made of cheap linen.
“So many!” Alec exclaimed softly, dismayed at the sight.
A drysian was at work over one of them, but it was a middle-aged, balding priest in green vestments who hurried in to greet them. “Brother Valerius! What brings you here?” He gave the rest of them a puzzled look, too.
Valerius wasted no time on pleasantries. Fixing the man with a dark look, he said, “I’m told there’s some new ailment going through the Lower City, but it came to me from these men, rather than one of you. Why is that?”
The priest seemed to shrink a little under that hard gaze. “We’ve been dealing with it, Brother, and saw no reason to trouble you-”
“Or attract the vicegerent’s notice? There have already been a few found up above. Fetch me water and clean rags.”
The priest gestured to the acolytes, who scurried away.
Valerius began his examination of the stricken, touching them with remarkable gentleness and skill. Meanwhile, Seregil knelt down by one of the few adults, an emaciated old woman with chapped, large-knuckled hands that spoke of a hard life. Her rheumy eyes were fixed; her chest barely stirred.
Across the room, Alec was looking at a tall, sharp-featured young man not much younger than himself. “This is Long Nais, the keek.”
“The what?” asked the priest.
“A kind of footpad, one really good at locks,” Alec told him.
Seregil joined him and looked down at the prone figure. “Yes, that’s him, all right. Odd finding him here among the likes of these others.”
“Tell me what you know,” Valerius ordered the cowering priest as he moved slowly among the sleepers.
“We’ve never seen the like, and nothing we do brings them
around, Brother,” the man told him. “There’s no rhyme or reason to it that I can make out: young, old, men, women, children. The only thing they have in common is that they are all poor.”
“There are more children than adults,” Alec noted.
Valerius nodded and turned back to the priest. “How many have you seen so far?”
“There are reports of seventy-two dead since the beginning of the summer, and what you see here. And those are only the ones we know about.”
“It only strikes the wretched?”
“So far, Brother.”
A young drysian woman came forward hesitantly. “If I may, Brother Senus, there is what I was telling you yesterday.”
“Go on, Sister, though I still say it’s only coincidence,” the older priest said grudgingly, clearly displeased at being interrupted by his subordinate.
“A week or so,” she told Valerius. “That’s the longest any of them have lingered, though the littlest ones and the aged usually go more quickly. The first who were brought in had been lying in the street. We didn’t know when they’d been stricken, but then an older boy and a girl were brought in by their families the day they fell ill. The girl lasted five days, the boy nine. Now we’re watching Silis.” She pointed to a child of no more than five. “His mother brought him to us two days ago. They go quietly, at least.”
“The rest of these were found in the street,” the priest explained. “Only the Maker knows how much time they have.”
“Or how many don’t get brought to us,” the woman added sadly.
Valerius examined the little child and the old woman closely, then grasped his staff, muttered some spell, and laid his hand on the old woman’s chest. She didn’t stir. “Have you tried sparis root and rabbit vetch?” he asked the priest in charge.
“Yes, Brother, and lania bark with spleen water, bitter saw grass, and Zengati salts. As you can see, nothing has any effect.”
“What do you think?” Alec asked when Valerius stood up again.
“I’ve seen other maladies that leave the stricken ones catatonic like this.” Valerius scratched under his unruly beard. “It’s closest to some form of Kalian falling sickness but there’s no sign of jaundice. And even if it was, one of those remedies should have helped them.”
“Thero wondered about epilepsy,” Alec told him.
“But you can’t catch epilepsy, can you?” asked Seregil.
“Not that we know of, but we also don’t know what causes it,” Valerius told him. “And the salts should have brought them around.”
“It could be some form of plague that causes epilepsy,” Alec suggested. “But Seregil and I haven’t caught it yet, and we’ve been close to it. Same for the drysians who tend to them.”
“Often, there’s no rhyme or reason to who catches plague,” Valerius told him. “Sometimes it takes the old and sick. Sometimes it takes the young and healthy, and it’s never all of one and none of the other. This one seems to strike children the most often, but you have a few of the old and ill.”
“What about Nais, though?” Alec pointed out. “He was young, and healthy as far as I know. And he doesn’t look like he’s been sick.”
Valerius arched a bushy black brow. “And you can tell that by looking at him, can you, Brother Alec?”
“No, I didn’t mean to-”
“Don’t jump down his throat, Valerius. He’s concerned,” Seregil warned.
Valerius gazed around the room, expression softening a little. “It’s most certainly some new disease, and given where it’s been observed, I’d say it’s something brought in by sailors, as usual, or some trader. I’ve seen stranger things. As it is, though, I have no choice but to tell Prince Korathan.” He mopped his brow. “I can’t say I’m looking forward to it, though.”
“Well, he is a good deal easier to deal with than his sister,” Seregil pointed out with a smile. “But the Rhiminee merchants and the nobles who back them won’t like losing
custom to smaller ports up the coast, or beyond the Cirna Canal if he decides to close the Lower City, especially on account of an illness that strikes down only those in the most wretched wards.”
“Which is why the vicegerent relies on me and not them to judge such things.”
“Maybe whatever it is will pass when the heat breaks,” said Alec.
“Perhaps,” said Valerius, but he didn’t sound particularly hopeful. “I think it might be best if you two come with me to speak with Korathan, since you’ve seen more of it than I.” He cast a baleful look in the direction of the priest. “I should send him, so he can explain why he kept all this secret, but I see no point in wasting the prince’s time.”
The prince’s formal audience hours had not yet begun in the great hall. A servant led them instead through the royal household to the queen’s garden, where Korathan was taking breakfast alone and reading a tall stack of correspondence as he did so. Seregil hid a smile at the prince’s look of surprise as he and the others bowed.
Korathan rose and took Valerius’s hand, then raised an eyebrow at Seregil and Alec. “You two again? This is unexpected.”
“Please forgive the early intrusion, but we bring word of a matter of the utmost importance,” the drysian replied. “A new sickness has appeared in the Lower City and over a hundred people have died.”
The prince’s pale eyes narrowed dangerously at that. “And this is the first I’m hearing of it?”
“I only heard of it this morning, and from these two,” Valerius explained.
Korathan glanced at Seregil. “You certainly are busy fellows.”
The drysian went on. “The priests and healers down there have been trying to study it and manage it themselves, but it continues to spread. Last night Alec found a man in the Upper City, who’d apparently come up through the Harbor Way.”
Korathan sat down and waved them to the other chairs. “Bilairy’s Balls! As if we needed anything else this summer. Tell me more.”
“Seregil and Alec have seen more of it than I have.”
The two of them told the prince of the people they’d found, and the temple drysians’ reactions.
“You handled the bodies and yet you come here?” Korathan asked incredulously.
“Yes, and as you can see, Your Highness, we haven’t caught whatever it is,” Alec replied.
