Comatose: The Book of Maladies

by D. K. Holmberg

  “What did you use to search?”

  “The level of alertness. Librarians have been helping, and they’ve given me a stack.” He motioned to the pile of records on the end of the table, and then there were two more nearly as high as the table resting on the floor. “I figure at this pace, it will only take me the better part of a year to go through all of them.”

  And he didn’t think that his father—or the young woman—had that much time. They were feeding them, but at what point would their conditions become permanent? At what point would he lose his father because of this illness?

  “It’s a strange condition, isn’t it?” Stefan said.

  “It is. With my father, I thought that maybe there was something he was exposed to, but I haven’t been able to determine anything. I’ve tried various treatment options, but none of them has been effective.” He had been careful in doing that. He hadn’t wanted to attempt anything that might put his father in danger, but at the same time, he needed to try something. Each of them had been small tests. He was gauging response, thinking that if he could discover whether there was the slightest change, he might be able to use the easar paper. Ultimately, he feared that he would need to use the easar paper regardless of Master Helen’s warning. He was prepared to try it if nothing else worked. He owed his father that much.

  “Can I help you?” Stefan asked.

  He glanced up at his friend, relieved. “I would like that.”

  Stefan grabbed a book and pulled it open. “What am I looking for?”

  “You’re looking for anything where the patient was mostly well but unresponsive. There are quite a few where they’re unresponsiveness is tied to infection or to something going on inside their head, and quite a few where blood loss led to their condition, but this is different from those. If you find anything, I will take a look to see if I can find a pattern.” With treatment, especially with difficult treatments, it was the pattern that was the most helpful. That was what he needed to find. If he could discover a pattern, he would be able to help—he was certain of it.

  They fell into a rhythm, and Alec appreciated that Stefan was there, working with him. It was nice having his friend, even if they weren’t saying anything. He lost track of time as he sorted through the records, setting aside those that were completely wrong. That stack much taller than the short stack that had cases with any similarities to what his father was going through. His despair was growing.

  After a while, the door opened, and he looked up. It had been quite late when Stefan had come, though his friend had been looking for him. It was even later now as a young student—one Alec didn’t know—poked his head around the stack of books. “Physicker Stross?”

  Alec nodded. “What is it?”

  “I was sent to get you,” he said. “You have a visitor outside.”

  Alec glanced over at Stefan who waved at him. He was deep in one of the records, and his own stack of discarded records was growing nearly as quickly as Alec’s. “You don’t have to keep at this without me,” Alec said.

  “No. Let me help. Besides, consider it my way of working with a physicker,” Stefan said with a smile.

  Alec patted him on the shoulder as he passed by and followed the student through the hallways. The halls were quiet, given the hour. They didn’t pass anyone on their way. A few lanterns provided light, but not much. The halls of the university were stark. Stone floors and walls of a white marble rising on either side. There were a few paintings hanging on the walls, but not many.

  The student guided him to the main entrance. Could Sam have come for him? But wouldn’t she have snuck in as she usually did. She knew where his new quarters were, and she would have been able to reach him without sending a messenger to him. If not Sam, who?

  “Did they tell you who they were?”

  The student shook his head. “I didn’t ask. At this time of night, I thought speed was more important than asking a lot of questions.”

  Alec sighed. This was a young student, someone new to the university, who likely thought students weren’t supposed to ask questions.

  When they reached the door, Alec stepped out into the night.

  But it wasn’t Sam.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked Bastan.

  “Come on.”

  “Bastan, it’s late.”

  Bastan glanced at the student and waved his hand. “You can go. I have need of Physicker Stross.”

  The student looked over at Alec for a moment and waited for him to give him a nod of permission.

  Bastan chuckled. “You have risen quickly.”

  “You know what happened.”

  “Only some of it. Sounds like quite the story.”

  “Maybe not quite as exciting as what you think. We did it hoping we could find a master physicker we suspected was tied to Marin.”

  “And you still let them get away.”

  “I didn’t let them get away.”

  “No? I imagine that Samara would have been able to catch Marin.”

  “If Elaine couldn’t catch Marin, then Samara wouldn’t have been able to. If she had tried to, especially if Marin had her Scribe, she would have been placing herself in danger.”

  “I think you underestimate the relationship between Marin and Samara.”

  Bastan guided him down the stairs leading away from the university. There was a wide path lined with tall shrubbery that they walked along. “Marin cares more than she lets on.”

  “Sort of like you?”

  “I’m not unwilling to reveal that I care.”

  “You’re only unwilling to reveal why you care.”

  “You don’t think that I should care about my best thief? Samara was the most skilled person I had working with me. Were it not for you, she would still be working with me.”

  “I don’t think I’m the reason she’s not working with you. She was looking for a way out from under your thumb even before I met her.”

  “Only because she didn’t know.”

  “Know what?”

  Bastan shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “You came looking for word of your father.”

  “You found something?”

  “I don’t know what to make of it, but there was something.”

  Alec followed Bastan as they crossed the bridge leading away from the university. It felt strange doing so at this time of night, with a sliver of moon shining down, and doing so without Sam. Alec had wandered the streets of the city late at night before, but he’d always done so with his Kaver connection with him.

  There was a quiet that hung over everything, an almost somber sense that he enjoyed. There was something peaceful about the city when he walked through it this late at night. Eventually, people would awaken; there would be the sounds of the morning activity and the steady din of thousands of voices all mixing together to create a murmuring sort of noise. At night, there was only silence.

  “Keep moving,” Bastan said.

  “I was only enjoying—”

  “I know what you are enjoying. It’s the same reason I like to pull my jobs at night.”

  “I thought you pulled your jobs at night because doing so kept you from notice.”

  “That’s part of it, but sometimes, working at night adds to the difficulty. Depending on where you go, there might be people that you want to avoid. If you go during the daytime, it’s a greater likelihood that you will avoid those people. At night, you get to enjoy this.” He held his hands out and turned slowly. “There’s almost something magical about the night. Certainly, at night, you can almost feel the presence of the gods.”

  “I didn’t know you were so religious.”

  “A man doesn’t have to be religious to recognize that there are higher powers. I think of you and Sam and all of those Thelns that we’ve been facing. You are all different from the rest of us, even if I am not sure quite how or what to make of that difference.”

  Ba
stan stopped at a section several over from the university. He moved slowly now, and one of his hands drifted into his pocket, and Alec was left nervous. Was there something dangerous here?

  He motioned but said nothing as they turned a corner, heading down an alleyway. Alec wasn’t scared—not really—and that was only partly because he had some experience out at night. Having Bastan with him was reassuring in a different way. He had seen how confident and competent Bastan was, and though he doubted there would be Thelns attacking at this time of night, he felt somewhat safer knowing that Bastan was with him.

  “They should be here, somewhere,” he mumbled softly.

  Alec looked around the street. There was nothing other than the darkened shape of buildings on either side of the alley, and strange shadows rippled toward the middle of the street. Was that all from moonlight?

  Near the end of the street, he saw two people crouched. “Bastan?”

  “Don’t worry, Physicker Stross. That’s where we’re heading.”

  Alec trailed after Bastan, and they reached the two men crouched at the end of the street, and Alec realized there was a body lying between them.

  Not a body, but a man. And it was someone Alec recognized. “Kevin? What happened to him?” he asked, looking over to Bastan.

  “That’s why I came for you.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “Not dead. He still has a pulse.” When Alec arched a brow, Bastan shrugged. “A man has to learn a few things in order to remain in my position. Anyway, he’s not dead. We found him like this.”

  “And you just left him here?”

  “I thought that if there’s anything you need to discover from the area, it might help to leave him where we found him. It’s not as if he’s suffering.”

  Alec nodded. Bastan had a bright mind and had done basically what Alec would have requested. Had he taken the man from here, he might not have been able to learn much of anything.

  He started forward and briefly studied Kevin. There was no sign of injury. He checked his pulse and found it regular. His breathing was normal. A cursory evaluation for evidence of internal pain or bleeding showed none.

  Whatever happened to Kevin was the same as what happened to his father. And the woman. Alec was certain of it.

  “Can you tell me what he’d been doing?”

  “He had been looking into the apothecary.”

  Alec glanced at the other two men and then nodded. Was that Bastan’s way of telling him that these men didn’t know who he was? “Was there anything particular about this section of the city that you think might be important for me to know?”

  “Only that Kevin had heard there was movement here, something about a particularly dangerous poison. He thought, given what we had discussed about delicate treatments, that he should look into it.”

  “It’s okay to move him. I can take him back with me to the university.”

  “He’s not going to the university,” Bastan said.

  “Until we figure out what is happening, he’ll need to be fed. Can you do that at your tavern?”

  “For Kevin? You’re damned right I can do it. I’m not sending him to the university to have him poked and prodded by students there. I know what kinds of things happen at the university.”

  “I’ll be at the university.”

  “Not all the time. And not if you’re going to figure out what happened, you’re not. I’m not about to leave Kevin someplace where there’ll be someone who’s not invested in his well-being.”

  Alec looked over at Bastan and shrugged. He was surprised by Bastan’s reaction, but he was mostly surprised that Bastan cared this much. His people meant something to him, which told Alec that it had to hurt him when he lost people too. In the line of work Bastan was in, he had lost people, Alec had seen it.

  “Fine, take him back to your tavern, but make sure that you’re grinding up food and getting it down his throat into his stomach.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time we had to do that for a man,” Bastan said. He motioned to the others, and they lifted Kevin and carried him away. Once they were gone, Bastan crouched down next to Alec. “Now would you care to tell me what is going on?”

  “I don’t know. This is the same way they found my father.”

  “You found him?”

  “I didn’t find him, but this is the same way he was found. That’s why I came to you asking about the delicate items.”

  “Kevin wouldn’t have been in contact with them. He would only have been chasing someone who might have heard something.”

  “Can you at least share with me what you heard? If we know where we’re looking, maybe we can figure out if there’re some similarities.”

  “He was following a lead.”

  “What kind of lead?”

  “The kind that would give me more information about where to find poison that shouldn’t be readily available.”

  “The eel venom.”

  Bastan didn’t say anything.

  “My father and Kevin aren’t the only two suffering like this. There is a third person, a woman, who is at the university, though she’s been there longer than my father. She’s in about the same condition, but I don’t know what happened to her or anything more about her than I do about the others.”

  Bastan frowned to himself. “Your father had the eel venom, and Kevin was looking into it. What if this other person is connected to it?”

  “Then we would at least have identified a connection, but we still wouldn’t know what happened to them.”

  “Nope. No way of knowing, but it’s a start.”

  Bastan stood and reached his hand out to help Alec up. After he pulled him up, he breathed out heavily. “I need to see this third person.”

  “She’s at the university.”

  “And I need to see her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if she’s tied to this, it might be that I’ll recognize her. Are you going to take me to her, or am I going to have to break in?”

  10

  Sneaking with a Thief

  There was something uncomfortable about sneaking Bastan into the university. Alec was not certain he should do it, especially given his recent promotion. But he needed to know whether there was anything that Bastan could help him with, especially if it could lead to information about what happened to his father and these others.

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve been to the university,” Bastan said.

  “When were you last here?”

  Bastan shot him an amused expression. “A long time ago.”

  Alec shook his head, determined not to let Bastan bother him. He knew the man took joy in challenging Sam, but he wasn’t going to let Bastan get into his head.

  They moved quickly through the university gates. It was late, and there were few enough people out at this time of night that Alec needed to avoid attention; he couldn’t risk being observed with someone like Bastan. The man had something of a reputation that Alec had to be concerned with, especially if one of the master physickers appeared, and if they recognized Bastan.

  Once inside, he found the halls empty, and they were able to make their way through the university without anyone noticing them.

  “What do you know about this illness?” Bastan asked.

  “Probably the same as you,” Alec said. “Both my father and this woman arrived unresponsive. They are otherwise well, and we have struggled to figure out the cause of their illness.”

  “Do you suspect some sort of poison?”

  “It could be,” Alec said. “There are a few different poisons that could induce this state, but everything that I’ve tried to counter them as been ineffective.”

  “What sorts of poisons would do that?”

  Alec glanced over at Bastan. He studied the man for a moment before shaking his head. “I don’t know that I feel comfortable revealing that to you.”

  “Do you really think I would use it in some way?”

  “I think you
would use any information that you could to maintain your power,” Alec said.

  “That would be true, but if you think keeping knowledge like that from me is going to prevent me from discovering it on my own, you underestimate me.”

  Alec glanced over. As he did, he thought about what he knew of Bastan. This was a man who had known enough to get Aelus involved when it came to finding something that would work against the Thelns. He had known enough to convince his father to help him, so if nothing else, Alec should trust the fact that his father was a good judge of character and had been restrictive about with whom he shared some of the secrets of his knowledge.

  “It could be sleaph toxin or Heller’s compound or a mixture of jandran root with bostich berries or—”

  Bastan chuckled. “It wasn’t a test, Alec. I believe you know what you’re doing.” He eyed Alec for a moment. “You’ve tried healing all of those things?”

  Alec nodded. “Tried all of them and a few others have had no effect.”

  “Then I guess it doesn’t matter.”

  “What doesn’t matter?”

  “It doesn’t matter if I have my healer attempt the same.”

  “You have a healer?”

  “I have someone I can call on when needed,” Bastan said. He frowned at Alec. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

  Alec laughed to himself. He shouldn’t be surprised that Bastan would have somebody. Especially knowing the kind of work that he did. “Did your healer already test these things?”

  “Before calling you, yes. I thought I would try a simpler route.”

  “Simpler?”

  “Fine. Someone who wouldn’t attract quite as many questions. Do you think I like coming to the university and being subjected to the types of questions I am sure to face?”

  Alec shook his head. “I don’t know what you like,” he said.

  “I don’t like the idea of putting Sam at risk. Me coming here, and revealing my connection to her, puts her at risk. Drawing attention to myself here puts her at risk.”

  Alec had always known that Bastan cared for Sam, but Bastan tried to conceal that fact, though Alec didn’t know why. Why would he care about hiding his connection to Sam?