“He’s got a point.” I offered her a hand. “C’mon, let’s go take a night off. Catch up. Get some rest. If we’re lucky, the scouts will be back tomorrow. There’ll be shit to take your mind off the past once we’ve interrogated him.”
Suri regarded me with fierce, unblinking eyes for several long seconds. Then she flicked her gaze down, and linked her fingers through mine.
“Alright. You win,” she said. “Come on. We’ll see you all tomorrow.”
I gave a little mournful wave back to Vash, Istvan, and Rin as Suri gently, but firmly dragged me from the dining hall.
Suri didn’t stop once we got outside, heading for the Ducal Suite at a quick, determined walk. I spared a glance for Karalti. My dragon was still sound asleep in the castle’s courtyard, her flanks expanding and contracting as she snoozed the night away. Her HP was fine, and her stamina recovering. But as I reached for her mind, I felt a crackle of static pass between us. The Dragonsblood potion issue was becoming a matter of urgency.
“Everything alright?” Suri called from up ahead.
“Oh... yeah.” I hadn’t realized I’d stopped. I hurried to catch up to her. “Anyway, you look like you’re on a mission. What’s eating you?”
“Jacob,” she said tersely. “I really just wanted to get that little conversation over with, so I didn’t have to think about it for the entire night.”
“You’re running a fatigue debuff, and so am I,” I said. “Even if we don’t feel that tired, all our mental skills are lowered. We need to rest. Get four hours of shut-eye and then go wake him up in the middle of the night, if you want. You’ll scare the shit out of him.”
Suri stopped and turned on the scaffolding, reaching out to clutch my forearm. She said nothing, staring at the ground.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
She slowly lifted her face, cheeks flushed. “I didn’t want to ask this in front of the others, but... would you come with me?”
“To interrogate Jacob?” I offered her a hug.
“Yeah.” She looked away, gradually easing into my arms. “It’s not that I can’t handle him, or anything. I’d just feel better having someone at my back.”
I pushed a curling lock of scarlet hair from her cheek, tucking it behind her ear. “Sure. What do you need me to do?”
“Hold the door while I go into the cell. Make sure it doesn’t close on me. I can deal with being in a cell, I can deal with grilling Jacob, but I can’t deal with being locked in a cell with him. You know what I mean?”
“Done and done,” I said. “I don’t think I ever told you, but among my myriad of other talents, I have a long and storied career as a professional doorbitch.”
Suri did a small double-take, quirking her lips. “Myriad? Did I just hear that?”
I actually caught myself for a moment. I had, in fact, said ‘myriad’ instead of ‘many’. Even more surprisingly, I knew what the word meant. “Uhh... yeah. I don’t know where that came from. Me ugg. Big man, big words.”
“It came from you getting smarter, you jarhead.” Suri chuckled, a rich, warm sound that made parts of my body tingle pleasantly. “Jeez. Soon you’ll be using words with FOUR syllables.”
“Let’s see... ‘Do you want to make some fuck?’ is a phrase that has SIX syllables,” I replied somberly. “So that’s gotta be, like, genius level.”
“Good enough for me. At least I know what you want.” She pulled out of my embrace, and tugged my hand. “You have to work if you want that badge, lover boy.”
“My pleasure.” Grinning my head off, I let her lead me to the tower, all the way to the bedroom.
Chapter 17
Hours later, I stirred in the warm covers, half-asleep. Suri was out cold, snoozing softly to my right. By the soft lamplight from my study, I was able to see the results of two hours of enthusiastic, rambunctious lovemaking: the messy hair, the tangled sheets, the bruises from my mouth. At Suri’s urging, I’d bitten her on the insides of her thighs, taking just a little blood. But even with the twin hungers of blood and sex sated, another, deeper hunger was gnawing at me. My body needed the Dragonsblood Potion, and it wasn’t going to let me rest until I’d gotten it.
I frowned as I sat up, still nude, and carefully climbed out of bed. Suri stirred a little, groaning. I went to the study and turned the lamp off, then padded silently out into the living area of the suite. Once I was out there, I equipped some warm clothes—no armor—and made sure I had my Alchemy equipment and a gold piece in my gear. Then I left, checking that the door was locked, and headed out into the night.
It wasn’t too unusual for me to be restless after the sun went down. Something about being the Right Hand of the God of Darkness made me less inclined to sleep when it was dark, and that had been before I’d become at least fifty percent vampire. Fortunately for me, the Masterhealer of Vlachia was a fellow night-owl. When I dropped down from the last rung of scaffolding to the ground and oriented on the hospital, the lights inside the apothecary’s office were still blazing.
Five minutes later, I found Masha poring over notes at her desk, scribbling into a book as she peered at another, very ragged piece of parchment through thick crystal glasses.
“Sav, bulenn dizuh mon-jungu...” The tiny woman, barely five feet tall and wrinkled as a walnut, muttered to herself in a language that almost sounded like Tuun. She didn’t seem to hear me, until I cleared my throat from the doorway.
“Eh?” Her head shot up, and she reached reflexively for a knife beside her inkwell before relaxing. “Oh. It’s you.”
“Sorry to interrupt,” I said. “I was hoping you’d come by some King’s Grass.”
“Oh, yes, yes. I vas able to order some. For the potion you must take to stay healthy, yes?” Her Churvi accent was much thicker than usual as she spoke, hopping from her boosted chair to the ground. “Give me one moment. Then I must get back to my vork.”
“What are you working on?” I couldn’t help but be interested. Alchemy and herbalism had caught my interest from my first days in Archemi. “Is that Churvi?”
“Yes. My native tongue, dialect of the Metok Tribe,” she replied, pulling over a stepstool so she could access one of the herbal storage drawers that took up the back wall of the apothecary. “I found it vil searching through the rubble of the castle library. Lord Bolza had many rare books in his collection... many rare books which were destroyed. But some papers, ve have been able to save. The clever Mercurion girl and I went there to recover what information we could. I found pages of medical notes written in Churvi. It is my duty to transcribe them.”
“New medicines?” I sidled over and glanced at the pages. My dyslexic brain was in no way capable of deciphering Masha’s handwriting. “What’s it say?”
Standing on a stepstool, she turned her head sharply. “You cannot read?”
“A bit. I mean, I can read Ancient Tuun okay, for some reason. With any other language... not really.” I admitted. “I’m better at it than I used to be, but still not great. Especially when it comes to cursive.”
“Oh. Then I must teach you.” Masha ferreted around in the drawer until she came up with a bundle of dried blueish strands. When I saw it, some of the tension in my gut relaxed. King’s Grass. “How have you become so skilled in medicine and herbalism without being able to read?”
“Practice,” I said. “I kind of picked it up in the field out of necessity. I’m sure there’s a lot I don’t know.”
“Hmm.” Masha returned to me. “Here. Take your herbs, first. This is all I was able to source from Litvy. You are dependent on a difficult medicine, Tuun. King’s Grass is only found in the marshlands of Ilia and Revala, marshlands that are being shelled into oblivion as the armies of this so-called Emperor clash with the forces of Queen Aslan.”
“That’d be right.” I took the small bundle and sighed. “Well, thanks for getting this in for me.”
“I need it too. There are several important potions that require it,” Masha replied. Her V
lachian was settling back into a more normal cadence, less accented. “I say you, me and Her Scaliness fly to Taltos and buy up every bit of it we can find. Gods know we will need the surgical potions it is used for.”
“Different herbs have different properties, right?” I folded it into my Inventory. “What’s so special about King’s Grass?”
“It is a powerful coagulant,” Masha replied, returning to her chair and climbing onto it. She had stacked it with cushions so that she was seated at a comfortable height. “That is, a substance which induces clots. Used in herbal potions, without mana, it is a Phlegmatic which helps to bind wounds and stop bleeding. But when combined with mana, it becomes a dynamic coagulant of the Water element, helping to bind and neutralize volatile components of Earth.”
My eyes widened. “Ohhh. That’s why it’s important for Bloodscour potions, right?”
“Yes.” She narrowed her eyes. “Do you know why?”
I thought back over the ingredients for Bloodscour. It was a vital toolkit for Archemi’s doctors: a potion that could remove even severe infections from very sick patients. In metagame terms, it removed the Blood Poisoning, Advanced Blood Poisoning, and Progressive Gangrene statuses. “I’m guessing it’s because of the troll flesh and stingcrab blood.”
She leaned her chin on her hands. “And why would you say that?”
I shuffled on my feet. “You’ve got two different kinds of monster products being mixed together. If you combine two different types of blood without a medium, they just curdle and turn gross. I figure the mana acts like a... shit, what’s it called? A substance you dissolve stuff into?”
“A reagent.”
“Yeah!” I snapped my fingers. “The mana is the reagent, dissolving all the ingredients, and the King’s Grass helps bind them all into a stable suspension. For about twenty minutes.”
“You are correct.” Masha gave me a short nod, then eyed me curiously. “It is strange to me that a man with your insight cannot read well. Come here, Tuun. Let me make an assessment of you.”
Nervously, I sidled over to her. “What kind of assessment?”
“I want to understand your struggle.” She gestured to the page. “This is scribe’s hand, Tuun. It is a style made to be neat, tidy, and easy on the eyes. You do not lack brains, so it must be an issue of education. Were you never taught to read?”
“I was in school for sixteen years. The only way I’ve ever been able to read more than a couple lines is with an... uhh... an assistant reading it out to me. I’ve always had this problem.” I gestured at the page. “I mean, I can see the words. I know they’re words. But the letters move around when I try to look at them.”
“Show me.” She took up her pen, and held it out to me.
“Show you?” I took it, slowly.
She pulled a blank sheet of vellum from a stack not far away, brushed some powder off it, and lay it flat. “I want you to copy three or four lines as you see them. Do not try and write what is really written, but what your eyes show you.”
I was feeling tenser by the minute as I put the pen to the smooth, thick sheet in front of me, and started to awkwardly scratch the letters down. I had no idea if they were right—or if I was even making any sense at all. It took me nearly ten minutes just to put down three lines of large, childish letters, the rows of which were noticeably crooked.
“Hmmm.” Masha gently took the pen from me, and shooed me back. My face flushed as I watched her compare the two copies: my disgusting chicken scratch, and her neat, but incomprehensible lines.
“Like I said, it’s always been a problem,” I stammered. “It’s like they just jump around-”
“Tssshh. You do not need to excuse yourself to me. This is not an exercise intended to cause you embarrassment.” Her brow furrowed as her eyes flicked between the two. “It is fascinating, actually. It is as if you cannot see the spaces between the letters, so you draw the shape they make when combined.”
“Yeah...” The blush had spread to my ears now. “They always blurred together. I kind of just... make them up. Regular school was hell. Korean school was like... quadruple hell. I got thrown out of three different cram schools because I couldn’t wrap my head around Hangul. My dad beat the shit out of me for it.”
“Your father was an idiot. Leave this with me. I think there must be some way to help you be able to read and write,” she said crisply. “I will analyze what you have provided me, and see what I can devise. It may take a while though, eh? A few weeks.”
“You’d... do that?” I blinked a couple of times, not sure I’d heard her right.
“Of course. I’ve taught students who cannot hear or see well. I’ve taught more illiterate students than I can count. Why couldn’t I teach one who merely struggles to see how letters are formed?” She looked up at me, her eyes piercing in the gloom. “You’re bright, Tuun. You have a good memory and an aptitude for medicine. Not to mention, Ignas puts his trust in you, and believe me, His Majesty does not suffer fools.”
“I... uh...” I trailed off, not sure what to say. “Man. Tell that to my parents.”
“Your parents aren’t here, Tuun.” She jabbed a finger at my attempt at writing. “I think that if there is a way to help your eyes see words more clearly, that you will be able to overcome this issue. Because you DO want to take advanced levels in Herbalism and Alchemy, do you not?”
“Yeah.” I nodded enthusiastically. “And Surgery... and Tactics. Like, military strategy and tactics.”
“Then you must be able to read and write.” Masha gave me a small smile. “Leave it with me: I will come back to you when I have thought about it some, and we will test some scribing techniques to see if we can improve your comprehension. You said you can read the Tuun script. Why do you think that is?”
“I... honestly don’t know.” I shrugged. “You know Starborn sort of just arrive in Archemi as adults, right?”
“So I’ve heard. Sprung fully formed, like the little godlings you are.”
I snorted. “Yeah. Well, the first time I saw Tuun script was in Taltos. There was some catacombs underneath, with memorial plaques. Somehow, I could just read them. First time in my life I’ve ever read something without struggling with it for hours.”
“Can you write in Tuun?” She offered me the pen again. “I speak a dialect of that tongue. I will narrate this sentence in Myzsnoan Tuun, and you can write what you hear.”
“I’m pretty sure it’ll be a disaster, but why the hell not? I’ll try.” I shrugged, and bent down.
“Alright: let me see here. Ahem.” Masha cleared her throat. “Jun jage destill tzu kagu, muuzhen gusig tsai Dramuu ob songon mid dem ruun-go sadom,” she said, in accented, but fluent Tuun. “To finish the distillation, you must blend two drams of blue poppy with the rest of the mixture.”
I heard the words. I could bring the written characters to my mind. But as I put the pen down on the vellum, nothing happened. My fingers trembled a bit, and an ink-blot began to spread.
“Uhh... sorry.” I flushed, pulling it back. Then, I rubbed my face. “I can’t.”
“You can’t draw the letters? Or you can’t bring yourself to?”
“I don’t know.” I tried focusing on the first word, jun. It was a simple hook-shaped character. I tried to write, and managed to produce a very wobbly ‘L’.
“Fascinating,” Masha said. “So you have a language you can read, but not write.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” My face was hot, and I couldn’t help it. “Well, I mean, I DO know. I have dyslexia. It’s... uhh... a disability. Of this.”
“Indeed. It is a disability, surely, but not one that condemns you to a life without the written word.” Masha said, nodding with satisfaction. “Like I said, I will think on it. But I must finish my scribing tonight, before the moon reaches its peak. And you have a potion to make, eh?”
“Yeah...” Tongue-tied, I rubbed my eyes. They were aching from staring at the letters, just like they had in real
life. “Karalti should be rested enough for me to ask for some blood. But... Masha?”
“Hmm?” Masha looked up at me from her book, lips pursed. She already had her pen in her hand.
“Thank you.” Without really intending to, I gave her a stiff, formal bow from the waist. “You... I don’t know if you know how much this means to me. That you’d help me, I mean.”
She chuckled and shook her head. “I think I can see its importance to you, at least a little. Ai-yai-yai... parents beating children for struggling with their letters. The mind boggles. Now, shoo: go and tend to your dragon. And if you can’t settle your nerves after that, I’m sure there’s nighttime herbs that need picking. Shaking hands will make fast work of those plants.”
I scuttled out of the study. My head was ringing. I was too shocked to feel much of anything. I was grateful, maybe. Grateful, and still embarrassed.
Karalti was still sleeping in the courtyard when I emerged. I crossed to her at a quick walk, my shoulders hunched, and threw my arms around her neck. She startled a little, snorking in her sleep, and groaned as she craned her neck toward me.
“Mmm?” Her telepathic voice spat and fritzed like it was full of radio static. “Wuz wrong?”
Before I replied, I leaned in, breathing deeply. My dragon smelled like dust and waxy, night-blooming flowers. Just after she woke from sleep, the fragrance of her sweat was always warm and heavy. It was the best smell in the world.
“Nothing. Nothing... it’s just potion night,” I said, after coming up for air. “I need to draw some blood. Is that okay with you?”
“Potion night? Oh, sure.” Karalti yawned, flashing twin rows of four-inch, blade-like teeth. She smacked her jaws a couple of times, then lifted her wing just enough that I could get underneath it and reach her forearm.
“Thanks, Tidbit.” I ducked under the warm shroud, letting my eyes adjust. The moon was a huge, slim crescent in the sky, shining over the courtyard. After ten or so seconds, I was able to see where to insert the needle: a small vein on the inside of her elbow joint.
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