A little acolyte answered the door and put a finger to his lips as he let them in. Valerius stood at a small altar similar to the one in the hall, wreathed in incense as he made the daily offerings for the queen, the city, and the land, assisted by two older acolytes, one male and one female.
Alec made a sign of respect and bowed his head. Seregil folded his arms and leaned against the wall by the door.
When the last of the wine, grain, and oil had been dispensed with, Valerius dusted his hands on the front of his gold-embroidered green robe and turned to them with a look of annoyance. “Well? I suppose you have some good reason for interrupting my morning ritual?”
“We need your opinion on something,” Seregil replied.
“What’s wrong with your voice? Do you have a cold?”
Seregil nodded slightly toward the acolytes.
Valerius dismissed them. “What’s all this, then?” He noted Alec’s bandaged hand. “In trouble again?”
“We were attacked by assassins,” Alec told him.
Valerius snorted. “Surprised it doesn’t happen more often. Let me see.”
He unwrapped Alec’s hand, then inspected the shallow cut on Seregil’s throat. “Clean cuts. No infections.” He rested a hand on Alec’s head and gave some healing that made Alec shiver.
“What about me?” Seregil asked.
“For that little scratch? You’ll heal. Is this what you came for?”
“No, Valerius. We were wondering if you’d heard anything about a strange sickness in the Lower City?”
“It’s being called sleeping death,” Alec added.
The drysian raised a bushy black eyebrow at that. “Sleeping death? No, not a word. Since when have you two turned physician?”
“It’s just something we stumbled across,” Alec explained. “Last night I found a few people with it up here, near Brass Alley.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it, and neither have your healers,” Seregil said.
The drysian’s frown was ominous. “Why haven’t I heard about this from them?”
“I think they’re afraid of quarantine, but it doesn’t seem to be passed by touch. Alec and I both have handled the sick ones before we realized what it was and we’re fine. So are the drysians taking care of them.”
“What are the symptoms?”
“People just fall down and lie there with their eyes open until they die,” Alec explained. “Do you know what could cause that?”
“Sounds like some sort of fit.” The drysian led them through the cool dark corridors to his chambers. The sitting room and bedchamber, visible through an open doorway, were austere and sparsely furnished. His private library overlooking the gardens and grove, however, was impressively stocked, lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves of ancient books and racks of scrolls, with ladders for reaching the highest ones. Deep, comfortable armchairs flanked a couch in front of a black basalt fireplace carved with garlands of herbs.
Another chair, more worn than the others, stood by one of the tall open windows, the table beside it already stacked with books.
“Make yourselves comfortable,” Valerius said absently, already perusing a shelf.
Seregil helped himself to a gold-stamped book on herbal medicine. Alec found one filled with pictures of poisonous plants and they settled down to wait.
The drysian climbed a ladder, retrieved several weighty volumes, and sat down in the chair by the window. For nearly an hour the only sound in the room was the soft flutter of turning pages and the rustle of leaves in the grove outside.
At last, Valerius added the books to the pile on the table beside him, then consulted another book and several scrolls in quick succession. “No, nothing exactly like that. Not that lasts that long with the eyes open.”
“Care to come see for yourself?” asked Seregil, knowing full well what the answer would be.
The Harbor Way was less oven-like at this early hour, and once they reached the Lower City, a freshening sea breeze cooled their faces. The Grampus Street temple stood at the far end of the ward, near the north mole.
The Maker’s temples were always humble in comparison with those of the other Immortals of the Four, but this one, though larger than the shrines in the area, lacked even a single tree by way of a grove, just a weathered stump near the front door with a potted bay tree sitting on it. It was a low, flat-roofed stone building, and only its cleanly swept front yard and the sheaf pattern painted over the doorway set it apart from the neighboring houses. Even so, there were doves about, and the youngest acolytes in their short brown robes were spreading the morning offerings to the birds when they arrived.
Valerius had changed into a simpler brown robe, though nothing so plain as his old drysian garb from his wandering days. The lemniscate he wore around his neck was made of gold now, but his staff was the same simple, worn one he’d always carried.
His arrival caused quite a stir. Tongue-tied acolytes bowed and led their unexpected guests through the offering hall and into a larger room beyond.
Twenty-seven people-most of them children-lay on pallets around the room, each dressed in a long nightshirt 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.”