SYMPTOMS: Facial swelling, acute abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, leading into coma and death.
PROOFING CUES: Subtle, sweet, and slightly metallic flavor, difficult to detect at low levels or in sweet dishes.
2
Kalina
Duty takes precedence over all else, and I knew what it meant to fail at it far better than my brother ever could. There had been no time spared to comfort me all those years ago when we all realized my body couldn’t tolerate the life of a proofer; I’d simply recovered from another health crisis to find my Tashi’s time devoted instead to my small brother. The same honor and duty that was taken from me still bound our family to the Chancellor, and while he still lived we couldn’t pause to grieve for our own uncle.
But already it seemed hopeless. Jovan and I stole moments where we could talk out of hearing of the physics, whispering thoughts and theories, reaching dead ends. It had to be poison, surely, for all the physics’ talk of unknown diseases—and I knew as well as anyone their fascination with unexplained ailments—because no one else had fallen sick. But if so, it was one Jovan didn’t know. And he knew all of the poisons. Or at least we’d thought he did.
Jovan leaped to his feet, pacing again. I sat on the floor, back to my uncle’s body, knees drawn up to my chest and arms wrapped around my bare shins. He took his measured steps: left, right, left, right, spin to the left, left, right, left, right, spin to the right. The impeccably timed sound of his feet on the floor, in precisely equal steps, tapped out the rhythm of my childhood. Always balanced, no movement with one side of his body failing to be echoed by an equal one on the other. I rested my head back on the bed, watching him. Although average in his dark coloring and his medium height and build, my brother was striking in his symmetry and precision, even at his most anxious. Perhaps especially at his most anxious. His breath released slowly as his pacing calmed him. It calmed me, too.
Etan had given us a detailed description of his day, including everything he ate and drank, and every person he saw. Nothing unusual. First thing in the morning he had proofed the kori, kavcha and tea, cheese and dessert at Lazar’s kitchen and then spent the morning with Chancellor Caslav, eating only food he’d prepared himself. They hadn’t left the Manor until Lazar’s lunch, and afterward Etan had gone alone to the docks to check on a late tea delivery while Caslav had returned to the Manor.
The symptoms had begun at his mouth; likely whatever had triggered the attack did, too. “Eat, drink, breathe, kiss,” I murmured. At my words, Jovan finished his set of eight and visibly resisted the urge to begin another set. I offered my hand and he sat beside me. Together we thumbed through the pages of my notes.
“He ate two courses with his fingers,” I said. “So he could have touched something and passed it to his mouth. But it would have to be something only he and Caslav touched.” I looked back at the notes. Etan had kissed every Councilor and recalled touching the shoulder of the musician who had performed, a man called Hasan. The Talafan nobleman had shaken his hand in the manner of the Empire. Etan had also handled the leksot briefly when it had crawled over him during its brief escape, but he had washed his hands after doing so because of the smell and the shed fur. And although the Chancellor had also touched the animal, so had Lord Ectar, Jovan, and Credo Lazar, as well as at least one of Credo Lazar’s servants.
Jov stopped at that place in my notations. “Have we checked his skin where the leksot crawled on him?” He thrust back the bedclothes from our uncle’s body. Several red scratches marked his calves and knees. Jov touched the skin around the markings, but they were ordinary scratches and showed no sign of special irritation.
“I looked at those already,” I reminded him. “Didn’t we agree this was something oral?”
The beads at the door rattled. “I am sorry to disturb you, Credo, Credola,” Thendra said. The sight of the physic triggered a wave of nerves in me. Though never anything less than courteous, Thendra looked at me like an interesting puzzle that she hungered to solve, and I’d grown to dislike her assessing, dispassionate face for all that I relied on her.
Jov stood. “We were just looking at these.” He indicated the scratches. “The Chancellor will have some too…?” But she was already shaking her head.
“I asked your uncle about the marks, Credo. If the animal had a toxic scratch we would see symptoms surrounding that area.” Her gaze dropped. “I do not know what is causing this. It is no poison or disease I know of.”
Jovan looked back at the scratches, desperation apparent in his shaking voice. “The animal drooled a lot. What if it had some foreign disease, one we’ve never seen here, and passed it through its saliva onto an open cut?”
Her sleepy gaze sharpened as she regarded him. “I could examine the animal,” she said. “I do not know if it will help, but I am happy to do so if you wish.” She left unspoken our lack of remaining options.
“I’ll go,” I said quickly, before Jovan could move. His experiments would be outside my knowledge and understanding to conduct; I wanted to do something, anything, that might help. Though the tension in my brother’s expression signaled his objection, the desire to examine the scratches more closely won out and he didn’t argue.
“The glass garden,” he said. “Be careful.”
* * *
Dozens of staff members and even a few Councilors crossed my path on my way to the gardens; word had spread. I didn’t stop to hear commiserations. Every time I pictured Etan lying still and empty, my chest squeezed in on me and my throat and eyes burned. But Caslav lived, still. We’d lost our Tashi, but maybe we could redeem our family’s honor. Maybe I could help, for a change.
The glass-walled gardens were small, so even in the darkness it didn’t take long to find the leksot. I wouldn’t need the cage after all.
The creature lay prone on a patch of dirt underneath a crying fin tree, its tail spread limp across the ground like a snake. Jovan had been right. Here was the architect of our uncle’s downfall; not some shadowy foreign poisoner or a treacherous colleague, but a pitiful dead animal, its paws and face still and wilted, tongue protruding from its little mouth. My hand shook, wobbling the light. Losing our uncle to something so stupid and random as a foreign disease was so unfair, so unworthy of all he’d been. But at least I could hope something in its body would help Thendra and the others treat the disease. The Chancellor was running out of time.
I crouched, about to scoop up the body, when something made me pause. I swept the light around slowly. Something looked wrong.
The dirt surrounding the body was unmarked. I pressed a light finger in and noted the easy impression it left. The leksot hadn’t walked or crawled here; it must have fallen from the tree. A low branch of the crying fin formed a green fan just over the animal. I ran a hand down its flexible length. It was no wider than my wrist.
An odd place for a sick animal to sit. Etan had suffered for hours. Why would an animal in distress have perched on a branch too narrow to lie down on? The swollen, protruding tongue suggested it had died the same way as my uncle. But it had been in apparent good health when Jovan left it here. How had it come into the city carrying a disease but then sickened and died so quickly? That was odd even accounting for differences in anatomy.