by D. P. Prior
Barek closed his eyes, clenched his jaw. ‘He told us it was the bard. Took us to her parents to warn them. Elias brought her home, there was an argument…a fight.’ Barek opened his eyes, tears streaming down his cheeks.
Shader’s head was pounding. ‘A fight?’ With Yeffrik and Jessy? But—
Barek tried addressing Rhiannon, but she wouldn’t meet his gaze. ‘It wasn’t meant to be like that. You have to believe me. Sammy…Rhiannon, I…’
She looked up at that. ‘What? What the shog have you done to him?’
‘Nothing. I…Huntsman has him.’
‘Huntsman?’
‘He came…Rhiannon, I tried to…’
She took her head in her hands and began to sway. Agna hugged her close and scowled at Barek.
‘Rhiannon, please…’ Barek gave up and turned back to Shader. ‘What are you going to do? We need you, Deacon. Gaston’s lost it. The men follow him, but only because he’s the leader; they’re just doing what you taught them. If you came back…’
‘Go, Barek.’ Shader dismissed him with a wave. ‘You can’t blame me for what’s happened. This isn’t what I trained you for. I expected better from you—you of all people.’
‘But—‘
‘Get out of here!’
Barek rode alongside Gaston’s mare and leaned over to take its reins. He cast a final look over his shoulder before kicking his heels into his horse’s flanks and trotting down the Domus Tyalae with the mare in tow.
The fat man—Cadman—trod his cigarette underfoot. ‘Boys,’ he said with an exaggerated sigh. ‘And yet Governor Gen thinks they could help.’
‘Zara Gen sent them?’ Ioana said.
‘Sent us all, actually. Years of research and medical practice and I’m still just a dogsbody.’
Shader returned his swords to their scabbards and tried to make eye contact with Rhiannon, but she turned her back on him and went inside with Agna. He couldn’t tell if he was angry or hurt. He’d acted like an idiot, and yet if Gaston came back he’d do the same again. What did she expect him to do? Turn the other cheek? That was one bit of the Liber he couldn’t subscribe to; he’d tried it before, but it had only delayed the inevitable.
‘Are you really a doctor?’ Cadris asked, his voice squeaking like a rusty hinge, fingers drumming on his belly.
‘Many times over,’ Cadman said, whipping off his pince-nez and blowing on the lenses once, twice, three times. ‘And not just of medicine.’ He fished a polka dot handkerchief from his pocket and gave the glass a good rub, lips moving almost imperceptibly—as if he were reciting a prayer…or counting.
Cadris threw his head back somewhat disdainfully and folded his arms over his chest. ‘Well, we’re terribly impressed, but I have to say…’
‘Cadris!’ Ioana’s voice cracked out like a whip. ‘Soror Velda’s on her own with the patients.’
‘But Agna and Rhiannon are in—‘
‘What was it we were discussing over breakfast?’
‘Yes, quite, but really, this does not—‘
‘Obedience, Pater. Obedience and humility.’
Cadris’s cheeks flushed and he winced before bowing his head and waddling inside.
Cadman returned his pince-nez to the bridge of his nose, shook out his handkerchief and crammed it into his pocket. ‘Mater, I’m so terribly sorry about all this bother. I should have come alone, but I foolishly thought I could kill two birds with one stone. Governor Gen felt the knights might come in handy—extra man-power, you know the sort of thing. They were more than a little keen, too. You heard what the lad said: apparently they came to Sarum to help you.’
‘With what, exactly?’ Shader asked.
Cadman squinted at him, beady eyes scanning him from head to foot, one eyebrow rising. ‘Who can tell? Do you know, I’m finding this quite fascinating. Gaston told me all about you. Said you left the Elect in Aeterna before founding the White Order. Governor Gen has some interesting tales about you, as well. Seems you’re something of a celebrity. I must say, it’s an honour to meet you.’
‘Really,’ Shader said. ‘Seems you know a lot more about me than I know about you.’
The fat man plucked another cigarette from a silver case he kept in his breast pocket. ‘As I said, I’m Dr Cadman. Ernst Cadman. Office of Public Health at Arnbrook House. I also run a little private practice out in the suburbs—services to the poor, that kind of thing. Which reminds me, Mater,’ Cadman beamed at Ioana. ‘How are you getting on with the plague? I hear great things about the care you provide: exemplary barrier nursing.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Oh.’ Cadman took three short puffs on his cigarette. ‘I assumed that’s why none of you were infected: you know, masks, gloves, stringent hand-washing. The Governor thought you might like to share the secrets of your success so that we can hold you up as an example to the hospitals and get this plague beaten.’
Ioana frowned and stuck out her bottom lip. ‘This is no ordinary plague, Dr Cadman.’
Cadman slid his pince-nez further down his nose and raised his eyebrows. ‘Go on.’
‘The people who are infected…I don’t wish to sound judgemental…and I’m not…’
Cadman was nodding. ‘But?’
‘They are mostly people from the…the…’
‘Less salubrious trades? Most degenerate areas?’ Cadman said. ‘Interesting, isn’t it? My esteemed colleague, Dr Stoofley, made similar observations, only for him the pattern of depravity broke down when it came to bankers and merchants getting ill. Maybe he doesn’t bank where I do.’
Elias sighed, muttered something under his breath, and slipped away towards his cart where he made a fuss of Hector before climbing aboard and hunting through the instruments and sacks of herbs.
Maldark, had a sullen look on his face. He kept glaring at Cadman and then patting the head of his hammer. The doctor noticed and tried to lead Ioana inside the templum.
‘Mater,’ he said, shooting Shader a look that said this was a private conversation. ‘I wonder if you’d allow me to see your patients and have a word with the carers. Zara Gen is convinced you have some mystical immunity and it is my intention to prove him wrong. Science is what we are about, is it not, Mater?’
Shader felt a warm glow from within his pocket as Cadman brushed past him. He slipped his fingers inside and withdrew them as if bitten: the Statue of Eingana was gently throbbing. Maldark was watching him and gave the slightest of nods. Cadman cast a furtive look over his shoulder before ushering Ioana inside the templum. Turning his back on Cadman’s driver, who’d remained as still as a corpse throughout, Shader took the statue from his pocket. The amber dweomer had returned, and the slightest of ripples ran along the serpent’s scales.
‘You felt it also?’ Maldark touched the statue reverently with the tips of his fingers. He stared at it with a mixture of awe and affection.
Shader slipped it back in his pocket. ‘It seemed to react to our visitor.’
Maldark rubbed at his beard and shut his eyes as if he were trying to listen. His chest rose and fell like a bellows, the iron bands of his armour grating, leather straps creaking. At that moment, he looked impossibly old to Shader, an animated fossil from a long-forgotten epoch.
‘You’re not taking that muck in the templum!’ Frater Hugues was beside Elias’s cart engaged in a tug-o-war with the bard, a hessian bag stretched taut between them and spilling black seeds to the ground.
Elias let go his end and Hugues fell flat on his back, the bag’s contents emptying over his face. He tried to sit up, spitting out seeds, but Elias smashed a mandolin over his head, leapt from the cart and scarpered towards the residences. Hugues shouted a stream of obscenities and ran in pursuit with the stiffest, most ungainly gait Shader had ever seen.
‘A bacillus, Mater, a bacillus!’ Cadman inveighed as they re-emerged. ‘There are no mysteries except those waiting to be uncovered by science.’
Ioana was no fool, and Shader could tell she was
unconvinced by whatever the doctor was telling her. ‘Ain forgive me for saying it,’ she lowered her voice, ‘but the victims are all cutpurses, whores, and drunkards. You name it, they’ve done it—even the youngsters.’
Cadman snatched away his pince-nez and made a show of looking flustered. ‘Scum, every last one of them, though I admire your reluctance to call a spade a spade; highly commendable if you ask me. But a plague preying on immorality! As a man of science I really must object.’
‘So what’s your theory?’ Shader asked, straightening to his full height and narrowing his eyes.
Cadman fiddled with his moustache, crammed the pince-nez back in place and patted his breast pocket three times; twice more, and then—pointedly—once again.
‘Filthy people are drawn to filthy places, and filthy places are made by filthy people. Dalantle, Calphon, Edgebriar—rat-infested backwaters with the demography of a penal colony. Ninety percent of the dross of Sarum is crammed into those dumps in the most unsanitary conditions. The docks are just as bad—all those salty dogs and seaman’s logs…’
‘Dr Cadman, if you please!’ Ioana’s voice had regained its stridency.
‘Forgive me, Mater, but the point I’m making is that plague is spread through dirt and rodents, streets flowing with excreta—all the things you’re going to find in those regions.’
‘And the bankers?’ Maldark said. ‘How doest thou explain them?’
‘Whores, thieves, assassins—all the sort of company kept by your typical financier; and if the bankers have the pox, well it’s only a matter of time before the merchants come down with it. Mater, I’d like to share my observations with the Governor and arrange for the hospitals to adopt your practices.’
‘What observations?’ Ioana asked. ‘Which practices?’
‘Oh, don’t you worry,’ Cadman said, giving Shader a wide berth and raising his eyebrows. ‘Nice coat. Aeternam?’
‘Britannish.’
Cadman inclined his head, his eyes bulging above the pince-nez. ‘Ah, Britannia, Britannia. All that hope, all that glory wasted on the other side of the world. Alas, Mr Shader, I fear I’ll never see her shores again.’ Cadman opened the door of his carriage and turned back. ‘Isn’t it a bit hot for a coat, and a black one at that? Unless of course you’re like me. Doesn’t matter what the sun’s doing, I’m always frozen to the bone. Well, cheerio everyone, and Mater, don’t you worry. I have everything I need. You’ve all been most helpful. Together, we’ll soon have this plague under control. Just a quick word in the Governor’s ear and it will all come out right as rain. Right as rain, Mater. Good day.’
The carriage shuddered and groaned as Cadman clambered inside and pulled the door to. ‘Tally-ho!’
The driver suddenly lurched upright, snapped the reins, and the twin black stallions surged forward.
Ioana came to stand beside Shader. ‘What was that all about?’
Shader shook his head as the driver turned the horses onto the Domus Tyalae and the black carriage clattered into the distance. ‘Something tells me there’s more to Dr Cadman than meets the eye.’
Ioana threw up her hands and then shrugged. ‘Well whatever it is, I’m sure it can wait.’ She wandered back inside, leaving Shader alone with Maldark.
The dwarf leaned on the haft of his war-hammer staring in the direction the carriage had taken. ‘Eingana called me to Sarum,’ he muttered so quietly that Shader thought he might be talking to himself. When Shader made no response, Maldark looked up at him.
‘You think you’ve found the reason why?’ Shader asked.
‘Mayhap.’ Maldark shouldered his hammer and headed after Ioana.
Shader put his hand in his pocket and curled his fingers around the statue. It felt cold and lifeless once more. Why had it reacted like that around Cadman? Was it afraid of him? Was it trying to communicate? Shader had the nagging feeling that he’d come close to something important, something that prickled the hairs on the back of his neck. He’d grown sensitive to the aura of evil during the campaign in Verusia, and it was something that hovered around Cadman like a cloud of malarial midges.
Not much he could do about that right now, he thought, and besides, there were other matters that needed taking care of. In spite of what he’d told Barek, Shader had to deal with the White Order. Like it or not, he’d created them, trained them, and then abandoned them. The responsibility for everything they’d done was starting to settle like a mountain on his shoulders.
Then there was the duel with Gaston. He couldn’t back down from it: he knew his own nature too well for that. Finally, there was the thing he dreaded most of all. It might not involve swords and heroic levels of guilt, but he’d rather have faced all the demons of the Abyss in its stead. Uttering a swift prayer to Ain, Shader headed into the templum and went in search of Rhiannon.
ILLUSIONS SHATTERED
A cigarette, a cigarette, a cigarette.
That was the biggest drawback occupying the Office of Public Health in Arnbrook House: it didn’t matter how fine the stained panelling was if you couldn’t have a smoke. Might give the wrong impression. Never mind how lush the carpet, the—Cadman couldn’t quite settle on an adjective for the crystal chandelier suspended dangerously above his head like a big glittery Sword of Damocles. Gaudy, he decided just as the door inched open.
‘Anything to drink, Doctor?’ Lallia asked, peering through the gap and faking a smile.
Cadman knew she hated having to ask, but that, unfortunately, was her job and he was loving every minute of it. ‘Tea please, my dear. Britannic if you have any, with a splash of milk and three sugars.’
Lallia entered it all in her notepad, speaking without looking up. ‘That’s a lot of sugar for the Public Health Advisor.’
She might as well have called him a fat git, thought Cadman, pursing his lips and wondering if that was the correct Sahulian vernacular for the insult. ‘Yes, I suppose it is,’ he said with forced jollity. ‘Just don’t let on about it.’
He waved her away with a flick of his fingers and the door closed with a resounding thud. He could get used to this: being waited on hand and foot, lounging in luxury, and only intruded upon by the odd sniffling politician trying to get treatment as a personal favour. It never worked. Cadman was almost religious about that. His job was advice and planning. The last thing he wanted was contact with ill people. The thought would have made his skin crawl—if he’d had any besides his illusory corpulence. He could never understand why he’d gone into medicine all those centuries ago. The memory was so remote it blurred with all the stories he’d confabulated about his past. A man needed something to build upon. There was nothing worse than a black hole at the core of your being.
Cadman rested his fleshy chin on the tips of his fingers as he contemplated the amber fang and eye on the desk before him. It seemed logical to suppose they were halves of pairs and that, if the legends of Eingana were true, they belonged to a serpent statue of sorts. Two eyes, two fangs, one body. Five pieces, in all. Cadman groaned. Not a good omen, and surely all the warning he needed to cease this folly while he still had the chance.
He picked up a piece in either hand and rolled them between his forefingers and thumbs, wondering how they joined to the body. Maybe a fixative was required, although on closer scrutiny he could detect no trace of gum or resin. They pulsed gently, like blood through an artery, and Cadman bent his ear to listen, thinking he could hear them hissing. Shaking his head to rid himself of the sensation, he gingerly touched the pieces together. Warmth invaded his arms, passing through the phoney flesh and heating his bones. He gasped and then sighed as it began to drive back the eternal cold. It was like…Cadman dug about for the memory…It was like settling into a hot bath.
Making fists around the amber, he stood and walked to the window. Closing his eyes, he sought out the missing parts of the statue, and to his surprise knew instantly that one was near, so close indeed that he felt he could merely extend a hand and pluck it from the air.
A face formed in his mind, gaunt and hard, scarred with furrows from hidden conflicts. Cadman recognized the chill blue eyes, the firm jaw dusted with dark stubble; long black hair tied behind the neck, the wedge of a widow’s peak retreating from a high forehead. It was the face of a man in his fifties, although Cadman suspected he was considerably younger: he wouldn’t have put him at anything more than thirty-five. It was the face of Deacon Shader.
That’s what self-flagellation and fasting will get you, Cadman thought, before reminding himself of his own misleading appearance.
A hard lump grew in his stomach, as it always did when he recalled what he really was. It wasn’t real of course, but it was uncomfortable all the same. Crossing his arms over his bulging belly, he shut his eyes and tried to imagine the softness of real flesh, the sensation of warm blood coursing through his veins. On a good day he could almost feel it, but today was too full of worries to be considered good.
Cadman opened his eyes, finding it hard to keep them from the amber relics. They seemed to confirm what he’d sensed at the templum: Shader had a piece of the Statue of Eingana. He’d detected something else too: a residue of power, or perhaps another piece, more distant, better concealed. Maybe with three segments assembled the fourth would reveal itself, but that would involve further action, and something told Cadman this Shader was not a man to be crossed.
Cadman.
He started at the whisper and threw his gaze around the office.
Ice clamped around the black spark that passed for his heart, radiating through his bones and snatching away the brief respite he’d had from the amber.
Close your eyes.
Fat chance of that! Cadman thought, backing away towards the desk. ‘Where are you?’ he said in a voice he hoped sounded more angry than scared. He bumped into the chair and collapsed into it.
Don’t be afraid. Close your eyes.
His eyelids felt like they had lead weights hanging from them. They fluttered momentarily and then shut like the final curtain at a theatre. A vignette of heroically attired actors sprang to mind, and lithe and dainty dancers—one might almost say skeletally thin—fanned out on the stage around them.