The trouble with dog-leeches, of course, was that one took one’s chances with their abilities and credentials. Some really were trained healers, fallen on hard times or banished from the profession for crimes such as grave-robbing. Others were merely improvisers, applying years’ worth of practical knowledge acquired tending to the results of bar fights and muggings. A few were entirely mad, or homicidal, or-charmingly-both.
“My colleagues are dog-leeches,” sniffed Ibelius. “I am a physiker, Collegium-trained. Your own recovery is a testament to that.”
Locke glanced around the room. He was lying (wearing nothing but a breechclout) on a pallet in a corner of what must have been an abandoned Ashfall villa. A canvas curtain hung over the room’s only door; two orange-white alchemical lanterns filled the space with light. Locke’s throat was dry, his body still ached, and he smelled rather unpleasant-not all of it was the natural odor of an unwashed man. A strange translucent residue flaked off his stomach and sternum. He poked at it with his fingers.
“What,” said Locke, “is this crap on my chest?”
“The poultice, sir. Varagnelli’s Poultice, to be precise, though I hardly presume your familiarity with the subject. I employed it to concentrate the waning energy of your bodily channels; to confine the motion of your warm humors in the region where it would do you the most good. To wit, your abdomen. We did not want your energy to dissipate.”
“What was in it?”
“The poultice is a proprietary conglomeration, but the essence of its function is provided by the admixture of the gardener’s assistant and turpentine.”
“Gardener’s assistant?”
“Earthworms,” said Jean. “He means earthworms ground in turpentine.”
“And you let him smear it all over me?” Locke groaned and sank back down onto the pallet.
“Only your abdomen, sir-your much-abused abdomen.”
“He’s the physiker,” said Jean. “I’m only good at breaking people; I don’t put them back together.”
“What happened to me, anyway?”
“Enervation-absolute enervation, as thorough as I’ve ever seen it.” Ibelius lifted Locke’s left wrist while he spoke and felt for a pulse. “Jean told me that you took an emetic, the evening of Duke’s Day.”
“Did I ever!”
“And that you ate and drank nothing afterward. That you were then seized, and severely beaten, and nearly slain by immersion in a cask of horse urine-how fantastically vile, sir, you have my sympathies. And that you had received a deep wound to your left forearm; a wound that is now scabbing over nicely, no thanks to your ordeals. And that you remained active all evening despite your injuries and your exhaustion. And that you pursued your course with the utmost dispatch, taking no rest.”
“Sounds vaguely familiar.”
“You simply collapsed, sir. In layman’s terms, your body revoked its permission for you to continue heaping abuse upon it.” Ibelius chuckled.
“How long have I been here?”
“Two days and two nights,” said Jean.
“What? Gods damn me. Out cold the whole time?”
“Quite,” said Jean. “I watched you fall over; I wasn’t thirty yards away, crouched in hiding. Took me a few minutes to realize why the bearded old beggar looked familiar.”
“I have kept you somewhat sedated,” said Ibelius. “For your own good.”
“Gods damn it!”
“Clearly, my judgment was sound, as you would have had no will to rest otherwise. And it made it easier to use a series of fairly unpleasant poultices to greatly reduce the swelling and bruising of your face. Had you been awake, you surely would have complained of the smell.”
“Argh,” said Locke. “Tell me you have something at hand I can drink, at least.”
Jean passed him a skin of red wine; it was warm and sour and watered to the point that it was more pink than red, but Locke drank half of it down in a rapid series of undignified gulps.
“Have a care, Master Lamora, have a care,” said Ibelius. “I fear you have little conception of your own natural limitations. Make him take the soup, Jean. He needs to regain his animal strength, or his humors will fade again. He is far too thin for his own good; he is fast approaching anemia.”
Locke devoured the proffered soup (boiled shark in a milk-and-potato stew; bland, congealed, many hours past freshness, and positively the most splendid thing he could recall ever having tasted), and then stretched. “Two days, gods. I don’t suppose we’ve been lucky enough to have Capa Raza fall down some stairs and break his neck?”
“Hardly,” said Jean. “He’s still with us. Him and his Bondsmage. They’ve been very busy, those two. It might interest you to know that the Gentlemen Bastards are formally outcast, and I’m presumed alive, worth five hundred crowns to the man that brings me in. Preferably after I stop breathing.”
“Hmmm,” said Locke. “Dare I ask, Master Ibelius, what keeps you here smearing earthworms on my behalf when either of us is your key to Capa Raza’s monetary favor?”
“I can explain that,” said Jean. “Seems there was another Ibelius, who worked for Barsavi as one of his Floating Grave guards. A loyal Barsavi man, I should say.”
“Oh,” said Locke. “My condolences, Master Ibelius. A brother?”
“My younger brother. The poor idiot; I kept telling him to find another line of work. It seems we have a great deal of common sorrow, courtesy of Capa Raza.”
“Yes,” said Locke. “Yes, Master Ibelius. I’m going to put that fucker in the dirt as deeply as any man who’s ever been murdered, ever since the world began.”
“Ahhh,” said Ibelius. “So Jean says. And that’s why I’m not even charging for my services. I cannot say I think highly of your chances, but any enemy of Capa Raza is most welcome to my care, and to my discretion.”
“Too kind,” said Locke. “I suppose if I must have earthworms and turpentine smeared on my chest, I’m very happy to have you…ah, overseeing the affair.”
“Your servant, sir,” said Ibelius.
“Well, Jean,” said Locke, “we seem to have a hiding place, a physiker, and the two of us. What are our other assets?”
“Ten crowns, fifteen solons, five coppers,” said Jean. “That cot you’re lying on. You ate the wine and drank the soup. I’ve got the Wicked Sisters, of course. A few cloaks, some boots, your clothes. And all the rotting plaster and broken masonry a man could dream of.”
“And that’s it?”
“Yes, except for one small thing.” Jean held up the silver mesh mask of a priest of Aza Guilla. “The aid and comfort of the Lady of the Long Silence.”
“How the hell did you arrange that?”
“Right after I dropped you off at the edge of the Cauldron,” said Jean, “I decided to row back to the Temple District and make myself useful.”
2
THE FIRE within the House of Perelandro had yet to finish burning when Jean Tannen threw himself down, half-dressed, at the service entrance to the House of Aza Guilla, two squares northeast of the temple the Gentlemen Bastards had called their home.
Elderglass and stone could not burn, of course, but the contents of the House of Perelandro were another matter. With the Elderglass reflecting and concentrating the heat of the flames, everything within the burrow would be scorched to white ash, and the rising heat would certainly do for the contents of the actual temple. A bucket brigade of yellowjackets milled around the upper temple, with little to do but wait for the heat and the hideous death-scented smoke to cease boiling out from the doors.
Jean banged a fist on the latched wooden door behind the Death Goddess’ temple and prayed for the Crooked Warden’s aid in maintaining the Verrari accent he had too rarely practiced in recent months. He knelt down, to make himself seem more pathetic.