The Poison Master Read online

  Looking now at the pendant, Alivet wondered again whether the old story was true. She preferred to believe that it was—and indeed, belief was not hard. The pendant was a curious thing: a cross of metal perhaps an inch long, studded with garnets and pearls. Upon it was bound the little figure of a man, each hand fixed to the arms of the cross. His head was bowed, drooping to one side like a flower that the sun has ceased to touch. It seemed likely that the piece had come from the deep fens, where the small pearls were spat from the murie shells and littered the shore like beads. But the more fanciful story had greater appeal for Alivet.

  “Who is this man?” she had asked her aunt, when she had first been shown the pendant.

  “I have no idea,” Elitta had replied. “I do not know who he might be, nor why he should be so sadly bound. There are no stories about him. Perhaps he had some meaning back in the Origin.” She smiled at Alivet. “Keep it safe. My grandmother said that it was a protection against evil.”

  Well, if ever she needed protection against that, it was surely now. But Alivet wondered, as she always did, whether the pendant had not been the reason why the Unpriests had taken Inki and not herself. It was a foolish, superstitious thought, but she had never been able to shake it off.

  The rest of the journey passed in a reverie of worry and plans. The phial that had contained the sozoma was still safely in her pocket; it might be a good idea to get that analyzed if she could find an alchemist. One of the backstreet people would probably do it without asking awkward questions. The possibility that the red-eyed Poison Master was involved with Madimi Garland's death had not been far from her mind ever since the events of the previous night. She was wary of being drawn into some kind of trap, but why would anyone bother? She was nobody special. Perhaps the empty phial might supply a clue.

  The boat was drawing to a halt. Alivet looked up. A collection of ceremonial poles towered above her: black and shiny, with clusters of russet marsh moss entwined about the wheels at the summits. The anube rowers and the steersman, some nine people in all, stood up smoothly. The steersman again gave his booming cry and it rang out across the marsh, seeming to splinter the afternoon light. There was a ripple in the black water ahead. Again the cry, and movement beneath the water: things sinuous and long, sidling up to the base of the poles.

  Alivet felt the air grow thick and shivery, and she looked at the marsh wife with unease. Sometimes people felt the need to cast themselves into the water around the poles and when they did, they sank without a sound and did not rise. But the marsh wife sat placidly chewing. The anube at the prow dropped a tangled mass into the water. There was a brief thrashing.

  Alivet drew quickly back from the side of the boat and took her seat on the opposite edge, away from the poles. She looked up across the marsh, in the direction from which they had come. The sky was beginning to darken along the eastern horizon: a thunderhead building up like an anvil over the fens. Alivet could see the swarms of insects beginning to rise from the rushes, conjured by the promise of rain. Then a glint of unnatural light caught her eye. Another boat was approaching. It moved swiftly through the channels and she heard the sound of a glide motor. It was not a pilgrimage boat. A figure stood erect in the prow; the profile was human. Perhaps it was nothing more than a farmer, returning from the markets of the city…

  Alivet strained to see. The sky grew darker. A curtain of rain swept across the marsh, seeming to drive the boat before it. The figure in the prow turned. She saw a black circle in the pallid face; the gleam of a lens. The anube's cry echoed out once more across the fens: a long, melancholy wail. Alivet drew her hood close about her face and nudged the arm of the nearest rower. The anube did not respond. It was staring into the untidy nest at the crest of the poles, where something was starting to stir.

  “Excuse me,” Alivet said, in an urgent whisper. “But I think an Unpriest's boat is coming.”

  The anube was silent. Alivet had never heard of any penalty for interrupting a devotion, but perhaps she was about to set a precedent. The boat would be upon them in minutes. She could take a chance and sit it out; she knew that fugitives sometimes fled into the marshes and perhaps the Unpriests' presence had nothing to do with her. Or she could cut and run—but Alivet glanced at the writhing water on either side of the boat and dismissed that possibility almost as soon as it occurred to her. Then she realized that the anube at the prow had spotted the approaching boat. It gave a low hiss, perhaps of disapproval.

  “Make your offerings!” it instructed the passengers. Fumbling for the pouch in her pocket, Alivet took out some of the lamp seeds and, with one eye on the approaching boat, held them out. The anube took them without comment and scattered them around the base of the poles. The glowing seeds seemed to burrow into the mud, as though twisting downward by their own volition.

  The first heavy drops of rain began to fall. Alivet glanced anxiously at the boat, which had now cut its glide engines and was sailing smoothly up the channel. It was now some fifty yards from the pilgrimage boat. The Unpriest at its prow was wrapped in a waterproof greatcoat; its tails streamed out behind him like half-unfurled wings. The lens in his eye had spiraled inward, so that the socket seemed puckered and bruised. Behind him, a woman crouched in the stern of the boat, leather-gloved fingers skittering over the engine casing. Unhurriedly the anube took offerings from the two old men, who clucked and muttered at the sight of the Unpriests, and from the marsh wife, still chewing her narcotic gum with bovine contentment. Alivet turned her hooded face away from the Unpriest and tried to look small and unobtrusive.

  A sudden flurry of rain drummed on the floor of the pilgrimage boat. The last echo of the anube's cry fluted across the marsh and the steersman turned the prow of the boat away from the poles. Alivet held her breath, her heart hammering. They were moving out into another channel beyond the poles, out of the path of the glide boat. The head of the Unpriest snapped sharply up; the lens flickered.

  “Remain where you are! We wish to question your passengers.” It was a reedy, sibilant voice, suggesting that the Unpriest's vocal cords had undergone modification. The anubes behaved as if they had not heard. The steersman adjusted the tiller and signaled to the rowers. They pulled on the oars. The pilgrimage boat shot forward.

  “Stop!” The glide boat nudged the edge of the poles. Alivet saw the water beneath grow suddenly still. Cold rain scattered across her hood. She looked up and saw a livid edge of cloud, glaring with the light of the hidden sun and a crack of sky. Then the clouds drew together. A shadow swept across the marsh. The Unpriest in the prow raised a long-barreled thing to his shoulder; Alivet recognized a webgun. If they were after her, at least she was wanted alive—but if you spent too long under a web it would eat into the skin, cause lesions that could prove fatal if touched by the infected waters of the fens.

  The Unpriest fired. The glistening strands of the web fell out like white flame across the water. The anube steersman whistled an order and the boat spun around. The web fell short, hissing into the marsh. The Unpriest raised the gun again, adjusted the range, and methodically fired. The edge of the web fell across the marsh wife, who uttered a shrill, startled cry as though she had only just realized that they were under attack. Glutinous, burning strands attached themselves to Alivet's hand, welding it to the side of the boat. The marsh wife fell against her, entangling her further in the web. Lightning cracked through the clouds and hissed into the marsh.

  Alivet, knocked to the floor of the boat by the marsh wife's struggles, saw in the sudden light that the nest at the top of the poles was moving. An elongated, dark red body twisted out and up, and fell on top of the Unpriests. Alivet glimpsed a bristling underside and a series of mouths like the lenses of a camera. The female Unpriest gave a sudden shrill scream, but the weight of the fallen thing was enough to roll her boat over. The Unpriests were sucked down into the marsh. A few ripples corrugated the surface, then all was calm and silent.

  The steersman heeled the pilgrimage boat around
and drew it farther up the channel. The marsh wife was still uttering small, yipping cries as she struggled. Alivet felt as though nails had been driven through her hand. She gritted her teeth against the pain and snapped, “Stay still! You're just making it worse.”

  “Only itumin will dissolve that,” one of the old men said, with something approaching satisfaction. “Never any good for anything else, but wonderful stuff for the fire nets. Wonder what the dredgers wanted? Nothing here for them, you'd have thought.”

  Alivet twisted round to look at him. “You wouldn't happen to have any itumin, by any chance?”

  “Oh, not here, Sister. You need to keep it in a jar. Got a jar on my boat—it's at the next wharf.” He made a sucking sound, as if remembering something. “Expensive stuff, too,” he told Alivet, and fixed her with a rheumy eye.

  “I can pay,” Alivet said, with very bad grace.

  “That you'll have to.”

  Eventually, she reached an accommodation with the marsh wife. At least they were not welded to one another; Alivet was learning to be thankful for small mercies. Half sitting, half crouching, they remained in the bottom of the pilgrimage boat as it sped up the channel. The poles receded into the distance, as the storm flattened the reeds and rushes and drenched the passengers of the boat into a dreary silence.

  Chapter VI

  CITY OF LEVANAH, MONTH OF DRAGONFLIES

  By the time the pilgrimage boat came in sight of the Shadow Town docks, the storm had set in for the day. Alivet knew these torrents. Every autumn they boiled up from the south and rolled over the world, to drive the waters of the fens into a turbulent froth. But there was one good thing about the rain: it might keep the Unpriests from her path for a time. First, however, she was obliged to wait until the old man went to his boat and found the itumin. She was soon lighter of coin, but free from the Unpriests' web. She looked around, but there was no sign of the red-eyed Poison Master. Alivet swallowed bitterness. Perhaps he had no intention of meeting her here; perhaps it had been nothing more than some peculiar caprice. She could feel the note in her pocket, its presence heavy as lead. She wondered whether her message had reached Elitta, whether her aunt even now might be taking refuge.

  Alivet swore under her breath. The thought of her poor aunt forced to flee into the fens flooded her with hot guilt. If she hadn't gone to Kightly's office to get the formulations, if she'd only stayed by her client and kept an eye on Madimi… But it was pointless to fret over what-might-have-beens.

  The anube helmsman helped her from the boat, saying nothing about what had occurred. Looking back, it seemed unreal: the pursuit, the attack, the vanishing of the Unpriests into the marsh. There was only a rope burn along her hand to remind her, but Alivet knew that it was not yet over. She had to get away from the wharf. Mumbling a hasty farewell to the marsh wife, she hurried along the dock.

  Shadow Town was a far more prosperous area than the Little Swamp district. Here, the stilt-houses were tall, built of dark wood with plaster panels and bronze trim. Looking up, Alivet saw that each curved gable was ornamented with a gaping face: the stylized visages of whisps and momes, an old superstition designed to deter anything that might creep in from the fens. Even in the chancy storm light, Alivet could see through the gaps in the houses to the edges of the fens, and here there were no twisting trees or dank pools, but square upon square of riverwheat pasture.

  Farther down the street lay a row of boardinghouses. Alivet looked longingly through the glowing windows, their lamps lit early against the storm, and thought of hot food and soft beds. But this part of town would be too expensive for her, quite apart from the risk of discovery. The Unpriests would surely be enraged at the loss of two of their number; they were proud to the point of madness and deeply resented humiliation. They were likely to double their efforts in tracking her down and someone would surely tell them that the boat had been heading for Shadow Town. Alivet fought despair. If she could find a pawnshop, she might be able to cash in her apprentice rings, but she shied away from the thought. It would be like selling herself. She still had a few coins left. She stopped at a stall and bought a bag of day-old bread.

  “Are you from the city, then?” From the tone of the stall woman's voice, the people of Shadow Town clearly felt themselves a cut above those unfortunate enough to reside in other parts of Levanah. Alivet muttered noncommittally and turned to go, but as she stepped from beneath the awning, something soared overhead. She dodged back. It was one of the Unpriests' scarab fliers, coming in from over the marsh. Its jade sides were slick with rain and the containment field crackled and spat like lightning. Beside Alivet, the stall woman craned her neck over the counter to get a better look. The flier veered low over a row of houses and disappeared.

  “Wonder what they're looking for,” the stall woman said. Her eyes narrowed with spite, her disapproval of Alivet was forgotten in the face of the common enemy. “Nothing for them here. You'd better get out of this rain, lovey. You'll catch your death.”

  Alivet, still staring in the direction of the flier, numbly agreed. Best find a place to hide. She stepped around the back of the stall and hastened down a side street. It was a wise, if inadvertent choice. Alivet found herself in a maze of small lanes, leading between tall houses. This must be the commercial district, for she could see signs for apothecaries and alchemists; ignatonic repair establishments; an Experience merchant's place with a grand gilt sign. It made her wonder how Genever might be faring. The narrow streets were crowded in spite of the rain. Alivet stepped under an overhang to avoid the rush. Everyone looked self-important and well dressed, as though they had somewhere to go and something urgent to attend to. Well, so did she. This would be a good place to get the phial analyzed, and it would get her off the street, too.

  Alivet chose the seediest-looking apothecarium. She closed her fist to hide the betraying tattoo, and hoped that the apothecary would not recognize her for a fellow drugmaker. It was a frail hope, for a trained nose would be able to detect the perfumes that clung to her: sorivoy and tumerith ingrained into her skin and her hair still bearing traces of colote even after a night spent in the cold airs of the fens.

  She could not smell herself, but whenever an apothecary stepped close to her in the streets around Port Tree or Heretic's Marsh, she could recognize a fellow worker from the accompanying melange of odors: subtle spices, drifts of astringency and sourness. If she lived through this, perhaps she would purchase a perfume to conceal her own betraying scent, but such things were unpopular among the apothecarial community, who claimed that they wrecked the delicate balance of the senses. Alivet was inclined to agree. She hesitated beneath the stranger's wheel before touching her palm to the frame of the door in respect and going inside.

  Within, it was cool and dark, fragrant with a thousand odors. Alivet felt as though she had come home. She looked up at the plants that lined the shelves with as much relief as if she had stepped through the door of her own small chamber. At the end of the room, in the shadows, a voice said, “Yes? What do you want?”

  “I need to get something analyzed. My sister had an allergic reaction to something last night. I'd like to get to the bottom of it.”

  Someone stepped out of the shadows, wiping his hands on a towel. Alivet saw a gangling man of middle age, with untidy wisps and drifts of hair above a thinning scalp. His overalls were stained. Evidently, she had interrupted his work.

  He asked impatiently, “What was it, then? Jherolie? Tope? The number of people I've had in here this week, complaining about boils and wheezing—there must have been a bad batch. Not from here, I hasten to add. I only give out tope on prescription, and then only in the most modest doses. Tell your sister to use emollient cream and sleep with the window open. Should get better in a week or two.”

  “It wasn't tope. She took sozoma.”

  The apothecary snorted. “Wasn't an allergy, then. You might as well posit that she's allergic to air.”

  “Maybe it wasn't, but I'd like the phial
analyzed anyway, just as a precaution. Also a—that is, my sister's handkerchief.”

  “Wise, wise,” the apothecary mumbled. “Takes snuff, does she? Well, you never know. Bring them here and I'll run them both under the phonoscope. That'll be three fens and a penny.”

  In silence, careful not to stand too close, Alivet handed over the phial, the handkerchief, and the money. The apothecary, taking all three, ran a swab around the sides of the phial. He sniffed it once, quickly, then placed the swab in the phonoscope and set the dial. The phonoscope whirred.

  “It'll take a few minutes,” the apothecary said.

  Alivet took a seat on a nearby stool to wait. Her thoughts drifted back to Genever. What if he had killed the girl? Yet even though he had abandoned her after Madimi's death, she couldn't see Genever slaying someone. Besides, he had seemed so concerned about Madimi: positively insisting on the application of the reviving salts. What if it had been the salts themselves that had poisoned the girl? But they were Alivet's own; Genever could have had no access to her bag and the last time she had occasion to use the salts on a client, all had been well. Anyway, what would Genever possibly have to gain from slaughtering a client? Or for implicating Alivet? He'd killed someone once, he had told her wearily, in one of the rented punishment booths, and the experience had not come up to expectations. Alivet shuddered. Was there anything Genever Thant had not done, in his thirty- odd years in the Experience trade? She hoped she'd still be able to get a thrill out of things when she reached fifty—if she lived. Perhaps the answer was to be born poor. At least then you appreciated little luxuries like thyme tea and breathing.

  She was not even certain that whatever had killed Madimi Garland had been contained in the sozoma itself. It could have been in the sorbet. Or perhaps the voluptuary, leaning so suggestively over Genever, had released something into the air. Madimi Garland was an heiress, after all. There must be many people who would benefit from her death. And then there was the question of the Poison Master.