The Poison Master

by Liz Williams

  “What do you know of other worlds, Alivet?”

  “I know only what the Lords allow us to know,” Alivet said, with some bitterness. “And the little that we have discovered on our own. I know that our ancestors came from another world—that's what the Search is all about, after all. And I know that there are supposed to be other beings out there, who wish us harm and from whom the Lords are said to protect us. But there have never been more than rumors. No one I know has ever seen such a person. There are stories and legends, but it's hard to know what to believe. If anyone tried to make such a journey, I'd assume that the Lords would stop them.”

  “Then let me enlighten you. There are a number of other worlds, Alivet. Perhaps more than we know. Some of us are free to travel between them, as far as our technology and our purses allow. But the Lords and their human abettors keep you here, stagnating in your swamps. Even the deep fens are subject to Unpriest rule. And journeying to and from Latent Emanation is also prohibited by the Lords. I have taken a considerable risk in coming here.”

  Best to humor him, Alivet thought. Perhaps she could talk her way out of this.

  “Then, Brother Ghairen,” she said, “perhaps you'd like to tell me why you're here?”

  “I told you. I'm a Poison Master,” Ghairen said, as if this explained everything. “Fifth Grade, Scheduled Circle.”

  “I've never heard of such a thing,” Alivet said.

  Ghairen gave her an indulgent glance, as if she were a particularly promising pupil.

  “Then I'll explain. My society is divided into many professions: diviners, engineers, linguists—and poisoners, to name but a few. My profession is similar to your own; I am basically an alchemical apothecary, although it is true that the focus of my work differs somewhat from the kind of thing with which you are engaged. I know something of hallucinogens and narcotics, but as my title suggests, my principal area of expertise involves the art of toxins.”

  “Why would anyone devote themselves to that?” Alivet asked. “For political reasons, or—?”

  “Precisely. On Hathes, assassination is considered to be an accepted, if not acceptable, method of social climbing. My profession, you will doubtless be relieved to hear, is a relatively small one. There are not many Poison Masters.”

  Alivet was beginning to see why that might be so. Presumably they were all in the process of finishing one another off.

  “But I don't wish to boast,” Ghairen added. “The apothecaries of Latent Emanation know more about psychoceuticals and psychopomps, drugs and hallucinogens, than anyone else across the worlds. There is not so much of a call for drugs in my society. There is some private interest, naturally, but their use is not a form of socializing, as it is in yours, and we do not use drugs for spiritual purposes. Instead, we live, breathe, and work with toxins—and, indeed, with the healing of their effects. A Poison Master is both assassin and doctor. The Practical Examinations are legendary throughout Hathes.” He gave a small, nostalgic sigh.

  Alivet moved a little farther away. She said carefully, “I don't imagine that it's easy to get to the status of—what was it?—Fifth Grade, Scheduled Circle.”

  “That's very true,” Ari Ghairen said. His pale face grew re flective. “So many of my colleagues… all fallen, taken by the years like autumn leaves.”

  “The years? Or your preparations?” Alivet's question was barbed.

  The Poison Master glanced modestly at polished fingernails. “I'm very good at what I do,” he murmured.

  “Apparently so. I should like to know what a Poison Master—Fifth Grade, Scheduled Circle—is doing here,” Alivet said. “And what do you know of my sister?”

  “Your sister is an important part of this, it's true. But I've come for your help,” Ari Ghairen said.

  “My help? I thought you were offering to help me.”

  “Indeed I am. I have been staying here on Latent Emanation, disguised as an Imponderable, although I was obliged to take a risk back at Port Tree to attract your attention. I explored these lodgings thoroughly, so I know about the passages. And the room where the Search was held.”

  “How did you find me here in Shadow Town? I followed someone to the Search.”

  “Most certainly you did. You followed me. I saw you coming from the boat and rather than accosting you in a public place, I allowed myself to be found. It is the easiest thing in the world, to attract someone's attention.”

  “But you went into the Search. How did they let you in?”

  “They didn't. You thought I went through the door, as you were intended to think. But I did not. I went upward, and you drew the obvious conclusion,” the Poison Master said, with gentle reproach.

  “Why did you offer to help my sister?” Alivet persisted. “And how did you know about her? Why does an—otherworlder take such an interest in local affairs?”

  “Ah. Here we come to the nub of the question.” Ghairen walked across to the window, where he stood staring out across the rooftops. “Come here.”

  Cautiously, Alivet went to stand beside him. The Poison Master murmured into her ear, “Tell me, Apothecary Dee, what do you see?”

  Alivet followed his gaze. The world beyond seemed drowned, lost in a blue, rainy twilight. She could no longer see the fens. Below, the streetlights had been lit and as Alivet watched, a lamp smoldered in an opposite room. She saw a woman sink into a chair and ease off her shoes. Alivet envied the woman, wishing that she could share in the somber peace of that lamplight. She said as much to Ghairen.

  “Why, do you envy her? Do you think she has an easier life than you?”

  “Perhaps, perhaps not. She looks as though she might.”

  “But looks can deceive. I know that girl in the lamplit room. I took her for a drink a few days ago, in an inn along the street. I listened to her woes, and there is no shortage of them. She has lost a brother to the Unpriests. He serves in a Lord's palace; he has been there for years. She works as an artificer, to buy his freedom, but the taxes ensure that she is barely closer to the day of his release than when she began. She has inherited that tall house, and she rents out rooms to students at the Colleges of Shadow Town. The roof leaks, and the basement floods every winter. She spent Memory Day bailing out her cellar with a bucket instead of sitting down to steamed carp and samphire. She would envy you your lighter responsibilities, and greater wages.”

  “But my responsibilities are heavy, too, and there are unlikely to be any more wages, given that I seem to be wanted for murder,” Alivet said. She did not think it was the right moment to ask if Ghairen had had a hand in Madimi's death, though given his proximity, it seemed all too probable. “You offered to help me. You keep evading my questions. Why?”

  “You're a realist. I approve. So is the young woman across the way, and so are many folk on this little world, I find. Yet no one ever seems to address the central issue. If the Lords were gone, there would be no more Unpriests and no more Enbonding, and if there was no more Enbonding, people like you and the girl whom you envy would be free from such dogged slavery. Not to mention your Enbonded relatives. Tell me, how do you see the rule of the Lords and their creatures?”

  “Some might call it a burden.” Alivet spoke stiffly.

  “Some, but not all?”

  “You said it yourself. We are realists. And there are those of us who are more—pragmatic, than others. Those who gain advantage by allying themselves with the powerful, to whom cruelty is just another methodology.” Those like Yzabet, who believe the Lords protect us from beings from other worlds. At that thought, Alivet felt a trickle of sweat run down the back of her neck.

  “Is that just the voice of disappointment, Alivet? If you were given the opportunity, would you turn down the chance at power? Isn't it often the case that revolutionaries are simply the disgruntled?” He put his head on one side, studying her.

  “I don't want that sort of power. And whatever I think about the way this world is ruled, there is little we can do about it.” She had not i
ntended to sound so frustrated.

  “Indeed? I would have thought that disposing of the Lords of Night would have been a start.”

  “You know so little? There is no redress against the Lords. Do you think we are as meek as hatchlings, to take their governance for hundreds of years without protest? Many folk have tried to dispose of the Lords—years ago, a group discovered the making of gunpowder and tried to explode it in the cellars of a Night Palace. The Unpriests took them before they could set foot on the causeway and hung them on a gibbet. Others have tried arrows, fire, the use of the Unpriests' own weaponry. And poison, too. Nothing has worked. The Lords rarely set foot outside their palaces, and it's well nigh impossible to gain access. Many have tried, with terrible consequences. The Unpriests and the Families do their work for the Lords in the city and the fens.”

  “Do you understand the nature of the Lords?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What kind of beings are they?”

  Alivet thought for a moment. “I've always supposed that they are beings like humans and anubes, but much larger and more powerful. They are night creatures, we know that much. They are said to permit only dim lights in their palaces; they do not seem to like the day. But no one really knows. Those of the Enbonded who return are in no fit state to remember.”

  “Has anyone seen them during the hours of daylight?”

  “I've never heard of such a thing. It's rare to see them in the city. They prefer the shadows, but they are not rumored to be like the lich-breed, who are said to burn at the first touch of the sun.”

  “There are no legends about what they are? No myths?”

  “I have heard of none. But it's partly what the Search is concerned with—to discover why the Lords brought us here. And that could take us some distance toward discerning what kind of creatures they might be. Whatever they are, they seem impervious to harm.”

  “That is not true,” Ari Ghairen said. Alivet stared at him. “They seem all-powerful only in comparison to yourselves. A way to defeat them can be found, if expertise can be pooled. I have researched you, Apothecary Dee. I have been studying you for some time now. I have seen your apothecarial records; read your reasons for wishing to enter the profession in your apprentice statement. I know all about Inki—how she was taken by the Lords and the steps you are taking to pay for her freedom. Now, I am prepared to help you free your sister, if you assist me in turn.”

  “Why do you need my help? I'm just an apothecary.”

  “Precisely. But you are a very good one. I told you, I've seen your records. You have an excellent reputation, and reason to be very angry over what has befallen your family. Plus, you are young, and thus do not have the caution and resignation that older people are prone to exhibit. And I need an apothecary.”

  Alivet sat back on the couch. “What for?”

  “You make drugs. I make poisons. Together, it is my belief that we can pool our knowledge and create a substance that will bring down the Lords. For we share something else besides knowledge.” He leaned confidingly toward her. “We both want the Lords gone.”

  “Why should you care about the Lords? Do they concern themselves with Hathes?”

  “Not these days.” Before she could ask him what he meant, he went on. “But Hathes is concerned with the Lords.” He fixed her with an owlish eye. “There are grave violations of social justice on this world. Someone has to redress them.”

  “Don't patronize me,” Alivet snapped. “I don't believe for a moment that you're motivated by questions of principle. By your own admission you're an assassin, not a social philanthropist.”

  “Well, maybe it doesn't sound too likely,” Ghairen said after a moment. He smiled and she wondered whether he had been testing her gullibility. “Let's just say I have a number of vested interests in getting rid of the Lords.”

  “And are you going to tell me what these are?”

  “No. Well, not yet, anyway.”

  That meant, Alivet thought, that she was unlikely to approve of those “vested interests.” “So you're prepared to engage in—what? Assassination? War?”

  “I'd prefer to think of it as the removal of a mutual problem.” He was avoiding her gaze, Alivet noticed. His face had become shuttered, withdrawn. Yzabet's words echoed in her head: And they protect us, too, from the beings of the worlds beyond. Without the Lords, what would happen to us?

  “Ask yourself this, Alivet. Do you want the Lords gone or don't you?”

  Yzabet's fears—balanced against Inki's face, the blinded eye, the Unpriests' reign, hundreds of years of oppression and not knowing…A day or so ago, the choice would have seemed simple, but now, with Ari Ghairen standing smiling before her, Alivet was suddenly not so sure. Alchemical process: she separated her doubts from her desires.

  “Yes,” Alivet said slowly, “I want the Lords gone. But what makes you think I'd be willing to embroil myself in treason? I know the penalties. The Unpriests would flay me over forty streets if the Lords ever found out.”

  “Alivet, I need your assistance, and I'm prepared to pay for it. I'll pay you enough to buy your sister out of Enbondment. I can take you to Hathes tonight. And it'll save your life, as well, not just Inki's.”

  “My life?” Alivet stared at him. “Are you talking about the Unpriests?” She was about to ask him whether he had been responsible for Madimi Garland's death. The thought that Ghairen was responsible for her most recent woes, that he had manipulated her into a position where she became dependent upon him, was appalling.

  But just as she was about to accuse him, Ghairen said, “The Unpriests present an inconvenience. I'll happily help you to evade them. I promised Inki I wouldn't let any harm come to you.”

  “You've spoken to my sister? I don't believe you.”

  Ghairen sighed. “I thought that might be the case. It's like this. Some years ago now, I first came to Latent Emanation. I wanted to find out more about the Lords. And one of the things I discovered was that the Lords hold a banquet every year: a critical event, because it's the only time in the course of a year that the Lords are all in one place together.

  “That first year, I tried to gain entrance into a Night Palace. I failed. A year later, I returned and tried again. That time, I managed to gain access. I introduced what I believed to be a lethal poison into the air of the palace, concealing it within a great perfumed fan. The Lords might as well have been breathing in the fragrant airs of the Mothlem mountains for all the effect it had.

  “The last time—over a year ago now—I thought I had a chance of success. I was informed of an anube mendicant, living in the deep delta, who had once fought a Lord and defeated it. It was said that he knew of a method of killing them. I came back to Latent Emanation to search out the anube. But when I reached his pole-haunt, I found that the Unpriests had got to him first. My informant had betrayed him. He was hanging from his own pole, for the larvae to feed upon. I narrowly escaped with my own life, but I dealt with the informant before he had a chance to betray me, too.

  “It has taken me the last few months to find another option. But I have run into difficulties, and now the next banquet is only a week away. I do not want to lose another year. As soon as I could, I came to Latent Emanation, went back into a Night Palace, and skulked in the lower levels, looking for someone I might cultivate. I spied on kitchens and sculleries. At first I had little hope: the Enbonded were cowed, servile, vacant. The Lords use mind-washing drugs upon their servants. But some servants, the ones who perform the more complex tasks, are not so drugged. One day, a girl had an argument with the head chef over the preparation of a fondant.” Ghairen smiled. “Actually, she threw a cake at him. The girl was confined to a cell for the night, which was where I visited her. I'm sure that you will not be surprised to learn that the girl's name was Inkirietta Dee.”

  The thought of her sister's defiance produced an uneasy mix of emotions in Alivet: pride at Inki's spirit, dismay at the risks she had run. And there was disquiet, too
, at the notion of her sister in secret converse with the Poison Master.

  “How is my sister?” she whispered.

  “She's well enough. She's certainly retained her spirit. And she sends you her love.”

  Alivet turned back to the window. If she was going to cry, she did not want Ghairen as a witness. After a moment, she said, “Why did she talk to you?”

  “I am neither Lord, Enbonded, nor Unpriest. Under the circumstances, I suspect that was good enough. Inki told me a great many things as she poured out her grievances over the Lords, and one was of particular interest to me. She told me that she had a twin sister in Levanah who had been planning to become an apothecary, and who had already demonstrated some considerable aptitude in the art. I didn't tell her a great deal about myself—if it comes to the point where she is interrogated,” Ghairen said with careful neutrality, “I did not want her to have too much knowledge.”

  Alivet grew cold. “And how likely is interrogation?”

  “Highly improbable. Inki need do nothing now except wait for you and me to come up with a solution.”

  “This plan,” Alivet said, “have I got this right? You're intending to poison the Lords at their banquet, in one fell swoop.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Would it not be better to wait another year, plan things out? The Lords have been here for centuries, after all. Surely a year or so won't make much difference?”

  Ghairen gave a thin smile. “I am an impatient man, Alivet.”

  She studied him. Nothing Ghairen had done so far had indicated a lack of patience. She was certain he was lying, but why?

  “Do you have a suitable toxin in mind?”

  “What I require—and what I believe I have now found after all these trying months of research”—frustration and strain were briefly visible in his face—“is a substance that is both a poison and a drug. But as I told you, I have run into difficulties. The substance I have in mind is highly unstable; I cannot work with it myself, and I could not bring it with me. That's why I need your expertise.”