Untalented (19 page)

“And?”

“Urdig will oppose these efforts.”

“You know this for sure?”

“His voting history and his alliances within the Great Circle make it almost certain.”

“What do you propose, Eminence?”

“This plague and the Vergal quarantine offer us an opportunity. The Healer’s Guild is already suspicious of the Vergal’s squalor as a plague source.”

“And Untalents make up a large portion of the Vergal’s population.”

Daravela nodded. “You see where I’m heading?”

Loric smiled. It had worked in the past, he knew. “A simple matter of a few well-placed agitators. And suddenly, Untalented equals plague carrier.”

“Urdig’s opposition to Untalented controls will look ill-advised—dangerous, even. Add an Untalented daughter into the mix and the Houses won’t want anything to do with him. How far are you willing to go?”

“Far enough,” Loric replied.

“What I’m suggesting may cause your wife’s family serious problems.”

“Isolte will support us.” Loric would ensure she did. He could tell Daravela still had reservations about confiding in him, but after a moment she went on.

“It is my conjecture that House Roshan intentionally used Padvai’s marriage to Urdig to install an Untalented queen in a position to pull strings for the family. And set up an heir for actual future rule. A hidden Untalent on the throne poses a serious threat to the Order. Roshan isn’t the only House that chafes at submitting to mandatory Testing. My sources bring me whispers of a movement within the Great Circle to limit the right of the Order to Test.”

Loric knew then that their bargain would hold. Daravela would never pass up the opportunity to remove such a thorn in the Order’s side.

All because House Roshan had finally miscalculated after all these years.

The Spotted Salmon had several advantages as a base of operations. Its central location in the Vergal allowed Saroya easy access to most neighborhoods. Mention of Balreg or the pub opened many doors to her that would have remained closed. She fine-tuned her story: she was Balreg’s niece, a failed healer the guild now allowed to conduct research on their behalf.

She began her door-to-door canvass in the area of the Minor West Canal, as per Balreg’s information, asking the questions Nalini designed to find out if anything in the household poisoned the air. Saroya added her own questions regarding daily habits; while she respected Nalini, she also suspected the healers could be just as closed off to new ideas as the builders. She wasn’t prepared to accept the poisoned air theory. Or the viler one she’d overheard at the fishmarket: that Untalents were the source. Suddenly it seemed more important, both for her and her fellow Untalents, that she find the true cause. She left her questions about Veshwa to the end after her interviewees shed their suspicions.

Her first day ended with no hints of Veshwa anywhere. She covered sixty homes, making note of the doors where her knocks went unanswered. At this rate it could take her months to cover the quarter.

She fixed herself a quick meal in the pub’s kitchen, checked that the sign was still posted on the barred front door, and then went up to Balreg’s apartments. She unrolled the maps Nalini left her and tacked one up onto the wall. Then she dug her notes out of her pouch, marking on the map every house visited, and how many sick and healthy residents in each. She examined her questionnaires, counting the different answers for each question, with a tally of the healthy and ill in each category. She finished after midnight, her eyes burning, and no clear pattern showing itself. She crawled underneath a blanket and fell asleep, exhausted.

Late on the third day, as she neared the end of her canvass of the Minor West Canal area, Saroya wanted nothing better than to throttle the old dressmaker in front of her. Her tongue loosened in gratitude for the poultices Saroya gave her for her arthritic hands, the woman blathered on while Saroya eyed the lengthening shadows. Saroya doubted she would ever get back out the door. Benumbed, she almost forgot to ask about Veshwa as she took her leave, and was only half-listening as she prepared to make her escape.

“Veshwa, Veshwa … I think—no that was Pashma, wait,” the woman rambled.

“I should go.” Saroya forced herself not to roll her eyes.

“No, just a minute. The woman who used to live four doors down … Her name was Veshwa.”

Saroya’s heart skipped.
Don’t get too excited
—the dressmaker’s memories did not seem reliable. “Used to live?”

“She moved out a few years back.”

“Where?”

“Oh, now, that I don’t know, dearie.”

Saroya took her leave, and then knocked on the door of Veshwa’s former residence. The woman who answered was obviously feverish, and Saroya took a step back. She could give no treatment to the afflicted, and risked too much if she entered the home.

“So you have not come to save us.”

Saroya shook her head helplessly. “There is no cure. I can leave you some herbs for the headaches, but there’s not much more I can do. Maybe you can help me, though. I’m looking for a woman named Veshwa who used to live here.”

The woman leaned against the doorframe, then shook her head. “We’ve been here five years. My husband owns the building. We moved in when his fishing fleet was lost in a winter storm, and we could no longer afford our other home. I remember the woman you speak of. My husband kicked her out when we needed the place ourselves. I felt sorry for her. I don’t think she had any family to go to. I don’t know where she went.”

“No idea at all?” Saroya bit her lip.

“She may have moved to an almshouse, but I wouldn’t know which one.”

Saroya sighed. “Thanks, anyway,” she said, depositing the promised herbs on the stoop before she left. The resignation in the woman’s fevered eyes haunted her.

Back at the pub, she collated all her data and then stared glumly at the map of the Vergal. She counted at least twenty almshouses scattered across the quarter, and was sure that she’d ferret out an equal number of unmarked poorhouses on her own.

The next morning, as she prepared to leave by the back alley, a knock on the front door of the pub interrupted her. She hesitated then unbarred the door. A slender woman, hooded, stood on the stoop, clutching the hand of a young boy, barely more than a toddler.

“Please, can you help us? The healer in our neighborhood died of the plague. I don’t know what to do—Theogar won’t stop coughing.” Desperation shone in the woman’s face.

“I’m not a healer—”

“But they said—”

“I’m only a healer’s assistant. I can give you some herbs. Put them in boiling water, and let him breathe the vapors—they should help, unless he has plague. Nothing I can give you will help then.”

She sent the woman away but more rapping at the door prevented Saroya from setting out on her own mission. This time, an older man held out his bandaged right hand. He’d cut it opening an oyster on the docks. Word of Saroya’s presence had spread, along with her reputation for treating small wounds and ailments. With the shortage of true healers, the inhabitants of the Vergal seemed happy to settle for her paltry skills. A steady stream of patients kept her busy until lunch, when a break in the flow of people allowed her to escape.

With just the afternoon available, she only visited two almshouses and their immediate neighborhoods. The plague rampaged through these areas. The almshouses, with their crowded, squalid conditions, acted like breeding grounds for the fever. Her knock went unanswered at the second almshouse, though she heard someone talking from deep within the building. She pushed the unlocked door ajar, and peered into the gloom.

“Hello?” Saroya’s greeting echoed down the narrow hallway.

She checked the cloth tied round her face was secure then crossed the threshold. She passed two empty rooms on her way down the hall, parchments strewn on the floor. The hallway opened into another cross corridor ten paces further on. The voice she’d heard on entering resolved into a sing-song muttering. Saroya frowned. That didn’t sound like an administrator. She reached the junction, where a terrible stench overwhelmed her and she gagged.

“Who’s there?” A man leaped out from round the corner, a large stick in his hands held ready to strike. Saroya shrieked and stumbled backwards.

“Don’t hit me!” She braced for the blow.

“Who are you? Get out!” The man thrust what Saroya could now see was only a broomstick in her face. “Go on—or fever’ll getcha. Fever, reaver, leave her.”

Was he mad? Saroya tried to recover her composure. She put out her hands, trying to placate him. “I’m a healer’s assistant. I was hoping to see the administrator.”

The man spat on the ground. “Fled, he did. Left us all here to die. Die abed, skin all red.”

“Why are you still here?”

“Someone’s got to burn the bodies.” Saroya recoiled. He’d startled her so badly that she’d missed the sheen of fever in his eyes, but now that she looked closely, she could see the inflamed pustules spotting his skin. She cursed under her breath—why had she come in?

The man turned his back on her and scurried round the corner, spewing nonsense. Against her better judgment, she edged forward.

The foulness assailed her nostrils despite the cloth. A window in the corridor showed her the central courtyard, with a pyre piled with bloated bodies. The man, still nattering, dragged another out of the hall. Bile scorched Saroya’s throat, and she ran back out to the street. She would not find Veshwa here, not alive.

After that visit, Saroya obsessed about the safety precautions Nalini had recommended: she used a different face covering every day, and boiled anything made of fabric that she’d worn outside. As soon as she returned to the pub, she threw out items that might have come into contact with a sick person, tossing them into the stove, especially the parchments on which she took all her notes. She carefully transcribed the data before throwing the originals into the fire. She washed every night, not knowing if it helped, but if Nalini was correct that some foul vapor caused the fever, she dared not risk any of it clinging to her.

At the end of the week, she went to the house Nalini had told her of and gave a report of her activities to the healer she found there. Faro looked tired and drawn, but still managed to convey his disdain for her. “A futile effort, if you ask me. We need more healers here, not note takers.” Yet he took the paper from her before slamming the door in her face.

Next, Saroya set out to meet Nalini. She rounded a corner into an open square, and bumped headlong into a black-coated magistrate. Before she could think to apologize and make a quick escape, he’d grabbed her arm. Saroya gulped. Would the magistrates still be looking for a delinquent renter? As he peered at her face and dress, Saroya noticed the group of scruffy people in the cart behind him, guarded by a second magistrate.

“Talent certificate, please,” the magistrate said.

“What?”

“By order of the Healer’s Guild. If you can’t show me proof of Talent, I’ll have to take you to one of the camps.”

Saroya felt as though the ground had dropped away beneath her. She looked more closely at the people in the cart. Their hands were bound. Were they all Untalents? What new policy was this? She tried to buy time.

“I … I never carry my certificate with me. I didn’t realize I needed to.”

Saroya found no sympathy in the magistrate’s face. “Show me a certificate, or get in that cart.”

The unfairness of it made Saroya want to kick the man in the shins. She’d been hearing vile rumors tying Untalents to the plague for days, but nothing in her own survey showed any link. The plague chose its victims indiscriminately. Saroya knew she wasn’t sickening people. Those poor people in the cart weren’t either. If conditions in the camps he mentioned were anything like the sick camps she’d heard whispers of, then getting into that cart was tantamount to a death sentence. No one came back from the camps. Ever.

The magistrate lost patience. He reached for the manacles at his waist.

“Wait!” Saroya cried out. She rummaged in her pouch, and pulled out Nalini’s note vouching for her as a healer’s assistant. “Will this do?”

The magistrate conferred with his partner as Saroya tried to look official. Finally he handed the paper back to her. “Very well. It seems you’re doing important work. Better get on with it.”

Saroya didn’t wait around for him to change his mind. She hurried off. Relief mingled with a renewed sense of urgency. As if Untalents didn’t have enough to deal with. Now they were scapegoats for the plague. She had to find proof the healers were wrong. She had to find Veshwa. No one would listen to an Untalent trying to save her skin. But this wan’t just about her anymore. With so many lives at stake, maybe the king’s daughter could keep others like her from dying needlessly.

Finally, Saroya arrived at the square where she’d left Nalini. She searched the far shore of the river for her friend. She was just about to leave when she spotted a small figure emerging from an alleyway. She recognized Nalini’s determined gait. At first, she couldn’t place the taller man who followed her friend into the square. Saroya hurried to the water’s edge, and with a sinking feeling she identified Eiden Callor.