Master of Plagues: A Nicolas Lenoir Novel (7 page)

The soothsayer hoisted a sling of leather pouches over each shoulder and locked the door to his shop. “I am ready, Inspector.”

“We’d better get horses,” Kody said. “Can you ride, Merden?”

The Adal stared at him.

“Right,” Kody said, coloring. He might as well have asked a fish if it could swim.

Lenoir started off toward the station. Already, he could feel the eyes of the entire market square upon them, though whether hostile or merely curious, he could not tell.

This day was about to get very interesting.

T
hey left the horses at the Fishering barricade and crossed Addleman’s Bridge on foot. Already, Lenoir could see that the pestilence houses had swelled in number, overtaking the view from the river. Ahead, the barricade loomed forbiddingly, its timber frame packed in with sandbags and capped with spear points. Watchmen armed with crossbows manned makeshift towers at both flanks, and a dozen more sat slumped against the bridge side, resting, cooking, cleaning rifles. The main force stood guard on the other side, facing the Camp; it was there they found Sergeant Izar.

“Inspector,” the sergeant said, “I didn’t expect to see you here again.” He started to say something else, but then he spotted Merden, and his golden eyes widened. He dropped his head low and murmured something in Adali. Merden inclined his head in return.

Izar’s gaze shifted between Lenoir and Merden. Lenoir could almost hear the questions, but he did not have time to explain. “How are things here, Sergeant?” he asked, scanning the barricade. The men looked edgy, and most of them wore scarves tied around their faces.

“Quiet, for the moment,” Izar said. “We had an incident this morning. A mother tried to get one of the watchmen
to take her children through. She was very determined. We had to subdue her, and that made some people angry.”

“Where is she now?” Kody asked, glancing around.

“Unconscious. She was taken to the clinic.”

Lenoir winced. “Anyone else hurt?”

“A few, but nothing serious. Good practice for the men, I suppose, for when it gets bad.”

When,
not
if.
It hardly took a soothsayer to make that prediction; one look at the faces of the crowd milling around the barricade—angry, fearful, desperate—was evidence enough.
It is only a matter of time.

“I hear you had some trouble on the Fishering side,” Kody said.

Izar smiled wryly. “Good thing the chief moved me here, where I can stay out of trouble.”

Kody said something in reply, but Lenoir had stopped listening. Instead, he watched as Merden made his way over to the crowd. Many of the watchers were Adali, and they all bowed their heads the way Izar had done, some putting their hands to their chests. A gesture of respect, it seemed. They recognized him as a soothsayer, or perhaps as a witchdoctor. The cloak, Lenoir presumed.

“Izar,” he said, interrupting the sergeants. “That rune on the back of Merden’s cloak—what does it mean?”

“
Mekhleth.
The Wise. Few men have the right to wear a cloak like that.”

“Do you know him?” Kody asked.

“Only by reputation.”

“And he’s some sort of . . . what? A holy man?”

“Not exactly. More like a shepherd. It’s . . .” Izar shook his head. “The word doesn’t translate.
One who knows the way,
I suppose.”

“If he’s so special, what’s he doing living in Kennian?”

“That is a very good question, Kody.” Izar’s gaze followed Merden as he spoke with the crowd. Several of them were pointing and talking animatedly.

“Time to go,” Lenoir said. “Carry on, Sergeant.”

As they approached Merden, the voices around him died, replaced by silent, distrustful stares. A woman said something sharp in Adali, but Merden raised a hand and spoke a few quiet words, and she subsided. “I have asked these people where they go for healing,” the soothsayer said. “If you will follow me, Inspector, I think I know the way.”

Lenoir nodded, only too happy to move away from the tense scene at the barricade. They made their way down to the main road, a wide track of earth flanked with market stalls. Pickings were meager today, Lenoir saw; the vegetables looked tired, the fruits dull and withered. They passed only a single butcher, and he had no beef to sell, only a bloody slab of mutton and a crate full of tatty, resigned-looking chickens.

“Look at the price of cooking oil,” Kody said in an undertone, inclining his head at a nearby table. “Three times the price they were charging in the poor district the other night.”

Three days in, and already the quarantine was biting. “It will get worse,” Lenoir said, “and quickly.”

“The women I spoke to at the barricade mentioned this,” Merden said. “They want to keep their children inside where they will be safe, but they dare not leave their livestock unattended.”

Lenoir sighed. “Livestock is the least of their worries. Cooking oil and sugar will be the first to go. Then the flour, and that is where the real trouble begins.”

Merden glanced sidelong at him. “It sounds as though you speak from experience.”

“I lived in Serles during the revolution. I was barely an adolescent, but I remember it as if it were yesterday. The city was not under siege, but it may as well have been. It was too violent, and people too afraid of the pox, for any trade to come. In the worst neighborhoods, people began eating dogs. By the end, the dogs were eating them.” Lenoir shuddered at the memory.

They continued on in grim silence, following Merden’s lead as he turned off the main road and struck out between the hovels. Their path was little more than a gutter, and they picked their way between puddles and glistening sinkholes of mud, clinging to the narrow strips of high ground like a small herd of ungainly goats. It smelled like a privy and looked like a swamp, but Lenoir barely noticed, too absorbed in the sight of a family of six loading their meager belongings into a wheelbarrow. Leaving, it seemed, but where would they go? They would not be allowed into Kennian. Out into the countryside, then? Or would the lord mayor have the highway blocked too? They were not the first to leave, either; Lenoir noticed several boarded up shacks along the way.

Nearly everyone they passed had a scarf tied around his face, and nearly every face was Adali. In quitting the main road, they had passed the informal boundary separating the Adali quarter from the rest of the Camp. The square shacks of tin and timber favored by Braelish and other southerners gave way to the distinctively dome-shaped tents of the Adali. Less distinctive were their colors, for while the traditional dwellings of the nomadic Adali were invariably brightly hued, these were drab and dingy, stitched together with whatever their owners could find. Here and there, an old tent could be spotted that had once known the touch of the famously vivid Adali dyes. These might have been red or gold in days gone by, but years of steeping in the grimy haze of the city had rendered them all the same forlorn shade of dun, making them scarcely distinguishable from the others.

“Mekhleth,”
a voice called.
“Mekhleth anir!”

They turned to find a man hurrying out of his tent after them. He approached Merden respectfully, bowing his head as the others had done. After a wary glance at Lenoir and Kody, he said something to Merden in a hushed, urgent tone. They conversed for a few moments,
and Lenoir could tell from the man’s expression that he was disappointed. Merden put a hand on his shoulder and said something that was surely meant to be reassuring; the man nodded resignedly.

“His neighbor’s son is sick,” Merden explained.

“He asked you to help?”

“If only I were able.”

“I thought there was a witchdoctor somewhere nearby who knows the cure,” Kody said. “Isn’t that why we’re here?”

“I believe you mean a healer, Sergeant,” Merden said coolly, “and, yes, there is one nearby. With so many ill, however, he is having difficulty keeping up.”

Lenoir grunted thoughtfully. “So the Adali are not immune after all.” He could not help feeling relieved. If it had simply been a question of physiology, there would be nothing to learn from the witchdoctor.
Healer,
Lenoir corrected himself. Like Kody, he had not realized the term
witchdoctor
was offensive, though he supposed it was not surprising.
Khekra
was a forbidden subject; it stood to reason that any term evoking dark magic would be similarly frowned upon. “Does this man know where we can find the healer?”

Merden repeated the question in Adali, and the man nodded, pointing. “We were headed in the right direction,” Merden said. “It is not far now.”

Sure enough, they came across the healer’s tent a few minutes later. Lenoir did not have to be told which one it was. Aside from its impressive size and the traditionally bright shade of gold, a great throng of people teemed outside its entrance. At first, Lenoir thought they were clamoring to get inside, but as he drew nearer, he saw that the crowd was surprisingly subdued. Small groups clustered together, conversing quietly. Some sat slumped in the mud, though whether from illness, exhaustion, or just boredom, Lenoir could not tell. Many were certainly
sick. Signs of fever were everywhere, and some already had nosebleeds. Husbands propped up wives, and mothers rocked crying children in their arms.

A ring of stakes had been driven into the ground around the perimeter of the tent.
Some sort of fence?
If so, it was not working. Decorative, perhaps—that would explain the horn beads and bits of bone dangling from leather thongs at the top of each stake. Merden seemed to take an interest in them; he nodded, as though a suspicion had been confirmed.

Kody held up, looking uncertain. His hand disappeared into his coat pocket, but he hesitated.

“Put it on, Sergeant,” Lenoir said, reaching for his own scarf. “It does not make you cruel, or a coward. It only means you are not a fool.”

Merden, for his part, drew his thumb across the underside of his nose, leaving a smear of what looked like fresh mud. “I should warn you, Inspector, what you see inside may be alarming, but you must remain calm. Above all, you must not distract the healer. To do so could be the death of us all.” He gestured at the ring of stakes, as though that explained everything.

Kody looked startled. “What do you mean,
the death of us all
? What in the below is going on in there?”

“Khekra,”
the soothsayer replied, and he led the way into the tent.

P
assing through the tent flap was like being swallowed by some great beast. Darkness engulfed them, and for a moment, Lenoir stood rooted to the spot, blinking away the sunlight. His eyes adjusted quickly, but it did him little good; the cavernous space was lit only by a few tapers, and these stood in a tight semicircle in the center, a flaming sickle that devoured the eye and blotted out everything else.

A shadow shifted at the fringes of the light. Lenoir squinted, trying to make it out, but it had no distinguishable shape. He could not tell where the shadow ended and the darkness began, and yet it moved, twisting and sinuous, like a column of smoke. A dry, rattling sound accompanied the motion, peppering the air in short bursts—soft, then manic, then soft again—before falling abruptly silent. The darkness ceased its dance.

The flames ducked, as though disturbed by a sudden movement, but they bent
toward
the shifting shadow, rather than away. Something tugged subtly at the center of Lenoir’s belly.

He could hear Kody’s breathing behind him, too rapid by half. To his right, Merden watched calmly. A pungent scent pricked at Lenoir’s nose, even through the handkerchief. Something familiar, something his
subconscious branded as deeply unsettling, but he could not place it. He took an involuntary step back, but Merden’s hand closed firmly around his wrist, exerting a gentle but meaningful pressure.
Do not move.

Something
hissed
in the darkness.

Lenoir went rigid. Merden’s fingers tightened around his wrist in warning, but the soothsayer need not have worried. Lenoir would not have been able to move if his life depended on it. He stood, transfixed, as the shadow resumed its sinuous dance. Lenoir felt another tug at his middle, sharp this time, too sharp to be merely a product of his own nervousness. For a moment, he feared he would be sick. Beside him, Merden let out a long, steady breath, as though blowing on something to help it dry.

A gust of wind rolled out from the center of the tent. The candles snuffed out. Everything went dark.

Silence.

“Mekhleth,”
a voice said, and a flame flared to life. The gaunt face of an elderly Adal appeared, etched in amber and shadow. He turned away to light a candle—not one of the tapers that had formed the sickle, but a short pillar with several wicks, as big around as a supper plate. He lit several more until a soft glow suffused the center of the tent, revealing the outlines of a cot with a figure lying on it. The patient, presumably.

But what in the depths of the below did they just see?

“Welcome,” the man said in Braelish, having noticed his pale-skinned guests.

“I am Merden. These men are Inspector Lenoir and Sergeant Kody, from the Metropolitan Police.”

The man arched an eyebrow, but did not otherwise reply.

“How did you know?” Merden asked him.

“That you were
mekhleth
?” The man smiled, a thin, weary thing. “Your breath. Who else could have lent such strength?”

Merden nodded, apparently satisfied with this unfathomable answer.

“I am Oded,” the man said. “Please, come inside. It is safe now.”

Lenoir gave the healer a thorough once-over with his eyes. He looked to be at least seventy, and judging by his drawn-out vowels and richly rolled
R
s, he had not lived many of those years in Braeland. Like Merden’s, his skin was a rich copper hue, but the tips of his fingers were blackened. Evidence of his art, perhaps. Lenoir made a mental note to ask Merden about it later. More evidence of the healer’s art, or at least his recent practice of it, could be discerned in the sagging lines of his thin frame. The Adali were a fine-boned race, and tended to be long and lean. Oded might once have been lean, but he had lost weight since, and the stoop of his shoulders took several inches off his height.
The man is exhausted,
Lenoir thought. Like Sister Rhea, Oded was sacrificing his own health for that of his patients.

Speaking of which . . .
“This woman,” Lenoir said, gesturing at the figure in the cot. She slept, or so it seemed, a thin sheen of sweat glistening on her brow. “You were treating her?”

Oded nodded.

“Will she live?” Kody asked.

“Time will show,” the healer said. “Most get better, but a few—it is too late for them.” He glanced at the tent flap, and Lenoir could read his thoughts.
He is having difficulty keeping up,
Merden had said. The more people gathered outside, the further behind he fell. It was a race, and the healer was losing.

“What happens to the ones who die?” Kody asked.

“They are burned.”

“It is our way,” Merden added.

“It will be our way soon, I suspect,” Lenoir said, “in the Camp at least. According to the College of Physicians, the bodies are highly contagious. Burning seems like the safest option.”

Oded made a face. “Physicians.
Pala.
”

Lenoir did not know the word, but he doubted it was complimentary.

Merden sounded a few low notes of laughter. “No doubt they are persuaded that leeches will improve the matter.”

“They are quite attached to their leeches,” Lenoir agreed, “if you will forgive the pun. I can only assure you that not all Humenori medicine is quite so backward. Science on the continent proper is rather more advanced.” He glanced at Kody just in time to see the sergeant roll his eyes. As for the Adali, they traded a doubtful look.

“How do you treat the disease?” Kody asked.

“There are two parts.” Oded gestured at the cot. “This was the second part, where the strength is restored.”

“And the first part?” Kody’s tone was wary, as though he was not sure he really wanted to know.

“It depends. If it is caught early, a potion is usually enough, but not always. Sometimes, it is harder.”

“Harder how?”

“First, I must draw out the . . .” Oded paused, frowning. He looked at Merden.
“Hatekh
.
”

“Demon,” Merden translated matter-of-factly.

Kody raised his eyebrows. “Demon, huh?” He flashed Lenoir a significant look.

No doubt he expected to find an ally in his skepticism, but Lenoir knew for a fact that such creatures existed. After all, he had nearly been killed by one. If the Darkwalker was not precisely a demon (Lenoir had never been sure what to call him) the distinction was subtle enough to be unimportant. “What makes you think a demon is involved?” he asked, ignoring Kody’s snort.

“This has been known to my clan for generations,” said the healer.

“That’s not really an answer, is it?” Kody said.

The healer cocked his head. “Is it not?”

“Okay, fine, how did your ancestors know it was a demon?”

“By the marks.” Reaching for the woman in the cot, the healer drew down her blanket to reveal a dark purple welt on her forearm.
The lesions,
Lenoir thought,
the ones Lideman says no one comes back from.
“These are the marks of the demon,” the healer said.

“They’re bruises,” Kody said.

“Bruises, yes. From the demon.”

“Oh, for the love of—”

“Enough,” Lenoir said. “It does not strictly matter, does it?”

“My thoughts exactly, Inspector,” said Merden. “What is important is that Oded is said to be treating the disease effectively, and for that, he deserves our respect.”

“Indeed.” Lenoir congratulated himself for bringing the soothsayer along. It helped to have another dispassionate, analytical mind involved, someone he could bounce ideas off, and that was certainly not a role Kody was going to fill. “Oded, can you show us how it is done? Can you teach others?”

It was Merden who answered. “That depends. Can others be taught?”

Good question.
Somehow, Lenoir had a difficult time imagining Horst Lideman accepting medical advice from an Adali witchdoctor. But what choice did they have? “We have to try.”

The healer looked uncertain. “There is not much time. You see how many wait for me outside.”

“There will be more,” Lenoir said. “More than you can ever hope to heal yourself. This is an epidemic, and it is running out of control.”

“The inspector is right, my friend.” Merden gestured at Oded’s thin frame. “You give a little of your own strength each time you heal a patient. How much do you have left? You cannot do this alone. You need help.” He added something in Adali, touching his chest.

The healer looked down at his patient, lips pursed. He sighed and shook his head. “Very well. I will try to show
your . . .
physicians . . .
how to heal this sickness. But they will not listen. They will do as this one does.” He gestured dismissively at Kody. “They will not believe.”

Kody sighed. “Look, I believe you’re doing
something
to help these people. I don’t know what it is, and maybe you don’t really know either. But if you told me right now that standing on one leg and barking like a dog would help this woman get better, I’d do it. I might not believe it, but I’d do it, because at this point, I’ll try anything. I’d be willing to bet those physicians feel the same.”

Lenoir gave him a wry look. “Eloquently put, Sergeant.”

“Actually,” Merden said, “it was.”

If the healer was appeased, it was buried beneath layers of exhaustion. “I must rest. Come back tomorrow.”

Kody scowled, and Lenoir opened his mouth to argue, but a sharp look from Merden stole the words. “As you say.” Lenoir reached up to tighten the scarf around his face. “Until then.” He gave a curt nod and withdrew.

“It would have been pointless to press the matter, Inspector,” Merden said as they wove their way through the crowd of patients waiting outside. “His strength is gone. He would not have been able to show your physicians anything.”

Lenoir did not answer. He turned his collar up against the evening and jammed his hands in his pockets. His mind whirred. Had they made progress today, or was it merely the illusion of progress? What evidence did they really have that Oded’s treatment worked? For the moment, Lenoir did not give a flying fruitcake whether or not the disease had anything to do with demons. All he wanted was to find a way to stem the tide. With Merden’s help, he had found a witchdoctor who claimed he could cure the disease, but even if that was true, Oded was just one man. Could he really teach Adali magic to a bunch of Braelish physicians, presuming they were even willing to learn? And if he did, would it be enough?
Death rate
has tripled in the past week,
the report had said. Lenoir could still see the words, stained in black ink.
Camp population will be halved by the end of the month.
What could even a handful of healers do against such a deluge of death?

Lenoir gave his head a sharp shake.
Stop this. It achieves nothing.
He had learned long ago that it was useless to let the enormity of a task overwhelm him. A good inspector did not permit himself to become obsessed with minute details at the expense of the whole, but neither did he become paralyzed by the complexity of the challenge before him.
One piece at a time, Lenoir. Do not lose perspective, but do not lose hope, either. You are one step closer today. That is a victory, however small.

He swam in his own thoughts for a long while. By the time he came up for air, they were nearing Addleman’s Bridge. He could tell right away that something was wrong. So could Kody; the Sergeant quickened his gait, throwing a worried look over his shoulder at Lenoir.

“The crowd is bigger,” Merden said. “A great deal bigger, in fact.”

“Bigger,” said Lenoir, “and a great deal more dangerous.”

“How can you tell?”

“All men,” said Kody. “All
young
men, or near enough. That’s never good.”

Lenoir unbuttoned his coat, for ease of access to his gun. “Be ready, Sergeant, but do not show your weapon unless you have to.” He broke into a jog.

The crowd rippled like a small sea, currents and eddies stretching from the barricade back up the main road, overflowing between the hovels. Kody dove in first, taking full advantage of his size to elbow a path for himself and Lenoir. Merden followed somewhere behind, but already, he had been swallowed by the throng; the only sign of him was the tip of his ebony staff bobbing above angry faces. The closer they got to the barricade, the tighter the press
became, until Kody was grabbing shoulders with both hands and wrenching people apart. “Stand aside! Police coming through!” Over the shouting, Lenoir could hear dogs barking.

They burst through the head of the crowd into a sort of no-man’s-land, a tiny, tense pocket of air between two storm fronts—one turbulent and thunderous, the other icy and grim. The hounds at the barricade stood shoulder to shoulder, rifles in hand, a pair of dogs baying viciously as they strained at their leads. Lenoir had seen dogs used this way on the continent, but never in Braeland, and he doubted the beasts had been trained for the purpose.
Bad idea,
he thought, but it was too late to do anything about it now.

“Izar,” Kody demanded of no one in particular, and one of the watchmen pointed. The Adal stood, stoic and determined, at the far end of the barricade, eyeing a civilian as big around as an oak. The civilian eyed him back, and Lenoir could tell the man was weighing his chances. They were poor indeed, but it was impossible to tell if the man realized that.

Kody called out. Izar flicked him a glance, but did not dare move; he waited where he was while Lenoir and Kody made their way over.

“What’s going on?” Kody asked when they were near enough. “How did this start?”

“How do they ever start? With rumors. The woman who was injured this morning—apparently the story going around is that we killed her. And her children. Beat them to death with cudgels.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Kody protested.

Izar shrugged at the irrelevance of this appraisal.

“Those dogs . . .” Lenoir said.

“Not my idea, Inspector.”

Lenoir had assumed as much. No Adal would be naive enough to release untrained dogs into a herd, whether of cattle or men. “We need to calm this situation,
Sergeant,” he said, though he knew he was stating the obvious. “Perhaps—”