Master of Plagues: A Nicolas Lenoir Novel

by E. L. Tettensor

  “Why? What have I done?”

  “Nothing, sir. It is a precaution.”

  “But I don’t understand. What’s this all about? Why, I’m a priest, you can’t just—” The man protested all the way down the street, but he offered no resistance. Lenoir sent him off with only a single scribe. The priest was no threat, and Lenoir needed to keep as many of his team together as he could. He had already lost two scribes to escort duty; he could not afford to lose more.

  “Just a few blocks left, Inspector,” Riley said, “and then we’ve done Hollybrook.”

  “Yes, Riley, thank you.”

  “Where shall we go after that?”

  Lenoir opened his mouth to respond, but found he had nothing to say.

  * * *

  “Well, if you do see anything, give a shout,” Kody said.

  The woman nodded and clipped the door shut, only too happy to get his swollen face out of her sight. He stood there on the stoop, momentarily lost in indecision, listening absently as the chain rattled and the bolt slid to.

  What now?

  His team had combed Primrose Park from end to end, and they hadn’t found so much as a stray cat. Maybe we should’ve started with the poor district. Guaranteed, they’d find corpse collectors there, and plenty of them. Too many, the more sensible part of him put in. You’d be hauling them in all night. Not nearly enough manpower for that. No, Lenoir was right to start with the posh neighborhoods. Kody might have come up empty, but one of the others was bound to find something. “Bound to,” he whispered, as if saying the words aloud could make it so.

  “What’s that, Sarge?”

  “Nothing. Let’s keep moving.” He rejoined Patton at the bottom of the stoop. “We’ll work our way back north, in case we missed something.”

  “Oh. Okay.” The scribe shifted. “I just thought . . .”

  “What?”

  “Well, since we’ve already done our bit, maybe we should head over a few blocks, help out Sergeant Keane and the others?”

  “We stick with the grid, Patton. That’s how it works.” Kody raised his lantern so the other scribes could see his face. “All right, hounds, that’s enough loitering. We turn around and work our way back. Same pattern. Stay focused. I catch two of you on the same street, skulls are gonna crack. Got it?”

  His team dispersed, melting into the side streets and alleyways. Kody started back up the avenue, and this time around, he was even more meticulous. The beam of his lantern scoured every stoop, every courtyard, every hollow. Not that he expected to find anything. If Ritter had spotted them, he would already have made tracks, and if he hadn’t, he would be out in the open, not crouched in the lee of a town house stoop. After all, wasn’t the whole point to dump the bodies where everyone could see them? We should head back to the park, Kody thought. I’ll bet that’s where he’d do it. Or maybe Dressley Square. That would get plenty of attention come morning. Or . . . wait . . . the cathedral? Tomorrow’s prayer day. For that matter, any church . . .

  He growled, grinding the heel of his palm into his eyes. There were just too many options. If they’d had every man on the force out there, maybe. But with a handful of watchmen and a few dozen scribes . . . It was worse than a mouse in a barn. It was a fly in a forest. We’ll never find him. We’re sunk. He couldn’t even feel angry about it. Instead, he just felt sick.

  Kody had just made up his mind to scrap the pattern and head straight for the park when he heard the whistle. It was too distant to be one of his. Keane’s, by the sounds of it.

  “That came from Blackpoint,” Patton said into his thoughts.

  “Sounds like.”

  “Should we go?”

  The whistle sounded again, shrill and insistent. Kody pursed his lips. It’s not ours. Keane will take care of it. Then he heard something else.

  KaPOW.

  It lingered, drifting on the wind like a wisp of smoke.

  Patton froze. “Was that . . . ?”

  “Yeah,” Kody said, “it was.” He started running.

  The whistle had gone silent. For several agonizing seconds, the only sound was the pounding of footfalls as Kody headed toward the river. He didn’t even glance behind to see if Patton was following.

  It’s got to be Ritter. By the sounds of things, he’d killed the scribe who found him. If he gets away . . . Kody pushed himself harder. The bridge was just ahead. The Minnow marked the boundary between Primrose Park and Blackpoint, between Kody’s territory and Keane’s. He couldn’t be far now. Good thing too, because Kody wasn’t going to be able to keep up this pace for long. As it was, Merden’s injunction against running echoed in his ears.

  Another whistle sounded. It came from the same spot, but had a slightly different pitch. A different scribe. Again and again it blasted, unmistakably urgent. The gun was silent, but that didn’t mean the scribe was safe. Ritter might have spent his flintlock, but he was a sailor, and sailors always had knives. Damn it, Keane, I hope you’re on this.

  Kody could hear shouting now. It guided him around corners, through narrow alleys connecting wider streets. The voices were getting louder, but he could tell he was still at least a block away. He couldn’t hear the whistle anymore. He tried not to think about what that meant. His blood roared in his ears, and his head felt like it could float away like a balloon at a fair, but he kept running.

  He was nearly on top of the shouting now. He recognized Keane’s voice, though he couldn’t make out the words. There were at least two other voices, youthful and afraid. Scribes. If he kept on straight ahead, he would find them.

  Kody veered left.

  He couldn’t have said why he did it. Maybe it was because the voices up ahead sounded so disorganized, so frantic. Maybe it was just instinct. Regardless, Kody found himself making a flanking maneuver, like a man trying to head someone off.

  Which is exactly what he did.

  The man almost barreled into him, all three hundred pounds of him. Kody spun his shoulders to avoid the tackle, and still had the presence of mind to stick his knee out. The impact sent a blaze of pain up his leg, but the fugitive caught the worse end of it, tumbling headfirst to the pavement. Somehow, he managed to roll out of it, ending up in a wary crouch. Kody reached for his crossbow, some part of his brain registering surprise that a purser would be so agile. And meaty.

  The figure snapped his arm out. Kody staggered. At first, it felt like he’d been stung by an insect, so small and burning was the pain. But when he reached up, he felt something buried in his neck, too cold to be anything but metal. He gripped it, ready to tear it out, but his attacker was back on his feet and there wasn’t time. Kody leveled his crossbow. His attacker drew a knife, a big curved blade that gleamed wickedly in the glow of the streetlamp. The Inataari. He was at least six and a half feet tall, with long, narrow mustaches and the fiercest eyes Kody had ever seen. He took a step closer. Kody fired.

  Somehow—Kody would never understand how—the Inataari spun out of the quarrel’s path. He whirled again, arms wide, and now the blade was coming at Kody in a flashing arc. He nearly fell on his arse trying to get out of the way. He grabbed for his gun, but the Inataari was on him again—how in the below did he move that fast?—and Kody had to throw himself against the wall just to keep his balance. He fumbled again for his gun. He’d just managed to pull back the hammer when his attacker blasted into him, grabbing his wrist and pinning him up against the wall. They struggled. It was like trying to wrestle a grizzly bear. Kody grunted and swore, but the Inataari was strong enough to best him on a good day, and this wasn’t a good day. Kody felt himself being slowly overwhelmed. His vision swam with spots, and his knees weren’t as sturdy as they should be. He was vaguely aware of a warm stickiness at his throat.

  It is your blood, Sergeant.

  For some reason, the voice in his head was Lenoir’s.

  There is a very
small knife embedded in your neck.

  Did the Inataari poison their knives? Or was that the Mirrhanese? Kody couldn’t remember. His arm burned from trying to keep the blade away from his throat.

  “Hey!”

  The shout came from Kody’s right. He knew the voice, but he couldn’t place it.

  Frantic footfalls against the pavement. An inarticulate cry, followed by a grunt as something crashed into the Inataari, hard enough to throw him off balance. Kody drove a knee into his attacker’s groin, twisted out of his grasp, and fired. Something warm and wet spattered against his face.

  The world swam. A gunshot sounded, as if from a distance.

  Kody dropped into darkness.

  CHAPTER 33

  “Will he be all right?” Lenoir asked.

  “Should be.” Keane was making notes, but he glanced up long enough to give Lenoir a reassuring look. “He passed out, but he was awake by the time I found him. Didn’t look too good if you ask me, but he got into the wagon on his own legs, so I guess that’s a good sign.”

  “It’s fortunate he did not bleed out.” Lenoir had seen an Inataari throwing knife once, in a museum in Serles. They were a nasty bit of business, barbed in more places than was strictly necessary.

  “Funny thing, that.” Keane looked up again, his brow creased in puzzlement. “He didn’t even lose that much blood. By the time I found him, you would’ve sworn that wound was hours old.”

  Lenoir blew out a breath, something between a gasp and a laugh.

  Clotted up faster than anything I’ve ever seen. Kody’s words as he praised the miracle potion, a medicine that thickened the blood. The sergeant’s life may well have been saved by that tonic. Had he not contracted plague, Kody could easily have died from a knife wound in the street.

  Now that, Sergeant, is irony.

  Or was it justice after all, winking at them across the void of the universe? Lenoir shook his head in wonder.

  He scanned the row of bodies before him. They lay side by side, ready to be loaded up into the wagon. Two of the dead were scribes. A third was missing most of his face—the Inataari, judging by the mustaches matted with gore. As for the fourth . . .

  “We got him.” Lenoir could scarcely believe it.

  “Sure did.” Keane put a boot to the corpse, as if for emphasis. The head rolled against the uneven cobbles, sightless eyes tracking across the sky.

  Ritter. In the flesh at last. Dead flesh, thankfully. Lenoir had been right about all of it: the plan, the disguise, the neighborhood. The only thing he had not foreseen was the Inataari, though of course he should have. Ritter could have managed on his own for a while, but he would have needed help to drag a cartload of bodies all the way up to Blackpoint. “What exactly happened?”

  “Scribe came across your man and his cart. Had a full crop of corpses with him. Reckon that’s how the scribe knew.”

  “Where are the bodies now?”

  Keane pointed. They had put the cart at the far end of the street, as far away as they could manage without losing sight of it. Even at this distance, Lenoir could see that it was full. Limbs dangled over the edges—an arm here, a leg there, bruised and swollen.

  “Guess that means we managed to stop him in time,” Keane said. “Unless he’d dumped a load already, that is.”

  “That would not have been possible. He would have had to wheel the corpses up from one of the infected neighborhoods. That would have been hard work, and taken hours, especially if he was trying not to attract too much attention.”

  Keane grunted, his pencil still bobbing. “Anyway, scribe sees them, blows his whistle, and takes one in the guts for his troubles.” Keane indicated one of the bodies at his feet.

  Lenoir knelt. If he had ever seen the young man before, he did not remember it. As for Ritter, he looked much as Lenoir had imagined him: small, pale, and rat-faced. He was perhaps a little more sinewy, a little more weathered, than Lenoir would have guessed, but the man was a sailor after all. He had been shot twice, once in the gut and once in the throat. Keane had unloaded both barrels on him. Lenoir would have done the same, and possibly run him through for good measure.

  Still, gazing upon the corpse of his foe, a man responsible for so much death and destruction, Lenoir felt strangely hollow. There was no triumph, no sense of reckoning or redemption. He was relieved, certainly—but it was an exhausted sort of relief, as if a great wave had come and gone, leaving him scoured and empty.

  Belatedly, he realized Keane was still talking. “We reckon the Inataari was keeping a lookout, ready to add some muscle if things went sour. Once he’d spent his barrel, they tried to make tracks, but Joyce here”—he indicated the body of the second scribe—“caught up with them around the corner. That’s when he got it. Bastards nearly cut his head clean off.”

  Lenoir recognized the signature flourish of the Inataari’s blade. He grimaced.

  “They split up after that,” Keane went on. “Kody caught up with this one first, and they tussled. Might’ve gone badly if Patton—that’s him over there—hadn’t showed up and given Kody a hand. Meanwhile, I got me this one.” He shoved Ritter’s corpse again. The head lolled to one side, leaving him face-to-face with his miasma mask. Vacant gaze met vacant gaze, each reflected in the glassy surface of the other. “You ask me,” Keane said, “he got off light, considering what he did. If I had my way, we’d have fed him to the dogs in the Camp.”

  Lenoir could not disagree. Sometimes, the best justice has to offer is vengeance. In the end, justice had not even offered that. Nor was Ritter’s bloody work complete. They had stopped him before he had managed to implement the last stage of his plan, but that would be no consolation to the sick and the dying, to those who would fall ill tomorrow, or the day after that. Hundreds of deaths had yet to be laid at Ritter’s feet. Still, it might have been thousands had they not discovered the cure.

  Speaking of which . . .

  “Very well, Sergeant. Get these bodies loaded up and ready to go. As for Ritter’s cart, leave a guard on it, and when you get back to the station, have the corpse collectors we rounded up tonight come up here and deal with them. Make sure everyone wears proper protection. Those corpses are highly contagious.”

  “Sure thing, Inspector. What about you? Where you headed?”

  “To the docks,” Lenoir said. “We have medicine to make.”

  * * *

  The first rays of dawn filtered weakly through the salt-crusted window of Warehouse 49. Lenoir leaned against a wall, arms crossed, waiting. He had managed to roust the dockmaster hours ago, but it would be another hour or so before his crew started to arrive on the scene. Sailors were early risers, but the predawn hours belonged to the fishermen. I like to keep the piers clear until the fleets put out in the morning, the dockmaster had said. Keeps the misunderstandings to a minimum. Judging by the men Lenoir had passed on his way in—bleary-eyed, irritable, reeking of spirits—it was a wise precaution.

  It had not taken the dockmaster long to locate the right warehouse, once he had Ritter’s name to work with. Now it was simply a question of getting the angel wort out to the Camp, where it could be put to good use. To do that, however, Lenoir needed hands, and plenty of them. That meant dallying about in this damp, stinking cave of a warehouse, idle and useless, while more pressing matters gnawed at his nerves.

  Fortunately, he did not have to bear it for long. The warehouse doors creaked, and the first of the dockhands drifted in. He paused when he saw Lenoir, seemingly surprised to find him alone. “Good morning,” the dockhand said, a little tentatively. Lenoir wondered what the man had been told about his first task of the day.

  “You are earlier than I expected,” Lenoir said. “That’s good.”

  “Oh.” The dockhand glanced around. “How many are we expecting?”

  Lenoir shrugged. “You tell me. As many as it takes to load these c
rates up quickly.”

  “Where’s the dockmaster?”

  “I sent him off to round up some wagons.”

  “Oh.” There was an awkward silence. The dockhand glanced behind him, at the door. “I suppose you’re in a hurry.”

  “You might say that.”

  “Well, if you give me a hand, we could save time by getting ’em ready at the loading door. I mean, I know it’s not your job and all, but if you’re in a hurry . . .”

  Lenoir considered. It was not the kind of task he would ordinarily consider, but he was in a hurry. Every minute they delayed was a chance for the plague to claim another victim. “I suppose they are not that heavy, considering the cargo.”

  “That’s right. Most of the weight is in the crate itself.” So he did know why he was here. That was good.

  “Very well,” Lenoir said, motioning for the dockhand to lead the way. They headed up the gangplank to the loading level. “Do you have a key for the loading door?”

  He shook his head. “One of the other lads has got it. He’ll be along soon. But if we line the crates up nice, it’ll make things go faster. Here, I’ll take this end. That way, you don’t have to walk backward.”

  Together, they hoisted a crate and started moving.

  “You’re a hound, then?”

  Lenoir grunted, half in exertion, half in annoyance. He was not in the mood for idle chatter.

  Taking the sound for assent, the dockhand went on. “Shouldn’t you have a partner or something?”

  “He is unwell.” Following the dockhand’s lead, Lenoir started to lower the crate, but it slipped from his grasp. He hissed in pain as a sliver the size of a toothpick sliced into his skin. “Stupid,” he grumbled, picking at it. He should have asked to borrow a pair of the thick canvas gloves the dockhands wore.

  “I got it,” said the other man, bracing his hands against the crate to shove it into position. Lenoir noticed that this particular dockhand was not, in fact, wearing gloves. Perhaps his hands were so callused that he did not need to. But no . . . looking closer, Lenoir saw that the man’s hands were white and soft-looking. Odd, considering his line of work.