“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—”
“You there!” Izar stepped away and jabbed a finger at one of the watchmen. “Put that rifle up, fool!”
But the watchman could not hear over the crowd. He brandished his weapon in the face of a young Adali man, threatening, until one of his more sensible fellows grabbed the muzzle and jerked it upright, saying something heated. These men are no more trained for this than the dogs, Lenoir realized with a sinking feeling. As a young watchman in Serles, Lenoir had been instructed in crowd control, using tactics developed by the Prefecture of Police during the revolution. But Kennian had never known revolution, and Lenoir had not thought to recommend such training to the Metropolitan Police.
“Where’s Merden?” Kody cried, whirling around.
“Here.” The soothsayer appeared at Kody’s elbow.
Lenoir did not have time for relief. The shouting around them kept growing in volume, the space between storm fronts shrinking inch by inch. Demands and accusations drifted like sparks over tinder, just waiting to catch light.
“—cannot keep us trapped in here like animals!”
“—just supposed to wait here to die?”
“Stand back! I’m warning you—”
“—not sick! Open your eyes! Can’t you see that I’m not—”
A stone sailed through the air. It struck a watchman in the head, near his temple. He staggered.
The shouting swelled into a feverish crescendo. Izar surged, long arm reaching, crying out something even Lenoir could not hear.
A gunshot rang out.
Lenoir closed his eyes in the sudden silence.
When he opened them, the weapons were everywhere—rifles and blades, sticks and rocks, a length of what looked like lead pipe. The dogs tore into the crowd, set loose or simply broken free, and now there was screaming on top of the shouting, and the two fronts met in a brutal crash of bodies. Lenoir tried to reach for his pistol, but someone barreled into him, smashing him up against the barricade and pinning him there. He could hardly even see for the flurry of limbs. The edge of a log pressed painfully into his ribs. The pressure grew and grew as the crowd heaved against the barricade, trying to overwhelm it. If Lenoir did not break free, he would be crushed.
Another gunshot sounded, and another. It seemed only to whip the stampede into more of a frenzy. Lenoir thought he heard Kody shouting nearby, but he could not pinpoint exactly where. He heard a crack and a grunt, and the pressure against his chest loosened a little. Another crack, and the body against Lenoir’s went slack. Merden appeared, his herder’s stick clutched in both hands. “This way!”
The hounds had clustered together in a chaotic semicircle, creating a small, protected space between themselves and the right side of the barricade. Lenoir and Merden slipped behind them. It bought them some time, but little else; there was no way out except back through the rioting crowd or up over the barricade, and Lenoir did not want to risk being gunned down. The watchmen in the towers were firing warning shots at anyone foolhardy enough to attempt the climb. So far, the threats were doing the job, but Lenoir doubted it would last. “We have to get to one of those towers!”
“How?”
Lenoir had no idea. Izar was nowhere to be seen. They had lost Kody too. Lenoir drew his pistol, for all the good it would do him. He had two shots, and then it would be the sword. Even a skilled fighter would have trouble wielding a long blade in such a melee; in Lenoir’s hands, it was as likely to end up in his own belly as someone else’s.
The watchmen were not having much more luck with their rifles. The weapons were effective deterrents, but virtually useless at close quarters. Most of the men were using them like staves, cracking them across the faces of anyone who got too close. Somewhere within the horde, the dogs could be heard snarling and snapping. Still the rioters pushed in, pelting the police with stones and landing as many blows as they could with fists and sticks and whatever else they had managed to get hold of.
“Look!” Merden pointed. The hounds had dragged some of the sandbags out from the base of the nearest tower, and were smuggling their injured through the opening. Lenoir bolted toward it, pistol raised, hoping the sight of it would be enough to dissuade anyone from attacking him. The hounds held the line, keeping the tide at bay. The gap at the base of the tower was tantalizingly close, a light at the end of the tunnel of bodies.
He never made it.
The line broke just before Lenoir reached the gap. The tunnel of bodies collapsed in on itself, rioters flooding in through the breach. Izar appeared, grappling with someone. He had a pistol in his hand, hammers cocked and ready, but instead of firing, he was trying to subdue the civilian by hand. The sergeant paid for his mercy. Someone cracked the side of his face with a shovel, and he spun with a spray of blood before sinking down beneath the waves of humanity.
Lenoir dove at the spot where Izar had disappeared, but something struck the back of his head. White light flared in his vision, and then everything tilted, the bodies whirling away sickeningly as the ground rushed up to meet him. He went down hard, crashing against the barricade as he fell.
The last thing he remembered was the taste of blood.
CHAPTER 8
When Lenoir opened his eyes, he found himself staring at his own bedside table. For a moment, he wondered if he had dreamed it all—the witchdoctor, the hissing shadow, the riot. Then a bright flash of agony arced through his skull, and he knew better. He groaned and started to roll onto his back, but a rich voice said, “No.”
Lenoir froze. “Merden?”
“Obviously.”
He waited for more, but the soothsayer had apparently said all he wished to. Lenoir scowled. “Why am I not allowed to move?”
“You may move, Inspector, but you may not lie on your back. That would have unfortunate consequences for your split skull.”
“Split?” If Lenoir had considered moving before, the notion left him quite completely.
“You need not be too concerned. It is not that bad.”
The pain in Lenoir’s head begged to differ. “Are you sure?”
Merden’s only answer was an impatient expulsion of breath.
“What is that smell?” Lenoir asked.
“A poultice.”
Instinctively, Lenoir reached for the sore spot at the back of his head. His fingers touched something cold and wet.
Merden tsked. “Really, Inspector, are you such a child? Must I tell you not to touch it?”
Lenoir struggled to a sitting position. The curtains were drawn, but a single oil lamp was enough to illuminate all four walls of his tiny flat. By its light, he took in the usual disarray: cupboards ajar, hearth unswept, threadbare blanket pooled carelessly at the foot of a single upholstered chair. He found Merden seated at the table with a cup of tea.
Another man might have felt uncomfortable at having a near stranger left unattended for hours in his home, but not Lenoir. There was nothing private for the soothsayer to find. Papers were scattered across Lenoir’s writing desk, but none of them were personal correspondence. Portraits hung on the walls, but they were not friends or relatives. The only truly personal touch in the room was his books, one of which lay open in front of Merden.
When Lenoir recognized the title, his surprise momentarily overtook his pain. “You read
Arrènais?”
“Not yet.” The soothsayer sipped his tea.
Lenoir let that go. “How did I get here?” Even as he asked the question, an image passed through his mind, brief and hazy, like a half-remembered dream: someone grabbing his arm and hoisting him over a shoulder. “Did you carry me?”
Merden’s eyebrows flew up. “I am flattered you think me capable of such a feat of strength, but no—it was not I who carried you. It was Sergeant Kody.”
Lenoir grunted. It was as close as he could bring himself to verbalizing his satisfaction at the news that Kody had escaped the riot unscathed. “Where is he now?”
“At the station, I presume.”
“And Izar?”
“The Adali sergeant? I do not know.”
“What happened back at the barricade?”
Merden shook his head and took another draw of tea. “I do not think the wall was breached, but I cannot be certain. The riot was still in progress when we got you out.”
“And how long ago was that, exactly?”
A look of irritation crossed Merden’s face. “Perhaps it would be best if you asked all your questions in one go, Inspector, and spared me this tedious interrogation. Or shall I guess them?” He started to tick them off on his long fingers. “You have been out for approximately ten hours, mostly due to the healing tea I gave you. You were struck in the back of the head by a rock. I do not know who threw the rock. I do not know who survived and who did not. I do not know if the quarantine still holds, or if infected Camp residents are swarming all over the Five Villages in the first wave of the world’s ending. Anything else?”
Lenoir gave him a flat look. “I think that covers it, thank you. But let us not pretend it is my questions you find tedious. You are annoyed because you are full of questions yourself, but have been obliged to sit here watching over me, and so have been unable to learn the answers.”
Merden drank his tea.
Lenoir stood, gingerly at first, and was surprised to find that aside from the headache, he felt more or less intact. He washed his face, did his best to arrange his hair over the blot of healing mud at the back of his head, and checked his cupboards for something to eat. (The latter was wishful thinking; he never had anything to eat.)
Master of Plagues: A Nicolas Lenoir Novel Page 8
