City of Lies

by Sam Hawke

  And of course, Lazar’s servants would bear closer examination; at least one was foreign born, because I remembered seeing a Doranite man in house colors serving kori to the Theater-Guilder. For Silasta’s wealthiest families, invisible servants had better access than the closest friend or lover.

  I stopped outside the Reed apartments. The buildings loomed aggressively over the promenade, crowding the land. Unlike the elegant, classically-designed neighboring apartments, Lazar’s expanded buildings were the product of his considerable fortune and his grandiose and, in places, garish taste. Around the side of the narrow garden, my head ducked low, I crept past the veranda where several singers and two pale northern jugglers were entertaining the Credo and his family for the afternoon. Explaining my presence here would create unwelcome issues. Instead, I used the kitchen entrance at the back of the property. Etan’s well-known love of cooking gave me a pretext to study techniques and the opportunity to visit every kitchen entrance of the Families’ apartments, the Guildhalls, and every building the Chancellor might conceivably enter. So although the serving staff looked up, quizzical, upon my entrance, no one seemed displeased.

  Lazar’s head cook greeted me jovially. “Credo Jovan!”

  Cardamom and honey hung in the air, and something thick and sweet boiled on the great stove. “Nice to see you again.”

  The little woman returned my smile. “I am at your service.”

  “I’ve come to ask a favor,” I told her. “My Tashi complimented your luncheon and wants to use it as a lesson for me. I was wondering if there were any leftovers—a small sample of each course?”

  The cook looked over her shoulder at the swarming kitchen. A stack of clean bowls stood beside several large kori bottles on a bench, and a crumb-scattered platter and two empty soup tureens waited to be washed. In the corner, a long clawed kitsa prowled around underfoot, snatching up spills and crumbs with its quick pronged tongue. “We’ve packed up from lunch, I’m afraid, though there might be some of the sweet left—I was going to leave it for the staff.” She clicked her fingers and a servant sprang to her side. “Boy, serve a sample of the goa confection for Credo Jovan, here.”

  I thanked her and accepted the small bowl. “The Credo’s been keeping you busy,” I said, casually stepping out of the way of some of the workers and closer to the tureens. “I stopped by the lunch on an errand for the Chancellor and it looked like the whole staff was in there. Did you have to bring in extra people?”

  “No, but the Honored Credo pulled every member of his staff for this lunch,” she said. “And the family has had guests and entertainment out on the porch all afternoon—no one will be allowed a break until tonight.” She added hastily, “Hard work for an honored family is the path to our own greater honor, of course.”

  I smiled. Behind my back, I scraped a spoon across the edge of the inside of the tureen. “The Credo is lucky to have you. Thank you for the sample. My uncle will be delighted.”

  “Please thank Credo Etan for the compliment. I’ve the recipes, too, if that would assist.” She turned to find the papers and I slipped an empty kori bottle into the folds of my paluma. Then, sample and recipes in hand, I excused myself and returned up the road to my family apartments, where the dessert sample, kori bottle, spoonful of soup, and handful of fish cake crumbs joined Etan’s saliva and vomit. However unlikely, I would test it all for poison.

  Some basic things I could do immediately. I made a solution from a lichen powder and tested the food samples; the presence of some corrosive poisons would turn the solution red. Etan’s saliva generated an extremely pale pink, which was to be expected, but there was no response with any of the food. I examined his partly digested stomach contents; the color and smell, while unpleasant, seemed normal. Thendra had taken blood and urine from him and I would need to do the same.

  After a thorough visual examination under Etan’s best glass—nothing looked abnormal—I tasted the food samples myself. The soup was a well-made but simple root affair, the only detectable additives salt and two seed-based spices. The dessert was crushed nuts and bindie egg, whipped with goa berry syrup. Only crumbs remained of the fish cakes, but the ingredients list provided by Lazar’s cook matched the smell, texture, and taste of the sample I had. The kori was standard cloudy liquor from the southern Losi region, with no additives that I could detect.

  Replacing the sliding panel in the kitchen wall that hid Etan’s workroom, I shook my head. Etan had trained me too well. There was no call for me to be more worried than my uncle. But then the front doors thrust open and Kalina darted in, sweat sticking her hair to her face and her eyes wide. I stopped, unable to take my next breath.

  “Jov,” she said, and before she could say another word, I knew my sister’s news.

  * * *

  My uncle was dying, and so was the Chancellor. For all that my entire life had been built around this very scenario, faced with it I now felt incompetent. Unprepared. Unworthy.

  When the Chancellor fell ill, the physics shifted their attention from Etan to Caslav, and Kalina and I made it through the burgeoning chaos in the Manor without difficulty. Half the Council flocked about and the Manor staff looked fearful. No one paid us any heed as we were escorted to the suite adjoining Caslav’s.

  We sat there now, silent, trying to get fluid through our uncle’s puffy lips. The physic Thendra darted in occasionally, her voice sharp as she barked instructions at her apprentices. Tain broke from his uncle’s bedside only once, to briefly check on the three of us. None of us spoke of poison, but with the physics feeding both men purgatives and emetics it must have been suspected. All we knew for certain, though, was that with every moment that passed, they grew worse.

  “Home,” Etan murmured. “Go home.”

  “Shh, Tashi.” Kalina patted his hand gently. “Just rest. We’ll take you home when you’re well.”

  “You…” His lips worked silently, then he slumped back again. “Home. So—sorry.”

  I could not bear to make eye contact with my sister. My sense of failure was so intense I could barely breathe.

  Our family’s great proofing tome lay under the bed, hidden from immediate sight, and the satchel of antidotes we’d brought earlier now bulged with every remedy we had. We had tried ingested antidotes and absorbing creams, sometimes the same ones in powder, liquid, or raw plant form. When Etan could no longer swallow, Kalina propped his weak body up against her while I poured teas down his throat. While the physics were occupied with the Chancellor, she stood guard by the door as I used a hollow needle to inject our only blood-borne antidote.

  Nothing stemmed the tide against him.

  As evening deepened, Etan was conscious less and less, his breathing weakening. Earlier, he had detailed his day for us as best he could while Kalina took notes. Even then he had struggled to force the words from his thickened tongue. Having spent much of my life drawing calm from my Tashi when the compulsions seized my body and my brain, the sight of unflappable Etan swearing in frustration at his lack of control over his own body set me off.

  My problems were manageable in everyday life if I kept things in order, stuck to a routine, stayed calm. But in times of high stress, a storm of panic and fear and speculation built in my head. My usual physical calming exercises—breathing, pacing—themselves became part of the problem, and I ended up stuck in a recurring pattern. After we’d tried the last of our antidote options, I’d paced in sets of eight until my legs wobbled with exhaustion. I’d never resented my weakness so much as today, when my uncle and my sister needed me the most.

  Thendra, too, grew visibly frustrated as the hours passed. “Both men say they were in perfect health this morning, yes,” she had told us. “Their symptoms are the same. Credo Etan’s manifested sooner, but the Chancellor’s are escalating faster. I fear their bodies cannot continue with this pressure, no, but since I do not understand what ails them, I cannot treat it.”

  She had suggested maidenbane as a possible poison and Kalina
and I feigned ignorance, but the antidote had had no effect; we knew it would not, not only because Etan would never have missed such a basic poison, but because we had already tried it, just in case. Nor did any other remedy offer any improvement in either man. In private, we had attempted every antidote for the greater and lesser poisons in our secret stores, to no effect. Ideas thinned, as did our hope.

  Kalina leaned against me now, her frail form a light, even weight against my back and her hair a dark shroud between us. “What are we going to do?” she asked, her voice bleak, and though I wanted to reassure her, no words came to me. The weight of my failure crushed me.

  “We’ll manage it together,” I assured her.

  She stayed silent.

  Etan stirred and we both started. Kalina rose and leaned over our uncle, touching his hand with hesitant fingers. “Tashi, can you hear us?”

  I stared at Etan, mute. What could I say to the man who had raised us? Something lighthearted, to take his mind off the inevitable, or something sincere and thoughtful that represented all we had shared? Instead, my mind cranked through its usual gears, noting pointless details, counting breaths, evaluating symptoms.

  We are who we are, I told myself. It wasn’t a comfort.

  Etan coughed, making a sound like water sucking down a drain, and blinked furiously. His lips moved.

  “Tashi?” I leaned close. He was trying to say something.

  Etan’s gaze moved between us and he clutched at his chest. I turned to grab the cup of water from the table but, at Kalina’s gasp, the cup fell out of my hand and spilled water over my lap.

  Etan’s dark eyes were still open, his lips parted, but some spark, an animation that had been there before, was gone.

  Whatever knowledge our uncle had wanted to impart, he’d taken it with him.

  Zarnika

  DESCRIPTION: Naturally occurring mineral, brittle and gray, often with a colorless, odorless crystalline coating, soluble in water. Poisonous to ingest directly or through plants or water supplies in high concentration areas. Poison can also be absorbed through skin.

  SYMPTOMS: Facial swelling, acute abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, leading into coma and death.

  PROOFING CUES: Subtle, sweet, and slightly metallic flavor, difficult to detect at low levels or in sweet dishes.

  2

  Kalina

  Duty takes precedence over all else, and I knew what it meant to fail at it far better than my brother ever could. There had been no time spared to comfort me all those years ago when we all realized my body couldn’t tolerate the life of a proofer; I’d simply recovered from another health crisis to find my Tashi’s time devoted instead to my small brother. The same honor and duty that was taken from me still bound our family to the Chancellor, and while he still lived we couldn’t pause to grieve for our own uncle.

  But already it seemed hopeless. Jovan and I stole moments where we could talk out of hearing of the physics, whispering thoughts and theories, reaching dead ends. It had to be poison, surely, for all the physics’ talk of unknown diseases—and I knew as well as anyone their fascination with unexplained ailments—because no one else had fallen sick. But if so, it was one Jovan didn’t know. And he knew all of the poisons. Or at least we’d thought he did.

  Jovan leaped to his feet, pacing again. I sat on the floor, back to my uncle’s body, knees drawn up to my chest and arms wrapped around my bare shins. He took his measured steps: left, right, left, right, spin to the left, left, right, left, right, spin to the right. The impeccably timed sound of his feet on the floor, in precisely equal steps, tapped out the rhythm of my childhood. Always balanced, no movement with one side of his body failing to be echoed by an equal one on the other. I rested my head back on the bed, watching him. Although average in his dark coloring and his medium height and build, my brother was striking in his symmetry and precision, even at his most anxious. Perhaps especially at his most anxious. His breath released slowly as his pacing calmed him. It calmed me, too.

  Etan had given us a detailed description of his day, including everything he ate and drank, and every person he saw. Nothing unusual. First thing in the morning he had proofed the kori, kavcha and tea, cheese and dessert at Lazar’s kitchen and then spent the morning with Chancellor Caslav, eating only food he’d prepared himself. They hadn’t left the Manor until Lazar’s lunch, and afterward Etan had gone alone to the docks to check on a late tea delivery while Caslav had returned to the Manor.

  The symptoms had begun at his mouth; likely whatever had triggered the attack did, too. “Eat, drink, breathe, kiss,” I murmured. At my words, Jovan finished his set of eight and visibly resisted the urge to begin another set. I offered my hand and he sat beside me. Together we thumbed through the pages of my notes.

  “He ate two courses with his fingers,” I said. “So he could have touched something and passed it to his mouth. But it would have to be something only he and Caslav touched.” I looked back at the notes. Etan had kissed every Councilor and recalled touching the shoulder of the musician who had performed, a man called Hasan. The Talafan nobleman had shaken his hand in the manner of the Empire. Etan had also handled the leksot briefly when it had crawled over him during its brief escape, but he had washed his hands after doing so because of the smell and the shed fur. And although the Chancellor had also touched the animal, so had Lord Ectar, Jovan, and Credo Lazar, as well as at least one of Credo Lazar’s servants.

  Jov stopped at that place in my notations. “Have we checked his skin where the leksot crawled on him?” He thrust back the bedclothes from our uncle’s body. Several red scratches marked his calves and knees. Jov touched the skin around the markings, but they were ordinary scratches and showed no sign of special irritation.

  “I looked at those already,” I reminded him. “Didn’t we agree this was something oral?”

  The beads at the door rattled. “I am sorry to disturb you, Credo, Credola,” Thendra said. The sight of the physic triggered a wave of nerves in me. Though never anything less than courteous, Thendra looked at me like an interesting puzzle that she hungered to solve, and I’d grown to dislike her assessing, dispassionate face for all that I relied on her.

  Jov stood. “We were just looking at these.” He indicated the scratches. “The Chancellor will have some too…?” But she was already shaking her head.

  “I asked your uncle about the marks, Credo. If the animal had a toxic scratch we would see symptoms surrounding that area.” Her gaze dropped. “I do not know what is causing this. It is no poison or disease I know of.”

  Jovan looked back at the scratches, desperation apparent in his shaking voice. “The animal drooled a lot. What if it had some foreign disease, one we’ve never seen here, and passed it through its saliva onto an open cut?”

  Her sleepy gaze sharpened as she regarded him. “I could examine the animal,” she said. “I do not know if it will help, but I am happy to do so if you wish.” She left unspoken our lack of remaining options.

  “I’ll go,” I said quickly, before Jovan could move. His experiments would be outside my knowledge and understanding to conduct; I wanted to do something, anything, that might help. Though the tension in my brother’s expression signaled his objection, the desire to examine the scratches more closely won out and he didn’t argue.

  “The glass garden,” he said. “Be careful.”

  * * *

  Dozens of staff members and even a few Councilors crossed my path on my way to the gardens; word had spread. I didn’t stop to hear commiserations. Every time I pictured Etan lying still and empty, my chest squeezed in on me and my throat and eyes burned. But Caslav lived, still. We’d lost our Tashi, but maybe we could redeem our family’s honor. Maybe I could help, for a change.

  The glass-walled gardens were small, so even in the darkness it didn’t take long to find the leksot. I wouldn’t need the cage after all.

  The creature lay prone on a patch of dirt underneath a crying fin tree, its tail spread limp acr
oss the ground like a snake. Jovan had been right. Here was the architect of our uncle’s downfall; not some shadowy foreign poisoner or a treacherous colleague, but a pitiful dead animal, its paws and face still and wilted, tongue protruding from its little mouth. My hand shook, wobbling the light. Losing our uncle to something so stupid and random as a foreign disease was so unfair, so unworthy of all he’d been. But at least I could hope something in its body would help Thendra and the others treat the disease. The Chancellor was running out of time.

  I crouched, about to scoop up the body, when something made me pause. I swept the light around slowly. Something looked wrong.

  The dirt surrounding the body was unmarked. I pressed a light finger in and noted the easy impression it left. The leksot hadn’t walked or crawled here; it must have fallen from the tree. A low branch of the crying fin formed a green fan just over the animal. I ran a hand down its flexible length. It was no wider than my wrist.

  An odd place for a sick animal to sit. Etan had suffered for hours. Why would an animal in distress have perched on a branch too narrow to lie down on? The swollen, protruding tongue suggested it had died the same way as my uncle. But it had been in apparent good health when Jovan left it here. How had it come into the city carrying a disease but then sickened and died so quickly? That was odd even accounting for differences in anatomy.