Merciless

by Jacqueline Pawl

  Pilar squeezes her eyes shut and shouts against the gag in her mouth, the tendons in her neck standing out. She whips her head left and right, squirming, and several of the blisters on her face pop from the friction, oozing yellow liquid onto the pillowcase. Her eyes snap open, and—for a moment—she does not recognize Mercy. Then the pupil of her good eye contracts as she recognizes the face above hers, and her eyes widen again in terror and desperate hope. She cries into the gag, tears streaming down the sides of her face. She looks to Mercy like a cornered animal the way she thrashes and jerks, aware the end is near but choosing to not go down without a fight.

  In Pilar’s case, that end is the sharp end of a syringe as it slides into the flesh of her upper arm.

  “What did you give her?” Mercy shouts at the healer, but it’s clear it’s a sedative by the way Pilar’s gaze slides from her face and the fight leaves her limbs. Her entire body goes limp at once. Her head lolls to the side, and two unshed tears slip from between her lashes and glisten as they trail down her face. Mercy clambers off the bed and throws the gloves onto the bedside table, pushing away a strand of hair which had stuck to the perspiration across her forehead. She glowers at the woman, who measures a full foot and a half shorter than she, but stands solidly. “I was sent to speak with her!”

  “Oh, ye were? The king chose a pixie to check up on me, then, did ‘e?”

  Mercy crosses her arms. “No, his son did.”

  “So who’re ye t’be so special, hm? His latest infatuation?”

  “I am Lady Marieve of Feyndara.”

  She snorts. “Ye might be a lady in Feyndara, but I’m queen of this ward. Name’s Alyss.” She crosses to the shelves and begins gathering jars and bottles in her arms. She sets them on the desk and uncorks one, sniffing the contents. “Are ye goin to stand there all day lookin at me, or are ye plannin on helpin anytime soon? Get the kettle off the fire and add some marroway leaves to it. They’re in that chest under the table. They’ll keep her docile.”

  Mercy quickly finds the short, pointy leaves and adds them to the kettle. Alyss grinds dried mushrooms into powder and scrapes them into the kettle with the flat of her knife, then pours in a shimmering golden oil Mercy recognizes.

  “Oil of Ienna.”

  “She’s not going to last long. I’d like to give ‘er some peace before she goes, but I’m not going to waste valuable medicine on someone who isn’t goin to get better. Best she gets some rest without bein in pain for the little time she has left.”

  “She called it Fieldings’ Plague. Have you ever heard of it?”

  “No, never. Never seen a case a Fieldings’ Blisters this bad, either. It’s not uncommon for the common folk to come down with a rash at the start of summer, now ‘at they’re workin outside day in and day out. But she’s a priestess, and it’s not usually more ‘an skin deep. I’ve never seen it attack vision.”

  “You mean her eye wasn’t like this before? That her blindness happened recently?”

  Alyss crosses her arms and nods at Pilar’s unconscious form. “I used to see this one in the market when the shipments of herbs came in from Bluegrass Valley. She liked to preach near the docks and serve tea to the workers on their breaks. Must’a seen her this past spring, healthy as an ox.”

  Pilar’s brows twitch and she mumbles something in her sleep.

  Alyss peers at Mercy from under furrowed brows. “You didna touch ‘er with yer bare hands, did ye?”

  “No,” Mercy lies, still feeling the ghost of Pilar’s blistered palm against hers. A traitorous shiver of fear runs down her spine, but Alyss is too distracted to notice.

  “Good. Ye’d see symptoms within the next few days: redness, blisters, ye know the drill. At the first sign, I want ye in here, not traipsin around court where ye can get everyone infected. Got me?”

  “Understood.”

  She clears the desk of the scraps of papers and apothecary books and pulls a heavy granite bowl from one of the drawers. “Alright, now come here an’ mash this wallobhy root into a paste.” She holds out the pestle in one meaty hand. “Just because you’re a lady doesna mean ye can’t do manual labor. The prince sent ye down to help, and by the Creator, I’ll take any help I can get. If ‘er babblings are to believed, things are going to get a lot worse before they get any better.”

  “That’s why you gagged her, then? What was she saying?” Mercy picks up the pestle and begins mashing the root, the sound of granite grinding against granite joining the crackling of the hearth. It reminds Mercy of working alongside Sorin, and a sudden, unexpected wave of homesickness washes over her. She frowns and focuses instead on Alyss’s hands as she lays out cloth bandages on the warped wood of the desk. “Did she say anything specific?”

  “Nothing that made any sense t’me or the slaves who brought ‘er in. She started screaming an’ kept going until ‘er voice started breaking—didn’t even stop then. Didn’t shut up until one of the elves shoved that gag into ‘er mouth, and it surprised ‘er enough it made ‘er quit.”

  “She could hardly stand in the throne room. How was she strong enough to fight you off?”

  “The fear gets ‘em. Their hearts start poundin, adrenaline pumpin through their veins, and the haze breaks long enough for them to realize they’ve got no memory of comin down here. They think I’m going to hurt ‘em. They don’t want to admit they’re dying,” she says. “I’ve seen men hardly more than skin and bone insist they’re healthy up to their dying breaths.”

  Mercy looks at Pilar, huddled under the blanket. Her brows are drawn low and her eyelids twitch every few seconds. “She was speaking like she had been given a message. She said ‘stop him,’ and told us to go north. Any idea why she would say that?”

  Alyss shakes her head and dumps a handful of multicolored pills into the mortar. “Grind those into the paste,” she says. “They’re bitter as hell, but they’ll lessen ‘er fever. I can’t help ‘er much, but I’ll do what I can to keep ‘er lucid when she wakes so ye can speak to her again. As for what she said before, fever can make people believe some strange things. It probably twisted ‘er Sight into some corrupt vision. That and Solari happening on the same day probably scared ‘er out of her wits.”

  Mercy frowns. “I don’t know. She said he’ll come for us in the end. What could—” She stops, her eyes going wide as she remembers the map on Seren Pierce’s desk. “Beggars’ End!” she cries. She jumps away from the desk, sending the heavy pestle crashing against the side of the bowl. “She wasn’t talking about a point in time, she was talking about the slums. That’s where this is originating.”

  Alyss’s face goes slack with shock. She sets her heavy hands on Mercy’s shoulders and pushes her toward the door. “Go, tell the king to double his guards around Beggars’ End. Tell him to close the gates immediately. If this disease is as bad as it looks, we have to contain it.”

  Mercy twists away from Alyss, but she doesn’t relent, even when Mercy trips over Pilar’s shoe, still resting on the ground beside the shelves. “I will. My handmaid, Elvira, will bring whatever she can to help.”

  “Yes, fine, good,” Alyss says impatiently. She opens the door and shoves Mercy through, closing it in her face. “Remember to close the gates!” she yells through the wood.

  The two guards start and look first at each other, then at Mercy with confused expressions.

  “Take me to the king,” she says in as regal and unwavering a voice as she can manage. Again, the guards don’t utter a word, but their silence speaks volumes as they exchange another glance. The confusion on their faces morphs into curiosity, then horror as they consider the infectious terrors lurking behind the inch-thick wood separating them from the infirmary. Face pale, one of the guards turns on his heel and bolts up the stairs, Mercy one step behind.

  29

  “You must seal Beggars’ End immediately.”

  The chatter halts as every pair of eyes lift to Mercy and the guard, both breathing hard after running up three flights o
f stairs to the council room. They stand in the open doorway, having burst in without so much as a knock—which is probably the reason for the scowls on more than half of the faces in the room, including Ghyslain’s, but Mercy couldn’t care less. She lifts her chin and stares at him defiantly, waiting for him to give the order.

  Landers speaks first.

  “On what grounds would you have us do that?” he scoffs. “Half the guard is clearing the premises, and the other half is with His Highness, scouring the city for infection.” He frowns, deep-set wrinkles carving canyons around his mouth and eyes. He turns to the king. “Are you going to allow an elf to order you like this?”

  “Father!” Leon says sharply, surprise and embarrassment coloring his cheeks. The other councilmembers, strangers to Mercy, whisper to each other from the fringes of the room.

  “She arrives at the city unannounced—a foreigner, an enemy—demanding peace negotiations despite her lack of authority, and now she has the gall to speak to you as such—” Landers snaps his mouth shut, then turns to Mercy. “Last night, I tried to welcome you as best I know how, my dear, but I will not allow manners to supersede my loyalty to my country. Her arrival, Solari, this priestess—the timing cannot be simple coincidence.”

  Ghyslain watches her reaction, and when she offers none, turns his gaze to Landers. He speaks each word separately, his voice low and cold. “I think it best you not forget your place on this council, Nadra,” he says, and Landers’s face flushes to match his son’s. “And neither should you forget your place, my lady.” His dark eyes focus again on Mercy, and she feels his regard like a physical weight, making it difficult to breathe. His eyes bore into hers; they are not the starry, wandering eyes of a madman, but deep and bold, the challenge plain in his eyes: I’ve hired you to kill my son. Do you think you can manage that, little girl? Truly?

  The voice in her head is so goading, it grates Mercy’s nerves and she clenches her fists. It takes her a second to realize the voice is not the king’s, but Lylia’s. Uncanny. Mercy speaks through teeth bared into a smile when she says, “Of course, Your Majesty.”

  “Wonderful. Now tell me why the End needs to be sealed.” He steeples his hands and rests his chin on his fingertips, waiting. Everyone else in the room watches her, but Mercy ignores them.

  She quirks a brow. “Cassius Baccha told you why.”

  Ghyslain’s face pales and he stands abruptly, knocking his chair to the ground behind him. Leon flinches when the wood cracks against the floor.

  “You! What is your name?”

  The guard behind Mercy straightens, puffing out his chest in imitation of a seasoned soldier. He can’t be more than seventeen years old, lanky and underweight for his height; his uniform pools around him. “Samuel Eldridge, Your Majesty.”

  “Have five men sent to each of the gates surrounding the End and seal them immediately. No one is to go in or out, and no one is to speak of what has happened until we have a plan to deal with it. Until then, the area is off-limits.”

  “Send a man for Murdock Brannaugh as well,” one of the councilmembers supplies. “He and his men can begin patching the holes in the walls where the filth have pried out the stones.”

  Ghyslain nods, and Eldridge promptly leaves. “How do you know that?” he asks Mercy.

  She shrugs. “I guessed. I saw Cassius Baccha speaking to you in the throne room, and he looked like he’d tip over with a strong wind, he was so affrighted. Unfortunately, it appears I was right.”

  “How can we contain this?” one of the councilmen asks.

  “No, the question is, once we contain it, how do we eliminate it?” another says.

  “We’ve been discussing that, actually,” Leon pipes up. Some of the color has returned to his face, but his stance still lacks its usual confidence. “Any planning we do is purely theoretical—we won’t know until His Highness returns how many are infected. It could be just the one woman, unlikely as it seems, but we are operating under the assumption that, as a priestess in the Church, she has unwittingly spread the infection to a significant portion of the public.

  “We can set up a makeshift infirmary in the fields outside the city’s walls, where they will live in isolated recovery until they are healthy enough to return to their homes. The only people who will have access to them will be the healers, who will be provided temporary living spaces beside the ward. The biggest danger will be in transporting the sick out of the city, during which time the disease could spread to other, healthy citizens. Carriages could work, but we have no idea how the disease spreads, and how long it can survive on inanimate objects. It’s possible the carriages would have to be destroyed.”

  “How many could be treated in the tents?” Ghyslain asks, and this time, Landers answers.

  “Two hundred in each, Your Majesty. Two-fifty if we are really pressed for space, but any more and conditions could quickly become squalid.”

  “And if there are more?”

  “The healers will have to be escorted into Beggars’ End to treat the infected, and watched carefully to ensure they do not spread the disease outside of the slums.”

  “Very well. When Tamriel returns with the report, we will decide what to do. In the meantime, I’d like you each to take up a task in the castle. Don’t go home yet. Jett, make sure the infirmary is stocked with everything it needs, and have a few helpers sent from the kitchens. Everyone else, speak to Landers if you need an assignment. I’ll . . . be in my study,” Ghyslain says, his voice suddenly weary. He excuses himself and leaves the room, the councilmembers bowing as he passes. Half of them follow him out, and the other half crowd around Landers and Leon, waiting to be given a task. Mercy turns and is halfway out the door when someone grabs her arm.

  Landers has broken free of the crowd and stands before her, no hint of contempt or suspicion lurking behind his eyes. “My lady Marieve, would you be so kind as to attend Alyss in the infirmary for the next few hours? Creator knows she’ll need the help if this is as serious as I suspect it to be, and Feyndaran medicine may be advanced in ways ours is not.”

  “Of course.” She returns his saccharine smile and leans in close, lowering her voice. “But next time, you should consider carefully what you say about me to the king. I take insults to my character very seriously, and I’d hate for there to be more animosity between our countries than there already is, my dear.” Landers gapes at her as she turns and walks out of the room.

  Instead of going to the infirmary, Mercy walks past the staircase and continues down the hall, turning right at the corner and slipping into the shadow of an archway. The room beyond is empty save a long dining table and chairs, each set with plates and silverware, all coated in a fine layer of dust. Tamriel is still out, walking the streets with the soldiers and counting any infected, which means his bedroom—now less than ten feet from her—is empty.

  Two soldiers stand in front of the door in full armor. The other two must be helping clear the premises, and should be back any minute, which means now or never. Mercy swipes two knives from the table and examines their blades. Not terribly sharp, but better than nothing. She holds one in each hand and is about to step into the hallway when heavy footfalls outside the room halt her.

  Mercy slinks back into the archway, the stone cold and rough under her fingers as she leans against it. Peering out, she watches as the two soldiers lurch past, their feet dragging on the carpet runner before coming down in loud clomps. The lines of their shoulders are slack and their arms hang at their sides. The way they move reminds Mercy of the stories of hordes of undead monsters Lylia used to tell to scare the younger apprentices. Back then, they had fascinated Mercy. Now, she shivers as fear runs light, tickling fingers down her spine. When the guards step into a spot of light from one of the ensconced candles, she sees their eyes are unblinking as they stare straight ahead, pupils dilated to huge black orbs. They stumble forward as though beckoned by an unheard voice, and a minute later, their clomping footsteps fade down the stairs.
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br />   Another minute passes before Mercy peels herself away from the wall and releases a shuddering breath. She nearly drops the knives when she adjusts her grip, the handles slick with perspiration. Something is really wrong in this pristine palace, and it’s nothing to do with the noblemen’s concerns or a spoiled prince’s melancholy. Goosebumps erupt over Mercy’s flesh, and she absently rubs one arm as she steps into the hall. On her left, the hallway turns sharply toward the library and the stairs. On her right, ten feet away, is Tamriel’s unguarded door.

  She walks three paces before glancing behind her, imagining the guards stepping silently out of the shadows to seize her, but—of course—no one is there. The hall—the entire floor—is silent save Mercy’s breathing and her light footsteps. Fingering the key she had tucked under the collar of her dress, Mercy grasps the metal doorknob and turns it, surprised when the latch releases with a soft click.

  She opens the door and, knives in hand, steps into Tamriel’s bedroom.

  The room is bathed in heavy shadow, a sliver of moonlight cutting a gash across the rug and massive, pristinely-made bed. Across from Mercy, two doors stand open to a balcony; a breeze sweeps in and sends the silk curtains flapping and the skirt of Mercy’s dress twisting around her ankles. She waits on the threshold for her eyes to adjust before moving forward, a shiver of excitement jolting through her veins. Her first contract, completed tonight.

  Several silk cushions surround a gold-embroidered ottoman, a platter with a bottle of wine and two empty goblets resting on top. A candle and a vase with a single rose sit beside the bottle. Whatever plans the prince had made for the evening had been gracelessly broken by Pilar, but it’s clear he had meant it to be an intimate affair: the cushions and ottoman are only feet from the bed, where soft, fluffy pillows are piled high atop the silken sheets, and the fragrant ashes of incense still smolder on the bedside table.