Comatose: The Book of Maladies

by D. K. Holmberg

  “We need help. Bastan was taken.”

  Tanis looked at her. “What?”

  “We were out on the street. He wandered off, and five men grabbed him. I tried to go after them, but…”

  Tanis nodded and raced off, hurrying to one of the back storerooms. When he returned, he had several swords gripped in his hands, and he started handing them out to men in the kitchen.

  “Whoa. What are you doing with those.”

  “You said he was captured. We’re going after him.”

  “We don’t even know where he’s gone.”

  “It doesn’t matter. We’re going to find out what happened to him, and we are going to get Bastan free.”

  Tanis left the kitchen, and within moments, most of the people within the tavern were on their feet, half of them already armed with swords of their own.

  Were all of these people with Bastan?

  She knew that Bastan kept most of the people in the tavern on his payroll in some way, just as she knew he was always protected while here. She was surprised by just how many people were with him.

  “You need to wait a minute,” she said to Tanis.

  “Wait for what?”

  “Wait for me.”

  “And what do you think you can do that the rest of us can’t?”

  She stepped forward, reached up, and grabbed him by the collar, yanking him down. It surprised her, because she had much more strength than she was expecting. Tanis seemed surprised, too, and his eyes widened as her face loomed only an inch or so from his. “You will wait for me. I care about Bastan as much as the rest of you.”

  When she released him, Tanis stared at her for a long moment before finally nodding.

  Sam hurried back to Bastan’s private office and saw Alec and Master Helen working with the box. The lid was off, and Alec was reaching inside, attempting something with one of the rats. She heard a soft squealing, and she shivered. No animal should make a squealing sound like that, certainly not one caged.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, grabbing her staff.

  Alec looked over at her. “Sam?”

  “Bastan was taken. I’m going after him.”

  Alec looked down at the rats for a moment before standing and wiping his hands on his pants. “Then I’m coming with you.”

  “You don’t need to. I can do this myself.”

  “No, I think that whatever you’re doing, you need some help.” He leaned down and grabbed the two jars on the table, quickly screwing lids back on them and stuffing them into his pocket.

  Master Helen watched, and after a moment, she looked over to Sam. “What you are proposing to do will be dangerous.”

  “What I’m proposing to do is go after someone who has taken somebody I care about. I would do the same for anyone important to me.”

  “You haven’t gone after your brother,” Master Helen said.

  Sam shot her a hard look. “Not yet. That’s coming next.”

  She looked over at Alec. “Are you coming?”

  “Just a minute. I need one more thing.”

  He turned to Master Helen. “You have easar paper?”

  “Alec—”

  “We need to help Bastan. I don’t know why you have such reluctance about him, but he deserves our help.”

  “It’s not that I’m reluctant to help Bastan, it’s just that…”

  “It’s just that what?” Alec asked.

  “It’s just that I’m not sure we should be the ones offering that help to him,” she said.

  “Because he’s a thief?”

  “Because he’s a djohn.”

  28

  Coming Up With a Plan

  “A djohn?” Sam asked, staring at Master Helen.

  She nodded. “Bastan is a djohn. I’m certain of it.”

  “What is a djohn?” Alec asked.

  Sam couldn’t take her eyes off Helen. “They are from beyond our city. They have some innate magical resistance, though I don’t understand it very well. They’re the men Bastan brought with him to fight the Thelns.” If he is djohn, it would explain why he knew to hire them.

  How was that even possible? How was it possible that Bastan had hidden something like that from her?

  “Could you quiet that creature down?” She nodded to the squealing rat. It didn’t matter. After another moment or two, the rat fell silent. She made her way over to the box and saw it lying motionless inside. The fur had blackened, and the skin beneath it had discolored. “What did you do?”

  “I tested the venom,” Alec said. “I used milky one on the first rat and got no reaction. Then I used the yellowish one on a second rat, and it poisoned the rat. Hence the squealing. When I just tried to follow up the yellow venom with the milky venom, the other rats all but attacked me, so it died before I could give it the milky one. I decided to give the first rat the yellow venom, and it had no reaction. It’s almost as if the two, regardless of which is given first, counter each other.”

  “You don’t have to be quite so excited about that,” Sam said.

  “But… Don’t you see what this means? Maybe I can find some way of helping my father and the others.”

  “You already had some way of helping your father and the others. You had the easar paper. Once you knew what it was, all you had to do was document the antivenom, the same way you did with Tanis.”

  Alec paled. “You’re right. I don’t know why I delayed. I should have gone straight back to the university after we returned to the city and tried to help my father and Beckah and…” He shook his head. “I was so excited about trying to figure out what it meant that we had these eels and to see if I could discover an antivenom, that I didn’t.”

  “And now, there’s not time,” Sam said. “Now, I need you to come with me, so that we can go after Bastan.”

  “Where do you think they took him?” Master Helen asked.

  “If the size of the men had anything to do with it, I suspect Ryn came after him.”

  “Why would his brother be so determined to come after him?”

  “I think… I think that’s my fault,” Sam said, flushing. “Bastan was trying to expand his territory and expand his reach.”

  “From what I understand of him, he has not done so before now. He has been content with his grasp on Caster,” Master Helen said.

  “He had been. But ever since I went to the palace to begin training, Bastan decided he needed to extend that reach.”

  “Because of what he’d discovered?”

  Alec looked at her. “It’s because of you, isn’t it?”

  Sam nodded. “He didn’t tell me that, but I suspect that’s what it is.”

  “He has been talking about protecting those he cares about,” Alec said. “When I came to visit, he kept referring to family and talking about protecting those who worked with him.”

  “Yes, well I don’t work for him, not anymore, but it seems as if Bastan sees me as family. And…” She flushed again. “Well, given everything I’ve gone through, Bastan is pretty much the only family I have. I need to go after him and I need to get him back before Ryn does something to him.”

  “I will help you,” Alec said.

  Master Helen glanced from Sam to Alec. “If you do this, you risk exposing the presence of the Kavers and Scribes in the city.”

  “I think our presence has already been exposed. The fact that we were able to fend off the attack is enough to have exposed us. We can mitigate some of that exposure if we go after Ryn, but I don’t know how much we’ll be able to limit.”

  Master Helen let out a deep sigh. “All the years I’ve been in the city, I have done everything I could to prevent the spread of knowledge about our existence.”

  “Why?” Sam asked. “Don’t you think awareness of our existence would help keep people in line?”

  “It’s never been about keeping people in line. It’s been more about preventing others from coming and attacking.”

  “You mean coming for the Scribes.”
/>   “What?” Alec asked.

  Sam glanced from him to Master Helen. “That’s what they don’t want you to know. If you go to the Thelns lands, there might be a way for you to expedite your understanding of what it means for you to be a Scribe. They don’t want that.”

  “Because none have ever returned. There is temptation—” Master Helen started, but Alec cut her off.

  “I don’t know why you would be so worried about the Scribes—others like us—going to Theln lands and understanding who we are and what we can do, but it’s more than what you’ve shared.”

  “It’s because the Scribes create the easar paper,” Sam realized.

  Alec looked down to the two jars in his hands. “And the paper is connected to the eels, somehow, isn’t it?”

  Sam looked at Master Helen, and her skin tingled as she suddenly understood the excitement that Master Helen had shown when she realized that Alec had found the eel venom. It was about more than his discovery of the toxin. It was about something it meant for her. “Is that it?”

  “Those who are Scribes in Theln lands have long known some secret to creating easar paper. We have snuck it from them, which is how we have the supply that we do, but we have never been able to learn how it’s created.”

  “Did you think it had to do with the eels?”

  “We have speculated on that,” Master Helen said. “Given the fact that the eels have some role in protecting the city, especially with the numbers of eels we have counted in the canals, we have managed to prevent the Thelns from coming. Even the mechanism of how that works is not well understood.”

  “Then why would Marin have tried to poison the eels?”

  “Because she was working for the Thelns,” Master Helen said.

  Sam shook her head. “I’m not sure that is what it was. If it was all about her working for the Thelns, she could have left the city long ago. Besides, she was only here to protect Tray.”

  Master Helen frowned. “What is this?”

  “Marin. The reason she was in the city was to protect Tray. She needed to keep him away from his father, and though I don’t know that it made sense for her to keep him so close to his mother, I think this was where she felt he was safest.”

  “What are you talking about, Sam?” Alec asked.

  “Tray. Lyasanna told me that Tray was her son. And Marin confirmed it when we captured her.” Master Helen gasped. “Marin was given the assignment to kill him, and she refused, and so because of that, she disappeared.”

  “Where did you hear this?” Master Helen said.

  “As I said, from Lyasanna herself, and then from Marin.”

  “You found her,” Helen said.

  Sam nodded. “I thought you knew. I thought you knew that Elaine and I returned with her.”

  “Elaine never returned.”

  If she hadn’t returned, where did she go?

  Could Marin have escaped again? Sam had to believe it was possible, especially with the abilities that Marin had shown, but she didn’t think Elaine would make that mistake.

  Unless… Unless Elaine had chosen to murder Marin, to find a way to silence her so that Lyasanna’s secret couldn’t come out.

  As Sam raised that question, she realized that at some point, she had started to believe Marin. When had that happened? When had she started to trust what Marin had told her over the words of her mother?

  “And Marin involved you because of your mother?” Alec said.

  Sam nodded. “Apparently, Marin believed that my mother was complicit, or at least did nothing to countermand Lyasanna’s orders.”

  “We need to find them,” Alec said. “We need to ask the princess about this.”

  “I was about to, but Master Helen grabbed me.”

  “And it’s a good thing that I did,” Master Helen said, nodding to Alec. “Had I not, what would have happened to your Scribe?”

  Sam took a deep breath and tapped her canal staff on the ground. “I need to go after Bastan. Alec—You can choose to come with me or not, but I think your augmentations may benefit me.”

  “Maybe I don’t have to go with you to place the augmentations.”

  “Why is that?” Sam asked.

  “Well, you’ll only worry about me if I’m with you, won’t you?”

  Sam nodded. “I can’t have you getting harmed while we’re trying to rescue Bastan.”

  “What if there was a way for me to remain hidden where I would be safe and where I can still place augmentations? It wouldn’t be a guessing game, like it was when Jessup held you.”

  “But you won’t know which augmentations I need.”

  “Which augmentations do we typically use? Think about it, Sam. We use strength, speed, sometimes we heal. If I am there and able to give you what you need to stay out of harm’s way, we might not even need healing augmentations.”

  He was right, and that annoyed her. But why was that? Was it because he was suggesting that she go off on her own, or was there something else to her annoyance? Was it that she would once more be fighting by herself?

  For Bastan, that felt right.

  “Stay here. Give me a few minutes, and then begin adding augmentations. I want skin that can’t be punctured. I want bones that can’t break. And I want resistance to various toxins. Every so often, I want you to cycle them, so we’re ready as the augmentations may wear off.”

  Alec nodded. “I think that’s all a great idea.”

  She went to Bastan’s desk and pulled out a bowl from one of his drawers. She opened her palm above the bowl and made a quick slash with one of her knives. Blood pooled in her palm and then dripped into the bowl. She winced, ignoring the pain in her hand, knowing that it needed to happen so that Alec would have access to enough blood.

  Alec glanced at the jars before he thrust one of them at her. “Take this. This is the eel venom.”

  “Alec—”

  Alec shook his head. “No. I don’t know if there’s any purpose to it, but if nothing else, you can use this to end your fights.”

  “I don’t have any way of administering the venom,” Sam said.

  Alec held out a pen to her. Sam chuckled.

  “A pen? You know, I do have a knife.”

  “Fine. Dip either of them in the venom. You can use it to jab into somebody. It doesn’t take long before it takes effect.”

  Sam thought about the rat and the way that it had squealed. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear a man squealing the same way, but Alec was right that she needed to have some other defense if she was attacked. She pocketed the venom and took the pen, slipping that into her pocket alongside it. She would have to be careful so that she didn’t jab herself with the venom.

  “Maybe you start with making my skin impervious,” she said.

  Alec frowned for a moment before his eyes widened. “Oh. Good idea.” He took a seat at the desk and glanced up at Master Helen. “The easar paper?”

  She considered him for a moment before pulling a few sheets of paper out of her pocket and setting them on the table. “You understand how valuable these are?”

  “Maybe they won’t be quite as valuable if we can figure out how to make it ourselves,” Alec said.

  Master Helen nodded. “I am going to return to the university. If these others were injured by eel venom, I will see if I can’t help them with the antivenom.”

  Sam grabbed her arm, taking the jar of the milky liquid. “Not yet.” Her abrupt move may have been a bit too forward with Master Helen, but she didn’t care. “Depending on what happens, we might need it.”

  “Those at the university need it now,” she said.

  “Then use the easar paper to buy them time.” Now that they knew what to try, the easar paper shouldn’t carry the same risk, should it?

  “That’s a dangerous strategy.”

  “It will work,” Alec said. “I’ve seen it work with one of Bastan’s men.”

  Master Helen looked from Alec to Sam, frowning deeply. “Are you sure about what
Marin said?”

  Sam nodded slowly. “I don’t know if it’s true.”

  “But you believe it is true.”

  “I believe that Marin didn’t have as much reason to lie to me when she said it. Maybe it wasn’t entirely true, but…”

  “Thank you,” Master Helen said.

  “For what?”

  She breathed out heavily, her frown easing. “For giving me something to consider. For possibilities I had not thought existed.” She headed toward the door and closed it behind her. Sam stared at it, feeling a strange unsettled feeling.

  “That was…”

  “Strange,” Alec finished for her. “Master Helen can often be strange.”

  “Do you think you can do this?” she asked.

  “You need to go get Bastan. You’re right. He is your family.”

  “He said I was like a daughter to him,” she said with a whisper.

  “I’m not surprised. When I came here to talk with him, he… Well, let’s just say that he made it very clear how much you mean to him.”

  Sam took a deep breath. “Are you ready?”

  “Are you?”

  She licked her lips, tapped the canal staff on the ground once more, feeling as if doing so gave her a measure of good luck, and grabbed her cloak, slipping it over her shoulders. She was tired, exhausted from everything she had been through, but this was something that needed to happen. Regardless of anything else, she had to go after Bastan and had to bring him back.

  “I’m ready.”

  29

  After Bastan

  The Hosd section was too close to the swamp for her comfort, but now, with her ability to maneuver through it, she was able to approach the section along the swamp side, something that not many others could do. Sam hopped along on her staff, remaining perched as she went, occasionally flipping. Augmentations left her flush with strength and speed, allowing her to jump much farther each time she flipped out of the water, coming back to balance on her staff. She was careful not to flip too far or too fast, needing to maintain control of each rotation, and not wanting to come down too hard on the staff. If she did, she might splinter it before she even got a chance to go after Ryn and get Bastan.