Master of Plagues: A Nicolas Lenoir Novel (12 page)

Which was why it was so important to get out of those fast-moving waters and onto solid ground.

“What about the cargos?” Lenoir asked. “Did you look into those?”

Zach pulled out a scrap of paper and pushed it across the table. “See for yourself.”

Lenoir peered at it. “This is illegible, Zach.”

“Huh?”

“Illegible.”
The inspector waved the page irritably. “It means
impossible to read
.”

Zach scowled. “There’s appreciation for you. The only orphan in the Five Villages who can write, and you’re complaining about my penmanship.”

Lenoir was unmoved. “You can write because I paid for your lessons, but I find myself questioning whether I got my money’s worth.”

Zach stabbed sulkily at his steak. “It doesn’t say anything anyway. Spices and cotton, cotton and spices. A little bit of wine and spirits.” Zach shrugged and popped his fork into his mouth. “That’s it.”

“This is everything that has come in since you have been watching the docks?”

“Pretty much. I also put down stuff that came in earlier that was being unloaded. When I could find out, anyway.” He pointed at the page.

“Anjet worm?” Lenoir read bemusedly. “Yellow mule?”

Zach snatched the page from Lenoir’s hands.
“Angel wort and yarrow root,”
he said, handing it back.

Lenoir’s eyebrows climbed his forehead. “We really must discuss your spelling, Zach.”

“What is that stuff anyway?” Zach asked before Lenoir could make good on the threat.

The inspector scanned the page with a shake of his head. “I don’t know. More spices, most likely, judging by the quantities. You might be eating it right now.”

Zach considered his plate, but all he saw was steak and blood, butter with a bit of parsley in it. He didn’t really like parsley, but at least he had something green
on his plate. Sister Nellis was always telling him he had to have something green.

“Nothing else, then?” Lenoir said.

Zach shrugged. “I met a bloke who knew Sergeant Kody. Didn’t seem to like him much. I think maybe the sergeant put him in jail once.”

“Quite possible. Kody spent a great deal of time at the docks as a watchman.”

“Oh yeah?” Zach lowered his fork and knife. Here at last was a subject that really interested him. “How long did he have to be a watchman before he became a sergeant?” Zach had been trying to do the maths, figure out how long it would take him to get from street hound to inspector, but he didn’t know enough about it to make a reasonable guess.

“Less than five years, but that is exceptional. Sergeant Kody was promoted very young.”

“How come? ’Cause he’s so big?”

Lenoir sniffed into his wine cup. “Come now, Zach. If that was so important, would I be an inspector?”

“I suppose not.” Lenoir wasn’t small, but he wasn’t big either.

“Kody was promoted to sergeant, on my recommendation, because he is a competent investigator. Much more so than most of his peers.”

“What makes him so special?”

Lenoir cocked his head, peering at Zach as if he could look through his eye sockets straight to the back of his skull. “Tell me, what do you see when you look at Kody?”

My future, hopefully.
Aloud, Zach said, “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“If you were an investigator, what might you deduce about Bran Kody by examining the facts before you?”

This game again. Lenoir loved it. Zach liked it sometimes, but only when he did well. Otherwise, it just made him feel like a dumb kid. He frowned, thinking.

“How old do you think Sergeant Kody is?” Lenoir prompted.

Zach shrugged. “Twenty-something.”

“Twenty-six.”

That didn’t sound very young to Zach, but he didn’t say so. It would only make Lenoir feel older. “Okay, so he’s twenty-six. So what?”

“A handsome fellow, wouldn’t you say?”

“I guess. Can’t say I’ve really thought about it.” That wasn’t strictly true. Even Zach had noticed the way the barmaid at the Firkin looked at Sergeant Kody the other night. She hadn’t looked at Lenoir that way, or any of the other patrons.

“A handsome fellow,” Lenoir said, “and twenty-six, with a respectable job. And yet he is unmarried.” He leaned forward, one eyebrow raised. “What does that tell you?”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to be married.” Zach could certainly understand that. Marriage didn’t make a whole lot of sense to him. Sharing what little you managed to scrape together with someone else? No, thanks.

“It is possible that marriage does not interest him,” Lenoir allowed. “More likely, however, it is evidence of his dedication to his job. And of his ambition. Sergeant Kody wants to be an inspector one day, and perhaps even more. For now, all his energy is focused on that. And that, Zach, is what makes him so special.”

Zach chewed on that as he chewed on his steak.

“So, is that why you’re not married?”

Lenoir’s snort was almost too soft to hear. “Eat your supper, boy.”

“Hey, how come you’re not eating?” Zach had been so busy inhaling his steak, he hadn’t even noticed that Lenoir hadn’t ordered anything.

“No appetite,” Lenoir said with a grimace, “not after what I saw today. And before you ask—no, I do not wish to discuss it. Not right now.”

Zach didn’t try to hide his disappointment, but he didn’t press the matter, either. That never got him anywhere with Lenoir. The inspector opened up when he good and felt like it, which wasn’t often. There was no point in trying to convince him. Zach was pretty sure Lenoir was that way with everyone. In fact, he had a feeling the inspector talked to him more openly than he did to most adults. That felt good, even if Zach didn’t really understand it.

“Going back out there tomorrow?” he asked.

Lenoir nodded. “Tomorrow, we find out whether Oded’s treatments worked and the patients he saw will recover.”

“You think they will?”

“I don’t know.” There was something in the way he said it—sad and weary, even more than usual—that made Zach’s supper curdle in his belly.

“There was a plague in your town once, wasn’t there?” It had been a while since Lenoir told him the story about the revolution, and Zach had been more interested in the exciting bits—the soldiers and rebels and great chanting mobs—but he remembered something else too, buried beneath all the adventure, something about everyone getting sick. When Lenoir told that part of the story, he’d worn the same sad, weary look he wore now.

“There was a plague, yes,” Lenoir said, the words almost lost inside his wine cup.

“What stopped it?”

“Nothing. It stopped when it had killed everyone it wished to.”

Zach swallowed. “How many people died?”

The inspector’s dark eyes considered him for a moment. He drained his cup and reached for his coat. “Finish your supper, Zach,” he said, and was gone.

“D
id you get any sleep last night?”

“If you need to ask, Sergeant, you are in the wrong line of work.” It was needlessly irritable, even for Lenoir, but his nerves were stretched over a razor’s edge. It did not help that he had a lump the size of an apricot at the back of his head, a lingering reminder of the riot. His neck was so stiff that he could hardly turn his head.

“Me neither,” Kody said tartly, as though Lenoir did not already know. The sergeant was sporting a thin coat of stubble, which was a first, and his boots were so improbably shiny as to suggest a vigorous polish sometime in the past few hours, meaning it had been done well before dawn. Such fits of restless industry were intimately familiar to Lenoir, though it hardly took a chronic insomniac to recognize the signs.

“I suspect we will find more of the same in there,” Lenoir said, inclining his head at the small green tent where Horst Lideman and the others awaited them. “Let us hope Oded, at least, is rested. He has a lot of work to do.”

“Assuming he actually healed those people.”

Lenoir growled under his breath. The one thing he had always been able to rely on from Kody, whether he wished it or not, was foolish optimism. Now, when it
might actually come in handy, Kody was trying on a new face. “If I wanted extra negativity, Sergeant, I would carry a mirror.”

Kody passed a hand over his eyes. He looked more than tired, Lenoir decided. He looked
worn
. “It’s just . . . this doesn’t feel like our lucky day,” he said, pulling the tent flap aside.

By the light of a paraffin lamp, Lenoir took in the expressions arrayed around Lideman’s desk, and he sighed. “It appears you are right, Sergeant. This is not our lucky day.”

“It is not anyone’s lucky day,” Lideman said. He sat behind his desk, hands folded primly before him. Across from him, Oded sat rigidly upright, gazing into nothingness like a soldier under inspection. Merden hovered in a corner, his countenance inscrutable.

“What happened?” Lenoir asked, though he could already guess the answer.

“The treatment failed.” There was no smugness in Lideman’s tone, only regret. “The patients died.”

“What, all of them?” Kody’s tone was a mixture of despair and disbelief.

“It is not so surprising,” Lideman said. “Their diagnoses were terminal, remember, and the disease kills quickly.”

“It
is
surprising,” Oded said, so quietly he might have been speaking to himself. “The woman . . . I knew she was lost. I said so last night. But the others . . . they were out of danger. For all four of them to die . . .” He shook his head, his gaze still abstracted.
He is in shock,
Lenoir thought.

“I do not deny your good intentions, sir,” Lideman said in an apparent attack of amnesia, “but as I told you, your remedy has no basis in science.”

Oded continued as if the physician had not spoken. “I cannot understand it. I did everything right. The demons were cast out, the strength of the patients restored. They were out of danger, all but one.”

“Maybe it was our fault,” Kody said. He rubbed his forehead, as though the idea pained him. “Maybe having other people in the room distracted you.”

The healer shook his head. “That cannot be. You were only present for the first treatment, with the boy. After that, it was only Merden, and he is
mekhleth
. His power helped make the patients stronger, not weaker.”

Lenoir swore under his breath. He had not come here expecting good news—it was still too early for that—but he had at least expected some ambiguity. Some
hope
.
Some bit of improvement, however modest, in one or two of the patients. To face such unmitigated failure, and so soon . . . “It makes no sense.”

“No,” Merden said from his corner, “it does not.”

But if Oded had no power over the disease, then why were the death rates so much lower among the Adali? “Perhaps your people are immune after all,” Lenoir said.

“I’m afraid not, Inspector,” Lideman said. “One of the four patients Oded saw yesterday was Adali. He was the first to perish.”

Oded gave a dismissive wave. “Many of my people have died, just not so many as yours. We are not immune.”

Lenoir shook his head, bewildered. “I cannot account for it.”

“It makes no sense,” Merden repeated, his golden eyes fixed on Lenoir.

“Nevertheless,” said Lideman, “we cannot dispute the facts. I applaud your efforts, Inspector, and those of your companions, but I’m afraid I cannot devote any further time to this experiment. Good day, gentlemen.”

Oded rose slowly, his posture stiff and straight, his head held high. Beneath the armor of his dignity, however, the healer was visibly wounded. Whether he understood it or not, his patients had died, and the skeptical Braelish physician had been proven right. For a brief moment, Lenoir wondered which of those unpleasant
facts bothered Oded more. Then he saw the grief in the old man’s eyes, and he had his answer.

“I will return to my tent,” Oded said once they were outside. “I must continue my work.”

“Do not allow this incident to shake your faith, my friend,” Merden said. “Your gift is real, and it is sorely needed.”

Oded nodded wearily. He said something in Adali, bowed, and took his leave. Lenoir watched him go, something suspiciously like guilt tugging at his gut. He had brought the healer into this—distracted him from his work, subjected him to ridicule and derision, deprived the Adali of his care. If, after all that, the only thing they had achieved was to damage the healer’s confidence . . .
Not only have you failed to improve the situation, Lenoir, you may actually have made things worse.

But there would be time enough for self-recrimination later. For now, something else demanded his attention. He turned to Merden. “You were trying to tell me something in there. What?”

Merden grunted. “I did not think you noticed.”

“Of course I noticed, but why the guile? Why not just speak your mind?”

“Because I do not trust that physician.”

“Lideman?” Kody cast a hasty look at the green tent and lowered his voice. “What are you talking about?”

Lenoir’s eyes narrowed. “Do I take it to mean you think someone . . .”

The soothsayer arched an eyebrow.

“But why?”

“To discredit Oded.”

“And you think Horst Lideman—?”

“I think nothing in particular about the man. But
someone
did, and if it was not Lideman, then it was one of his people.”

“Did what?” Kody asked, his gaze cutting back and forth between them. “What are we talking about?”

Lenoir squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath. Sometimes, the sergeant could be impossibly dense. “Sabotage,” he said.

“Murder,” the soothsayer added.

For a moment, Kody just stared at them. When understanding finally dawned, his mouth dropped open a little. “You think the head of Medical Sciences murdered four of his own patients?”

“No,” Lenoir said, “I do not, and I suggest we take this conversation elsewhere.” He gestured meaningfully at the green tent a few paces away.

“This way,” Merden said, and he headed toward the river.

When they were at a more discreet remove, Lenoir said, “Your theory is flawed, Merden. Lideman has no motive.”

“Does he not? It would certainly be embarrassing for him if Oded’s
heathen ritual
”
—
his voice dripped with sarcasm—“was able to achieve what his College of Physicians could not.”

“That’s not much of a motive for murder,” Kody said.

“Agreed,” said Lenoir. “The fact is, Lideman did not believe for a moment that Oded’s treatment would work, and if he had been that concerned about being proven wrong, he would never have agreed to try in the first place.”

“One of his people, then,” Merden insisted doggedly.

“Look,” said Kody, “I get that you want to protect your friend’s reputation, but this is just silly.”

Merden fixed him with a cool look. “I met Oded two days ago, Sergeant. It is not as if he is a brother to me. It is not loyalty that moves me to speak, but reason. Consider: the patients we saw yesterday were all terminal, according to Lideman, but they were not all suffering from precisely the same symptoms. Some could have been expected to die within hours, while others had
longer. Yet they all died overnight, possibly within minutes of one another. We will never know, since no one was there to witness it.”

“So?”

“
So
, does it not strike you as highly improbable that all four patients died at roughly the same time?”

“Not really. You just said it yourself—they were all terminal.”

Merden sighed. “Very well. And what if I were to tell you that there was a fifth patient, one who did not yet display the bruising?”

“Lideman said there were four patients,” Kody said.

“To the best of his knowledge, that was true.”

Lenoir stared long and hard at the soothsayer. Merden returned his gaze evenly, without a hint of shame. “If you were to tell us that,” Lenoir said, “it would mean that you and Oded treated someone in secret, without the permission of his family or physician.”

Merden fluttered a hand, as though dismissing a meaningless detail. “If, hypothetically, we decided that the parameters of the experiment were flawed and undertook to treat a fifth patient, and if, hypothetically, that patient also died at the same time as the others, despite having been nowhere near as sick, would you then conclude that something highly improbable had occurred?”

Kody scowled. “You’re a real piece of work—you know that? How do you know it wasn’t the ritual that killed those people? Maybe all the stress of having that . . .
whatever
it was going on around them is what did it!”

“Do not be ridiculous. They were unconscious at the time.”

“That doesn’t excuse—”

“Enough, Sergeant,” Lenoir said. He needed to think, and he could not do it with Kody throwing a fit of righteous outrage. “What’s done is done. For now, we must focus on what it means. If what you are telling me is true,
Merden, then it does indeed appear as though someone has interfered with the patients. The question is who, and why?”

“I must see the bodies,” Merden said.

“What for?”

“To determine what killed them. If I am successful, it may shed some light on who did this.”

“Very well. As an inspector of the Metropolitan Police, I can compel Lideman to release the bodies to us. But you must be careful, Merden. The corpses are highly contagious.”

“I appreciate your concern, but I will take appropriate precautions.”

“In that case, we must hurry,” said Lenoir. “In view of the risk, they will wish to dispose of the bodies as quickly as possible.”

Merden was already moving. “I will begin immediately.”

*   *   *

“Here,” the soothsayer said, gesturing along the dead man’s jaw, “and here.” He wore leather gloves covered in some kind of grease, but even so, he did not touch the corpse any more than was necessary. He had cast off his cloak in favor of a dun jerkin and trousers, and even his boots appeared to be different. Lenoir had no idea where Merden had obtained any of these items, or what he had done with his own clothing, but the sight of it made Lenoir nervous, for he and Kody had no protection beyond the scarves they wore. He had already made the mistake of peering over the edge of the trench, and the sight of the corpses—stacks upon stacks of them, lined up like matches in a matchbox, covered in flies and reeking of rot—was enough to make him light-headed. He wondered how the gravediggers managed it. They were wrapped from head to toe, only their eyes visible, as anonymous as executioners. Just now, they stood at the edge of the trench, leaning on their spades, watching as
the hounds, the soothsayer, and the physician argued over the morning’s crop of corpses.

Horst Lideman scowled behind his scarf. “So they have bruises. What does that prove?” He gestured irritably with a gloved hand. “They had bruising before they died. It was how we chose them, for Durian’s sake! Please, Inspector, I do not have time for this nonsense!”

Merden tilted the corpse’s face away from them. “Look harder,” the soothsayer said. “These are finger marks. The killer was right-handed, and he stood here.” On his knees, he positioned himself level with the dead man’s shoulder and hovered his hand over the bruises.

Lenoir studied the corpse. The marks were there, to be sure, but they did not greatly resemble fingers to him. “When a victim is smothered, the bruises are typically well defined,” he said.

“The internal bleeding would account for that,” Lideman said grudgingly. “If you will forgive the analogy, these patients are like overripe fruit; the slightest pressure causes them to bruise badly. What would cause a clear outline in a healthy person would bleed much more profusely in someone suffering from the disease.”

“So you agree those look like finger marks?” Kody asked. From his tone, it was obvious the sergeant did not see the resemblance either.

“It’s impossible to be sure,” Lideman said. “I must admit, however, that it’s strange for all four patients to have so much bruising around the nose and mouth. Typically, the bruising is more pronounced in the trunk and extremities.”

“Could it have happened postmortem?” Lenoir asked. “Were the bodies washed in any way, or otherwise handled in a manner that could account for a bruising pattern like that?”

“Not that I know of.”

Merden
tsked
. “Why do you all strive to deny the obvious? These people were murdered.”

Lideman shook his head, but it was more in amazement than denial. “I cannot fathom it. Who would do such a thing?”

The same sort of person who would deliberately start an epidemic.
Lenoir kept the thought to himself. “Who had access to the treatment tent?”

“Myself, my students, and any number of nuns and priests,” Lideman said. “Are you implying that one of us is a murderer?”

“I am not. Aside from the lack of obvious motive, the fact that the victims were smothered suggests that it was not one of your people.”