The Book of Maladies Boxset

by D. K. Holmberg

  “I’ll come.”

  Beckah grabbed his hand. “Me, too.”

  23

  Protections on the City

  Sam stiffened. Why would he bring someone else with him?

  She lifted her hand off of Elaine’s head and stood, clasping her hands behind her back. “Thank you for coming, Alec.”

  Alec glanced from Sam to Elaine before bringing his gaze back up to meet hers. “What happened? I received this,” he said, holding up the note that Bastan had sent with Kevin. “And it said that I was needed urgently. What happened?”

  Sam wondered how openly she could speak. How much did this other physicker know? And, more importantly, why had Alec felt comfortable revealing their secrets to her?

  “She was attacked,” Sam started. “There was an explosion. Like the one in your shop.”

  Alec’s eyes widened slightly, and he studied Elaine for a moment. At least he seemed to understand what Sam was getting at. She had worried that he might be too caught up in this other physicker, and that he might be so interested in trying to impress her that he wouldn’t help Sam or Elaine.

  “I’ll need—”

  “I know. Bastan claims to have supplies.”

  Alec took a deep breath and nodded. “Good.” He turned to the other physicker. “Beckah, I need you go upstairs and see if you can grab a few towels and keep them moistened.”

  The other physicker—Beckah—looked at Alec with a hint of amusement in her eyes. There was something more there, as well, something that made Sam’s blood boil, though it should not. She had no claim on Alec, nothing more than their connection as Kaver and Scribe would allow.

  “Only towels?” Beckah asked.

  “For now,” Alec said.

  Beckah shrugged and turned back toward the door. Sam soon heard her footsteps on the stairs.

  Alec turned to Sam and sighed. “Why haven’t you come to me?” he asked.

  “Why haven’t I… Alec, I tried.”

  “You tried? It seems to me that with your connections, if you were to try, you would be granted entry.”

  Sam looked down. Did she share with him that she had come, that she had seen Alec, but had turned and left when she saw him with this other physicker? How would that make her seem? Probably as stupid as she felt right now.

  “I went to the university to find you once or twice. The last time, I saw you, but you were…” Sam closed her eyes; she felt ridiculous admitting the reason that she had turned around. Didn’t they have more of a connection than that?

  “I was what? In class?”

  “With her.” Sam looked up and met his gaze. Heat rose in her cheeks, and she breathed out heavily.

  “That’s the reason you haven’t come to the university in the last few weeks? I thought I’d done something to upset you. The last time you disappeared on me, you were intent to try to do things on your own.”

  “I seem to remember you applying for the university at that time,” Sam said.

  “Wasn’t that about the same time you were trailing Marin—and your brother—through the city? I think that’s about the same time you were determined to chase the princess throughout every section of the city.”

  “And for good reason,” Sam said.

  “It only seems a good reason now, but that doesn’t mean it was a good reason then.”

  Sam stared at him. “Who is she?” she asked softly.

  “She’s another student at the university. She’s—”

  Alec didn’t have a chance to finish. Bastan burst into the room, carrying a single sheet of easar paper. The paper was distinct enough that Sam recognized it without even examining it closely. There was something about the parchment that was easily identifiable. She could practically smell it.

  “Here,” Bastan said. “You can use this sheet, but that’s all.”

  Alec took the page from him with a certain greedy excitement. “Where did you get this?” he asked.

  “I’m a collector. I find things like this all over,” Bastan said.

  Sam grunted. “A collector? That’s what you would have us believe?”

  Bastan shrugged. “Believe what you want but be thankful I have even this page for you.”

  “And if it were me lying there? How many pages would you suddenly find then?” Sam asked. She knew she was pressing, and she knew that she was making assumptions, but she thought they were somewhat valid. Bastan would help her, wouldn’t he? He wouldn’t let her die just to protect his supply of easar paper.

  “Be thankful it’s not you lying there. I know that I am.”

  Bastan stepped back to the door and tipped his head toward Alec, nodding slightly.

  Sam now knew that Bastan had witnessed Alec mixing their blood before and had seen the way that he’d worked his augmentation, but it still felt uncomfortable for her to have Bastan standing there, watching.

  “I think she’s been poisoned, as well as having a potential internal injury,” Sam said.

  “Poisoned?”

  She nodded. “It’s like what they used on me. The Theln we faced was like Ralun. Powerful.”

  “All of them were powerful.”

  “This one was incredibly powerful.”

  Alec watched her and then nodded. “Are you ready?” he asked.

  Sam held her hand out, and Alec pulled a foldable knife from his pocket and made quick work of nicking the palm of her hand. Each time he did, it hurt about the same. Each time, Sam hoped it wouldn’t hurt, but it always did. He pulled a small glass vial from beneath his cloak, and Sam dripped her blood into it, at least a dozen or more drops.

  Alec took a deep breath and made a shallow slice along his own palm. As he held his hand above the vial, he was more cautious than Sam and seemed to count the drops as they fell into it. She noted that he only put in six drops.

  “Why that ratio?” she asked.

  “The healing has to come partially from me, but it mostly comes from the Kaver,” Alec said. “As much as I would like to be the one to take the brunt of this process, healing seems to be tied more to the Kaver than to the Scribe.”

  Alec brandished a pen and dipped it into the vial, stirring the blood inside. He put the easar paper on the table and smoothed it out. Then Alec made a few notes, almost as if he were testing the easar paper. Taking a deep breath, he began writing.

  Sam stepped back, not wanting to watch what he wrote. There was a particular nature to the words that was important, but she had found that watching over his shoulder always seemed to make Alec uncomfortable. She needed him to be focused. Elaine needed him to be focused.

  He scratched his pen along the page for longer than what Sam was used to him doing. She glanced over out of the corner of her eye, biting her lip as she frowned, and finally, he stopped.

  “Is it done?” she asked.

  Fatigue began to wash through her, working through her in the familiar cool wave she always felt when her blood was used.

  “It’s as done as it can be,” Alec said. “I hope this works, but I don’t know. It’s like when I attempted to heal the princess.”

  A gasp near the door caught Sam’s attention. She looked over and saw Beckah standing there clutching the moistened towels.

  “You… healed the princess?”

  “You didn’t tell her?” Sam asked. “I thought with your new friend—”

  Alec cut her off with a shake of his head.

  “Now I understand why the masters treat you the way they do,” Beckah said with a chuckle.

  “Not because he knows more than they do?” Sam demanded. Beckah turned toward Sam, her eyes widening.

  “Sam—” Alec began.

  Sam shook him off. “No. You know as much as most of those damn physickers. Don’t let them take that away from you. Your father has been preparing you for more than only the university for a long time.”

  “Sam—” Alec said again, this time a little more firmly.

  She shot him a hard look, wanting to glare at him, bu
t it faded as she saw the expression on his face. He nodded toward Elaine, forcing her attention toward her mother.

  She thought Elaine blinked once, and then she opened her eyes and managed to look around the room.

  “Where is this?” Elaine asked.

  “I’ve already told you. We’re in Caster. I brought you to a place that could let me get you some help.”

  Elaine’s features darkened for a moment. “Caster?”

  “It’s not as bad as most of you highborns seem to think,” Sam said. “It’s been good enough for me for the last ten years of my life.”

  “That’s not it, Samara,” Elaine started.

  “No? Then what is it? If you’re not offended by the fact that I brought you into Caster, and managed to get you help, I might add, then tell me, why are you so offended that we’re here?”

  “Because Caster isn’t as secure as the city,” Elaine managed to spit out.

  “Not as secure? It’s a part of the city. It’s no different from any other section.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. Caster was never part of the original city. It was added later, and that matters.”

  “Why does that matter?” That was the first question that came to Sam’s mind, rather than trying to understand more about how Caster could have been a later addition to the city, especially when many of the buildings were older.

  Elaine sighed. “Caster was here long before the rest of the city came. It was annexed as the city grew, but there’s something about the section that prevents the same protections. It’s probably why Marin stayed here.”

  Bastan had stepped forward, moving away from the door. He frowned, watching Elaine with a curious expression.

  Elaine managed to sit up, swinging her legs over the edge of the cot. She scanned the room, her gaze settling on Sam for a moment before shifting to Alec and nodding as she mouthed the word “thanks.” From there, she turned to look at Beckah and tipped her head, something like recognition passing across her eyes. Sam suspected that Elaine had been to the university often enough that she recognized even the students. Or maybe, Elaine was keeping tabs on Sam and had gone and observed Alec and his classmates. That seemed more likely than anything else.

  She shook her head, tearing her attention away from the others, and turned back to Sam.

  “It’s the city, Samara.”

  “What’s the city?”

  “You’ve asked how we’ve managed to keep the Thelns away, how we’ve managed to provide protection for as long as we have. That’s what I’m telling you. It’s the city.”

  “How can the city provide protection?”

  Elaine looked again at the others in the room, before shaking her head firmly. “That’s not an answer for here, not one for anyplace that isn’t secure.”

  “Where would you rather this conversation take place?” Sam asked.

  “We need to return to the palace. That’s the only place we can have the conversation that you need. It’s the only safe place to discuss this.”

  Sam let out a frustrated sigh and turned her attention to Alec, shrugging. “I guess we’re going to the palace. I guess that’s the only place where she feels comfortable talking about this,” she said, having a hard time keeping the annoyance from her voice.

  Alec started to reach toward her, and then caught himself.

  Sam swallowed, suppressing the rising frustration she felt, knowing that it would do no good. It wasn’t Alec’s fault what was taking place. And it wasn’t Alec’s fault that she felt the way she did.

  She pushed past Bastan, not waiting for the others to follow.

  24

  First Visits

  Alec had never been inside the palace. Since learning about Sam’s connection to the princess, Alec hadn’t had a chance to come here. The only time he’d been near a member of the royal family, he’d been with Sam, but that was in the university, not in the palace. It was somewhat disconcerting being here.

  Everything around him seemed more ornate than it needed to be. Chairs were gilded and heavily carved. Floors were covered with expensive-looking rugs that would be unattainable anywhere else in the city. Tapestries on the walls were clearly well-made, though Alec didn’t have the same eye for them as he knew Sam—and Bastan—did. Sculptures were scattered around the room where they now gathered, and Alec imagined the cost of them, and could only imagine how much everything in this single room was worth.

  Sam took a seat near the hearth, leaning back in an enormous plush chair and kicking her feet up on the table. Alec shot her a look, which she promptly ignored. He stood stiffly near the back of the room, waiting to be invited in, and fearing that perhaps Sam had gotten ahead of herself.

  “You don’t have to stand there so stiff,” Sam said.

  “I’m not stiff, it’s just that—”

  “It’s just that your friend isn’t here?” Sam asked.

  Alec frowned. “That’s not it at all. Beckah only came with me because she was concerned. We’ve been—”

  “Beckah? Her name is Beckah? If that’s not a highborn name, and I don’t know what is.”

  “Most of the people in the university are highborn by birth,” Alec said.

  “I would say that all are.”

  “I’m probably the farthest from highborn at the university.”

  “And closer to highborn than I’ve ever been,” Sam said.

  Alec looked around the room and saw the comfortable way Sam sat, noting the cut of her dress, even the sheen to her skin, now much less tanned than it once had. Did Sam realize how close she had become to the highborns?

  Not that he necessarily wanted her to realize it. There was value in Sam not knowing that she had moved up in the world. She maintained an edge, one that helped her as she struggled to improve.

  “Where did Elaine go?” Alec asked. It was better to change the topic than to get Sam even angrier. He hadn’t seen her in weeks, and now that they were finally in the same room, he didn’t want to get into an argument with her. All he wanted was for them to get along.

  Were he honest with himself, all he really wanted was to continue to work with Sam and the easar paper, though he didn’t know how much of a supply Bastan had. Probably more than he let on.

  “She was injured, so I suspect she went to make sure that everything you did was meant to help, not to harm her.”

  “Why would I hurt her? She’s your mother.”

  “Maybe for the same reason I would hurt her. She abandoned me, Alec. She… She didn’t care that she had left me, alone in the city, and with my mind somehow twisted by Marin and her augmentations. She didn’t care that I might still be out there. In all these years, she didn’t try to find me.”

  “I’m sure she cared,” Alec said.

  “Are you? She didn’t care about my father. She said it was too dangerous for him to remain with her, but it feels like she abandoned him, letting him go when it no longer made sense to have him in her life. I think the same thing happened with me.”

  Alec doubted that was the case, but he didn’t know anything about Elaine other than that she was a Kaver and possessed the same types of skills as Sam. Her Scribe came from the highest of the highborns, which made Sam’s and his connection feel somehow… less. He suspected that she wished she had someone more like the princess as a Scribe rather than him.

  As he stood there, debating what to say, the door opened, and Elaine strode in, followed by someone Alec had not expected to see.

  “Master,” he said, tipping his head politely to Master Helen.

  “You’re the Scribe?” Master Helen asked, looking over to Elaine.

  “I see you’ve met,” Elaine said. “That might make this conversation easier.”

  “I don’t think any of these conversations will be easy,” Master Helen said.

  Alec noted that Sam seemed to have tensed, and he frowned. “What is it?”

  She stood, her hands clenched at her sides, and nodded toward the master. “Her. She’s t
he one who has been trying to help me with my memories,” Sam said. “At least, that’s what she claimed she was doing. Have you been telling her what I’ve been saying?”

  Sam took a few steps forward, and Alec reached for her arm, not wanting her to do anything too rash. Sam could be impulsive and had something of a temper. It wouldn’t be a good idea for her to attack one of the masters, certainly not one who had the favor of the princess’s Kaver.

  “I asked her to help you, nothing more,” Elaine said. “Anything that took place between you it was just that—between you.”

  Alec wondered what Sam might have shared with the master.

  “Sit,” Master Helen said.

  Sam glared another moment. Alec wasn’t certain whether she would agree, but she sat back down, this time, on the edge of the oversized chair, and turned her attention to the hearth, essentially ignoring Elaine.

  “You said we had to come here for answers,” Sam said.

  “Please explain it to them,” Elaine said to Master Helen.

  “They are not of age,” Helen said.

  “Not of age?” Elaine asked. “That one just saved me from three Thelns. Were it not for her, I would have been either killed or dragged out of the city. Tell me that she’s not of age.”

  “Three Thelns?”

  “And she didn’t have her Scribe with her,” Elaine said. “I think it’s reasonable to share with her. I’m not sure about him.” She nodded to Alec.

  Master Helen gave a slight grin. “I believe he is more trustworthy than she.”

  “Why? Because he’s a student at the university?” Elaine asked.

  “No, because Master Eckerd felt that he was worthy enough to bring into a head trauma procedure.”

  “Eckerd?” Elaine asked.

  Master Helen nodded. “That was my reaction, as well.”

  “Why? What reaction are you talking about?” Sam pressed.

  “Interesting,” Elaine said.

  “Are you going to keep talking about us as if we aren’t sitting right here?” Sam asked.