Witchmark

by C. L. Polk

  “I know, it’s nonsense.” She tried to laugh, as if destroying one of her most precious teacups were nothing to worry about.

  “You can read omens in tea leaves,” I said.

  Her shoulders rose. “Just a bit of lore. It’s not witchcraft.”

  “Of course it isn’t,” I soothed. “But what did you see?”

  “I have to chivvy the men off to bed. If you want a bath, the tank is heated.” She walked out.

  I counted three and consulted the cup left on the table, the one Mrs. Bass had drunk from. A wheel clung to the left side, meaning someone near her would be leaving, not herself. Closest to the arc of coral lipstick was a cross, meaning be cautious, save money, take no risks. The rest of the leaves pooled in the red-tinged brown liquid at the bottom.

  She had seen something in Grace’s cup. So bad she tried to break the omen. If I took down a cup and drank my own share, what would I read clinging to the inside?

  Maybe I didn’t want to know, but I already had a good guess. I wished I had my collection of Senecal’s Stories of the Amaranthine. Childhood memory would only serve me so far about the lore of the Solace’s guardians.

  I took my plate to the sink and scrubbed it clean. A draft from the kitchen window wrapped a chilly arm around me. What did I remember? Gaining the enmity of an Amaranthine would mean poetic levels of disaster. Menas the Just had punished them when their tricks on mortals had escalated too far for his patience, and cursed them to speak only the truth. Their vengeance was the stuff of legend, and their mortal lovers died of grief.

  Tristan had bargained to teach me, and he would do exactly as he promised. Anything more would be walking on treacherous ground. Especially accepting his invitations to be in more private surroundings. It had been a long time since I had enjoyed the close company of a friend. I was too busy. I had too many secrets. Tristan already knew a good many of them.

  But I knew the plot of A Strand of Stars for Your Hair. When Helena’s ghost rises from her bloody bathtub and into the sky toward the Solace, play-goers wonder if she reunited with Heilyn in the end.

  I couldn’t let him get close.

  Mrs. Bass bustled into the kitchen bearing a small stack of mail. “Your quarterlies came today,” she said. “There were so many they couldn’t fit in the mailbox.”

  The envelope crackled under my fingers, my name and address neatly typed with the logo of my bank in the upper corner. The postmark read Leafshed 20, the day Nick Elliot had died. My fingertips tingled. I patted my trouser pocket and assured myself the keys were there.

  “Mrs. Bass, can you knock on my door at five?” I asked. “I have an errand to run in the morning.”

  NINE

  To Sing Winter In

  Nick’s mailbox held a thin letter from Gold & Key Publishing, but no oversized envelope from his bank. I made it into the hospital mess room in time to grab the last sticky bun and a lidded mug of scorched coffee to take upstairs. Porters wheeled trolleys loaded with patient breakfasts, dodging mail clerks who pushed files between departments. The letter poked my ribs, resting inside my jacket pocket. I’d stolen a dead man’s mail—to get justice, I reminded myself.

  It would all come out right once Mathy authorized my environmental inspection report and filed it with the police. Still, I wouldn’t like to have anyone notice the fiddled timelines, and so hid the letter inside the sticky drawer on the left. The teapot rested on a bookshelf as if it were a curiosity. The ink on the inspection forms had long since dried, so I tucked them into my clipboard before heading downstairs to read logs.

  Young and Old Gerald trooped out to the garden after I’d spoken to them. Young Gerald sat beside garden plots and crab-walked on gloved hands and one foot to bury bulbs in black earth. Old Gerald raked leaves, filling loose woven sacks. More of my patients worked with them, tending shrubs and picking apples as if Old Gerald’s transformed mood had infected each of them.

  Those who had followed for fresh air and sunshine were my most recovered patients, but could I send them home? Thriving in the calm of an institution wasn’t the same as facing the stresses of the world. But more were coming. More than would fit in our beds even if we discharged every man here. I retreated to the indoors to lay my eye on those who hadn’t recovered as well as the gardeners.

  Bill lay in his bed, eyes flaring with hope as I came in.

  “Can you mesmerize me?” Bill clasped my hand with both of his. “Can you, Doctor? Please.”

  A dried-blood-colored cloud whirled furiously in his head. I didn’t dare touch it. But I brought out my watch and spoke quietly, a trickle of power enough to help him sleep. He’d wake to the same nightmare, but for now he had rest.

  At half past eight I purloined an unburnt cup of coffee from the doctor’s lounge, sneaking out before anyone could catch me in conversation. Up three flights to fetch the teapot, down five to reach the basement, and I took a place in the lab to test a potsherd for the burnt iridescent sign of arsenic trioxide. I was doing this rather backwards, but I watched the flame wash over the concave surface with a little pride. Nick Elliot would get his justice.

  I turned the flame off and turned the clamped shard expectantly, peering at the soot-black surface.

  The test was negative.

  I lifted my goggles and turned the shard toward the light. The curved chunk of Nick Elliot’s hammer-struck teapot didn’t leave so much as a sparkle. No arsenic had ever touched it.

  Was I wrong about the poison? The symptoms seemed to fit. In a dirtier, less knowledgeable time, Nick’s illness would have passed for cholera. He’d said he was poisoned. “In the tea.” Those were his exact words. We weren’t any closer than before.

  I swept the pot’s remains into a bin. I turned my back on the cooling apparatus I had assembled for the test and went to the morgue.

  I opened the unlocked door. The clerk looked up with alarm, eyes widening when I asked, “Julia Riggins?”

  She nearly popped out of her seat to curtsy. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m Dr. Miles Singer.” She’d seen the note. She knew who I was.

  “Have you come to write me up?” Her voice was small, frightened. I’d put fear in her, fear I would bring her absence to her superior and let consequence rain down on her. I was a cad if I threatened her job to get what I wanted. “I didn’t think there would be any harm. The morgue was empty.”

  “That’s what I came to talk to you about,” I said. “I was going to do a death examination on one of the bodies gone to the crematorium yesterday. How did it happen that all the bodies were transported?”

  “Dr. Matheson came down yesterday, asking about the last full sanitation procedure done,” Mrs. Riggins said.

  My mouth dried up. Why would she care? She was General Medicine. Enforcing the cleanliness of the morgue wasn’t her job. “She told you to send the bodies out?”

  “No. She told me to do the sanitation and have the bodies rearranged so they were all in clean drawers.” She clasped her trembling hands in front of her. “Only I couldn’t find the sanitation manual, so I went to Materials for a copy, and—”

  I waited.

  She gulped and confessed. “I left the hospital.”

  “Ah.”

  “I went to a pasty cart—” She wrung her fingers and looked up, her eyes shiny with mounting tears. “I had to clean the morgue to sanitation standard. I’d skipped breakfast to get my children to school. I knew I’d need something to tide me over. And when I came back—”

  “You found the orders already filled out.”

  She hung her head. “The sign-in clipboard was sitting on my desk. I know I’m supposed to keep the morgue supervised. I didn’t mean any harm—”

  “I’d have done the same, if it were me. But Dr. Matheson didn’t sign the bodies out?”

  “She must have changed her mind. I came back and found the order to have them removed.”

  “Did anyone else come into the morgue during your shift?”

 
“No. I was alone until I—”

  “Until you left early to get your children.”

  “Please, Doctor.” Mrs. Riggins’s voice broke. “There were no bodies.”

  I gave her my handkerchief. “It’s not your fault,” I said. “You did as you were told, and there didn’t seem to be any harm in leaving an empty morgue. You had to tend your children. Your husband’s shift overlaps?”

  She sobbed. “It’s only—one day a week—”

  “And it leaves you in an awful spot,” I said. I would do my end-of-shift paperwork down here next week. It didn’t matter where I did my charting. No one needed to know. “But you didn’t see Dr. Matheson fill out the orders.”

  “She’d come down at ten thirty, and left again right after.”

  “When did you leave to get a pasty?”

  “Eleven o’clock. I was gone for twenty minutes at the most.”

  “Do you remember what she was wearing?”

  “Her doctor’s coat.” She dabbed tears from her eyes. “A surgeon’s bonnet, but she had curl rods in underneath. One of her suits, you know, with the … trousers.”

  So she hadn’t been dressed for lunch. “Thank you, Mrs. Riggins. You’ve been a great help. If you remember anything else about yesterday, will you ring my office?”

  She thanked me when I wrote “Please Disregard, Matter Settled” on the page where I’d written my note in the duty log.

  * * *

  I passed the warm, tested potsherd from one hand to the other as I climbed the stairs, pausing on the third floor to knock on Dr. Matheson’s door.

  “It’s open,” she called.

  I opened the door on a space big enough to fit four of my office. I dropped the bit of warm teapot into my pocket and crossed wide pine planks to set the inspection forms on her desk.

  She picked them up, stripping off her glasses to focus on the form’s tiny print. “Why do you need to do an environmental inspection?”

  “One of my patients—”

  “Are you investigating a patient discharge condition?” She tucked the glasses into the breast pocket of her white coat and stood. “Come along, I was about to check on the nurses. Which patient’s home do you need to check?”

  I opened the door for her, and stood by while she locked it. “Nick Elliot. He died in Urgent Care, night before last.”

  “What did the death examination show?” She took brisk strides to the stairwell, heels clicking on the floorboards.

  I hurried to catch up. “The body was ordered cremated yesterday. He was gone by the time I arrived to examine him.”

  She glanced at me, her eyes narrowed. “So. You’re chasing clouds.”

  She took the inside, her left hand on the banister, descending in quick echoing steps.

  “Nick Elliot told me he’d been poisoned,” I said. “His symptoms put me in mind of arsenic.”

  “He must have vomited. Test the clothes?”

  “Incinerated by the morgue staff.”

  “So you have nothing but his declaration.” She handed me the forms. “I can’t approve this.”

  What? “Dr. Matheson?”

  “You care too much, Miles. I don’t mean you’re soft. You’re thorough, conscientious, and compassionate. It makes you my best in psychiatry. But you haven’t chosen who to discharge, and I need those beds free for next week.”

  “That’s why you—”

  “I need sixteen empty beds in two days. I don’t need you chasing a penny-book mystery. Rule the death a suspected homicide and move on.”

  Suspected homicide with no report from the doctor who examined the body? The police wouldn’t lift a finger. I could do something. I was the only one who could do so officially.

  Did it matter that I didn’t have an official reason? I had to know what had been done to him, and why. There was no one but me and Mr. Hunter to fight for him. Damn it, why wouldn’t she sign?

  Unless Tristan was right and I was wrong.

  “Dr. Matheson, the order to have the bodies removed for cremation was initialed E.M.,” I said. “Was it you?”

  Her eyes widened. “Dr. Singer. Did you just—”

  “Miles! Oh, what luck.”

  Grace stood in the midst of the lobby crowd, carrying a straw lunch basket. The lid was ajar, the necks of a pair of wine bottles poking out one side.

  “Grace, what are you doing here?”

  “I thought we’d have lunch,” she said. A basket lunch, like she always wanted as a child, with a cloth spread out even if we only ate in the playroom. Did she remember those times too? She offered her hand to Mathy. “Dr. Matheson, how do you do?”

  Dr. Matheson stood up straight. “How do you do. Thank you for your impressive donation to Beauregard Veterans’.”

  “It’s a worthy cause,” my sister said. “I’m afraid you caught me, Doctor. I was coming to entice my oldest friend into sharing lunch with me. We didn’t have nearly enough time to catch up yesterday.”

  First she showed up to my house, and now she was here with a picnic basket. “I have afternoon rounds, Grace, I can’t while away the day over a bottle of wine.”

  Dr. Matheson patted my arm. “I’ll reassign your rounds, Miles, not to worry. Enjoy lunch with your friend, and then work on choosing your sixteen. If you need a tiebreaker, just knock.”

  She swept off toward the nurses’ changing rooms, her disapproval of my tardy work no longer an issue. Grace lifted the basket again, a trace of the girl in her contrite smile.

  “It’s not skiving off work if you have permission.”

  Her donation might as well have been a bill of sale. The whole hospital would bow to their most generous benefactor. But I knew my responsibility. “I have a mountain of paperwork to do. I shouldn’t miss my rounds.”

  “Just for today, Miles. Show me your office.”

  * * *

  “It’s minuscule.”

  “It’s a good view,” I grumbled. “Why doesn’t anyone notice the view?”

  “Because they’re trying not to bark their knees on—everything.” Grace sidled through the narrow space between my filing cabinet and the corner of my desk.

  “I don’t see patients in my office.” I cleared my desk of pens, inkwells, and wipers, and dropped the stack of reports I needed to file on the windowsill. “I don’t usually have visitors, either.”

  She looked down. “I needed to see you.”

  “You saw me yesterday. Twice.” I’d gone to the wash-house this morning, stepping over the fragments of her ill-fated teacup. Something was coming for Grace. Something bad. “Why do you need to see me?”

  She touched my face. I tensed, but didn’t flinch away. “You almost don’t feel real, Miles. I thought you were dead, your bones rotting in the bloody earth of Laneer.”

  “I should have died there,” I said. “So many did, but not me.”

  “So don’t you see? I needed to see you. Alive. Safe, and living as you deserve.”

  Which wasn’t living in a single room and working as Beauregard Veterans’ most insignificant doctor. “I’m content where I am.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Let’s not fight, Miles. I’m sorry I disrupted your day. Next time we’ll go to a dining room.”

  And be seen together in public? “We can’t go to a dining room.”

  “A tavern, then. The one you liked. The Roebuck.”

  I choked. “Grace, the Roebuck’s a … a men’s establishment.”

  “I know, Miles. I’m not a child.” Grace opened the first wine bottle. She unstrapped porcelain soup bowls and silverware from the basket’s lid, and dished out crab chowder from a heated steel pot.

  “Crab chowder.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “I had better like it,” I said. “It’s on the menu at home three times a week. I’m surprised you do.”

  “I have eaten in a tavern before. I’m not completely sheltered.”

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked. “Someone will notice.”


  Grace smirked. “Everyone thinks you’re a schooldays flame. I didn’t disabuse anyone.”

  “But you’re getting married.”

  Grace broke open a bun. Steam escaped as she buttered it; then she handed it to me. “And your absence at the wedding will only make people more certain you’re a dear friend. Everything’s fine, Miles. Eat your soup.”

  The chowder was delicate with wine in the broth, more finely herbed than I was used to. “So you donated a hill of money to the hospital.”

  “I should have offered more. You really don’t have a lift?”

  “We really don’t.”

  “The least I could do for them. A parting gift.”

  I put my spoon down. “A what?”

  “I know what to do.” Grace leaned over her bowl, elbows firmly on the desk. “Your own practice.”

  “No.”

  “Hear me out. You can have privileges at every hospital in the city—”

  “I wouldn’t need privileges unless I was doing surgery—”

  “You can,” she said. “You’d never have to worry about being discovered.”

  Oh, of course. I leaned back. “Because my patients would be from the Hundred Families. An exclusive clientele, getting their maladies treated with magic.”

  “Exactly.”

  “No, Grace.”

  “But isn’t that why you left?” she asked. “You wanted to be a healer when everyone said Secondaries only did stupid tricks. You’ve proven them all wrong. You come home—”

  “And consent to be bound to you.”

  “You’ll get to practice medicine! You’ll show the other Secondaries how they can use their own abilities in useful ways too. You can inspire them!”

  “Why? So they can be even more useful to the people they belong to?”

  Grace scowled. “Nobody thinks like that.”

  “Father thinks like that.”

  “Our generation doesn’t,” she said. “We could change the culture, Miles. We could make it better. You must know I wouldn’t compel you, or make you defer to me, or all the awful things Storm-Singers expect of Secondaries.”

  “So we would be leading by example.”

  “Yes! Exactly. We would lead the new way.”