The Poison Master

by Liz Williams

  “If you have a message, best to send it by such as myself to the Shore of Moss: there are boats there throughout the night, but not to the villages. However, they will be able to relay it,” the anube said.

  “Can you take it for me? How much will it cost?”

  The anube reluctantly named a small price. Alivet scribbled a hasty explanation on a piece of parchment and folded it into the anube's unhuman hand along with the coins. She had very little money left, but it would be worth it if Aunt Elitta was warned in time.

  “The address is on the front of the paper. I'm sending it to the village hall. From there, it must go to the woman who slapped Drew Marchal's face when they were seventeen. I've written that down.”

  Anyone at the village hall would know who that was. She did not want to put the details of Elitta's house upon the paper, in case it fell into the wrong hands. Happily, the anubes were no friends to the Unpriests; the message would be safest with them.

  The chaise turned and began to trundle away. Alivet looked about her. There was no one to be seen. The rain had become a torrent, pouring down roofs and copings, battering the dying leaves into submission. At the end of Little Swamp Street, Alivet could see the curved prows of the pilgrimage boats, their oars piled onto high nests set on poles to deter thieves. With a sinking heart she ran down toward the dock and out onto the wharf. The boats were all safely secured. As Alivet stared out across the marsh, she saw a faint, wavering light flickering over the water. She strained her eyes, trying to see. The light winked once, and was gone.

  “The last boat's gone for tonight,” said a reedy voice behind her. Alivet turned to see an ancient person wrapped in waterproofs. The face was as wrinkled as the shore after a storm, the eyes narrowed against the rain. She could not even tell what gender it might be beneath the shapeless bundle. Dismayed, Alivet said, “The last boat? I've missed it, then. It must be after midnight.”

  “Gone midnight, fifteen minutes ago. Where are you heading?”

  “The villages,” Alivet said cautiously. “But I've got to send a message. It's urgent.” Something held her back from telling the stranger that she was headed for Shadow Town. If the Poison Master meant her harm, the more people who knew where she was going, the better. But a small, insistent instinct tugged at her mind, telling her to keep silent.

  Alivet heeded it and did so.

  “In the morning, boats will go again, all along the river. To the villages, and farther. To Salvation, New Emden, Shadow Town. You will have plenty of choices tomorrow. Why must you travel now?”

  The narrowed eyes were bright with curiosity. Again, warning plucked at Alivet.

  “My mother's ill,” she said. “Listen, is there anywhere I can spend the night? A guest house or something?”

  “Very few that are not full. Pilgrims and passengers, you see, waiting for tomorrow's boats. There is a place along the wharf.”

  “Where?” Alivet asked, hoping that the person would not offer to show it to her. But the ancient only said, “Do you see that blue lantern? It is there. Tell them Marlay sent you.”

  “Thanks,” Alivet said. Turning, she walked quickly down the wharf. When she reached the end, she looked back. Marlay was gone. Alivet drew her hood more tightly against the rain and slipped down the street toward the blue lantern. A crack of welcoming light showed around the corner of a blind and for a moment, Alivet was tempted to do as she had been instructed and knock on the front door. But that strange, small song of warning was still nudging her, so instead she slid under the walkway that led to the house and into an alley. Alivet hurried down it and found herself on a boardwalk that followed the line of the foreshore. She doubled back toward the wharf.

  She needed to get out of the rain. Pulling the hood of her greatcoat over her head, she ducked beneath the boardwalk. Something touched her face and she nearly cried out, but it was only a shower of woodrot dislodged by the rain. Feeling foolish, Alivet hastened on and at last found herself back at the wharf. The boats were deserted, the marsh empty. From far away, out in the teeming dark, she heard the thin cry of a night bird. She looked back longingly to the gleam of lamps, but even as she did so she heard feet marching along the boardwalk. The sound echoed wetly through the gloom.

  Very carefully, still with warning prickling at the back of her neck, Alivet peered up through the cracks of the boardwalk. Boots gleamed in the rain. A pencil of green light arced through the air like a lightning flash and Alivet knew that she had been right to be afraid. Unpriests stood above her. She heard them conferring, in whispers. Then, to her relief, they set off toward the scatter of houses. Alivet clambered along the rickety supports of the wharf until she was out over the water.

  Beneath the wharf, a boat pole stood at an angle. Alivet caught it in both hands, swung off the wharf, and climbed awkwardly down, hindered by her skirts. There was a space at the base of the wharf, just above the waterline. She could hide there until morning, until the soft padding feet of the anubes betrayed their presence on the wharf above.

  The hole was as black as pitch. Clinging to the pole, Alivet tore off a handful of moss and threw it into the hollow. She waited for a moment, dreading the hiss of water- children or whisps—it was debatable which was worse: whisps or Unpriests—but there was nothing. Alivet went feetfirst into the hole.

  It was no colder than the barn had been during the Search, and no damper than Edgewhere in the winter. Crouching in the moist dark, she thought furiously. Were the Unpriests after her, or were they pursuing some other unfortunate? If they were after her already, then how had they found her? Someone must have spotted her in the street; it was unlikely that an anube would have given her away. It was possible that she was simply falling prey to paranoia. But everyone she had ever known—even her father, who had given little other sign of caring about his daughters—had told her: Have as little truck with the Unpriests as possible. They do not care if you are innocent or guilty. They're just looking for an excuse to torment you.

  Rather a night in the damp than a night in a cell, Alivet thought. That was the trouble with the Unpriesthood; they obeyed the decrees set down by the Lords, who were themselves creatures of utmost whim. Without the protection of powerful friends, one might be treated with kindness and magnanimity for rapine, or flogged to within an inch of one's life and hurled into the nearest bog for jaywalking. Or, indeed, vice versa. No one understood the Unpriests' methods, and there was a considerable body of covert opinion that held that they did not have any, unpredictability being their primary weapon.

  Yet nor did anyone know why the Lords did as they did. Why, for instance, would beings as powerful as they bring a thousand or so captive humans to a swampy place like Latent Emanation and then let them go to build their own city, with only Enbonding to ensure a surely unsatisfactorily meager servant class? The Lords answered to no one; the Unpriests only to the Lords and, to some degree, to the web of aristocratic influence exerted by the Nine Families. And that was surely the real problem: the lack of unity between humans, the vested interests that lay in the complex tangle of their relationship with the Lords. That relationship should be subjected to alchemical principles: dissolution, followed by a new combination of elements. Otherwise, humanity would just remain in the early stages of the alchemical process: corruption, separation, stagnation.

  Alivet's thoughts were becoming familiar and depressing. Tomorrow, at first light, she would get passage on a pilgrimage boat and head for Shadow Town. She did not expect to sleep, but it claimed her nonetheless.

  Chapter IV

  CITY OF LEVANAH, MONTH OF DRAGONFLIES

  When Alivet awoke, it was already close to dawn. She was cramped and stiff, her clothes mottled with damp. She half stood, crouching in the small space beneath the wharf, and peered out to find that the rain had passed, leaving a mild, milky morning in its wake. She could even see the sun, sailing behind the clouds on the horizon like a silver penny. Her stomach churned with hunger. Alivet tucked her braid with its tel
ltale rings more securely into her hood. There was nothing she could do about the wheel tattooed on her palm; she would just have to make sure she kept her hand in her pocket. Otherwise, she thought, there was surely nothing to identify her as Alivet Dee: apothecary and perhaps wanted person. She inched out of the hole onto the ladder.

  When she reached the wharf, she saw that Little Swamp Street was already starting to stir. Chaises trundled by, carrying factors and stewards; locals drew carts filled with produce for the markets. There was no sign of anyone resembling an Unpriest or the mysterious ancient, Marlay. The smell of fried shrimp, pungent and fishy, cut through the morning air. Alivet walked swiftly along the wharf and around the corner of the shrimp stand. The woman at the stand reminded Alivet of her aunt. She had the same oval face and dark hair, the heavy folded lids and broad hands.

  “What, then?” she greeted Alivet.

  “The shrimp. With water-grass and samphire. And river- wheat bread—a double portion, please.”

  “Haven't seen you before. Come in on one of the boats?”

  “No. I'm seeking passage. To the Estuary—Hemmen's Slide. Illness in the family.” She hoped to throw as much mud over her tracks as possible; gossip flew around the marshes like fever.

  “I don't know the Slides,” the stall woman said, pursing her mouth and handing over a greasy packet of shrimp and hot bread. Alivet, dismissed as a foreigner, added a pinch of salt and turned away.

  Her aunt's injunction always to eat a good breakfast echoed in her head. She carried the steaming parcel down to the wharf and crouched beneath a pole tree to eat. There was movement among the pilgrimage boats: anubes, bare- shouldered and clad in their customary wrapped skirts, moving without haste along the narrow decks. She wondered, not for the first time, why they lived as they did; forever sailing up and down the innumerable rivulets of the fens, worshiping their poles and the larvae that lived there, transporting folk from place to place as though it was some kind of moral duty. Yet for them it seemed that it was, just as the Search was the duty of all upright citizens.

  From this distance, the anubes looked like masked men, the long skulls weaving above their sinuous bodies. Their flesh was dappled in the sunlight: indigo, ebony, a light and startling aquamarine. Their glossy skins merged with the colors of the swamp. Alivet looked down at her own hands. She was colored like almost every other human, sallow and pale, though there were a group of dark-skinned folk along the river who were highly regarded for their reed-boat making. She wondered again about the Origin as she swallowed the last of the shrimp and wadded the packet into a ball. She dropped it into the sluggish waters below the wharf and watched as the creepers seethed around it. Within moments, it was gone.

  That will be me, perhaps, if the Unpriests find me, Alivet thought. She rose to her feet and made her way along the wharf, keeping to the lower deck and out of sight. The anubes continued their work as she approached. They would not notice her, she knew, until she spoke. One stood no more than a few feet away, hauling a length of rope through its hard hands.

  “Good morning, Brother,” Alivet ventured. She had heard some folk say that the anubes did not deserve the courtesy of a human title, but Alivet disagreed.

  “Sister, good day.” Politely, the anube looked up, so that she was staring into the well of its eyes. The long face was bland; their expressions were unfathomable to her.

  “I'm seeking passage,” she said. “To Shadow Town.”

  “It is acceptable. There is a place on the third boat.” The anube gestured. “It leaves in one hour, for First Commensurate Celebration, and goes by way of Mirror Marsh in order that communicants may present offerings to the poles. The journey may take longer than you wish.”

  “I don't have a lot of time,” Alivet said, knowing that it would be useless to protest.

  “That is wisdom,” the anube replied. “Who among us has the time they need? Do you have offerings? If not, you must procure them.”

  “I have these small things,” Alivet said, displaying the little bundle of formulations.

  “It is probable that they will be acceptable,” the anube said, with what was to Alivet an irritating caution. If the spices proved not to be acceptable, what would they do? Leave her in the middle of the marsh, clinging to a pole like a failed puntsman? But caution and reserve were the watchwords of the anubes.

  “When must pilgrims come back to the boat?”

  “A short while before the boat is due to leave—ten minutes, perhaps. Do not be late. We cannot wait for you; the ceremony follows a strict timetable.”

  “I understand. I won't be late. Thank you,” Alivet said. The anube inclined its head and said nothing more.

  She went back along the lower deck and down to the shore. A narrow strip of mud, lined with salt-rush and thimble pine, led past ancient jetties. Alivet followed this rudimentary path, stepping over the detritus brought in upon infrequent eddies or cast from passing ships. Creepers scattered across the mud as she approached, causing the shore to writhe as if alive. It was hard to imagine the fastidious figure of an Unpriest here in this somnolent, grimy place, but she could not let down her guard. The edges of the fens were too much like limbo, or the no-sleep of her ancestors within the drift-boat. She felt she might wander the shore forever like a lich.

  Alivet stopped to shake the thought from her head. She could feel the will draining out of her, like the seep of blood from a little, fatal wound. She turned to see a marsh whisp hovering out on the swamp. Its tapering tail was rooted in the mud; she could see the thick stem beneath the water. Its body flickered like a column of heat. Alivet stepped swiftly back and stumbled over a root. The thing must be hungry, to be out so long after sunrise. Salt-rush clumps shimmered behind it, distorted by its translucent membranes. The whisp swayed on its stem; Alivet felt clammy and hot.

  The marsh whisp beckoned with small, pale hands. Alivet took a tottering step forward. Her mind was starting to empty, but as it did so, she remembered the recent Search and once more she saw Inki's face, that terrible pleated hole where her eye had been. She felt as though someone had doused her with ice water. She threw herself back, out of reach of the whisp's influence, and ran along the shore. She did not stop until she reached the edges of the mud, where the pilings of the tall houses rose out of the marsh.

  Chapter V

  CITY OF LEVANAH, MONTH OF DRAGONFLIES

  Once she reached the relative sanctuary of the shore, Alivet hid down among the thimble pines, perched upon the high bole of a root above the water. She stared unseeingly out across the marsh, thinking of Inki. Her twin's face, with that puckered hole, still haunted her. She should be working in the alchematorium, earning the money to free her sister, not squatting here in a marsh. Frustration pounded behind her eyes like a headache. She glanced up at the sun, filtering down through the needles of the pines. It was almost time to make her way back to the pilgrimage boat.

  There were several passengers waiting on the wharf. One was a marsh wife with an empty basket balanced upon her hip, her mouth moving with the rhythmic cud of uth gum. Alivet wondered what the woman was seeing in the steady march of hypnagogic images. There were also two old men, clearly brothers, clad in the dull green robes of the deep fens. No one paid any attention to Alivet. She took a seat on the bench beneath the shadow of the boathouse and watched the anubes make their final preparations. Cargo was loaded and oars checked. An anube in the prow gestured for the passen gers to step forward. Alivet took the anube's hand as it helped her into the boat; the flesh was cool and moist, like the skin of a frog. She seated herself near the stern, out of the way of the rowers, and drew her hood over her face in case anyone might be watching from the wharf. She breathed deeply, trying to calm herself.

  The anube at the prow gave a booming cry like a bell, startling Alivet. She considered asking the marsh wife for a piece of the gum to steady her nerves, but thought it best not to draw attention to herself. The boat rocked as the hawser was untied. A shaft of sunlight
, reaching down through the clouds, sent quick sparkles across the water. Alivet looked back as the boat was rowed swiftly out into the channel. The buildings of Little Swamp Street were silent in the morning light. No one was watching. Alivet gripped the sides of the boat more tightly and looked out across the fen. The pilgrimage boat darted through the reeds, disturbing a nesting attern that bolted up in a flurry of dark wings. Unlucky, Alivet thought, and dipped her hand in the water in the old gesture against ill fortune.

  It was growing warmer: the air between the high rushes was stifling and stagnant. The distant outline of the city fell away. Ahead, lay the stilt-villages. In a couple of hours, Alivet would be able to recognize the channels: the humps and islets where the First Farms were located. At least if it all went sour she could hide out in the fens for a time; there was plenty to eat, as long as one avoided ochiles and whisps. And liches and water-children; all the monsters of the marshes. No wonder the anubes spent so much of their time trying to placate the local deities through their sacrificial practices. Alivet's spirits took a turn for the worse.

  Sweat was starting to trickle down the back of her neck. Reaching up, Alivet loosened the collar of her dress and her fingers encountered a thin, slippery chain, reminding her to check that her pendant, her aunt's gift, was safe. Alivet tugged the pendant from its place in the neck of her dress and glanced down at it. The pendant was an ancient thing, or so she had been told.

  “It goes to the eldest girl,” her aunt had said. “And you are the eldest by thirteen minutes. My grandmother once told me that it must have come from the Origin with the ancestors, that it hung around the throat of your great-great-great grandmother even as she stepped from the bowels of the Night Lords' boat.”