by C. L. Polk
It was over. I was ruined. I couldn’t dismiss the rumors without doing as Dr. Matheson said. My reputation was nothing, just when my patients needed me most.
Unless I could use wealth and power to bully the matter out of my way.
I leaned back in my seat and drummed my fingers against the chair arm. “I think you had better suspend me. I’ll hire an advocate for my board hearing.”
Something desperate flitted across her face—something that made the cords of her neck stand out. “It’s the easiest way to put Dr. Crosby’s accusations to rest. Prove you’re not a witch, Miles, and he can never try this again.”
“I will not. This is ridiculous.” I beetled my brows together, slung out my jaw, and let Dr. Matheson have the outrage she expected. “I’ll hire an advocate.”
“Why won’t you take the test, Miles?”
“I have a social engagement with my sister tonight.”
“You won’t do the examination because you’re going out with Dame Gr—”
She covered her mouth.
Now it was my turn to lean in. “You knew already.”
“You look alike. You have the same eyes.”
“So it was a lucky guess?” I shook my head. “My invitation to the luncheon. I’m too low in the hierarchy to be invited, but you insisted. Why?”
Dr. Matheson held my gaze. “Your paper on battle neurosis in Psyche was greatly admired by a noted philanthropist.”
No one read a medical journal for amusement. I connected the dots: Matheson had told my father of my achievement, and then my father had hatched the plan to put me and Grace together. “Tell me who wanted me invited. And introduced to Dame Grace.”
“Sir Christopher Hensley,” she said. “Your father, I realize now.”
She had spied on me for a father curious to see what I would do with freedom. “And what did he offer? Your promotion?”
Dr. Matheson’s eyes flared wide for an instant. “Patronage.”
“Is that all he wanted? Just invite me to a luncheon?”
“He wanted to know how you were doing.”
“And do you think he’ll be pleased to hear I’ve been accused of witchcraft? That instead of firing my accuser and supporting me, you want me to subject myself to examination?”
“It would remove all doubt—”
“You don’t have enough power with the board to wipe this off.”
Her explosive sigh made her shoulders deflate. She bowed her head. “Of course I don’t. I’m not the head of Medicine yet; I don’t assume the position until the first.”
“Support me, Mathy. Recommend Dr. Crosby’s dismissal and support me when I walk in there with an advocate, and I’ll help you. If—”
She lifted her head, lips parted and eyebrows high. “If?”
“Did you order all the bodies removed before leaving for the luncheon last week?”
She glanced away.
“You did,” I said. “How could you? He’d been murdered.”
“He said you didn’t need the distraction.”
“But to destroy Nick Elliot’s chance at a police investigation—”
“He was going to take the money off the table.” Dr. Matheson’s fists tightened until her knuckles whitened. “I couldn’t. Do you know how badly we need money? How much it costs to aetherize, even with the subsidies?”
“Murder, Eleanor! You obstructed justice!”
“For my future, and yours!” she said. “For the future of this hospital! Do you even know how much more money in donations we have this year?”
“At least another five thousand,” I said. “And Nick Elliot paid the price!”
“His murderer might never be found. I know. But you didn’t have a suspect. You only had his word that he’d been poisoned.”
“Because you destroyed the body. And looked the other way. For a patron.”
“Without one, the care of thousands of veterans would stretch thinner and thinner.” She swept loose tendrils of hair away from her furrowed brow. “We’ve been trying to stop an arterial bleed with finger plasters.”
“But to let his killer go free? Because I was the one who was out for a smoke? Eleanor. What happens the next time my father wants a distraction cleared from my duties?”
Anything my father wanted, that’s what. I wouldn’t let go of this one. Nick had learned secrets Father didn’t want getting out about the asylums and witches. It was his bad luck that it had been me Nick had found.
“What do you think, Miles?” She looked weary and slump-shouldered with the true weight of a deal with my father. “I’ll do it.”
“And if I were to leave the hospital, or be dismissed, you lose your money.”
“Everything depends on you remaining part of this hospital.”
“I know. I’m sorry Dr. Crosby spoiled that for you.”
“If your advocate doesn’t convince them—”
I nodded. “I don’t want to leave.”
“But if the board isn’t convinced—”
“I know.” I couldn’t sit here all morning. And I couldn’t just skulk out the door. I had to get onto the Mental Recovery Unit. “I’d like to explain to my patients.”
“You can’t.” She shook her head. “You’re suspended.”
“They have a right to an explanation from me.”
“Or you could be manipulating your patients as pawns in your reinstatement struggle. I’m sorry, Miles. I can’t let you.”
“Just for a few minutes.”
“If I have to, I’ll have guards escort you out. Leave quietly, Miles. I mean it.”
I had to get down there. I had to look at the infection one last time, and figure out why our soldiers had it, but the Laneeri didn’t.
“Fine,” I lied. “Let me gather a few things.”
* * *
I was suspended. I had no privileges, couldn’t practice medicine, couldn’t see my patients. I was to descend these stairs and walk out the door.
Hang that.
I crossed the lobby and followed the corridor to Mental Recovery, passing the ladies’ dressing room. Robin emerged, dressed in boiled gray cotton. “Miles.”
“Robin. I have to go.”
She caught my sleeve. “I wish I could do something—I’m sorry. For all of it. And I’m sorry about Bill, too. You must be worried about him.”
Bill? “What do you mean?”
Her head rolled back in frustration. “Mathy never told you. Of course she didn’t. You’d never leave quietly if she had.”
“What happened to Bill?”
“He had an acute stress attack. He’s in a safe room. It was a bad one.”
I took her shoulders in my hands. “How bad?”
“He was agitated all weekend, and then he stole a metal sock needle from the crafting group.”
My insides swooped. “Did he attack someone?”
“Worse. He snuck off to the surgery floor, found an aether dock, and jammed the knitting needle inside it. He’s aether-burned. He wouldn’t let go of it, they say. Held fast and screamed ‘get out, get out’ until someone pulled him away. They’re aether-burned too.”
Aether burns could be terrible, reaching deep inside the body. It was a sickening way to die. “So he attempted suicide?”
“It was his delusion. He’d gotten bad. I snuck a look at the duty logs—”
“You’re not supposed to do that.”
“Crosby went on a rampage,” Robin said. “I had to know why, and not just from rumor. Bill kept saying, ‘I have to get him out’ and ‘he hates the light, that’s the key,’ but Crosby noted it down as agitation from your mistreatment of him from doing a spinal draw so high on his back. But after they sedated him, he woke up and started yelling in Laneeri about how you were a witch. And the new patient, Mr. Wolf, told everyone about how you used magic on his leg—”
There was no time to waste. I had to see Bill for myself. “Which safe room?”
“He’s in B. I looked in on him. They’d sedated him�
�� Miles! Wait!”
I ignored her and ran.
* * *
The lights flickered in this part of the ward. I ran down the empty corridor and skidded to a stop in front of safe room B, a heavy door with a peephole at eye level slid to the open position.
Bill lay inside cocooned in heavy canvas restraint. They didn’t use those until you woke up out of sedation and were still wild with unreason, ready to do violence to yourself. But what was worse was the infection, spread all the way down to fingers and toes.
Robin plucked at my sleeve. “You’ve seen him. You can’t help him now.”
Bill’s lips curled back in a snarl. All he could see was a shadow over the little door. Perhaps if he saw me, if we talked …
“Come away, Miles. Don’t torture yourself.”
“I’m going to talk to him.”
“Miles—”
I pulled the door open. It smelled of woolen padding on the floor and walls, of body sweat, cooked flesh, and—someone hadn’t taken him to the lavatory in time. Or he’d done it on purpose.
I stepped inside, the floor sinking under my shoes. “Bill. I came as soon as I heard. Are you all right?”
“Witch.”
He spat the word, a sharp, ugly bit of Laneeri.
I stood where I was, showed him empty hands. “They put you in this room to keep you safe. Because you were trying to hurt people. Do you still want to hurt people?”
“I’ll kill you. We’ll kill you all.”
“What’s he saying? Is that Laneeri?”
“So you’re still violent.” I had answered in Laneeri, so I switched to Aelander. “Let’s talk about what made you so angry.”
“Don’t use dog-talk, killer.”
I blinked, but I kept on. “Why don’t you want to talk to me in Aelander?”
“Stop it.”
“Answer me.”
“Filthy Aelander. Murdering witch. Necromancer. You deserve death.”
What was this? I should have read the chart before barging in here. “Why?”
He didn’t answer. I tried again, in Laneeri. “Why?”
“Because you’re murderers. Soul-eaters. You have to be stopped.”
“And you’re going to stop us.”
This was—I didn’t know what this was. It wasn’t Bill. It was a different person, as if someone else moved and spoke with Bill’s body. I had to do something. Could I manipulate the infection? I’d folded Gerald’s into tiny nonexistence. What would happen if I made the body fight it, like a virus?
I moved closer.
“Miles, stop!”
Robin again. Still looking out for me. “I want to try something.”
I knelt beside Bill. He tried to bite me, but I put my hand on his forehead. He thrashed about violently, jaws snapping, but my attention was on the infection … wait.
I touched the edge of it with my power, and the whole mass flinched. As if it were one thing, but that didn’t make sense.
“Miles, you can’t,” Robin pleaded. “They’ll know. They’ll examine you. Leave him. You have to go.”
I looked up. “You believe the rumors?”
She took my hand. I blinked—first that Robin touched my skin, her hand radiating warmth. Then at her, for her placid, terribly ordinary aura fell away, revealing the strong soul-light of a witch.
“Robin,” I breathed. “You’re—”
She let go, and the illusion of ordinariness snapped back into place. “I’ll explain later. We don’t have time to argue. You have to get out of here. They’re coming.”
Running footsteps echoed through the corridor. Robin was right. I didn’t have time to argue. But Bill needed me to solve this.
All the men did. I kept working.
I couldn’t break it up. I had folded it when I helped Old Gerald. The edges resisted me and Bill thrashed, trying to free himself from my touch.
“Miles,” Dr. Matheson said. “You are suspended.”
“One moment.”
I caught an edge. It tried to pull from me. I pulled back, and it rose from Bill’s body into the air. I kept pulling, bit by bit, as if I pulled a tapeworm from a patient’s intestine. Like a parasite. Like …
“Miles. I am ordering you. Step away from the patient.”
I ignored Mathy, caught in understanding. It was a soul. This was a possession.
I pulled harder, dragging it out of Bill’s body. Bill screamed in rage and pain. He thrashed and bit his own tongue, blood spraying in a mist from his harsh breaths.
It came loose all at once, torn out of my hands and—east. It went east for the fraction of a second where I could see before it vanished.
Hands caught me under the armpits, hauling me away. Bill coughed, struggling. His hair was wet with sweat, plastered to his forehead.
“Doc?” he asked, and coughed again. “Doc, what happened?”
I settled my feet under me and yanked free of the orderly who had dragged me out.
Bill’s voice cracked with fear. “Why am I in here? What happened?”
Dr. Matheson’s back was stiff as a board. She turned to look at me, face white as paper.
Bill had been mad. I’d touched him, and he’d returned to reason.
She took a step back, out of my reach.
“Eleanor.”
“Not one word, Miles. Get your advocate. And don’t come back without him. Escort him out,” she said, and she turned away, hurrying into the safe room to kneel by Bill’s side.
The orderly dragged me away. I had to get back there! I had to understand what I’d done. I pulled, trying to get free of his grasp.
“Come along now, Dr. Singer.”
“I have to go back.”
“Dr. Matheson told me to escort you out. Go quietly, or the police will get involved.”
If they caught even a whiff of the rumors about me, they’d have me in an examination room in a blink. The talk would spread wider.
I quit fighting and walked with him. I had freed Bill. I couldn’t help the others, but I knew where I could find one more.
TWENTY-TWO
E. 3125 Trout Street
It took thirty minutes on the train and a walk north to an address on Trout Street: 3125, a narrow house teetering up two stories, painted yellow and surrounded by garden. Old Gerald’s home might have needed paint, but the order and beauty of his little yard was a tribute to his craft.
I stood at the front door and knocked for the third time. The porch still had screens up, the furniture suited for company in the last sunny days before Frostnight. They’d put up shutters tomorrow, or doubled glass if they could afford it.
I peered through the lace curtains for movement. No one came. I couldn’t have come all this way for nothing. Someone should be here. Marie at least should be home.
Unless she was shopping? They couldn’t grow everything in their resourceful little garden, and she’d had no help keeping it up while Gerald was away. I’d passed a Swanson’s on the way—would it do any good to go and look for her?
Perhaps there was an outbuilding. A shed. A little glasshouse made of salvaged windows to shelter delicate plants late in autumn and early in spring. I rounded the house, careful to step on the flat stones paving the narrow way between the house and the fence, with garden planted even here. Squash rambled on the ground; hops grew up the side of the house.
There was a glasshouse built along a fruit wall, but it was empty. Gloves lay discarded on the grass, and a basket holding cut herbs and late vegetables spilled over the back garden path, as if someone had quit the garden in haste. Fresh earth lined the print of a left foot, but no right.
Young Gerald had been out here and had gone into the house. I followed up the back steps into the screen room meant for the comfort and privacy of the family in the summer heat and breathed in the tang of blood. Too much blood. Had Young Gerald hurt himself? I dismissed it. There was no blood trail leading into the house. It came from—
No, no.
&nbs
p; Inside.
I pulled the screen door to the house. The kitchen door was ajar, and it stank, oh it stank, too rich and rotten and wrong.
I pushed the door open.
Young Gerald lay on the floor, eyes open and staring. His blood pooled underneath him, shimmering wet and thick but dark on the edges. I lifted his wrist, touched his waxy face.
He was cooling off.
A woman’s legs lay visible in the next room, one shoe gone, a tear in the sole of her stocking. Marie?
I sidestepped Young Gerald’s blood.
Marie. Her blood soaked the threadbare carpet under the dining room, her hands sliced in defensive wounds.
What would the Star call this? Bloodbath?
Nausea gathered in my stomach, though I’d seen worse deaths, more grievous injuries, knew the rotting meat smell of drying blood. I crouched to pick up her hand, to press against the stillest part of her wrist.
Here the link between the infection and Kingston’s domestic murders. Thousands had these parasitic souls. My patients had been telling the truth about there being another person inside them, instead of a constructed “other” who committed the terrible acts of war. I hadn’t told anyone my fears that the soldiers who killed their families had the same condition as my patients, keeping my precious secret until it was too late.
These deaths were my fault. The others too, but especially these. I smoothed Marie Grimes’s hair out of her face, then cursed. I was disturbing the scene of a crime, leaving my footprints everywhere, my fingerprints, fooling about with Mrs. Grimes’s hair—I knew better.
The floorboards creaked as I passed through the dining room and into the front parlor.
A creak answered me from above. Another. Heavy footfalls pounded across the second floor. A boot stomped on the straight, narrow stairs with a hollow thump, and Old Gerald leapt for the floor, landing in a crouch.
He came at me with a bloody knife, the blade reversed in his grip. I picked up a parlor chair, aiming for his face as I swung it.
He ducked and dove for my legs. I leapt backwards, landing on Marie’s arm. I dropped the chair in my scramble to keep my feet—if I fell, I’d be dead.
The chair fell on Old Gerald’s head with a thump. Too bad it wasn’t a little heavier. He kept his grip on the knife, scrabbling to push the chair away.
