“You will have to look farther than Ys to find your family, my boy, and you may be given the opportunity to do so. The Aedile is a good enough man in his way, I suppose, but that is to say he is no more than a petty official barely capable of ruling a moribund little region of no interest to anyone. Into his hands has fallen a prize which could determine the fate of all the peoples of Confluence—even the world itself—and he does nothing about it. A man like that deserves to be punished, Yamamanama. And as for you, you are very dangerous. For you do not know what you are.”
“I would like very much to know.” Yama had not understood half of what Dr. Dismas had said. With a sinking heart, he was beginning to believe that the man was mad.
“Innocence is no excuse,” Dr. Dismas said, but he appeared to be speaking to himself. He moved the plastic straws about the tabletop with a long, bony forefinger, as if seeking to rearrange his fate. He lit another cigarette and stared at Yama until Yama grew uncomfortable and looked away.
Dr. Dismas laughed, and with sudden energy took out a little leather case and opened it out on the table. Inside, held by elastic loops, were a glass syringe, an alcohol lamp, a bent silver spoon, its bowl blackened and tarnished, a small pestle and mortar, and several glass bottles with rubber stoppers. From one bottle Dr. Dismas shook out a single dried beetle into the mortar; from another he added a few drops of a clear liquid that filled the room with the smell of apricots.
Dr. Dismas ground the beetle into a paste with finicky care and scraped the paste into the bowl of the spoon.
“Candiarides,” he said, as if that explained everything. “You are young, and will not understand, but sometimes the world becomes too much to bear for someone of my sensibilities.”
“My father said this got you into trouble with your department. He said—”
“That I had sworn to stop using it? Oh yes, of course I said that. If I had not said that, they would not have let me return to Aeolis.”
Dr. Dismas lit the wick of the alcohol lamp with a flint and steel and held the spoon over the blue flame until the brown paste liquefied and began to bubble. The smell of apricots intensified, sharpened by a metallic tang. Dr. Dismas drew the liquid into the hypodermic and tapped the barrel with a long thumbnail to loosen the bubbles which clung to the glass. “Don’t think to escape,” he said. “I have no key.”
He spread his left hand on the tabletop and probed the web of skin between thumb and forefinger until he hit a vein.
He teased back the syringe’s plunger until a wisp of red swirled in the thin brown solution, then pressed the plunger home.
He drew in a sharp breath and stretched in his chair like a bow. The hypodermic dropped to the table. For a moment, his heels drummed an irregular tattoo on the mesh floor, and then he relaxed, and looked at Yama with half-closed eyes.
His pupils, smeary crosses on yellow balls, contracted and expanded independently. He giggled. “If I had you long enough . . . ah, what I’d teach you . . .”
“Doctor?”
But Dr. Dismas would say no more. His gaze wandered around the cage and at last fixed on the spattered glass which roofed the courtyard. Yama tested the cage’s wire mesh, but although he could deform its close-woven hexagons, they were all of a piece, and the door was so close-fitting Yama could not get his fingers into the gap between it and its wire frame. The sun crept into view above the little courtyard’s glass ceiling, filling it with golden light, and began its slow reversal.
At last, Yama dared to touch the apothecary’s outstretched hand. It was clammy, and irregular plates shifted under the loose skin. Dr. Dismas did not stir. His head was tipped back, his face bathed by the sunlight.
Yama found only one pocket inside the apothecary’s long black coat, and it was empty. Dr. Dismas stirred as Yama withdrew his hand, and gripped his wrist and drew him down with unexpected strength. “Don’t doubt,” he murmured. His breath smelt of apricots and iron. “Sit and wait, boy.”
Yama sat and waited. Presently the immensely fat man he had seen floating in the tavern’s communal pool shuffled down the passage. He was naked except for blue rubber sandals on his broad feet, and he carried a tray covered with a white cloth.
“Stand back,” he told Yama. “No, further back. Behind the doctor.”
“Let me go. I promise you will be rewarded.”
“I’ve already been paid, young master,” the fat man said.
He unlocked the door, set the tray down, and relocked the door. “Eat, young master. The doctor, he won’t want anything. I never seen him eat. He has his drug.”
“Let me go!” Yama banged at the cage’s locked door and yelled threats at the fat man’s retreating back before giving up and looking under the cloth that covered the tray.
A dish of watery soup with a cluster of whitened fish eyes sunk in the middle and rings of raw onion floating on top; a slab of black bread, as dense as a brick and almost as hard; a glass of small beer the color of stale urine.
The soup was flavored with chili oil, making it almost palatable, but the bread was so salty that Yama gagged on the first bite and could eat no more. He drank the sour beer and somehow fell asleep on the rickety chair.
He was woken by Dr. Dismas. He had a splitting headache and a foul taste in his mouth. The courtyard and the cage was lit by a hissing alcohol lantern which dangled from the cage’s wire ceiling; the air beyond the glass that roofed the courtyard was black.
“Rise up, young man,” Dr. Dismas said. He was filled with barely contained energy and hopped from foot to foot and banged his stiff fingers together. His shadow, thrown across the whitewashed walls of the courtyard, aped his movements.
“You drugged me,” Yama said stupidly.
“A little something in the beer, to take away your cares.”
Dr. Dismas banged on the mesh of the cage and shouted, “Ho! Ho! Landlord!” and turned back to Yama and said, “You have been sleeping longer than you know. The little sleep just past is my gift to make you wake into your true self. You don’t understand me, but it doesn’t matter. Stand up! Stand up! Look lively! Awake, awake, awake! You venture forth to meet your destiny! Ho! Landlord!”
Chapter Seven
The Warlord
In the darkness outside the door of the tavern, Dr. Dismas clapped a wide-brimmed hat on his head and exchanged a few words with the landlord, who handed something to the apothecary, knuckled his forehead, and shut the heavy street door. The cluster of ghost lanterns above the door creaked in the breeze, glimmering with a wan pallor that illuminated nothing but themselves. The rest of the street was dark, except for blades of light shining between a few of the closed shutters of the houses on the other side of the wide canal.
Dr. Dismas switched on a penlight and waved its narrow beam at Yama, who blinked stupidly at the light; his wits were still dulled by sleep and the residue of the drugged beer.
“If you are going to be sick,” Dr. Dismas said, “lean over and don’t spatter your clothes or your boots. You must be presentable.”
“What will you do with me, doctor?”
“Breathe, my dear boy. Slowly and deeply. Is it not a fine night? There is a curfew, I’m told. No one will be about to wonder at us. Look at this. Do you know what it is?”
Dr. Dismas showed Yama what the landlord had given him. It was an energy pistol, silver and streamlined, with a blunt muzzle and a swollen chamber, and a grip of memory plastic that could mold itself to fit the hands of most of the bloodlines of the world. A dot of red light glowed at the side of the chamber, indicating that it was fully charged.
“You could Burn for that alone,” Yama said.
“Then you know what it can do.” Dr. Dismas pushed the muzzle into Yama’s left armpit. “I have it at its weakest setting, but a single shot will roast your heart. We will walk to the new quay like two old friends.”