Master of Plagues: A Nicolas Lenoir Novel (3 page)

Reck scowled back at him. “I’m not the one being coy. All I know is what His Honor’s letter said, and that wasn’t much. There’s some kind of epidemic at the Camp, and he’s afraid it’s getting out of hand.”

“I have heard the rumors, of course, but . . . what has it to do with us? It is unfortunate, but hardly unusual. Disease is the wildfire of the slums. You can count upon it razing the ground every now and then. It is not a matter for the police.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.” Lendon Reck, like Nicolas Lenoir, was not a man inclined to sentimentality. “Look, there’s no point grousing about it. The lord mayor calls; we come running.” The chief’s tone left little doubt about his own lack of enthusiasm for this endeavor, and Lenoir decided it was pointless to press the matter further. He would have his answers soon enough.

The walls outside the carriage window soon gave way to sloping lawns and manicured hedges, signaling their arrival at the mayoral mansion. Lenoir could not suppress a sour turn of his mouth. Emmory Lyle Hearstings had been lord mayor of Kennian for three years, and in that time, he had thoroughly distinguished himself as one of the most fatuous creatures on hind legs. Lenoir had never been endowed with a great store of patience, but few taxed his meager reserves more thoroughly than His Honor. The sole stroke of good fortune was that Hearstings was generally too thick to notice. Still, Reck was taking no chances: as the carriage shuddered to a halt, he leveled a finger at Lenoir and said, “On your best behavior, Inspector, or I’ll have you patrolling with the pups.”

Lenoir might have declared such an activity to be preferable to the current enterprise, but he had no wish to antagonize the chief further, so he merely nodded.

They were shown to a frilly parlor and offered tea. They both declined. The chamberlain invited them to sit,
indicating a delicate-looking sofa upholstered with elaborately embroidered silk. Reck frowned at it dubiously, as though he had been invited to sit on a poodle. He opted for a more functional-looking chair instead. Lenoir perched on the proffered sofa, if a little gingerly.

“A fine piece, newly commissioned,” the chamberlain said, his pride evidently piqued by the chief’s rebuff.

“It’s . . . nice,” Reck said, a peace offering. “Goes with the style of the room.”

“Arrènais,” the chamberlain said, and Lenoir succumbed to a fit of coughing.

His Honor kept them waiting, as was his wont. It would not do for him to seem too available. Reck folded his arms and scowled at the carpet. Lenoir drummed his fingers on his trousers (the only genuinely Arrènais fabric in the room, or he was a fishwife). The clock on the mantel measured out the passage of time with prim precision. The chamberlain reappeared now and then to update them on His Honor’s unavailability, and to offer tea. Eventually, he was obliged to draw the curtains against the increasingly intrusive slant of the afternoon sun.

By the time Hearstings graced them with his presence, even Reck had had enough; he sprang to his feet like a scalded cat. “Your Honor.”

“Chief Reck.” The lord mayor’s improbable mustaches perked up as he smiled. “I hope I haven’t kept you waiting too long. And Inspector! I trust you are
par rinn . . .
er,
par renne—”

“Very well. Thank you,” Lenoir said before further violence could be done to his mother tongue.

“Yes, well. Very good. Please, gentlemen, take a seat.” Hearstings lowered his own ponderous girth into an armchair. Even as he sat, he reached inside his jacket and consulted his pocket watch in a gesture contrived enough to grace a portrait, or perhaps even hard currency. “How are things at the station?”

“Fine, thank you, Your Honor,” Reck said.

“A lovely graduation ceremony last week. You must so enjoy welcoming the new lads.”

“One of the privileges of the job.”

“Excellent food too. We must be allocating too much coin to the Metropolitan Police!” His Honor barked out a laugh.

A vein swelled in the chief’s forehead, a sign every hound knew and dreaded.

Hearstings was oblivious. “By the way, Reck, are you looking into that business of Einhorn’s?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh, good. I heard there was quite an incident at the auctioneer’s. Why, did you know—”

“Excuse me, Your Honor, I thought you wanted to discuss the Camp?”

“Ah, indeed.” The lord mayor assumed a solemn look, running his thumb and forefinger along his mustaches. “I’ll come straight to the point.”

Somehow, the chief managed to nod without a hint of irony.

“We have an epidemic in the Camp,” Hearstings said. “Horrid disease, from what I hear. Men bleeding to death from the inside out.”

Reck grimaced. “Sounds ugly.”

“That’s an understatement. Have you ever heard of anything like it?”

The chief shook his head. “You, Lenoir?”

“No, Chief, I have not.”

“Neither has my physician,” said Hearstings. “So far, it’s confined to the Camp, thank God, but it’s making a damn mess of the place. If it gets out of hand, I’ll have panic on my hands.”

Lenoir did not doubt that was true, but he still failed to see where the police came into it. So did Reck, apparently, for he asked, “What exactly do you need from us?”

Hearstings fluttered his hand, as though shooing a fly. “I’m sure it’s nothing, but I promised Lideman I’d send
for you. Head out there first thing in the morning. Talk to him. Hear him out, let me know if you think there’s anything in it, that’s all.”

Lenoir and Reck exchanged a blank look. “Lideman? And he is . . . ?”

“From the College of Physicians. Head of Medical Sciences. He’s been out at the Camp the past few days looking into this. He has . . . theories.”

“About what, exactly?”

“Why, about the disease, of course. About where it came from.”

“No doubt that is a fascinating puzzle for a physician,” Lenoir said, “but it is not the concern of the Metropolitan Police.”

Reck shot him a warning look. “What Lenoir means, Your Honor, is that my hounds are hardly qualified—”

“You misunderstand,” the lord mayor said. “I’m not asking you to solve a medical mystery. I’m asking you to look into a potential crime. You see, Lideman doesn’t think the disease reached the Camp on its own. He believes it was planted.”

For a moment, Lenoir was not sure he had heard right. “Planted. Meaning, deliberately.”

“Yes.”

Reck leaned forward, his chair creaking beneath him. “You think someone started a plague
on purpose
?”

“It sounds outlandish, I know, but Lideman is absolutely convinced. If he’s right, it means someone is trying to commit mass murder.”

More than a thousand bodies,
the chief had said. And that was just the beginning. “If he is right,” Lenoir said, “someone is succeeding.”

“I
don’t get it,” said Kody.

If he had all day, Lenoir could not possibly enumerate all the ways in which that was true. “Could you be more specific, Sergeant?”

“It just seems kind of far-fetched. I mean, why would anybody want to start an epidemic?”

Lenoir guided his horse toward the stone archway that marked the Stag’s Gate, nodding at the guard as he neared. It had always struck him as a quaint anachronism—putting guards on a gate that no longer held any significance, the old walls having long since been outstripped by the growth of the city—but he played along. It was still theoretically possible for the guards to refuse someone passage, and in Lenoir’s experience, minor authorities enjoyed nothing better than flexing their muscle. It was best not to tempt them. Instead, he held his horse patiently while the guard made a great show of inspecting a handcart before waving it through, as though the old woman wheeling it were passing from the countryside into the city, instead of from Houndsrow to Whitmarch.

“And if you
did
want to start an epidemic,” Kody went on, “why do it in the Camp? Why not somewhere more central, like Greenmire or Stonesgully?”

The sergeant had a point. If the goal was to spread the disease as rapidly as possible, it would make more sense to plant it somewhere within the city walls, where conditions were ripest. The population density, the location—the inner city slums made ideal breeding grounds for disease. The Camp outdid them all for sheer squalor, but it was far enough on the outskirts of the city that some did not even consider it part of Kennian proper.

“Those are the right questions,” Lenoir said, “but this is not the right time to ask them. It is far too early to guess at motives. We do not even know if this Lideman’s theory is correct, and the disease was planted deliberately.”

“I wonder if he’s the real thing. Most of these so-called physicians are charlatans, if you ask me. Although, I suppose if he’s Head of Medical Sciences at the college, he must have some credentials. . . .”

The sergeant continued to prattle on, but Lenoir had stopped listening. In moments like these, he pined for the good old days, when Bran Kody had despised him too much to indulge in idle chatter. Like a plant that wants nothing but air to survive, Lenoir had been content for his relationship with Kody to subsist entirely on cold silences. Alas, those days were gone.

“Speculation is fruitless, Sergeant,” he interrupted. “We have not a shred of evidence to go on. For the moment, we must content ourselves with observation.”
Silent observation, God willing.

Kody took the hint and subsided.

As they drew farther away from the old walls, the scene around them grew ever more disorganized. Where the inner city was a complex warren of narrow, twisting alleys, and the more distinguished suburbs of Morningside an ordered procession of genteel houses, the streets of Houndsrow seemed almost to exist by accident. Eight-story tenements vied for space with ancient stone farmhouses capped with thatch, the latter looking for all the world as if they had sprouted up between the gaps like
furry little mushrooms after a rain. The tenements were topped with timber jetties that slanted out over the streets, giving the buildings a precarious lean, as if they had suffered a paralytic stroke. Every inch of space was accounted for, yet few of them well. Every now and then, Lenoir and Kody would pass a cobbled square with a fountain, or an ancient church, or some other remnant of a village that had long since been swallowed by Kennian’s voracious appetite for expansion. Mostly, though, the Evenside suburbs were a place of semipermanence, a haphazard landscape sketched in rough, hasty lines. Lenoir and Kody wended their way through the jumble until they reached Addleman’s Bridge, a narrow path of stone arching over the slow, moody waters of the River Sherrin. The river marked the edge of the city proper. On the near bank stood the modest suburb of Fishering; on the far bank, the Camp. In between, Addleman’s Bridge marked the last bastion of civilization.

Kody sighed. “Here we are.”

Lenoir shared the sergeant’s lack of enthusiasm. The last time he had been here, it was in the company of a supernatural creature who wanted him dead. Somehow, he had survived that night, and even found an ally in the vengeful spirit who had once hunted him. But that did not mean he was eager for a reminder of the experience. It made the scar on his right forearm squirm a little, as though maggots wriggled just under the skin.

“Let us be as quick as we can about it,” Lenoir said, and he spurred his horse.

He could see the pestilence houses from the bridge, their pale peaks looming over the hovels like a range of snowcapped mountains. They could not have been there long, judging from the crisp white color of the canvas, but there were already at least two rows of them.
There will be more,
Lenoir thought,
before this thing is done.

As they neared the foot of the bridge, he felt increasingly uneasy. The cold clatter of their hooves intruded
upon an eerie hush, as though they were barging uninvited into a funeral. Mercifully, the sound died away as the horses passed from stone onto earth, their hooves beating out a dull, irregular rhythm, like the stutter of a terrified heart. The street was nearly deserted. A few people stirred here and there—carrying water, or firewood, or sacks of flour—but they went about their business in hurried silence. No children played in the street. No idle youths loitered about. Even the stray dogs sat subdued as the horses plodded past.

Kody threw Lenoir a grim look, but he did not speak. Disturbing the silence seemed disrespectful somehow.

The pestilence houses had been erected a short distance from the river, for ease of access to the water. The ranks of white tents looked like the camp of some invading army. Both sights were familiar to Lenoir, and they often coincided, as they had during the revolution in his home country. Lenoir’s beloved city of Serles had suffered greatly under the twin scourges of violence and disease; his adolescence had been a study of death in every possible shade.

More delightful memories
. The Camp seemed to be full of them.

They found Lideman in the largest of the tents, where the procedures were performed. A row of cots lined the space on either side, each one occupied by a patient. Lenoir spotted the physician immediately: he strolled between the rows, hands folded behind his back, as though he were taking a leisurely walk in the public gardens. Behind him trailed a younger man, furiously scribbling notes in a ledger. They had not yet noticed the visitors, and Lenoir could not prevent his gaze from roaming over the patient beds in morbid curiosity.

He immediately wished he had not.

Men, women, and children of every shape and size occupied the cots, about fifty in all. Their pale flesh gleamed with sweat, and their hair clung to their scalps in matted
clumps. Some seemed to suffer only from fever, but others presented ghastlier symptoms, looking almost as if they had been beaten half to death. Their arms and chests were covered with massive purple welts, and their limbs appeared swollen. Dark blood trickled out of nostrils, from the corners of mouths. Bloody tears streaked faces white as death. The smell of rotting flesh hung in the air, like a butcher’s on a hot day. Lenoir threw his arm up over his nose and mouth to prevent himself from retching. Kody did the same, backing away instinctively until he bumped against a table and was forced to grab it to steady himself. Instruments rattled, and Kody cursed quietly.

Lideman and his young assistant turned at the sound. Both men wore scarves tied around their faces. “Gentlemen, you should not be here!” the physician called. “It is not safe!”

“We are with the Metropolitan Police,” said Lenoir through his sleeve. “We have been sent by the lord mayor.”

Lideman grunted. “Good. But it is still not safe. Wait outside, and I will be with you directly.” Turning to his assistant, he said, “Ten more minutes of draining, and not a moment more. These people have little enough blood to spare.”

Draining?
Lenoir looked again at the nearest cot, and he realized that some of what he had taken for bruises were actually leeches.
Of course.
Braelish physicians and their leeches.

Kody’s nose wrinkled behind his sleeve, and he glanced at Lenoir.
See?
the look seemed to say.
Charlatans.

They quit the tent without any further encouragement, waiting for Lideman to join them. In spite of what they had just seen, neither man spoke; the strange hush had descended over them again. They watched mutely as a steady procession of nuns moved between the tents, carrying bloody rags, pails of dark liquid, and assorted other items Lenoir did not care to scrutinize. A pair of young
men, presumably medical students, appeared at the mouth of one of the tents, bearing a litter with a sheet draped over it. A child, judging by the length of the body.

“Where do you bury them?” Lenoir asked, breaking the silence as Lideman joined them.

The physician tugged the scarf down, revealing a kind face lined with care. “A trench near the edge of the woods. We don’t have time for individual graves anymore.” He held out a hand. When Lenoir hesitated, he smiled. “You are wise to be cautious, but you needn’t worry. I touch nothing with my bare hands.”

Even as he spoke, Lenoir noticed the leather gloves stuffed into the physician’s coat pocket. The coat itself appeared to have been treated with some kind of wax, and the hem was unusually long, reaching almost to the ground. The physician was taking no chances.
“Inspector Nicolas Lenoir,” he said as he shook, “and this is Sergeant Kody.”

“Horst Lideman, from the College of Physicians. But I suppose you already knew that.” He gestured at a small green tent set apart from the others. “This way, please, Inspector. It’s not much safer out here than it is in the treatment tent.”

They followed Lideman into the green tent, which appeared to be a makeshift office. A desk laden with books and ledgers crowded the space, leaving only enough room for a few extra chairs. A soft globe of light from a pair of lanterns was all that illuminated the space.
A gloomy place for gloomy work,
Lenoir thought, taking one of the proffered chairs.

“I’m glad His Honor sent you,” Lideman said as he sat behind the desk. “I wasn’t sure he would. He didn’t seem to put much stock in our theory.” There was no bitterness in the words; it was simply a statement of fact.

“
Our
theory?” Lenoir arched an eyebrow.

“The college is of one mind on this. The disease was definitely planted.”

“And what leads you to this conclusion?”

“It is quite straightforward, once you know the characteristics of the disease.”

Lenoir was not eager to know the details, but he was obliged to ask. “How so?”

“There are three factors,” Lideman said, holding up as many fingers. He assumed a professorial tone. “First, we have never seen this disease in Braeland before, though we have heard rumors of it appearing much farther north, beyond Adaliland. I have written to my colleagues all over Humenor, but I am virtually certain they will confirm that the disease is unknown to their shores as well.”

“Kennian is a port city,” Lenoir pointed out. “Exotic diseases are often brought in by ship. That is how the pox reached Arrènes thirty years ago.”

“That brings me to the second factor, Inspector. This disease is exceptionally virulent. It kills more than three quarters of those it infects, and it does so with remarkable speed. For the first day or two, the symptoms appear remarkably like influenza. But after that, the patients deteriorate rapidly. Vomiting. Diarrhea. Bleeding from various orifices. After the lesions appear, it is more or less a lost cause. Death typically follows in less than twenty-four hours.”

“Those people in the tent . . .” Kody said.

Lideman shook his head. “We’re doing what we can, but I’m not hopeful. Some of them will survive, but those with the bruising . . . I haven’t seen a single patient come back from that.”

“How long does it take for the patient to fall ill?” Lenoir asked.

“It’s difficult to be sure, but what we’ve seen so far suggests that symptoms begin appearing three to four days after infection. Perhaps five, if the patient is especially hale.”

“Approximately a week between infection and death,” Lenoir summarized.

“In most cases, less.”

“Which means that whoever carried it into Kennian cannot have come from a very great distance, even by ship. He would not have survived the journey.”

“He might, if he was very lucky, but not without infecting others, two thirds of whom would have perished.”

“But he
must
have come from a long way,” Kody said, “and fast, or we would have heard about this disease before now.”

“Precisely.” The physician bestowed an approving nod, as though on a particularly bright pupil. “The only thing that spreads faster than an epidemic is word of it. Kennian is a port city, as you have pointed out, full of the comings and goings of foreigners. If a disease this devastating was headed our way, we would have heard about it.”

“Could a person be infected without showing signs?” Lenoir asked.

“Unlikely, and even if it were possible, I do not believe such a person would be contagious. The college has been here for over a week, and what we have seen in that time suggests that patients are not contagious until
after
they have presented with symptoms.”

“And for how long do they remain contagious?”

Lideman smiled. “Excellent question, Inspector, and that is the third factor. Patients are contagious for as long as they display symptoms, and they grow steadily more contagious as the disease progresses. So a patient in the early stages with flu-like symptoms is not terribly infectious, whereas someone with the lesions is dangerously so. As soon as they recover, however, they cease to be a danger. The battle is won, whether by the grace of God or modern medicine, and they have driven the enemy off the field. When they perish, however, they remain quite infectious, for the disease invades completely. It continues to feed on their dead flesh.”