The Book of Maladies Boxset

by D. K. Holmberg

  His notebook—the running journal he kept with his notes, and then the notes of his notes—lay open in front of him. He studied it whenever he had free moments, hoping to uncover some nugget of information, some truth that might provide him a better understanding of his healing abilities.

  When he flipped the page, he came across one that referenced something he and Sam had been working on before Alec’s studies had become too consuming, and before Sam had been too caught up in what she learned from her mother.

  How long had it been since they had studied together? Alec started ticking off the days and stopped when he reached double digits. Too many. He missed her. It was a strange thing to admit to himself, but he had grown accustomed to seeing her daily, and he had become accustomed to spending time with her, testing the various ratios of blood required to make particular augmentations more effective. Now he studied alone.

  He told himself that his studies were important and that he did them so that he could one day help Sam even more, but when would that day come? How long would he be tasked with staying at the university, with learning various healing techniques, so few of which had anything to do with a real-world setting.

  Most of the techniques the instructors taught were theoretical, which chafed Alec. It shouldn’t; he knew he should simply accept what he was taught, and not question the knowledge the masters provided, but Alec had witnessed healing firsthand for nearly his entire life.

  The door creaked open, and he looked up. Beckah poked her head in and grinned when she saw him. “Are you coming?”

  He frowned. “Coming where?”

  She giggled. “You really should learn to double-check our class assignments.”

  “What do you mean…” He pulled out another notebook, the one in which he kept his record of classes and where he was expected to be from day to day. It often changed, much as the speakers changed. They worked their schedules around the availability of the master physickers, and Alec had simply trusted that his notes were accurate.

  As he flipped through the pages and settled on today, he ran his finger down the entries and realized that the ink was slightly off. He looked up at Beckah and saw her trying to suppress laughter again.

  “You did this? You changed my journal?”

  She shrugged. “I thought it would be funny to see what you would do. I didn’t expect to see you sitting here quite so long.”

  Alec stared at the notes he had made, and there was only the subtlest evidence that she had done anything to them. It was actually quite impressive work. He hated admitting that, and he would never tell her that, but she had succeeded in modifying his writing in such a way that it actually looked somewhat like it had been done in his hand.

  “Where are we really supposed to be?”

  “The hospital. And it’s Eckerd today. You’re going to want to be there.”

  Master Eckerd was one of the most renowned physickers at the university. Of all the masters that Alec had met, Eckerd was the one who challenged him the most. He had a grasp of ancient texts and could often reference things from books he’d seen only once or twice before.

  In that way, Eckerd reminded Alec of his father. Alec’s father was not only a skilled physicker, but one of the finest minds he’d ever been around. His father would often read something a single time, and could then recite it back, typically unerringly.

  He gathered his books and stuffed them into his bag, and hurried from the classroom, following Beckah.

  She strode forward with her hands clasped behind her, her back tall and straight like every highborn he’d ever been around. Somehow, Beckah didn’t make it offensive. She was an enigma to him but was fast becoming a friend. Within the university, he wished he had more such friends.

  “You didn’t tell me,” Beckah said.

  “Tell you what?”

  “You didn’t tell me how long you would have remained here before you’d have gone looking for the rest of the class.”

  Alec grunted. “I don’t know. I probably would’ve waited a while longer.”

  “Why?”

  “I trust my notes.”

  “Even when they can be tampered with?” she asked with a smile.

  “No one has ever tampered with my notes before.”

  “Are you certain?”

  Alec glanced down at his bag. Had she done something with his notes? She was determined to test him, to challenge him, but he didn’t think she would go so far as tampering with notes that he made in class. Would she?

  It was possible she might, but would she actually take one of his journals and change it?

  It so, it would be subtle, and… No. Had she done that, he was certain he would’ve known. He looked over those notes often enough that anything unusual—and different from what he remembered—would have stood out. His memory was not quite as good as his father’s, but that didn’t mean it was poor.

  “You haven’t tampered with any of my journals.”

  She shrugged. “I made you think about it, didn’t I?”

  Alec shook his head and chuckled. If it were anyone else, and if he had a suspicion that anyone else might have tried that with him, he might have been more upset, but this was Beckah. She might compete with him, and she might want to test him, but she didn’t want to harm him. At least, he didn’t think she did.

  “What’s Eckerd teaching about today?” he asked.

  “Something near and dear to your heart.”

  Alec frowned. “And what is that?”

  She turned to the side, twisting just a little bit, and patted her chest, thrusting her breasts forward. “Heartache, of course.” She laughed, and it carried down the hall, an airy sound that left Alec unable to do anything but laugh with her.

  “Why would Eckerd be teaching about heartache?”

  “Because I asked.”

  Alec shot her a look. “You asked?”

  “Sure. I had to know if your techniques were accurate, didn’t I? Isn’t that how our game is going to go?”

  “I’m not sure I know how our game is going to go. I think you’ve made it up as you go along.”

  “And I think you enjoy it more than you were letting on,” Beckah said.

  Alec fell silent, but he didn’t deny the fact that he truly did enjoy their interactions. Beckah tested him, she challenged him, and for that, he was thankful.

  They reached the door leading into the hospital, and she pulled it open.

  The smell struck him first. There was always an overwhelming medicinal odor, one that was a mixture of the hundreds of different concoctions that had been mixed and used in the hospital. Beneath it, there was something else, a hint of something worse, something unpleasant, and it always twisted his nose, forcing him to try not to gag to keep himself composed.

  He’d never had the same problem in the apothecary shop. Then again, in the shop, they only healed one or two people at a time. It was nothing like the hospital. Rows of cots were arranged here. On the cots, people with various ailments rested, some in much worse shape than others, all waiting for the master physickers to make their way to them. When Alec had first broken into the university, he had thought that the physickers cared more about money than they did about actually healing anyone. He still wondered if that wasn’t partially true, but he’d seen the masters—including some like Eckerd, who truly seemed to care—make a supreme effort to use their knowledge to benefit the people of the city.

  Today, like most days that he came to the hospital, almost all of the beds were full.

  Those that weren’t were being prepped, the sheets changed, and somewhere within the university, there were senior-level students coordinating the arrival of more sick and infirm people. If Alec remained at the university long enough, he, too, would take part in the screening process. Would he ever get to the point where he cared more about someone’s ability to pay than he did about their need for actual healing?

  A circle of students stood around one of the cots at the far end of the roo
m. Eckerd, an average height man with a thick head of gray hair and a long, bushy beard, and eyebrows to match, stood near the head of the cot. His voice carried, booming over others here.

  Beckah led Alec toward them, her demeanor changed now that they were in the hospital—and the presence of Eckerd.

  As Alec approached, he heard Eckerd saying in his slightly nasally voice, “Can anyone give me their assessment as to this young man’s ailment?”

  Alec stepped closer and stood up on his toes, trying to peek over the shoulders of two of the students standing in front of him. Stefan and Matthias were slightly taller than Alec, and Matthias in particular was wider, blocking his entire field of view. Alec shifted to get a better view and managed to catch sight of the man on the cot.

  He was a younger man with a shock of deep black hair, though it was thinning. His eyes protruded from his skull. The artery in his neck showed a bounding pulse, and the flesh on his arms seemed to sag.

  “How fast is his heartbeat?” Alec asked.

  Eckerd nodded. “A reasonable question. He has an average heartbeat, but it is irregular.”

  Alec glanced over at Beckah and saw her studying the young man with the same intensity that he had probably just shown. Was this the heartache that she had brought him to see? There was nothing physical about emotional heartache. And he didn’t think this man’s heart had anything to do with his symptoms.

  Alec scanned the young man’s skin again, letting his gaze drift down to his fingertips. There were small, purplish lesions at the ends of two of his fingers.

  “Does he have any other sounds when you listen to his heart?” Alec asked.

  The other students turned toward him, and Matthias glared at him. Matthias didn’t care for the fact that Alec did well, and clearly felt threatened by him. Stefan on the other hand simply watched Alec with an interested expression. They had always gotten along well.

  “What additional sounds would you be concerned about?” Eckerd asked.

  Alec shrugged. “Sometimes with presentations like this, the blood will flow turbulently through the heart. That will create unusual sounds.”

  “Why would you suspect the blood to flow turbulently in a young, otherwise presumably healthy man?”

  Alec pushed past Matthias and lifted the man’s hand. “The tips of his fingers.”

  Eckerd stared at Alec blankly, leaving Alec to feel a flush work through him. Was he too presumptuous? His father had once described an illness that overwhelmed the body, and it had been brought on by an infection, but it was an infection found only in those who preferred to inject solpace juice directly into their arms. Alec had no reason to believe this man had done that and hadn’t seen any marks, but it was the only similar illness that he could come up with.

  “What about the tips of his fingers?” Eckerd asked.

  Alec glanced around at the others and decided to push onward. He was a student, after all. He wasn’t expected to have all of the answers. It was okay if he made a mistake, wasn’t it?

  “My father taught me about an illness that is self-inflicted,” he started. Someone snickered, and Alec ignored him. “There are medicines that are addictive, and some men decide to administer them to themselves.”

  “Indeed? Your father knows of such addictive medicines?”

  “I don’t know if my father knows of the medicines, but he knows of men who have used them. They often end up harming themselves.”

  Alec stared at the man lying on the cot and felt a growing certainty that he was right. Not only was this man suffering from symptoms of an infection brought on by injecting himself, but he was suffering withdrawal from the substance he had been injecting.

  “Solpace juice. That’s what he did, isn’t it?” Alec asked.

  Eckerd made his way around the cot, and the other students peeled away, giving him space. When he stood across from Alec, he peeled back the sheets covering the patient, and Alec noted the injury on the man’s feet. It was the kind of injury that was consistent with someone self-injecting and choosing somewhere that it wouldn’t be detected.

  “Impressive,” Eckerd said. “I don’t know that there are many masters who would have made the same diagnosis, certainly not without seeing more of the injured. Now, solpace juice is fairly caustic but gives a sense of euphoria when injected into the bloodstream. Many of the lowborns will make the mistake of injecting it into themselves, and think that in doing so, they can enjoy that euphoria. Few are savvy enough to know that the euphoria is temporary and is often times followed by severe pain. The pain causes the person to once more administer the solpace juice, and the cycle continues.”

  “Master Eckerd, why is his hair thinning?” another student asked.

  “An interesting observation you’ve made. He suffers from an ailment that makes it appear as if his hair were thinning. It is a withdrawal from the juice he injected. You will see that his forehead is covered in a sheen of sweat as well. That is another symptom of his withdrawal. I think that if we were to do a full evaluation, you would see that not only does he have these symptoms, but there are probably others that we have not yet observed.” He stepped away from the cot, and the students followed him as he made his way to one of the nearby cots.

  Beckah elbowed Alec as he passed.

  He shot her a hard glare, which she returned with a smile.

  He followed Eckerd as the man reached another cot and resumed his lecture. This time, Alec stayed back, choosing not to speak up, not wanting to draw attention to himself. It was easier to remain silent, and easier to simply stay back, letting the others draw the attention of the master physicker.

  Alec noted that Eckerd glanced at him from time to time, either waiting—or daring him to speak up. He didn’t know if the fact that he didn’t made him more of a target, or less.

  7

  A Merchant Caravan

  Sam made her way through the Bolton section, keeping her canal staff clutched securely in her hand, separated into pieces. She didn’t want to draw attention to herself and was careful to keep her cloak pulled around her shoulders. The day was cool, the breeze that gusted through the city attempting to tug at her cloak, and the air had an odd scent to it, one that had the stink from the canals, but mixed with something else that she couldn’t quite track.

  Why hadn’t Alec come to her the night before?

  She shouldn’t be upset by it, but she thought they were going to work together, and that he would continue to come and help her understand her augmentations. Maybe he decided that his studies at the university were more important. Sam couldn’t even be upset by that. They had both agreed that what he learned at the university was important. Discovering methods of healing could be applied in many of their attempts with augmentations.

  Even though she knew that she shouldn’t be upset, she was finding it difficult to get over it. Alec was the only one who really understood what she’d been going through. He was the only one who understood the challenges she faced dealing with the discovery of Marin’s deception. He had been the one by her side over the last few months, the one person she could truly trust.

  Sam had known she couldn’t trust Marin and had doubted Bastan’s intent, but for so long, she had relied on her connection to Tray. She had done everything for him—and with him. Losing that connection, losing the bond, bothered her much more than simply learning that they may not actually be related. Alec understood that about her and understood how much Tray had meant to her. She needed him so that she didn’t feel quite so… empty.

  Movement up above caught her attention, and she pushed the thoughts away, quickly assembling her canal staff and flipping up to the roof.

  Training with Elaine had helped there. Sam had always had skill with the canal staff, though perhaps not nearly as skilled as Marin. When she had begun attempting different augmentations with Alec, that had granted her even more skill. But it wasn’t until she had begun training with Elaine that she truly began to improve.

  When she lan
ded on the roof, Sam tumbled into a roll, tucking her knees up to her chest so that she completed the roll smoothly and popped up onto her feet. She surveyed the roof, looking for signs of the movement she’d seen. There was nothing.

  Sam frowned. There had to be something here. She hadn’t imagined the movement, but whatever had caused it was no longer present.

  Maybe it was best that she return to the palace. Perhaps she simply couldn’t continue to work with Alec if it was so difficult to find a way to get together. She could continue working with Elaine, and the others whom Elaine wanted her to train with, and continue to hone her skills. Her mother seemed convinced that she didn’t require augmentations to gain the agility that Elaine so often demonstrated. Given the shortage of easar paper, it would be nice not to have to rely on it, but she still struggled with the idea that she had skills and abilities that didn’t require augmentations, that she only needed to tap them and learn how to use them. Even then, Sam thought herself far too small and petite to possess the power and agility that Elaine claimed was her birthright.

  From her vantage on the roof’s edge, Sam scanned the streets below.

  The Bolton section was home to dozens of merchants. They had massive estates, many of them sprawling, stretching entire blocks. The merchants prided themselves on displays of wealth to the point where many had gardens and enormous shaped shrubs on display throughout the grounds. The buildings themselves were brightly painted, another garish display of their wealth, using bold blues and oranges, some deep reds and even a few vibrant greens, all an attempt to draw attention to their wealth. It was similar in many of the highborn sections, but in Bolton, it was more prevalent.

  One of the merchants appeared from around the corner on the street below. He was an older man, thin, with a long beard that he’d slicked to a point. He wore a deep purple robe, the color flamboyant enough to signify significant wealth. The merchants in Bolton believed that colors like the purple he wore were a symbol of wealth, partly because of the cost involved in dying something so deeply colored. It took multiple washings to get a color as bright and vibrant as the merchant’s robe. Then there was the jewelry he wore. Each finger was adorned by a massive ring, some twisted into strange shapes, others simple bands of gold or silver, all very expensive pieces.