Amnesia: The Book of Maladies

by D. K. Holmberg

  The physicker began to assess Alec, repeating many of the same steps that Beckah had done. He ran his hands along Alec’s skin, removing his jacket and then shirt, exposing his chest and arms. After that, he pulled down his pants, leaving him in his small clothes, surveying his skin.

  “What are you doing? Why do you need to get him undressed?” Sam asked. She could only imagine how irritated Alec would be at learning he had been exposed like that. He was much more modest than that.

  “I need to assess the patient completely,” the physicker said. “Without him being able to speak, I must inspect his body for any insights it might offer.”

  Beckah was watching the physicker strangely.

  The man continued to work on Alec, listening to his heart and then his lungs and then his stomach. He checked his neck, before pulling open his mouth and examining it thoroughly. He rolled Alec to the side, looking at his back.

  “You’ve been working with him, haven’t you?” Beckah asked.

  The physicker looked up. “Physicker Stross has been teaching me.”

  “Why do you ask that?” Sam asked.

  “Because Darren has never been this thorough with his assessments before,” Beckah said.

  The physicker frowned at her before shaking his head. “Physicker Stross has helped me see that performing a complete assessment helps ensure nothing is overlooked.”

  That sounded like Alec. It impressed Sam that he had already had such an impact. It shouldn’t. Alec had always wanted to impart his knowledge, and he hadn’t been shy about sharing it, going so far as to even share what he knew with Sam, but Beckah seemed surprised by it for some reason.

  “I don’t know what it is,” the physicker said. “Perhaps one of the master physickers can be as of assistance?”

  Beckah glanced over at Sam. “I will see if I can find anyone.”

  Darren nodded. “I’ll stay with him.”

  Sam glanced from Beckah to Darren. She wanted to stay with Alec, and she probably needed to, but she couldn’t rely on these two knowing enough—or caring enough—to offer him the necessary attention. There was one person she could go to, but she wasn’t sure whether his father would be willing to help.

  Sam slipped out and quickly screwed together the ends of her canal staff. All of her thoughts were on getting help for Alec, but if he didn’t get the help he needed, what did that mean for her? If something happened—if Alec died—she would lose her Scribe. Would she ever be paired again?

  She didn’t know how the Kaver and Scribe relationship worked, other than the fact that she was dependent on Alec. It wasn’t the same dependence it once had been. Discovering that she had her own means of accessing augmentations had shown her that there was another way, but it wasn’t only that Alec was her Scribe.

  She cared about him. She would not lose him.

  When she reached the canal, she jumped.

  Enough of the strength augmentation remained, and she soared over the canal. When she landed, she went racing off. While running, she focused, trying to summon another augmentation. Fear and urgency helped make her strong, and she felt the speed augmentation wash through her.

  For Alec. She would move quickly for him.

  It didn’t take long for her to reach his section. She raced along the street, finding his father’s shop as it always was, with the light glowing in the window. She checked the lock and was surprised that it was locked.

  Kyza!

  Though anxious, she knew she didn’t want to damage his father’s door by breaking through it. She slipped her lock pick out and went to work on it, quickly getting it to snick open. As she entered, she reached for the bell she knew was above the door, silencing it.

  Sam closed the door quietly and turned her attention to the front of the shop. Rows of shelves greeted her, all of them containing the apothecary medicines. The smells that assaulted her were overwhelming. She’d felt that way from the very first time she’d entered the old apothecary, and nothing had changed in the interim. Alec must have been exposed to it so often to have muted his reaction to it, but Sam had not.

  Where was his father?

  With the light on, she suspected he was here, but if he was, why would the door be locked?

  She saw shadows moving near the other end of the shop.

  Sam hesitated. What would Alec’s father think about her intruding?

  It was for his son. She knew how he would react. It would be the same way she would react were someone to come to her with word of Alec suffering.

  Yet a small voice in the back of her mind warned her to be careful. Sam moved cautiously, and as she approached the back of the shop, she decided to sneak in between a pair of shelves.

  She moved around them, getting close enough that she could listen and look out.

  “This is a simple job. I thought you would be more excited about it.”

  The voice was rough and carried with it the same tone Sam had heard from so many others who lived and worked in the underground.

  “It’s not a simple job. What you have asked of me is highly complex.” This came from Alec’s father. Sam recognized his voice, and he sounded irritated. “And what you have offered is not nearly enough.”

  “Not nearly enough? This is five gold coins!”

  This came from yet another man.

  “And I have told you that it is not enough.”

  “It’s always been enough before.”

  “That was before.”

  There was a silence.

  Silence like that always made Sam uncomfortable. There were different types of silences that she had experienced in her time on the streets. There was the silence of the night, which she was careful not to disturb, especially when she was sneaking through the streets and working a job. There was the silence of sleep. That was a comforting sort of thing, especially when she could have dreamless sleeps, something that didn’t happen nearly as often as she wished it did. There was this kind of silence. One she was all too familiar with, especially from her time in Caster.

  This was the silence that preceded violence.

  Sam crept forward.

  She peeked out between the row of shelves. Alec’s father sat in a chair, and two men stood on either side of him. He was in a position of weakness where he was, yet, he still resisted. That impressed her. Perhaps Alec’s father was stronger than she had known, though that shouldn’t be surprising, especially with the strength that Alec had demonstrated.

  One of the men slipped out a knife, and he jammed it into the table. He was a large man, with a thick beard and closely shorn head that reminded him of Michael, though Bastan’s employee was far kinder and would never have made a threatening gesture like this to Alec’s father. Well, not unless Bastan had instructed him to. The other man was thinner but seemed all muscle. Neither was familiar to her, but both had the appearance of men who understood violence.

  “You already accepted the job,” the man with the knife said.

  “And I’ve already told you that the details of the job needed to change,” Alec’s father said.

  “The details don’t change.”

  “Then find someone else to do your task,” Alec’s father said. “You can’t. That’s why you came to me. There’s no one else in the city who can do this job, and certainly not for what I am demanding now.”

  The two men glanced at each other.

  Sam felt a prickle along the skin of her neck. It was a tingling sort of nervousness that told her something was about to go awry.

  She steadied her breathing and focused on augmentations: strength and speed.

  Would it work? She’d already called on augmentations twice in short succession, but she didn’t know what her limitations were. She hoped she wasn’t limited, certainly not such that she would be restricted from helping Alec’s father.

  It came slowly. There was the washing cold that started in her feet and worked its way upward, before settling in her head.

  With the augmentation set,
Sam lurched forward.

  She needed every bit of the speed augmentation.

  The man with the knife jerked it out of the table and brought it up toward Aelus’s neck. If she didn’t reach it in time, the knife would slice through his throat and there would be nothing Sam could to do to help him.

  She smacked with her staff, sending his knife arm flying out. There was a satisfying crack as his arm shattered with the impact of her staff. She flipped it around, and caught him on the head, dropping him.

  The other man reacted quickly, seemingly taking in the threat Sam posed, and unsheathed two belt knives before she could react.

  He jammed one of them into Aelus’s shoulder, and started to bring the other one around, but Sam struck, catching him with the staff in the center of his chest. With her augmented strength, he went flying and smashed into the wall. She stabbed again with the staff, crunching his sternum.

  Alec’s father glanced over his shoulder and gingerly removed the knife, placing pressure on his shoulder with his good hand. “I should thank you, but I fear your arrival will only lead to greater complications for me.”

  “Really? I think if I hadn’t arrived, you would be dead.” She nodded to the knife that lay on the other side of the shop. “He nearly took your head off with that.”

  He glanced over at the wall. “I suppose you are right.” He stood and made his way over to the larger of the two injured men, crouching down and assessing his injuries. He shook his head as he stood and made his way to the other. Within a moment, he stood once more, still shaking his head. “I presume that you have an augmentation?”

  Sam nodded. “Why?”

  “Because neither of these two men will survive this attack. Is Alec with you?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you have an augmentation?”

  “That doesn’t matter. I need you to come with me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because something happened to Alec. He’s at the university.”

  “I know he’s at the university, and I hope that you will find it within you to let him stay there. I know you have intentions of heading across the swamp—I’ve seen it myself—but I think Alec needs to remain at his studies. He can do so much more good as a master physicker than he can as a Scribe.”

  Sam frowned at him. She couldn’t deny the fact that Alec could do more good as a master physicker. That was the truth. As much as she needed Alec, as much as she wanted to have Alec with her, there was much more value in his connection to the physickers, especially as she began to recognize her own ability to augment herself.

  “He’s not going to be doing anything in his current state. Something happened. That’s why I need you to come with me.”

  Aelus’s eyes widened, and he glanced over at the two fallen men before turning his attention back to Sam. “Of course. For Alec, I’ll do anything.”

  12

  Back to the University

  Sam kept an eye on Aelus as she led him toward the hospital ward. She had been forced to sneak him across the bridge, especially at this late hour, and the bridge was closed to anyone coming to the university for healing. She didn’t want to wait until morning.

  When they reached the doors to the ward, Aelus paused.

  “What is it?”

  “The last time I was here, I was nearly dead.”

  “This time, you’re not. This time, it’s your son who needs you.”

  “When I left,” Aelus said, closing his eyes, “I never thought I would return and certainly not like this. I wanted nothing more than to get away from here.”

  “It seems you went quite a ways away from here, especially if you have become a poisoner.”

  “Alec told you?”

  “He did. Can’t say that I’m all that bothered by it. I’ve seen plenty of poisoners who do good work. There are bad people in the world. And there are good people who live in bad places.” She shrugged. “I don’t see the world quite as black and white as Alec does.”

  “No. I suppose your time in Caster has shown you a lot more gray than my son has known.”

  “He’s begun to see the gray, but…” Sam shook her head. “There are times when I think it’s too bad. His innocence can’t be returned to him.”

  She remembered Alec as she first had met him, the healer who had been so focused on that singular task. Now, he was something different. There was no disputing that he was something more, but he had changed, and much of his change was because of her. She wasn’t convinced she had done him a favor by forcing him to work with her and helping her understand what it meant for her to be a Kaver. He was a Scribe, but what would he have been had he never learned that? Would he have missed out on anything? Or would he have been better off? There were times when she suspected Alec might have been better off, especially now, knowing it might have kept him from this state, and she had a suspicion that whatever had happened to him now was because of her.

  “Maybe,” Aelus said. “Or maybe it’s that he needed to see it. I’ve tried to protect him from so much, not wanting him to be exposed to the darkness that exists in the world, wanting him only to know healing, but maybe I have protected him too much. Maybe he needed to be exposed to that darkness, so he could understand light when he sees it.”

  He took a deep breath and pushed into the room.

  Sam followed him, and she saw Beckah waiting near the cot where they had left Alec. She looked distraught, and the physicker who leaned over Alec was working frantically.

  “What?”

  Aelus ran across the room, with Sam right on his heels.

  “What do we know?” Aelus asked.

  “He’s unresponsive. His temperature has been rising, and his heartbeat has been quite erratic, and…” The physicker stopped as he looked up and saw Aelus. “Who are you?”

  “This is his father,” Sam said.

  The physicker’s eyes widened. “The apothecary?”

  “He was a physicker once,” Beckah said. “Alec said he could have been a master physicker.”

  “Not could have been,” Sam said. “Was.”

  The other physicker looked at Aelus, his eyes wide.

  “Alec always did see the best in me,” Aelus said.

  He began to evaluate Alec, and his examination was much more thorough than what either Beckah or the physicker had done. As he worked, he spoke. “Are there no master physickers available?”

  “I went to see if I could find anyone to help, but the masters’ quarters are empty.”

  “Just because the communal hall is empty doesn’t mean that you can’t check within each individual room. Who is responsible for the wards today?”

  “I am,” Darren said.

  Aelus glanced up. “A junior physicker? What happened to the days when a full physicker was responsible for the wards?”

  “Full physicker? The junior physickers run the wards.”

  Aelus snorted. “Perhaps now, but that wasn’t always the case. I need hashel leaves and a tincture of sirand.”

  “Why?” the physicker asked.

  “Because I intend to settle his heart, which will help with his breathing, which can ultimately stabilize him. Then we can take a few moments to determine what exactly he was exposed to.”

  “You think he was exposed to something?” Beckah asked.

  Aelus glanced up at her and seemed to survey her coat. “You are a friend of Alec’s.”

  “I am. We were working together, he’s been trying to understand the…”

  “Yes. I am well aware of what he has been trying to understand. I’m not sure he should have been.”

  “He gets to choose what he does,” Sam said.

  “Do not lecture me,” Aelus said.

  The physicker hurried back with two small jars on a metal tray. Aelus tapped out some of the leaves onto the tray and then mixed a few drops of liquid into them. He stirred them with his finger, and then picked up a pinch of it and stuck it inside Alec’s cheek, holding it there for a few
moments.

  “It doesn’t take much. It’s possible to under do it, but you certainly can’t overdo it, not with this concoction. It’s basic, but it’s quick-acting, and when you’re dealing with something like this, quick-acting is often the most important feature.”

  He pulled his finger out and wiped it on his pants. Aelus leaned forward and rested his head on Alec’s chest, listening. He stayed there, his eyes closed and his finger tapping on the side of the cot. She presumed the tapping represented Alec’s heartbeat. It tapped rapidly at first, and then far more gradually than what Sam thought was acceptable, it began to slow.

  When it did, Aelus stood and quickly looked around the room.

  “He should be stable, for now. I need to see where he’s been working.”

  “He has been working in his room,” Sam said.

  “Not completely,” Beckah said.

  “But his room is a mess.”

  “That might be my fault,” Beckah said. “We have been studying together, and…”

  Sam clenched her jaw. She tried not to let that get to her, knowing that it shouldn’t, and knowing that Alec would tell her that it shouldn’t, but the familiar surge of irritation bubbled within her. She didn’t want to hate Beckah, but it was so easy to do.

  “Where else would he have been working?” Aelus asked.

  “He did say he’s been working with Master Helen,” Sam offered.

  “If that’s the case, then I suspect there would be a classroom where they would have experimented.”

  Aelus waved for them to lead him. Beckah guided them off, and before they went, Aelus glanced over at the physicker. “Use more of this combination if his heart rate increases.”

  The physicker nodded. “I will stay with him.”

  Aelus stared at him for a moment before nodding.

  “Where is Master Helen?” Aelus asked Beckah.

  “I don’t know. I went looking for her, but I couldn’t find her.”

  “Where do you think Master Helen would go?”

  “Probably to the palace,” Sam said.