by C. L. Polk
I fell on the bed and slept.
A servant I didn’t recognize woke me with a cup of chocolate and presented me with clothing. Suits, tailored from black and charcoal and smoke gray, with hand-eased shoulders and the shine of silk woven with wool. Cotton shirts with tiny stitches had the most fashionable of rounded collars, the brocade ties silky and thick. Gleaming black shoes rested on a rack.
Back in the bosom of luxury, with finery all around me and the morning toilet of a gentleman of means.
Grace had planned this all along.
“The smoke flannel,” I said. “The sky-blue tie.”
It was meant to tempt me.
“Are you my father’s valet?” I asked.
“Second footman, sir.”
“What’s your name?”
“William, sir.”
I sat back in a leather grooming chair and let him shave my face, dozing off a little.
As temptations went, I couldn’t fault Grace’s choice. I hadn’t lived in such comfort in years. A different man strolled out of the dower house and down the short path to the glass doors of the breakfast room.
Here was my coffee, hot and black. My beloved oranges sprinkled in pink sugar, strawberries in double cream, pink rounds of cured pork and scrambled eggs stuffed in warm golden rolls. It was like being a boy all over again, only I didn’t have a book open to the left of my plate so I could devour words along with my food.
Something squeaked in the corridor outside the breakfast room. I set my spoon down and watched the door, willing myself not to bolt out the glass doors to the grounds. It could be Grace.
The squeak sounded again, and I named it as the breakfast room door opened: an ungreased wheel.
Mr. Wren was still the butler. Grace might be shorter than him, but only by an inch, the frame of the tall, lean man I grew up with now stoop-shouldered. He pushed my father to the chairless place at the head of the table. I’d taken a seat halfway along the length of a table for twenty. I stood up, napkin poised over my plate. I’d eat at the hospital.
His aura was like Grace’s, like tarnished silver set in sunlight. The growths in Father’s lungs were small, but numerous. He took a deep breath, and it didn’t explode into a coughing fit. I had done a good job. Father laid a hand over his chest in response to a flare of pain. I could have quelled it, but Mr. Wren was watching.
And if I were honest, I didn’t want to.
“You were right to become a doctor, Son.”
I gave him a stiff bow. “Thank you for saying so, sir.”
“And you were right to believe I wouldn’t have let you. I was a fool.”
What?
“I believe you deserve an explanation. Sit down.”
I obeyed, but I couldn’t believe my ears. I was right? Father was wrong? Was it raining cats outside?
Mr. Wren warmed up my coffee, leaving a copy of the Herald at my elbow.
“Thank you, Wren,” Father said. “I’ll be content here. Enjoy your breakfast in the kitchen.”
Mr. Wren’s head came up in surprise. “Sir?”
“I’ll make my son pass me the salt. Go on.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Mr. Wren left us in privacy. The moment the breakfast door closed, Father opened his hand. The salt shaker flew into his grasp. I left the paper and sipped my coffee, waiting.
“Secondaries are ignored,” Father said. “Their gifts go untrained because they’re not the right gifts. But they’re still magic.”
I didn’t turn around to look out the window. “Quite a change in opinion.”
“You defied me.” He smiled, showing the even front teeth of handmade dentures. The bowl of his spoon came down on the tip of a boiled egg, cracking it. “I couldn’t believe you’d done it. But something kept me from hauling you back. I knew where you were.”
I blinked as if Grace hadn’t told me already. “The whole time? And you left me there?”
He nodded. “I thought you’d come back. Life is hard when you don’t have money. Living in a single room, eating crab. I thought the romance would wear off.”
“But I didn’t.”
“You didn’t. You made the best of your gift when everyone told you it wasn’t worth anything. You have strength, my boy. Strength and courage, and it took me years to see it.”
I wanted to pinch myself. My fingertips drifted over the tablecloth, tracing the outline of a fan-tailed bird while Father told me how he’d followed my career. He named my achievements. He’d read all the papers I’d ever published.
He praised me, but he’d forced me to consent to binding. He had killed my mother. And whatever Nick had written about witches and asylums would surely point the finger at Father, for his part in it forty years ago.
I had never doubted my father would kill to keep a secret.
“When did you change your mind about Secondaries?” I swallowed coffee, took a bite of cooling egg-stuffed rolls.
“I couldn’t get out of bed before you came.”
Ah. “I didn’t heal you.”
“But I have more time. We can hold the Voice’s seat. I haven’t appeared before the Stations in weeks. Grace won’t mind if I sit in on a deciding to show them all what having you back has done.”
I checked the date on the morning edition of the Herald. Laneeri Delegation to Sign Surrender, read the headline. It should have said, World Turned Upside-Down. “My healing is an advantage.”
“Miles, your healing is the key to saving this family. If I’d let go of backwards beliefs, seen your potential…”
“You agree with Grace? You think Secondaries should exercise their gifts?”
Father scooped out cooked whites and perfectly runny yolks onto his toast. “It’s such a waste. Thinking of the Secondaries as nothing more than the raw power they provide for us, when they’re so much more useful.”
Useful. All my disorienting, incautious hope burst on the pinprick of that word. I was useful.
I knew better. Why had I forgotten?
I stood up and dropped my napkin on the lace tablecloth. “I hear the coach. I’m due at work.”
“Of course,” Father said. “You’ll be drained after the ritual tonight. Grace opened up the dower house. Was it comfortable?”
“William was very efficient.”
“It hasn’t been redecorated in a century.”
“It’s well preserved.”
“It can be yours.”
Never. “I have lodgings, Father. But thank you. Pleasant breakfast.” Useful. I was a tool, not a son.
I wouldn’t forget again.
TWENTY-ONE
Suspended
Beauregard Veterans’ might as well have been eight miles away, even though it stood right across the street. I jumped out of the carriage and sent the man back, joining the thin crowd gathered around a constable with white-gloved hands forbidding us to pass.
“Look, I’m a doctor at Beauregard. Right there.” I pointed over the policeman’s shoulder. His throat was prickly with infection, and I stood back a bit.
“I understand, but you’ll have to wait until the procession passes.” He’d said it to other people who thought they were worthy of an exception, people who waited with tight jaws or stalked off to try a different route.
What if I went ahead? There wasn’t a rope. I could just dash across, no harm done—
“Anyone who tries to cross gets a charge of obstructing a diplomat,” the policeman said.
I stepped back. “It’s a diplomatic procession?”
“It’s the Laneeri,” the policeman said. “Come to sign the surrender and swear as subjects to the Queen. We’re an empire now.”
This last he said with his chin high.
Flutes and drums echoed up the street. My head turned with the rest, and I breathed in a hint of burning sweetwood, carried on the wind. Dots of blue moved down the King’s Way, those at the front drumming a marching rhythm slow as a funeral step.
Well, I supposed it was.
I looked on and tried to blink the spots from my eyes as the people dressed in shades of blue came closer. I wasn’t seeing spots, but witchmarks hovering around the heads of the musicians.
Those in the front wore robes of the palest blue, the hems swirling around their ankles as they slow-marched. The flautists played a tune that fought back tears, suppressed a keen of mourning. It made my back shiver. The robes became darker, going from dawn to noon to dusk to night, and the stars around their heads became denser. These were sky-priests, the dominant spiritual faith of the Laneeri, and every last one of them was a witch.
They glanced at me, flicking their focus back to the road ahead if I made eye contact. They could see my witchmarks too. I examined the procession and held down a yelp of surprise when I realized none of the priests had the infection.
Shouldn’t there be some among them? The delegates walked in the center of the procession of priests, garbed in white robes bordered with red. All their faces were bare of the makeup upper-class Laneeri wore, their usually ornately plaited hair left loose to flutter at their ankles, and none of them had the infection either.
How did none of them have it, when the infection had spread to so many of the homecoming soldiers?
There could be a hundred reasons. If I could run tests on a Laneeri … But that wouldn’t happen. I watched the priests with their witchmarks, their heads bowed in defeat, their minds clear of the infection.
What protected them?
They marched to their weeping flutes and death-toll drums, sweetwood smoke billowing from censers swung to consecrate the air. They would walk to the palace. They would stop before the throne and kneel. One more humiliation, as if all the death they’d suffered wasn’t enough. After a ceremonial imprisonment, they’d sign the surrender and become Aeland’s vassal, completely defeated.
I could feel sorry for them, even after what they’d done to me. It had been a terrible war, but they had been outgunned from the start, even with magicians helping their efforts. The fight had never been fair. Desperate people commit terrible acts.
It was as close as I could get to forgiving them.
One of the priests turned her head and surveyed the crowd who stood muttering. A spiteful little smile hovered on her lips as she locked eyes with me.
She watched me a moment longer, then turned away, dismissing me as unimportant. Not the gesture of someone who had been utterly humiliated.
That look was sly. It was smug. It knew something I didn’t. The other priests glanced here and there as they played their flutes and swung their incense. I tried to follow their gazes, to reckon whom they looked at.
Soldiers. Out of uniform, some with mustaches shaved off, all of them with infection clouding their minds.
Did that mean they could see it too?
Police allowed the people down the block to cross once the procession had passed. I turned to check the policeman beside me. He signaled our permission with a beckoning hand and a nod. The people who had had to wait crossed the street, or mounted their bicycles and went about their business.
I ran to the hospital. I climbed the stairs to my office two at a time.
People passed me on the stairwell, but no one said good morning. A nurse stopped on the landing when she spotted me and retreated to the second floor, though I knew she was one of the Mental Recovery staff.
Had she been avoiding me?
The idea was ridiculous.
I rounded the third flight of stairs and Robin rose from her seat on the stairs, her eyes wide.
“Miles.” She opened her hand, and the stairs lurched under my feet.
She offered me a perfectly rolled cigarette.
I couldn’t breathe.
Footsteps scrambled up the stairs, and a hospital page panted for breath. “Nurse Robin? They need you. I’ve been looking all over.” Then he saw me and his eyes went round. He backed up, plainly afraid. Of me.
She rose to her feet. “I’ll be there in a minute. Gallbladder,” she said. “A fast surgery. I hope I’ll be out in time to see you.”
The page darted frightened glances at me. “I’m sorry, please don’t be mad, but they need Nurse Robin.”
I took the cigarette from her and slid it into my breast pocket. “What happened? Why is everyone jumping out of their skin?”
As soon as I said it, I knew.
The page dashed down the stairs in a panic.
Robin turned worried eyes to me. “It’ll all work out,” she said, and left me staring after her.
This couldn’t be happening. Not now. I climbed the rest of the stairs. My office key rested in the pocket next to Tristan’s, iron and bronze chiming as I reached for them. Gouges of bright bronze shone in the nest of tiny scratches around the keyhole to my office. The door lever rattled and pushed deeper than it used to.
I knew what I would see before I pushed the door open.
Someone had ransacked my office. I counted the volumes of Richardson’s Abdominal Surgery Encyclopedia. All eight volumes were there. So was my crystal whiskey set, empty, dusty, and untouched. My filing cabinet had been disemboweled. Stray paper carpeted the floor, files and records trampled on by leather-soled shoes. But what made my guts swoop was my vandalized desk, every locking drawer broken open.
My belongings were tumbled back into the drawers, uncaring of the order. My tortoiseshell pen rested there, along with the wristwatch I’d meant to have mended. I opened the drawer I kept locked.
The journal detailing what I knew of the infection was gone.
I lifted scattered papers, feeling for the book, but no luck. Thin transfer paper crackled under my fingers, and though it was glued to my desk by dried green ink I knew it was the form detailing the contents of my medical bag from Lost and Found.
I cleared papers away from my blotter.
The white-handled knife was gone.
So was the pendulum, snatched from the corner of the drawer where I’d left it. The boline, the pendulum, the journal detailing Gerald Grimes’s and Bill Pike’s condition …
Crosby. It had to be.
Dr. Matheson stood in the open doorway. She inspected my fine clothing with a quick eye.
“Dr. Singer.”
Dr. Singer. Not Miles. “Dr. Matheson.”
“I wish to speak to you in my office.”
Tools of witchcraft I could explain away, but the journal? What could I say about that? What could I do?
Chin up and take it, that’s all I could do.
“Good idea. Mine’s rather a mess, I’m afraid.”
Dr. Matheson didn’t smile. She turned around and left me to follow. She didn’t look back or speak to me on the trip downstairs, and crossed her office in long strides.
“Close the door and sit down.”
Pendulum, boline, and book were the only objects on Dr. Matheson’s blotter.
“Dr. Crosby broke into your office yesterday after some hearsay from a new patient,” Dr. Matheson said. “Do you know a man named James Wolf?”
I’d saved his life and his leg in my last day at the mobile hospital. I’d been so tired I could barely pick my feet up. So tired I never heard them coming.
“I had a patient by that name.”
“He claimed you healed him with magic and stole his soul as payment.”
Water stains marred the corner of Dr. Matheson’s ceiling. She’d trained a wandering plant on the wall rather than have the corner repaired.
Dr. Matheson nodded. “It’s quite ridiculous, I agree. But it drove Dr. Crosby to find these.”
I waited.
“Crosby’s been suspended pending board examination,” she said. “As are you.”
“Dr. Matheson?”
“I have to suspend you both. But I’d like to know what these are.”
“A letter opener,” I said.
“Obviously. Crosby said it was a silver-bladed knife for collecting spell items.”
“It’s a letter opener. And the stone on a chain is a pendulum. I use i
t as a visual focus for mesmerism, which I use on patients to help them manage pain and sleep.”
“Miles, I’ve read the book. It’s interestingly worded.”
“I used the patient’s language to describe what they believe lurks inside them.”
This was the weak spot. I’d written what I saw, blending my magical sight and medical knowledge. It didn’t make sense to write it that way, not clinically, and not scientifically.
“The accusation of witchcraft is already all over your wards. There was no stopping it. Multiple doctors have looked over Mr. Wolf’s scars from the surgery. I’ve seen them too.”
“I imagine they’re extensive.”
“They’re astonishing,” Dr. Matheson said. “He should have died before you had a chance to finish half of it. But he’s alive, and he can walk. He’s told everyone who will listen you’re a witch.”
“And they believe him.”
“We can solve this.” Dr. Matheson leaned over the desk.
“How?”
“Get examined, and we can dismiss this.”
Oh.
She meant a witchcraft examination. They held the patient suspected of witchcraft in a room lined with copper, questioned them, tripped them up in crossing lines of inquisition. I knew how to answer. I could answer.
But I couldn’t withstand that much copper. Even the lines carrying aether were enough to irritate, a fly you couldn’t quite swat away from your head. Witches begged to be let out of examination rooms. I had hated the way it drained me the moment I stepped inside one, back when I was still in medical school.
Copper was the real test. Someone could claim to sing down the wind and talk to the dead all day, but if they weren’t broken by the copper in the walls, they were just deluded.
Dr. Matheson spoke into the silence. “Dr. Crosby will be dismissed once you clear the examination. It’s only a single day. You could go to Kingston Asylum today, and be back on rounds by midweek.”
I’d never make it a full day in a testing room.
