“There is no Summer Fever. The physician lied to us—just as you suspected all along. He also failed to tell us that we have been living on poisons ever since we first set foot on the soil of Mirizandi: imbibing them with every bite of food and sip of drink, taking them in with the air, soaking them in through our skins.”
There was a clatter of metal on the tiled floor as someone—Cuillioc did not look to see if it was Brihac or Gerig—dropped a heavy piece of armor. “The Mirazhites have been secretly trying to kill us with poisons?”
“For the most part we have been killing ourselves just by being here,” said Iobhar, slipping his hands inside the sleeves of his scarlet robe. “The land generates poisons, breathing them out in vaporous exhalations, contaminating everything and everyone. The birds and beasts seem to have made some internal accommodation, though many of the young ones die, but the human inhabitants can survive only by eating of a powerful herbal elixir. Combined with this medicine, the noxious vapors produce a pleasing sensation of lightness and well-being; without it, they have a slow but deadly effect. By the time that the more dramatic symptoms appear, death can follow in a matter of days—or hours.”
Cuillioc caught his breath. So many things that had baffled him before were starting to assume new meanings: the waking dream of his first weeks in Mirizandi, his weakness and lethargy since. Even the fact that his scheming courtiers had been so strangely quiescent since the slaughter of the hostages.
“Those leaves the servants stew in their own drinking water—the spice you can smell all over the marketplace—that is the elixir?” His eyes narrowed. “But then—how did you come to learn so much, Iobhar, and all of it so quickly?”
“Most of this comes from your little guttersnipe page. He has been asking questions, gathering information, just as you instructed.”
Knowing how the urchin feared Iobhar, Cuillioc was frankly incredulous. “And he came to you instead of to me?”
“I met the boy on my way up from the barracks and convinced him to speak. I apologize for any rough handling, but it seemed expedient.” The furiádh stretched his pale lips into a hideous grimace, which may have been intended as an ingratiating smile. “Even as I questioned him, the boy was alternately burning with fever and shivering with an ague, and I feared he would not be able to give sensible answers for very much longer.”
In that sticky heat Cuillioc felt a cold horror, right down to the marrow of his bones. “No wonder the natives never took arms against us. Why should they exert themselves, when they had only to welcome us into their city and we were doomed!”
He felt sick with humiliation when he thought how they had gulled him, exploiting his ignorance, blinding him and his men with pleasure—yes, even inviting his contempt. Yet it boggled the mind to think that an entire city could keep such a dangerous secret for so many months, and not one of them speak out.
“In fact, the poison is slow and subtle; it takes many months to kill,” said Iobhar. “And it sometimes happens that visitors who leave the country soon enough eventually recover. But the Mirazhites were not content to remain silent and leave us to perish in our own time. The grocers, wine merchants, and all the others who supply the Citadel have been sending us foods and wines in which the poison is particularly concentrated. Meanwhile, the grains and fruits the servants eat are far more wholesome, besides being sprinkled with the herbal elixir. It was unfortunate for the slave who died—and for those other trulls your men brought in from the brothels—that they were eating the same food as the garrison. Foreigners themselves, they knew no better. Naturally, with a woman’s weaker constitution, one of them was the first to succumb. Which,” the priest added, “undoubtedly alerted those in the city that the crisis was near.
When the first cases appeared in the barracks they would have known it was time to act.”
Waving his helpers aside, Cuillioc picked up his gilded vambraces and began to strap them on. “But the boy?” he asked, picturing that thin, wiry body, which no amount of feeding could ever fill out. “He should have succumbed long before the women did; what kept him alive all of this time?”
“He has been taking some of his meals with the native servants, where he surely ate of the herb without even knowing it. Ironically, had he stayed with the galley slaves it would have been healthier. No one has been making a concerted effort to hasten their deaths.
“As for my acolytes and me,” Iobhar added with a self-satisfied smile, “our abstemious habits have undoubtedly served us well.”
Cuillioc (still busy with the arm guards) remembered how little the furiádh had seemed to suffer in the heat, and he wondered if it was even possible to poison someone whose very blood seemed to be two parts venom and the third part malice.
“But for yourself and so many others…” Iobhar spread his hands wide, allowed his voice to trail off.
There was no need to say anything more. They had all been eating and guzzling like pigs, and were going to suffer for it.
The Prince closed his eyes, muttered a prayer to his mother, knowing all along that she would not hear him, would not help him if she did; she had so little patience with incompetence and failure. No, it was up to him to find a way out of this trap, and more than a thousand lives hung in the balance.
He opened his eyes, made an effort to reorder his thoughts. “You said that some who leave these cursed shores live. Unless the situation at the harbor has grown worse since that first report, about half of our ships remain. The galley slaves will have to take their chances, whether the Mirazhites mean to poison them or claim ownership after we are gone—we’ll never find room for them now. The men-at-arms can row.” Cuillioc reached for his sword belt and girded it on. “If we act swiftly, while some of us still have strength, we may get as far as Nephuar or the archipelago—depending on how the winds favor us.”
He cinched the belt in place. “We may all still die, but any chance is better than none.”
It had not cooled much since midnight when Cuillioc finally prepared to leave the Citadel and set out for the docks. With so much smoke in the air every breath tasted like red-hot ashes.
After hours spent receiving reports, making hurried plans, and sending out orders, it was time to see for himself that all the wheels had been set in motion for a swift departure. Just inside the gate leading out to the street, he met Iobhar, accompanied by his two haggard acolytes, Maël and Omair. The priest asked for a word aside, and Cuillioc consented.
“It has occurred to me, Great Prince, that it would not be wise to tell the rest of our people too much,”
said Iobhar when they had moved out of earshot of the others. “It would be difficult to hold them back from a wholesale slaughter if they knew that every man, woman, and child in the city had connived against them. Alas, this is no time for revenge. When we are whole and strong again, when we can lead a great force out of Phaôrax to strike quickly, punish them for their perfidy, and leave just as swiftly—”
“I leave it to you to think on revenge,” Cuillioc interrupted him. He knew beyond any doubt that even if he should be one of a handful to survive, he would have no place in any future army sent back to Mirizandi. Another commander who had failed so spectacularly could expect to pay with his life; as Ouriána’s son, he merely faced humiliation and disgrace, but it would be years before she trusted him with another command, if she ever forgave him at all.
Striding through the dark streets toward the place where the galleys were moored, with the remaining knights of his household in attendance (eight had been stricken and two had already died), Cuillioc felt his eyes smart and his throat burn, the smoke was still so heavy. Sometimes torches flared in the reek and shadowy figures hurried past. Each time his hand moved toward the hilt of his sword as he braced himself for trouble, but each time a closer look revealed that these were his own men, sent out earlier to seize supplies of food and water.