© 2011. All rights reserved.
Adramal knelt by the old man’s body and closed her eyes. That cut out the sights of death – the staring eyes, the unkempt hair, the shrivelled and rat-gnawed flesh. She couldn’t do anything to block the smell. Her stomach fluttered and then settled. That was one thing to be said for working in the City Watch – if you stuck with it, you got tougher. Not so long ago, the mere thought of being this close to such a disgusting corpse would have had her wanting to puke. Now, this poor fellow was just another part of her job.
She focused her attention inward, calming the surface of her mind to the smoothness of a still pond. A familiar, reassuring sequence of abstract thoughts came together in the space she’d cleared. Magic gathered from the corners of the room, eager to obey.
To her mind’s eye, the shape of the old man’s body appeared as a soft white glow, fuzzy and indistinct. It had no bright spots, which would have signified recent wounds to his flesh. She tried not to form any opinions about what that meant – not even to allow any feelings about it, not yet. She let go of the spell’s thoughts, and it frayed and fell apart, as if it had never been. She paused and took a few shallow breaths, drawing in as little of the foul air as possible. Opening her eyes, she cast another spell. This one might give more information than the first, but she had to touch the corpse for it to work.
She hesitated. What if he’d died of something contagious?
Well, what if he had? She had a job to do. If she caught the disease, she could work out a cure before it got too bad. She shuddered as she touched his forehead. Her spell revealed the skull, as if she was touching it and not the worm-eaten flesh above it. But the messages from her fingertips about what they were really touching were strong enough to interfere with the information the spell presented. It was as if the man’s flesh was flowing like mud around her fingertips, exposing the bone, then reforming when she moved on. She squirmed and put more power into the spell, drowning out the sensations of his flesh.
She found no injuries to his skull or neck, nor his arms, ribs and legs. She let go of this spell and cast another that showed the major organs. Maggots wriggled in most of them, well along their way to devouring him. A cough forced itself through her lips. Acid burned at the back of her throat as she pulled her hands away, panting. She fought the urge to see whether anything had stuck to her.
“Are you all right, Lady?”
Sighing, she let go of the spell and turned to face the Watchman who stood in the doorway. He was barely older than her, in the Watch no more than a year. From the way he fidgeted, he was as anxious to finish here as she was.
“This is definitely the worst I’ve seen,” she said. That wasn’t true, of course. But she couldn’t tell him about that. Couldn’t tell anybody. “We’re nearly done. Help me turn him over so I can check his spine.”
The Watchman’s lip curled, but he marched smartly over to the corpse, then grabbed the old man’s shoulders and jerked him into a sitting position. The head lolled, and Adramal feared it would snap off. She took the corpse’s bare feet, and together they turned him onto his front. Adramal knelt by him and cast the required spell.
She found no injuries, but two of the vertebrae felt closer together than they should – perhaps the disc between them had slipped out of place. That would’ve been painful, to the extent that he might have been grateful for the release death brought.
“Good afternoon, Sergeant. How are you getting on?” Adramal didn’t look around. The newcomer cleared his throat and said, “Sergeant Adramal?”
She jumped to her feet, suddenly sweating. “Sorry, Sir.” She still hadn’t got used to having a rank. “We’re done here.”
Captain Tagahra nodded. “How long has he been dead?”
She shrugged. “Hard to tell, Sir. Bodies rot fast in this heat. I’d say half a fortnight, but that’s a guess at best.”
“Any opinion as to cause of death?”
“Almost certainly natural, Sir. No broken bones or wounds to the flesh. He’s decomposed enough that I can’t tell if there was any damage to the organs. I can’t rule out poisoning, but given what we know about him, he wasn’t wealthy or important enough for anybody to bother. His liver seems smaller than normal for his age, so he may well have been a heavy drinker, which could have contributed to his death.”
“I noticed a smell of strong liquor when I came in,” said Tagahra.
Adramal blinked. “How can you smell anything apart from him?”
“You’ll come to recognise the different odours. Go and find Elishar and ask him to remove the body.”
“Yes, Sir,” she said.
“I’ll see you back at Headquarters, then.”
Much later, Adramal sat at a table in the refectory of the Watch building. A pile of slates covered the table – reports about her activities over the last few days. A half-eaten meal lay somewhere under them. Almost everyone else had gone home. She would have liked to do the same, but Captain Tagahra had insisted she catch up on her record-keeping.
She yawned and sat back. The stink of death filled her nostrils. These days it was seldom absent. Before Tagahra had offered her a job in the Watch, she would never have believed how many people could die every day in a city the size of Kyer Altamar. And Tagahra insisted she examine every one of them, to see if a wizard had been responsible. He didn’t share her certainty that Shendar was dead. She couldn’t blame him, given the complete falsehoods she’d told him about how Shendar had died. But what else could she have done? Lelsarin had told her to keep quiet about it. And one way or another, Lelsarin always got her way.
Memories of the Temple haunted Adramal's nightmares. Shendar argued with the stone servant of Zorian, trying to convince it that Adramal was its master, returned from death in a new body. The servant didn’t believe her, not for a heartbeat. It pointed at her and said, Enough. Shendar vanished, dissipated into millions of motes of glittering dust. Despite her best efforts to wash it off, Adramal thought some of that dust still clung to her.
Why not tell Tagahra what really happened? That way she might get to finish the day’s work before sunset. He’d never believe her. Zorian was a story, long ago and far away, something to frighten naughty children. Do your chores or I’ll send you to Zorian’s tower! Finish your supper or I’ll feed you to one of his servants! But he was real enough for Shendar to kill seven people in his name.
If she told Tagahra the truth, he’d either think she was mad, or he’d know she’d lied to him earlier. Both were grounds for dismissal from the Watch.
And would that be such a bad thing? It would be a relief not to go to bed exhausted every night. More than that, purges wouldn’t be such torture. In the few fortnights since coming to Kyer Altamar, she’d used more magic than in the year before.
“Sergeant?”
She looked up to see Watchman Morakh. She’d known him a little longer than most of the others. Before she joined the Watch officially, she’d worked for them undercover to catch Shendar, and Captain Tagahra had sometimes sent Morakh to meet her when he was too busy to go himself.
“Going home?” she said.
“Not just yet,” he replied. “A few of the lads are going to Enlorgar’s Rest. Care to join us?”
With an apologetic smile, she held up a slate. “I need to finish this.”
“Does anyone ever read those?”
“Captain Tagahra does.” She sighed. “I’d like to come, but you know beer interferes with my magic. And I don’t fancy being the only sober person in the tavern.”
“I understand,” said Morakh. She thought she heard disappointment in his voice, as though her presence would have made the evening something special.
“Some other time, maybe,” she said. But she knew if she didn’t go with Morakh and his colleagues one day soon, they’d stop asking. She didn’t have the luxury of being choosy about whom she accepted as friends. “Would you mind fetching me some water, seeing as you’re standing?”
“Of course.” He went through the doorway to the kitchen and returned with a tall wooden cup.
“Thank you.” She took a gulp and cleared some room for it on the table.
“I’ll see you in the morning then, Sergeant.”
She picked up the chalk and resumed writing. After a few words, it slipped from her hand. I should go to bed. She bent to retrieve it and fell off her chair. Vexed, she tried to get up and found her limbs wouldn’t move. The pain from hitting the floor faded to a curious numbness.
A shadow fell across her. “Sergeant! Are you all right?” Morakh’s voice sounded a mile distant. She couldn’t speak. “Can you hear me?” He grabbed her under the arms and lifted her back onto her chair. He stared into her face. “Sergeant Adramal! Can you hear me? What’s wrong?” His voice was calm, but his eyes betrayed fear.
Adramal went through the techniques for keeping her own fear at bay. Her mind seemed unaffected by whatever had happened to her. She knew of only two things that could cause such complete and sudden paralysis. She hadn’t sensed any magic being used, which had to mean...
A spell slotted together. This one wasn’t as familiar as some, and she’d never cast it on herself before. She forced herself not to rush: if she made a mistake, she might not get another chance.
A heavy warmth settled in her chest and spread to the rest of her body. Pain followed it – sharp in her knee and elbow where she’d fallen, dull under her arms where Morakh had held her. She let go of the spell, ready to cast another if need be.
Her heart galloped. Her chest heaved as she drew a breath that felt like hot sand. A fit of coughing seized her. She doubled over, and Morakh struck her between her shoulder blades. She raised a hand to try to tell him to stop, but he kept hitting her. Her throat burned, and hot liquid dribbled from her lips. The coughing stopped, and so did Morakh’s blows.
“I’m sorry, Sergeant. Did I hurt you?”
She sat up straight, breathing slowly. Her skin tingled all over, as if she’d jumped into a freezing lake. She touched her face, and her fingertips came away stained yellow. Morakh took a cloth from his pocket and wiped away the worst of the mess.
“What happened?” he said.
She considered her answer. The prospect of speaking seemed like a long journey across unfamiliar territory. “I think,” she said. Her voice sounded like something that had been buried and dug up a fortnight later. “I think I was poisoned.”
Thank you for reading. Plague & Poison is on sale now - see here for where to buy.
Last update: 25/7/2020 17:09