“Why do I get the sense that you’re not concerned about him?” Sam asked.
“Because I’m not. We have worked together, so there’s no reason for me to fear the Shuver. Besides, he knows that if he were to make a move on me, I would have him eliminated.”
“If they come, they will likely try to kill me,” Aelus said.
“Possibly, which is why you should simply offer them an alternative.”
“What alternative?” Aelus asked.
“Offer him a poison, but make sure it’s one that is not fatal. If you do this, I will be in your debt.”
Sam cleared her throat. “If we’re done with our underworld dealings, we need to get back to the matter at hand. We need to get back to figuring out what happened with Alec.”
“I need to get back to the classroom,” Alec said. He tried to step off the cot and put weight on his legs, wobbling slightly. Sam remembered how she had felt when she had been seriously injured, and how it had been difficult for her to get back on her feet and feel as if she could do anything. Then again, when she had been injured, she had broken her spine, and this was not quite as severe, though maybe it was more severe than she realized.
“Let me help you,” she said, slipping Alec’s arm around her shoulders. Bastan grinned at her as she did. She wanted to elbow him, or maybe kick him, but she did neither. “It would be helpful if the two of you gentlemen would lead us,” Sam said.
“I know the way,” Aelus said.
“Good, because you’re going to have to be the one to guide Bastan.” They made their way from the hospital ward, and Sam paused before deciding to grab Alec’s record of treatment. She didn’t know whether she should have left it behind, but if the combination of things that he had used to create the pulp was dangerous in any way, she didn’t want to leave any documentation of it for others to find. And if it wasn’t dangerous, but really did help create easar paper, she definitely needed to keep it out of the hands of others.
They made their way up the stairs and down the hallway. When they reached the end of the hall, the odor drifted from the room. It was stronger than it had been before.
“You are working on this?” Bastan asked, glancing back at Alec.
“It wasn’t quite this awful.”
“How were you able to stand it?” Bastan asked.
“As I said, it wasn’t that bad, not until Master Helen came in and helped stir.”
Bastan grabbed his arm, holding on to him. “What was that?”
Alec shrugged. “Only that the combination of things didn’t smell quite as foul until Master Helen came in and began to help. I don’t know if it was the timing, or if she had some different technique was stirring.”
Bastan glanced from Aelus to Alec before looking down the hallway.
“I think we need to find another place to try this mixture.”
“Why?” Alec asked.
“This Master Helen. You trust her?”
“I always have trusted her,” Alec said.
“She is one of the brightest minds at the university,” Aelus said.
“What is it, Bastan?” Sam asked. “I’ve seen that look on your face before.”
“Just a hunch. And you know what I’ve told you about trusting your hunches.”
Sam looked down the hallway. She had learned from Bastan that she needed to trust those hunches, and it had saved her more times than she could count. If Bastan had a hunch, she would trust his. He had been at it a whole lot longer than she had.
15
The Apothecary
Alec tried not to look at the bloodstain on the floor of his father’s apothecary. He tried not to think about what it meant that Sam had been the one to kill those two men Bastan had dragged out of the back door of the shop, depositing them on the street behind. He tried not to think of how Bastan intended to take care of the problem as he had said. He wasn’t naïve. He had worked with Sam long enough and often enough to know that she had worked in the underworld, and Bastan had connections—and a distinct lack of scruples—but seeing it firsthand was quite a bit different.
“Why are we here?” Alec said. “We could have stayed at the university.”
“At the university, we run the risk of someone coming in on us,” Bastan said. “And this is all part of my hunch.”
“Someone has already come here,” Alec said. He couldn’t take his eyes off the bloodstain. He seemed drawn to it, though maybe that was still his tiredness. He felt sick, not nearly completely restored, not the way that he thought he should, especially if he had been administered eel flesh. It was a curative, at least from what everyone said, which meant he shouldn’t still feel quite as rundown as he did. And yet, he felt exhausted.
Aelus set the book down on the table and folded open the page. “Can you re-create this?” he asked.
Alec looked at the page. “I don’t need the book to know what it says. I did memorize it.”
“Of course you did. I just thought you might want the reference…”
Alec took a deep breath and began to mix the various ingredients of the concoction required to make the paper. When he was finished, he took it over to the hearth in the far corner of the shop. “This will smell,” he said.
“What did you use for the svethwuud?” his father asked.
“I didn’t know what that represented. I suspected it was some sort of tree, so that was the part I was going to try to work through, trialing various woods to see what might be the most effective.”
“What did you start with?” Aelus asked. “I think we should re-create exactly what you had done, just as Bastan said.”
“It was nothing more than maple.” Maple was easy enough for him to acquire, and the wood had been listed in the back of one of the other books as a kind that would be helpful in papermaking.
“I think I have…” Aelus disappeared for a little while before returning with a hunk of wood. Alec cut it down, adding it to the pulp mix, and then placed it over the flame to boil. Every so often, he would pull the mixture off and stir it. It stank, but it wasn’t anything like what he had smelled when he’d returned to the classroom.
“This isn’t the same,” Bastan said.
“It might just take longer,” Alec said.
They waited, and the longer they waited, the more it became clear that nothing was going to change.
Maybe it was the combination he’d used. Could he have done it in a different ratio? If that were the case, it might throw off how effective the whole process was.
“I don’t know what I did differently,” Alec said. “If I had my notes…”
“I thought you said you had this memorized,” Bastan asked.
“I did.”
“Then you don’t need your notes,” Bastan said. “Besides, you have proven my suspicions,” he said.
“And what suspicions are those?” Aelus asked.
“Only that something changed when Master Helen came.” He looked from Alec to Aelus. “How well do you know her?”
“Well enough to know that she wouldn’t do anything like that, and certainly not to Alec,” Aelus said.
“No? And I believe Samara thought the same thing about Marin for a number of years. Most of the time, you don’t know people nearly as well as you think you do. Most people allow themselves to have a public face and then there is the private face.” He looked over to Sam, smiling widely. “Tell me, Samara, do you have a private face?”
She unfastened her canal staff and poked Bastan with one of the ends. “I’m going to smack you in your face if you keep up with this. What are you trying to get at?”
“Only that I think we need to see what else Master Helen might’ve added to that mixture.”
“It’s unsafe,” Aelus said. “Until we know whether it was how Alec was poisoned, we really shouldn’t go there.”
“Someone has to,” Sam said.
“Why?” Alec asked.
“Because we need to make sure no one else gets exposed to it. I
can go.”
Alec shook his head. “I’ve already fallen to it. I’m not even feeling back to normal. I don’t want you to subject yourself to it.”
“I don’t have to, not entirely. I can use augmentations and find a way to seal myself up.”
“Augmentations don’t work like that, Sam.”
“They do if you document the right way,” she said.
Alec sighed and licked his lips. They were dry, and he worried that they would be cracking. Maybe there was something in the combination that was an irritant. Then there was the sickly way that he felt. His energy continued to drain away from him. That was most likely a result of the poisoning and his subsequent recovery, but if there was anything else to it, he would need to investigate further.
“I don’t know that it’s safe for me to assist you with an augmentation, Sam. I’m just recovering…”
Maybe that would be enough to keep her from attempting to go back to the university and risk herself.
“I don’t need to have you help me with the augmentation.”
Bastan arched a brow. “I thought the two of you needed to come together, and you needed the use of the paper.”
“And you know Marin has been sharing a few secrets with me,” she said.
“I’ve heard the sorts of things she has told you. Nothing that would be of much use in this case.”
“They were more useful than I realized,” Sam said. “And I was able to at least understand some of what she was trying to teach me. Part of it is how to add an augmentation on my own. That’s why Marin has been so difficult for us to contain.”
Alec licked his lips again. If Sam was able to place augmentations on her own, she didn’t need him, not anymore. That left him feeling strange. Then again, if she didn’t need his assistance for augmentations, maybe it meant that he could remain at the university and continue his studies.
But that disappointed him, as well. He wanted to head out, and he wanted to reach the Theln lands, if only to learn what was so tempting to the other Scribes. There had to be something there that drew them, that encouraged them to give up their connection to the city and to their Kavers.
“I don’t like the idea of you doing this,” Alec said.
“Neither do I,” Bastan said. “Maybe we should send one of my men.”
“Who?” Sam asked. “Who would you trust to do this, and who would you trust not to get hurt in the process? I can do this. Besides, if I don’t do this, it’s possible others will be hurt.” She looked at Alec, meeting his gaze. She always knew exactly what to say to convince him to help. She knew exactly what would be the most meaningful to him.
“I don’t know that you should go alone,” Alec said. “I can go with you.”
“You said you were weak.”
His father approached, and he pressed his fingers to Alec’s neck. “You were given eel meat. You shouldn’t still be sick.”
“I don’t know what I should or shouldn’t be, all I know is the way I feel,” Alec said.
“Tell me,” his father said.
There was something in his tone that reminded Alec of when he reported on other people’s illnesses. This time, he would be forced to report on his own. “It’s a sort of nausea. It sits in the pit of my stomach, a nagging sort of discomfort. That combined with the overall sense of malaise, feels like my energy continues to drain from me, makes it feel like I just need to sleep. I feel like I could lie down and rest for hours. Days even. And then there is the weakness.”
“What weakness?” his father asked.
“I don’t know how to describe it. It’s my arms and legs. I feel generally weakened.”
His father frowned, tapping the side of his cheek. He did that when he was thinking, and Alec wondered what his father might be thinking about now. What was it that Alec had told him that troubled him, because the expression on his face was definitely a troubled expression.
“Father?”
“The eel meat should have restored you,” his father said. “It’s not only a curative, but it also adds something of an energy boost. It’s not well understood, but typically, it lasts for several days, often longer. That’s the reason the university has forbidden its use. If others were to gain access to the eel meat, they would use it, likely stay awake for days on end, and eventually, the supply of eels would be destroyed.”
“Maybe you didn’t give him enough,” Sam said.
“He was given an entire eel. That is much more than most have been given. Seeing as how I didn’t know exactly what he was suffering from, I thought that the most prudent. There is no harm in administering too much.”
Alec looked at his father, trying to understand. “If this was a restorative, and it failed…”
“It is most unusual,” his father agreed.
“There is only one other instance of me coming into contact with something that failed to respond to treatment,” Alec said.
“But you weren’t exposed to the Book,” Sam said.
He wasn’t, but he had been exposed to the same substances, hadn’t he? He had been working with a combination of things that theoretically would create easar paper. What if he had done something—and what if the poisoning did something—that had caused him to fall ill?
“I know that I wasn’t exposed to the Book, but…” He looked over to Bastan. Maybe Bastan was right to think there was more to what happened to him. Maybe Master Helen was responsible for much more than he realized.
If that was the case, then he needed to get back there with Sam. The two of them needed to make sure no one else was harmed.
“I see that look on your face, Alec,” Sam said.
“I need to be there. I need to be a part of going back.”
Bastan glanced from Sam to Alec before shrugging. “It seems we are all going back.”
16
Closing the Classroom
Sam looked over at Alec as they headed up the stairs into the university. It was late, night having long since settled, and everything in the university had a sort of quiet about it, almost a stillness. The air had a pungent aroma, and it left her worried that perhaps the stink from whatever Alec had been mixing had now permeated the rest of the university. That shouldn’t have been the case, especially since the stench had been contained in the classroom, at least it had been before they had left the university to go to Aelus’s shop, but maybe it had.
Alec leaned on her as they walked.
It was becoming increasingly evident that something wasn’t quite right with him. Whatever he’d been exposed to, consuming the eel meat had not restored him completely.
“We could try the easar paper,” she whispered.
“I don’t know that we can,” he said. “If this is similar to the Book, there may not be anything that we can do.”
“Don’t speak like that, Alec.”
“I’m being realistic,” he said. “It’s not that I want to give up hope. It’s just that I understand there may not be anything that can be done.”
“We will wait and see what we discover with your experiment,” his father said.
Alec only stared straight ahead, saying nothing.
Sam didn’t like the fact that Alec seemed to have given up. It had happened far more easily than what she was expecting. He was always the one to keep her motivated, the one who tried to encourage her. So now that he needed her, she would be the one to lift him up.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” she said.
“I don’t know that you can decide that,” he said.
“No one gets to tell me what I get to decide,” Sam said with a smile.
She had hoped that it would draw out a reaction from him, but it didn’t.
He kept a serious expression on his face as they reached the upper level, and they headed toward the classroom. The smell as they neared was almost overwhelming.
“They shouldn’t have been able to hold classes here,” Alec said.
“There have been no class
es,” a voice said behind them.
Sam spun, readying to grab for her canal staff, when she saw an older-looking man. He had gray hair and was medium build.
Alec smiled at him. “Master Eckerd?”
“Are you responsible for this?” he asked.
“I’m not responsible. I was trying to—”
“You were trying to make easar paper.”
Alec swallowed. He glanced over at Sam who nodded at him. “I was trying to make paper. And if it happened to be easar paper, then so be it.”
“Carl spoke with me. He said your father had returned to the university. I didn’t believe it, as he hasn’t been back here in years, but now I see him with my own eyes.” He turned his attention to Aelus. “Is this your doing? Are you the reason that he risked so much attempting to create easar paper?”
“I would never have asked him to do that.”
“But you did treat him with eel meat in an attempt to restore him.”
“There was no choice.”
“I had already harvested the eels,” Bastan said.
Master Eckerd seemed much less impressed with Bastan than Master Carl had been, and he shot Bastan a withering look. To Bastan’s credit, he didn’t shrink away from it. Sam didn’t think Bastan shrank away from anything.
“Did Carl go to you?” Aelus asked.
He turned his attention to Master Eckerd and seemed to glare at him. Sam was surprised. It seemed most of the masters were irritated by Alec’s father. Was it all because he had abandoned his opportunity to be a master physicker? Or was there more to it?
“Carl did tell me that he had made a mistake with thinking to use the eels. I didn’t realize that you would have been involved with it.”
“I don’t disagree that harvesting the eels randomly is inappropriate, but I do think there are times when the eels can be useful.”
“Such as when someone you care about is suffering?” Master Eckerd asked.
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