Master of Plagues: A Nicolas Lenoir Novel (14 page)

K
ody had left Lenoir and Merden well behind by the time he reached Oded’s tent. He arrived, panting, temples throbbing, to find that the crowd waiting outside was bigger than ever, and they didn’t look happy. Those that could stand were on their feet, milling about in restless, muttering clusters, and when Kody started to shoulder his way through, it earned him more than a few dark looks. It reminded him of the crowd at the barricade on the morning of the riot.
Tinder waiting for a spark
.
Isn’t that all we need?

He was hardly surprised when a tall man stepped in front of him, blocking his path. “Can’t you see there are people waiting?”

“Police business,” Kody said. “Stand aside.”

“Police.” The man sneered. “You think we’re stupid? We know what this is. You Braelish need our medicine. You need our healer, so you take him away from us. All day I sat here yesterday. All day, waiting my turn for my daughters. The healer never came back!”

People were staring now, and the man’s words drew noises of approval.
Careful, Kody.
“He’s here now,” Kody said between gritted teeth, “and I need to talk to him. Right away.”

“Here, yes—seeing another Braelish man! You think because you have pale skin, you can just jump to the front of the line?”

Another Braelish man?
Kody swore and tried to move past the Adal, but the man shoved him hard in the chest. Kody’s fist curled, but he didn’t dare take a swing. The crowd was too ugly; they’d tear him apart. He’d have to talk his way through this one. “The Braelish man—what does he look like? Does he have dark hair?”

“What do I care? You Braelish all look the same to me.”

Kody got right up in the Adal’s face, close enough for the man to see how deadly serious he was. “That Braelishman shouldn’t be here. Let me through and I’ll take him away. You can have your healer all to yourself.”
For now, at least.

The man glared at Kody for a long, torturous moment. Then, grudgingly, he stood aside. Kody barreled ahead before anyone else took a notion to get in his way, and when he reached the tent flap, he ducked through without hesitating.

He plunged into the darkness of the witchdoctor’s tent, pausing at the threshold to let his eyes adjust.

“Oded?”

His voice sounded small and flat, swallowed by silence. Only now did it occur to him that the witchdoctor might be in the middle of a ritual. The thought sent a new stab of pain through his skull.

Something moved in the shadows. Kody tensed. “Oded?”

A low moan sounded at the back of the tent. Kody felt the hairs on his arms stand on end. He reached for his crossbow, then changed his mind and went for the flintlock instead. Just as his fingers brushed the gun, he sensed something move, and he jumped back. A shadow flitted in front of him, black on black, and he felt a breath of air. He pulled his gun and trained it on—what? Whatever it was fled deeper into the darkness, and Kody
backed up against the side of the tent, keeping his gun leveled in front of him. His heart thudded in his throat.

This is ridiculous,
he told himself.
It’s not a demon, it’s a man, and odds are he’s a lot smaller than you. If he had a gun, he’d have fired it already. So quit cowering like a little girl.

Kody stepped farther out into the tent. “Oded, are you here?” He started to move in the direction the sound had come from. He had almost reached the cot at the center of the tent when he sensed movement behind him. He pivoted in time to see something flash in the darkness. Pain blazed down his arm, and he dropped his gun. The thing flashed again, but Kody managed to twist out of the way. He threw a punch with his left, and it connected—with flesh and bone. Someone staggered in the darkness.

“Got you, you piece of—”

His attacker came at him again, and this time, Kody caught a glint of metal. A knife, and not a small one. He leapt back, narrowly avoiding a swipe to his midsection, and collided with the empty cot. Stepping around it, he put the cot between himself and his attacker. He reached over his shoulder and grabbed his crossbow. “You’d better hope your night vision is better than mine, mate, because I never miss.”

For long moments, all was still. Kody held his breath, listening, sweating, but all he could hear was his own heartbeat. Somewhere in that silence, maybe only inches away, Oded waited. He was obviously hurt. Maybe worse. The temptation to look for him was almost overwhelming, but Kody knew better. He stayed where he was, waiting for his attacker to make the next move.

He didn’t wait long. The dark shifted, and Kody fired. He hit his target dead on. When it shattered, Kody knew he’d been duped. A clay pot, by the sounds of it. He swore, tossing the useless crossbow aside. He drew his sword and braced for the counterattack, but it never came. Instead, something ripped near the back of the
tent, and a blade of sunlight appeared. Kody tried to get there, but with the cot in his way, he knew he would never make it. Another slash of the knife was all it took to set his attacker free. The outline of a man slipped through the hole and vanished.

Kody started to follow, but froze halfway through the hole. His quarry had already vanished amid the tightly clustered tents. Kody might catch him, or he might not. Oded might need help, or he might be beyond it. It was a risk either way, and Kody lost precious seconds to indecision. But the cure was more important than catching a killer, so he grabbed the ragged flap of tent and pulled, tearing the opening wider to admit the sun. The light fell on a pair of boots lying where they didn’t belong. Kody rushed over.

He found Oded facedown near the table at the back of the tent. Kody rolled him over, tucking his fingers under the witchdoctor’s jaw in search of a pulse. Nothing. He leaned in close, listening for breath as he patted Oded down. Just below the rib cage, he found what he’d dreaded: a sodden patch of clothing, still warm. Kody slipped his fingers through the tear and searched for the wound. He found it. And then he found another, and another.

His mind catalogued the details as though he were writing a report:
multiple stab wounds to the midsection, large blade, upward thrust.
The assailant was right-handed, and what he lacked in precision, he made up for in brutality. The knife most likely punctured the heart. Kody swore and sat back on his heels. He was too late.

The tent flap opened, and Lenoir and Merden entered, both of them out of breath. Kody’s posture and the gaping hole at the back of the tent told them everything they needed to know, so he didn’t bother to say anything. He just stared into Oded’s lifeless face and thought,
I’m sorry.

Merden said something rueful in Adali, and then he was kneeling beside Kody, scanning the body as though
hoping to find something Kody had missed, some sign that Oded could still be revived. Kody left him to it; for all he knew, the soothsayer had some mysterious Adali trick up his sleeve. But it would have to be some trick, because the witchdoctor was most definitely dead.

A moment’s examination was all it took for Merden to reach the same conclusion; his posture sagged. Lenoir spat out an oath in Arrènais, then added one in Braelish for good measure. “The killer?”

“Gone. I might have been able to catch him, but I thought maybe I could still help Oded, so I let him get away.” The words came out with remarkable calm, considering that he was moments away from being fired. He’d failed Oded. Worse, he’d failed Lenoir. The inspector didn’t tolerate incompetence. He didn’t even tolerate mistakes.

“How long ago?” Lenoir asked.

“Two minutes, maybe. I’ll go after—”

“Don’t bother. I’m sure he is long gone.”

The shame brought heat to Kody’s cheeks. “Sorry, Inspector.”

Lenoir made an impatient gesture. “Flagellate yourself if it pleases you, Sergeant, but the matter was decided before you ever got here.”

Kody blinked in surprise. Lenoir never missed an opportunity to criticize him.

Except, perhaps, when he was too busy criticizing himself. “If anyone is to blame, it is I. I should have seen this coming. Regardless, neither your regret nor mine will improve the situation, so it is pointless to indulge.”

Merden began to murmur over Oded’s body, one hand on the dead man’s chest, the other on his forehead. Kody watched for a moment, curious despite himself. Lenoir, though, was not the least bit interested in Adali funeral rites. He paced the tent like a caged animal, scratching the stubble on his jaw and muttering the occasional curse.

What do we do now?
The question was on Kody’s lips,
but he didn’t dare utter it. He’d narrowly escaped Lenoir’s wrath moments before; it would be foolish to risk it again. Besides, the inspector obviously didn’t have an answer. “We can still get the sketch artist,” Kody offered, wiping his bloody hands against his trousers. “At least we’ll have a likeness of the killer. And we can have posters put up all over the Five Villages . . .” It wasn’t much, but it was all he could think of.

Lenoir wasn’t even listening. He froze midstride. “Zach.”

“What about him?”

“He found some sailors who encountered the disease overseas. Perhaps, if we show them a sketch of the killer . . .”

Kody grimaced. “Bit of a long shot.”

“More than a bit. But they may also be able to tell us something about the disease, something that might help us to find a treatment.”

“We have a treatment.” Merden rose from his crouch, his long body unfolding like a pocketknife.

“We
had
a treatment,” Kody said. He was being negative, he knew, but his head was killing him, and the taste of failure was still bitter on his tongue. “Now that Oded’s gone, nobody knows how to do it.”

“I do,” said Merden.

Lenoir turned. “You can perform the ritual? Oded taught you?”

“I observed him closely while he worked on each of the patients. I understood most of what he was doing, and the rest, I asked him to explain.”

“And you are certain it will work?”

The soothsayer smiled wryly. “I had better be, Inspector, since any mistake could well be fatal.”

“Apparently, the ritual isn’t the only thing that could be fatal.” Kody’s gaze dropped meaningfully to the body at their feet.

“We were caught unprepared,” Merden said. “That will not happen again.”

“No,” Lenoir said, “it will not. We will place you under guard. I’m not certain how many watchmen I can persuade the chief to spare, but you shall have the maximum.”

Merden made a face. “I hardly think that will be necessary—”

“It will be done,” Lenoir said.

“What about them?” Kody hooked a thumb over his shoulder, at the doorway. “Those people want their healer back. They gave me a bit of a rough time coming in, and now this . . .”

“I must treat these people first,” Merden said. “It is only right. After that, it will be first-come, first-served—Adali or Braelish, no discrimination.”

“Will they go for that?” Kody asked doubtfully.

Merden’s amber eyes were serene. “Leave that to me, Sergeant. My voice carries some weight among my people.”

“That may be,” Lenoir said, “but you are still only one man, and this is an epidemic. We are no better off than we were before.”

Merden shrugged. “Perhaps a little, if you will forgive the lack of humility. Aside from the fact that I am younger and stronger than Oded, I am also
mekhleth
. My powers run deeper than most. Even so, you are right—I am but one man. I can save many lives, but this disease is like a stampede, and it will take more than a single shepherd to stop it.”

“I think we can assume that Horst Lideman and his colleagues will be no help,” Lenoir said.

“Even now?” Kody asked. “If Merden picks up where Oded left off, he can still prove that the treatment works.”

“I do not think it is doubt that holds him back,” said Lenoir. “It is fear.”

“It was always an unlikely solution,” Merden said. “From the beginning, I have assumed that I would need to take this on, though I hoped we would at least have
Oded.” He gazed regretfully at the body of his slain countryman.

Kody shook his head. “Wherever he is now, he must be furious. He’s lost to his people because of us.”
Because of me.

“He did not feel that way,” Merden said. “He died angry and confused, but also proud of the work he had done in life.”

“So you assume,” Kody said.

“So I know.” Merden closed his eyes and gestured vaguely around him. “It is written in the air.”

Kody frowned.
I’m probably going to regret this, but . . .
“What does that mean?”

“When a man passes out of this world, something of him lingers for a time, like a perfume that clings to the air after the lady wearing it has gone. Feelings, mostly, but if the soul is strong enough, even thoughts can leave a trace. I can sense them.”

“You can sense them,” Kody echoed, stupidly. “And . . . how is that?”

“Because he is a necromancer,” Lenoir said, looking uneasy.

“I thought he was a soothsayer.”

“All soothsayers are necromancers,” Merden said, “though not all necromancers are soothsayers.”

“Okay,” said Kody.

The soothsayer/necromancer looked back down at Oded’s body. “He must transcend, ideally before nightfall.”

Kody knew enough about Adali tradition to figure out what that meant. “You’re going to burn him.”

“It is our way. I would perform the rites myself, but I fear I do not have time. Hopefully, Oded had kin here in the Camp.”

“Speaking of . . .” Kody glanced back at the tent flap. “Who’s going to tell those people what happened?” He was pretty sure the news was not going to go over well.

“I will do it,” Merden said.

Lenoir glanced at the hole in the back of the tent. “Would you think less of us, my friend, if we availed ourselves of the new exit?”

“I would think you fools not to.”

“Do you have everything you need?”

Merden nodded. “And you?” He cocked his head meaningfully at the body.

“The matter is regrettably straightforward,” Lenoir said. “The Metropolitan Police have viewed the crime scene and examined the body. I consider our duties discharged. All that remains is for me to round up a protective guard. They should be here by midmorning.”