The Book of Maladies Boxset

by D. K. Holmberg

  “That’s why you were in the hospital for twelve hours?”

  Alec sighed. “Apparently, that happens from time to time. I came around.”

  “What does that have to do with this man?”

  Alec leaned against one of the cots, and it started to slide across the floor. He swore under his breath and stood up, feeling disrespectful of the dead by swearing in their presence. There was something about this place that called for a more solemn air. He didn’t want to be the person to disrupt that.

  “There was a patient brought to the classroom. He had apparently been dosed with foxglove, which stopped—or seemingly stopped—his heart.”

  “And you thought to help him?” Sam asked.

  Alec smiled sheepishly. “The university doesn’t have the antidote. I figured that my father might.”

  “Why wouldn’t the university have the antidote? You’d think with all of these physickers, and all of this brainpower, that they would have a way to reverse poisons like that, especially if it’s common enough that they can administer it in the classroom.”

  Alec frowned to himself. “I didn’t think about it that way.”

  Sam looked up at him. “You didn’t? You mean, I thought of something the great Alec Stross did not?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t understand why the university wouldn’t have the thistle root, but when I was hospitalized, they didn’t have a supply there, either.”

  “I’m assuming that your apothecary shop did?”

  “It did. We tested it.”

  Sam glanced from Beckah to Alec. “We?”

  “Well, Beckah tested it. She ingested a chunk of the foxglove, followed by a dose of the thistle root that we were able to find in my father’s shop to see if it was enough to counteract the poisonous effects.”

  Sam chewed on the inside of her lip, her attention focused on Beckah. “Did it work?”

  “We’re not entirely sure. It worked on Beckah. I mean she showed the symptoms of having taken the poison, lost consciousness, and awoke. So, we managed to prove that giving the thistle root immediately after taking the foxglove is successful, but what we don’t know is if there is a time limit after which the antidote would be of no effect.”

  “So, you came here, and you gave it to this man,” Sam said.

  “We tried. I used all of the remaining thistle root that my father had. It left us with nothing else. I gave all of it to this man, but…”

  “But?”

  “There wasn’t a response. If it worked, we didn’t stay long enough.”

  “So, we go in. We have nothing to lose,” Sam said.

  “But if he’s not here, I don’t know where else we might look. We know nothing about the man.”

  “There would be one other option, but it would be dangerous,” Beckah said.

  “What option?” Sam asked.

  “It would involve breaking into one of the masters’ quarters and searching for evidence.”

  Alec shot Beckah a hard look. “You can’t be serious. You can’t actually think to break into Master Carl’s room because he might have this man sequestered there.”

  Beckah’s shrugged. “If he’s not in the morgue, and we believe he’s not incinerated, then where else would he be?”

  “We’re getting ahead of ourselves, anyway,” Alec started. “We don’t even know if he’s still here or not.”

  “If he’s not, there’s a log. We can look for a record of somebody with foxglove toxicity, and if there’s not anyone listed, that means that he wasn’t incinerated.”

  “There’s a log? How is it that you know this?”

  Beckah looked past him. “Come on. Let’s see if your man is still here.”

  She pushed past Alec and Sam and shoved the door open. The inside of the morgue was much the same as the last time Alec had been here. There were dozens of metal cots, each containing a body. Sam gasped and covered her mouth as she gagged.

  “The smell,” she said.

  “You get used to it,” Alec said.

  Sam arched a brow at him. “You might get used to it, but do you really want to?”

  “Not really.”

  “This is where they keep the bodies?” Sam asked.

  “This is where some bodies are kept. There are others that never reach here,” Beckah said. She wandered through the morgue, looking at each face as she passed. Alec had a sinking suspicion that they wouldn’t find him. Even if he hadn’t died—and he found that unlikely—there didn’t seem much of a chance that he would still be here. It had been days since they’d attempted giving him the thistle root, and if it had worked, he would have been gone long ago.

  “How often do they take the bodies from here?” Sam asked.

  Beckah had reached the table at the back of the morgue and opened a book that lay on top of it. She flipped through the pages. “It depends. Sometimes, they’ll go nearly a week before taking a body away from here. Other times, when there are too many, they take them down to the incinerator and dispose of them.”

  Alec and Sam stood near the door, not venturing into the sea of cots.

  “There is no record of anyone with foxglove toxicity going to the incinerators,” Beckah said. “Then again, there’s no record of anyone with foxglove toxicity getting out of here, either.” She stared at Alec and shrugged. “Chances are he didn’t make it, and they just didn’t record it correctly.”

  If that was what happened, then they wouldn’t find the man. Bastan wouldn’t get him, which left him wondering whether Bastan would still give Sam the easar paper.

  If Marin returned, and if she tried to attack Sam, Alec wanted her to have all the help she could get, and that meant augmentations, and that meant easar paper.

  “We can try Master Carl’s rooms,” he started.

  Sam shook her head. “I can tell by the tone of your voice that you don’t think that’s likely to work.”

  Alec shrugged. “I don’t know, but I can at least try. I don’t want anything to happen to you, which means we have to find this man.”

  Sam looked past him, focusing her attention on Beckah, and said, “I think you’ve got a new study partner.”

  “That doesn’t mean I want anything to happen to you,” Alec said.

  Sam swallowed, ignoring his searching gaze. “Let’s go find this master and see if there’s anything we can learn.”

  28

  Bastan’s Man

  “How much farther?” Sam asked.

  Beckah looked back at her, an odd question in her eyes. Sam still didn’t like her, but the woman had been helpful. “Not much.”

  “How do you know how to find the masters’ quarters?” Sam asked.

  “Sam. She’s helping,” Alec chided her.

  “She says she’s helping. Alec, how much do you know about her?” she asked, lowering her voice hoping Beckah didn’t hear.

  The slight tension in Beckah’s back made it clear that Sam hadn’t been nearly as quiet as she had intended. Maybe it didn’t matter. If the woman discovered how Sam felt about her, what did that matter?

  “I know that she’s helped me study. I know that she’s helped me when I’ve been injured.”

  “How often are you getting injured at the university?” Sam asked.

  “More often than you would imagine,” he said.

  They reached a doorway at the end of the hall, and Beckah slipped something out of her pocket, quickly opening the door with it.

  Had she just broken into the room or did she have a key? If she used a key, why would Beckah have key access to the master levels?

  Alec didn’t seem to notice—or if he did, he didn’t care. Maybe he’d become too enthralled with Beckah to pay attention to things like that, but she was not.

  “Was it locked?” Sam asked.

  Beckah ignored her and hurried up the stairs.

  “Sam, you need to be nicer to her. She’s trying to help.”

  “Or is she only appearing to try to help?”

  Al
ec watched her, seeming to debate whether she was being serious. Sam was, at least mostly. She didn’t know anything about Beckah, and she didn’t like the fact that Beckah seemed so familiar with Alec, but Sam didn’t have any tie to him other than him serving as her Scribe—and that had been minimal lately.

  A wide stairway led up, and Beckah continued without pausing. “She seems to know her way around,” Sam said.

  A troubled look finally came to Alec’s face. “So it seems.”

  “Nothing about that bothers you?”

  “Sam—”

  They reached a landing, and Beckah hurried off down the hallway. She stopped at a door at the end of the hall. “This is Master Carl’s room.”

  “How do you know?” Alec asked.

  “Because Master Carl is—”

  “Your father?” Sam asked. It would be perfectly fitting for the man who wanted to poison Alec to have been related to his new girlfriend.

  “Not my father,” she said, a look of disgust on her face. “I’ve had to come here before.”

  “Why would you have to come here?” Alec asked.

  Beckah glanced from Alec to Sam, seeming to debate her answer. For a moment, Sam wondered if she would even say anything. Maybe she would avoid the question, which would only lead Alec to question her more. Sam couldn’t help but feel a sense of satisfaction at that.

  “I used to be a messenger,” Beckah said.

  “A messenger? Highborns aren’t messengers.”

  “They are if they want to get into the university and can’t,” Beckah said. She looked at Alec, making a point to ignore Sam. “I barely belong here, but they couldn’t keep me out any longer. I’ve tested four times, and each time, I was certain that I would gain admission. When I got notification this time…”

  “I don’t understand why you would hide this,” he said.

  Sam laughed. “You don’t? It’s because you’re too close to the highborns to really understand. When you don’t have something, and you really want it, you’d do anything for it,” Sam said. She hated that she was speaking on behalf of Beckah, but this was something Alec had to understand.

  “When have I ever seemed to care about class?” he asked Beckah.

  “You haven’t,” she replied. “I have. I need to continue to progress through the university to maintain my status. My failures have been a huge disappointment to my parents. They stopped talking to me until I was finally able to get into the university.”

  “But you barely have to study,” Alec said.

  “Barely? I study all the time. I only give you a hard time about it because you seem to know so much already. Every moment that I’m not in my room studying, I’m looking for something else that I can study.”

  “But—”

  Sam stepped forward, and between the two of them. “Can the two of you have this conversation another time? I think that whatever else, we need to keep moving, and shouldn’t remain here for too long. I mean, you said this is the master’s quarters.”

  Alec glanced from Beckah to Sam before nodding. “What do you propose?”

  “I think I should go in,” Sam said. She’d been thinking about the options as they’d followed Beckah through the halls, and it was the only one that made any sense. If either Alec or Beckah went into one of the masters’ quarters and was caught, it would likely mean expulsion from the university. Sam didn’t necessarily mind that for Beckah, but she did not want that for Alec.

  Sam, on the other hand, had no such issues. What would it matter if she were caught?

  Better yet, if she had some augmentation, it was possible that she wouldn’t be caught.

  “You don’t even know what this man looks like,” Alec said.

  “I know enough that he’s dead but not dead. Don’t you think I can find that?”

  “How will you get in and then out?” Alec asked.

  Sam slipped the sheet of easar paper out of her pocket. “Practice,” she said, trying to avoid meeting Beckah’s gaze.

  Alec glanced from Beckah to Sam before nodding. “It might be the best chance we have,” he said. “I’m not sure that I like the idea of you going in there on your own, but it might be our only choice.”

  “What are the two of you talking about?” Beckah asked.

  Sam wasn’t sure what Alec would answer. Would he share with Beckah—a woman that he clearly had a connection to—that he was a Scribe and that Sam was a Kaver? There would be questions if he did, and they would be forced to share more than what Sam wanted, but she would trust Alec in this. It was his decision to make about how much to share.

  “Beckah, you should head back down. If you’re caught here—”

  Beckah shook her head. “I won’t get in trouble if I’m caught here. I used to be a messenger.”

  “But you’re not now.”

  “What of you? What happens if you’re caught?”

  “I won’t be caught. I’ll follow you in just a minute.”

  Beckah let out a sigh, flickering her gaze from Sam to Alec before nodding. “Don’t linger for too long.” She took Alec’s hand and squeezed it.

  Sam turned away, her heart fluttering and nausea rising in her stomach. Those were emotions she shouldn’t feel, that she didn’t deserve to feel. Alec had every right to establish friendships—and more—at the university. She shouldn’t—and couldn’t—begrudge him those.

  Beckah disappeared back down the hall.

  “We should hurry,” Alec said.

  Sam nodded and held her hand out. Alec took a knife out of his pocket and made a small nick in the palm of her hand, doing the same with his. When blood oozed to the surface, he scooped it with the knife and smeared it together with his finger.

  “This will be rough,” he said. “I don’t have a pen or any other way to mix this efficiently.”

  “It will work. We’ve tried it this way before.”

  Alec nodded. “I remember.”

  “I thought that you might have forgotten.”

  Alec took her hand in his and squeezed. “I won’t forget what we can do.”

  Sam met his gaze. What they could do. Not what they could be. Not who they could be.

  It hurt, but she tried to keep the hurt from her face.

  “I hope this works well enough that we can keep you from getting caught,” Alec said.

  He used the tip of his finger and quickly started writing on the easar paper. “Speed and strength will help,” she suggested.

  “I know.”

  She closed her eyes, not looking as he continued to write. She didn’t know what he would add but trusted that what he chose to write would be effective.

  She felt it building within her.

  “It’s done,” he said.

  Sam opened her eyes, noting the easar paper with his handwriting across the page—still neat despite using his finger—detailing the method of augmenting her. She grabbed the paper, re-folded it, and stuffed it back into her pocket.

  “You don’t want me to hang on to that?” Alec asked.

  She shook her head. “I can hang on to it. I think Bastan needs to know that I’ll return with it.”

  Alec tried to hide the hurt in his eyes but failed. “I should…”

  Sam nodded. “You should head back down with Beckah. I’ll find you in the same place as before?”

  Alec glanced at the door. “Not the same place. Let’s meet in the courtyard outside the university. That way, if you need to escape quickly, you’ll be someplace that you can do it.”

  Was he trying to get rid of her? Or was he simply thinking through it, wanting her to get to safety?

  Sam tried not to get caught up in the possibilities. Doing so would only end up with her confused and hurt.

  “Go. I’ll be fine.”

  Alec squeezed her hand and then took off down the hall, moving quickly before disappearing altogether.

  Sam stood in front of the door, her body tingling. The augmentation had taken hold, appearing quickly. Everything around
her seemed to move more slowly, but she knew that was the augmentation for speed. It was she moving more quickly, not things around her moving more slowly. She was eager to test the augmentation, eager to find out whether it would work, but first, she had to break into the room and see if the man who wasn’t dead was inside.

  If nothing else good came of her visit to the university, at least she had an opportunity to have an augmentation once more. There was something right about it, something that felt good to her.

  She tested the door handle and found it locked.

  What she did next would reveal her presence, and she knew that there would be no backing down at that point. She could use her strength augmentation to break the handle, but once she did, there would be no concealing the fact that she had been here.

  Instead, Sam jerked on the door handle once sharply, forcing the lock within to release. With a loud snap, the handle twisted. The breach would be discovered soon enough, but it was subtler than a broken handle. She pushed, opening the door and stepped inside.

  It was an open room, and empty. She saw no one here, nothing that would indicate that the master both Beckah and Alec were concerned about had been here. There was a bed against each wall, each with a trunk at its foot. Shelves rose in between the two beds, and a long table ran along one wall, books stacked on top of it. In the corner was another shelf, this one filled with what appeared to be various medicines. It was similar to what she had seen at Alec’s apothecary.

  As she took a closer look at the nearest bed, she realized its sheets were disheveled and lumpy. Sam darted over and pulled back the sheets. There was no one there.

  Sam sniffed at the air, wishing for a moment that Alec had augmented her sense of smell, as well. There was a hint of a medicinal odor in the air that also carried the scent of various treatments, which reminded her even more of the apothecary.

  Beneath it, was something of a sickly odor. This was nothing like the apothecary and left her with an unsettled stomach.

  She should have asked Alec to stay with her. He would have recognized the different medicines on the shelf.

  Was there anything there that was useful?

  Sam hurried to the shelf and scanned it. She noticed leaves in several of the jars, each of a different shape and color. Another jar had what looked to be berries. And another had something like long, thorny twigs.