“Well, it is a discussion for a few days from now. Consider yourselves at liberty until, let’s say, the twenty-eighth.”
“Thank you, Professor,” Veranix said.
“Yes, well, I’m sure there is plenty of trouble you can get into in that time,” he said. “However, I will press on the two of you to help me to my tower before you engage in debauched revels.”
“Anything you need, Professor.”
The professor smiled and cupped one hand around Veranix’s head. “It’s probably pointless to tell you not to do anything too wild, isn’t it?”
Veranix looked away as he took some of the professor’s weight onto his shoulder. “I suppose it would be, sir. Especially tonight.”
Chapter 19
VERANIX WAS IN A HURRY to get wherever it was they needed to get to for Delmin to find out the name they were looking for. Delmin was being more than a little bit coy about it, which annoyed Veranix to no end. But he insisted that they return to their rooms first and change out of uniform.
“Why are we doing this?”
“Well, for one, we have now both finished our final duties as third-year students, so as of right now, this is inaccurate.” He pointed to the three pips on his hat. “We are either fourth-years on summer break, or we will be thrown out of gates for poor marks.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I was making allowances for you. Either way, it’s probably appropriate, given where we are going, that we not necessarily announce ourselves as University students.”
“Where are we going, exactly?”
Someone knocked on the door. Veranix was annoyed by the interruption, but let that go when he opened it to find Eittle, dressed in regular street clothes
“Finished up, lads?” he asked.
“Done with all, now we wait,” Delmin said, putting on a rather smart vest and suspenders. Sometimes Veranix forgot that Delmin came from a decent amount of money. “Though I’m pretty confident in full marks all. You?”
“Finished with the last. I’ll be heading out for the observatory tomorrow.”
“Good luck with that,” Veranix said. “It sounds like it’ll be quite a time for you.”
“Yeah,” Eittle said, looking to the ground. “I know you fellows are both busy and all, but I was wondering . . . I thought I’d go down to the Lower Trenn, give Parsons a visit before I left. Thought you two might want to come along.”
The idea hit Veranix like a slap in the face. Go visit Parsons? On the fifth floor of the Lower Trenn Street Ward, where all the mindless effitte victims were tended to? Including Veranix’s mother? He couldn’t go there, couldn’t see her, it wasn’t possible. Not even—
“Of course,” Delmin said. “That’s a perfect idea. Just give us a click.”
“Sure.” Eittle nodded and went off.
“Are you crazy? We need to—”
“We need to go to the Lower Trenn Ward, actually,” Delmin said. “That’s always where we were going and now we have a better excuse to go down there.”
“I cannot go to the Lower Trenn Street Ward, Delmin! Fenmere has eyes everywhere, and . . . and . . . I can’t . . .” The words wouldn’t come out, tears coming to his eyes. “I don’t . . .”
“Hey, hey,” Delmin said, taking Veranix by the shoulder and sitting him on the bed. “If it’s too much for you, I’ll go alone. You stay here. I’ve got this.”
Veranix’s heart ached. “No, I . . . more than anything, I want to go down there, but . . . if I do the wrong thing, if I reach out, then maybe . . .”
“I’ve got you, Vee.” Delmin gave him a big, stupid, toothy grin. “No matter what, you’re gonna be all right.”
“I don’t deserve you, buddy.”
“No, you don’t. Come on.”
The walk out the western gates and down Trenn was relatively sedate, filled mostly with Eittle talking about his summer program. In a way Veranix envied him getting out of the city, being able to just study the night sky in the quiet and open air. He still wasn’t sure what his summer was going to be, though it involved staying on campus under Professor Alimen’s watchful eye. Hopefully not too watchful, since he had every intention of gumming up the Fenmere effitte machine at any opportunity.
The ward was an enormous stone monstrosity, a blight squatting like an ugly toad at the corner of Trenn and Lowbridge. A grand fortress centuries ago; now a crumbling, impoverished hospital for the hopeless.
They entered to find a grimy desk manned by a white-and-yellow coated elderly woman. “Can I help you boys?”
“We’re here to see Kandell Parsons,” Eittle said. “He’s on the fifth floor.”
She arched an eyebrow over her spectacles. “Not much need for visitors on the fifth.”
“Even still,” Eittle said.
She shrugged and pointed them in the direction of a stairwell. She gave them no further mind as they went over. Was this old woman one of the sets of eyes Fenmere had, reporting to him anyone who might go to the fifth floor? She was writing something, perhaps “Three young men, possibly students, visiting Parsons.”
Veranix shook it away as they went up.
When they reached the fifth floor, the thing that took him by surprise was the moaning. Moans, sighs, and groans echoed from all around them as they emerged. The rest of it was exactly how he expected: dankly smelling of human filth. There were windows, at least in this large antechamber, where the afternoon sun still found its way in, casting rose light and gray shadows from the iron bars. Attendants carried and wheeled patients around, moving them from the side rooms and down the hallway.
“Saints, that’s disturbing,” he muttered.
“What did you expect?” Eittle asked.
“I don’t know, I . . . I thought they’d sit silently or something.”
“It’s not exactly like that,” Eittle said. Veranix wondered how many times he had already come out in the past month. A nod of recognition from one of the attendants as they crossed the floor confirmed it had been more than once.
“Your man’s in the parlor,” the attendant said.
“Appreciate it,” Eittle said.
“The parlor?” Veranix asked.
“They have names for all the parts of the floor. The parlor is where they have them sit during the day between meals and other treatments.” He led them down the hallway.
“What other treatments?” Delmin asked. Veranix was only half listening as Eittle explained about bathing and enforced movement, attempts to keep the body healthy in case the mind ever healed itself.
“That ever happen?” Veranix asked, making sure he looked at every patient they passed. Dead, vacant eyes every time, mouth half open. A man with an army tattoo on his arm was wheeled past them in a rolling chair. That could be Kaiana’s father. Did she ever come out here?
The army man moaned, and then made some gibbering noises.
“There have been . . . hopeful signs.” Eittle’s voice didn’t sound very hopeful. “That, for example.”
They entered the parlor, where several of the patients were seated in a semicircle, while a young attendant read from a book of poetry in the center of the circle. Veranix didn’t know the poems, but she read them well enough. She’d never make it in the Cantarell Players, but she understood what she was saying.
Most were seated. A few, Veranix noted, were standing. Same dead, vacant look, but on their feet.
“They can walk?” Veranix asked Eittle.
“They can be led, and stand,” Eittle said. “But they don’t move around on their own. Parsons, though, he’s not there yet.”
Parsons was in a rolling chair on the edge of the group. He sat motionless, head lolling to one side, eyes not even focused on anything. Eittle gave a small nod to the poetry-reading attendant and pulled Parsons’s chair away from the circle. He brought him over to a
small wooden table in a corner of the room, and sat down.
“Hey, man,” he said. “Look who came with me today. Calbert and Sarren. They wanted to see how you were doing.”
Veranix wasn’t sure what the blazes he should do. “Hey, Parsons,” was all he could muster.
What else could he even say? If anything, he’d want to scream at him for being so stupid to even take effitte. Taken it completely willingly, paid for it. He didn’t have it forced down his throat like Veranix’s mother, or even get hooked while fighting in the Napolic islands like Kai’s father. There was no excuse at all. If there was anything of Parsons still in there, clawing to be let free, Veranix almost felt he deserved to be trapped inside his own body.
Instead he said none of those things.
“You’ve missed quite a bit,” Delmin said. “End of term exams were downright dangerous this year.”
Eittle started talking, telling Parsons about the Prankster attacks, giving a lot of detail about the one in Almers.
After a bit Delmin stood up. “Be right back.”
He got a few steps away before Veranix popped up and grabbed him by the arm. “What is on? Why are we here?” he whispered.
Delmin lowered his own voice, flashing his eyes over to Eittle for a moment. “Not everyone on this floor is here because of effitte. Stay put.” And then he winked.
Delmin blazing well winked.
He was enjoying this a bit too much.
Veranix turned back to join Eittle when he bumped into a patient being led into the parlor by an attendant.
“I’m sorry, I—”
Veranix’s throat closed up.
The patient standing in front of him was his mother.
Her hand jutted out, pawing at his face. “Suh suh suh suh suh.” She started twitching her head.
“Miss Ayxa, you can’t do that,” the attendant said, pulling the hand away from Veranix. “Ayxa” was the assumed name she had used when his parents were in Maradaine. When Fenmere caught them. A false name used to keep Veranix safe. “I’m terribly sorry, sir.”
“I thought—” Veranix could barely form words without tears coming to his eyes, without his voice shattering. “I didn’t know—she—”
“Sometimes they have flashes of reaction,” the attendant said. “Spontaneous movement or articulation. But then it passes, see?”
Veranix’s mother was silent again, except the low moan, and her dead eyes stared at nothing in the far distance.
“That was very good, Miss Ayxa, but you shouldn’t spook the nice young man.”
Eittle’s hands came on Veranix’s shoulders. “We’re very sorry for any disturbance.”
“Quite all right,” the attendant said, and she led Veranix’s mother away.
Veranix wanted nothing more than to pick her up and carry her out of this horrific place.
“Hey, Vee? It was nothing, all right?”
“Nothing,” Veranix whispered. Every organ inside his body was rebelling. He could barely breathe, and the bile was creeping up his throat. He wanted Eittle to take him out of there. He wanted to run out.
If one of Fenmere’s spies were in there, they would report how someone made a scene after bumping into Miss Ayxa. That might be just enough to put him and his mother in danger.
With every ounce of will, he forced a grin on his face, forced his stomach down.
“Yeah,” he said as lightly as he could manage. “Just spooked me, having that lady paw at me. That happen a lot here?”
“Not that often,” Eittle said. He leaned in. “I really get it, how spooky it is in here. Don’t think I don’t. I just . . . I think it matters that Parsons has people who do this for him.”
“What about his family? Don’t they—”
“They’ve shut off from him.” Eittle’s jaw tightened. “Look, this isn’t my field, but I look around here and see a tiny spark behind the dead eyes in here. These people, they’re still there inside their skulls.”
“You think so?” Veranix felt his voice tremble.
“I do. Thing is, most of these people, they’re alone here. But maybe if friends, if they come here, they engage, then maybe . . . that could give a chance of coming back.”
“I get it,” Veranix said. “Most of these folk, they . . . they probably need someone.”
“Look, I . . . I know this a lot to ask, but . . .”
Veranix could see where Eittle’s hedging was going. “You want me to come visit Parsons over the summer?”
“I think it would be good for him. Maybe you and Delmin both?”
“Let me find Delmin,” Veranix said. “And we’ll see what we can work out.”
Veranix stepped away and went searching down the hallway for Delmin. He wasn’t sure where to go, but then he felt something. Even with his underdeveloped numinic sense, he could tell there was some magical activity going on in one room. Not actual shaping, but pulses and waves.
He looked in to see Delmin standing over a patient in bed. The man was completely still, eyes wide open, and horribly scarred. And the pulses of numina were coming from him.
“All right,” Delmin said, giving Veranix a gesture to stay put. “I appreciate it. Is there . . . anything I can do to help you?”
More pulses came. Delmin cocked his head like he was listening, and then chuckled.
“I’ll see what I can do about that. And, really, thank you.”
He left the room, grabbing Veranix by the crook of the arm and pulling him along.
“What was that?” Veranix asked once they were a bit away.
“Like I said, not everyone up here is an effitte victim. That was Illian Groat, a magic student from about six years ago.”
“Student?” Veranix clarified. Delmin saying that implied that Groat never received his Letters or Circling.
“He was in an accident—a magic-related one—during a failed Letters Defense. It left him like that.”
“You were talking to him?”
“In a fashion. His body is completely damaged, but his mind is intact. Wide awake there, but can’t move.”
Veranix shuddered. He thought the state his mother was in was damnation, but being awake and aware in an immobile body would be unbearable. “But he can still channel numina.”
“Roughly. And he knows Riverboat Signals, like most young boys who grow up in North Maradaine do.”
That made it clear. “So he can spell out words, and you can read it.”
“Precisely. One moment.” Delmin crossed over to one of the attendant’s desks. “Ma’am, I was visiting my friend in that room, and I’m pretty sure he’s in need of a full body wash.”
The attendant sighed ruefully, and then put on a fake smile. “I’ll get on it.”
“Was that what he wanted?” Veranix asked as Delmin returned.
“I could hardly say no to that.”
“So I presume that his accident—”
“Was caused while working with a student delving into the magical nature of elemental science. He had developed a numinic battery, which . . . didn’t work. The resulting explosion left Groat like that.”
“The same accident that we think is tied to the Prankster?”
“Caused by one Cuse Jensett. Who lived in Almers, ate in Holtman, was advised by Madam Henly and—”
“Expelled by Vice Headmaster Ballford.”
Cuse Jensett. That was the man.
“Why didn’t we hear about this? Why hasn’t his name come up?”
“I don’t know, everyone thought Jensett was a lunatic who failed. He did fail, quite spectacularly. Maybe no one who remembers him thought him capable of this.”
“But you did,” Veranix said.
“I remembered reading about the incident, but didn’t think anything of it until Jiarna reminded me of it. Then I rememb
ered that Groat was out here, and . . . frankly, I hoped that I’d be able to communicate.”
“Brilliant, Del. Rutting brilliant, we’ve got the name.”
“Of course, you still have to find him. I’ve been thinking, he can’t have done all of his work without proper equipment. He’d need a workspace.”
“Like what?”
“Something sizable, where he can mix his chemicals, where the scents of it won’t stand out. He’d need to house the equipment, he’d need to have a powerful heat source. There’s not a lot of places that could fit that. If he didn’t have a university laboratory, then maybe a tannery, or a brewery, something like that. But he’d have to be able to take it over, since what he’s doing couldn’t escape notice. Maybe one of the abandoned factories out west?”
“Right.” Veranix looked around, the empty stares and mindless moans now digging into his skull. The thought of his mother sitting in all this every day was making his stomach rebel. “Can we please get out of here?”
“What about Eittle?”
“He . . . he wants . . . look, I need to get out.” He leaned in and whispered. “I literally bumped into my mother. I don’t think I . . . I can’t handle any more of this place.”
Delmin’s eyes went wide, and he nodded in understanding. “Get out,” he said. “I’ll take care of Eittle. You go. You’ve got a man to catch.”
Veranix managed to get three blocks away from the ward before he surrendered to every emotion cascading through him. He staggered into an alley and vomited before he could get to the backhouse, then collapsed to the ground in tears.
She must have recognized him. Some spark, some awareness in the back of her destroyed mind, knew exactly who he was and tried to reach him.
He didn’t know if that was horrible or beautiful.
She was walking. She touched him. She tried to speak.
Maybe she could get better.
Maybe someone there saw what happened, one of Fenmere’s spies.
He didn’t want to think about what that might mean. Probably nothing would come of it. As far as anyone knew, he was just someone visiting Parsons.
The Alchemy of Chaos: A Novel of Maradaine (Maradaine Novels) Page 25
