”

  He was tempted to tell her that it wouldn’t be the first time he had broken into the hospital, though the first time had been with some urgency, looking for his father. But back then, he was completely oblivious to the workings of the university. Now, they had some right to visit, though it was rare for first-year students to spend much time in the hospital without having the masters there with them.

  “We won’t be breaking in so much as we’ll be investigating a treatment response,” Alec said.

  Beckah laughed again. “I think I like this Alec. Maybe dying was good for you.”

  “I don’t think dying is good for anyone.”

  She hopped up off the cot and pointed at the thistle root. “Are you going to grab that, or should I?”

  Alec stuffed it back into the jar and tucked it into his cloak, before following her.

  As they reached the door, he paused and turned back.

  “The lantern?” she asked.

  “Not just the lantern. I need to leave a note for my father that I took the thistle root. I should also let him know that we used a few of the foxglove leaves. He likes to keep a tight inventory.”

  Beckah waited as Alec hurried to the back of the shop and scra
tched a quick note on a piece of his father’s paper. On it, he explained what he’d been through, and the fact that they were testing thistle root as an antidote for foxglove and apologized for taking the last of his supply.

  Alec extinguished the lantern on his way out and joined Beckah at the door, closing and locking it behind him. It felt strange leaving the shop this late at night, and stranger still that the shop itself no longer felt quite as much like home as it once had.

  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.”