Scar Night Page 0,27
the creatures above. “I’m looking for Devon,” he said. “Have you seen him anywhere?”
Behind them, plates clattered and something smashed. Fondelgrue ignored the accident. “What would that poxy Poisoner be doing in here?”
“Maybe trying to tamper with the food again.” Fogwill shot a contemptuous glance at the gurgling, frothing pots, the smoking ovens encrusted with old food. “But I see you’ve got everything completely under control.”
The head cook slid a hand through his slick hair, then paused to examine something caught beneath his fingernail. He gave Fogwill a sideways look. “I think he tests his poisons and diseases on us.”
“I’ve heard him claim he comes here for inspiration.”
Fondelgrue smiled thinly.
“Well, if you do see him,” the Adjunct said, “please let him know he’s expected presently in the Sanctum—for a very important service.”
The head cook stifled a yawn. “It’s always bloody important with you lot.”
Behind them, a steward was yelling at a potboy. Something else smashed, but Fondelgrue didn’t flinch. Finally he grunted, and closed his eyes. “Well, you can see Devon isn’t here.”
Fogwill surveyed his surroundings again. Two potboys were wrestling in an aisle between banks of sinks and chopping boards. As they skidded and rolled around on the wet floor, one of them knocked against a table and a basket of cutlery scattered to the floor in a metallic hail.
“You have new staff, I see,” Fogwill commented. “Have they all been screened?”
Presbyter Sypes had a right to be nervous. With the Heshette enemy now decimated, there was always the risk they might turn to more subtle methods of revenge. One cup of poison?
Fogwill took a deep breath, and regretted it immediately. A dog whined nearby, then ceased abruptly. A dog? He didn’t want to know. He glanced once more at the wrestling potboys, then set off in the opposite direction. The odour, he noticed with horror, pursued him.
Threading his way back through the great kitchen, he had to dodge countless cooks, dish-washers, beaters, carvers, vegetable choppers, stewards, maids, and porters. The kitchen was bursting with them—who would notice one less body here? Or even a dozen? How many had the Poisoner whisked away to his own foul kitchens over the years? Fondelgrue’s words came back to him. I think he tests his poisons and diseases on us.
By the time Fogwill found the door, he was beginning to imagine that every one of these cauldrons might contain unknown terrors. That meat—suspiciously tinged with green? This pallid fowl—what ailment distressed it so? The Adjunct then and there resolved never to eat viands prepared by this kitchen again. At least for a week or so. He would meanwhile press Sypes on the matter of security, oversee the changes himself.
A steward glided past balancing a silver platter full of pastries.
Fogwill grabbed one, inspected it closely. Did the cream it contained have a faintly sulphurous odour? He dabbed his tongue to the soft pastry: was there a hint of bitterness masked by its succulent, buttery sweetness?
He stuffed the entire pastry into his mouth, and left the kitchen, munching.
Some risks were just worth taking.
* * * *
Arch Chemist and Poisoner Alexander Devon lay awake, bleeding. Blood trickled from cracks furrowing his face and neck, across his chest, and from the broken skin under his arms and knees, and soaked into his old stained sheet. Blisters burst on his back when he moved. His lungs felt furred: every breath bubbled and stung, every cough expelled strings of fluid, which he spat into a bucket beside the bed. Raw eyelids rested like broken glass on his swollen eyeballs. When he turned to check the standing clock by the window, his bones grated and his muscles scraped against the inside of his skin. He was late for work, yet moving meant agony. But Devon rose from his bed anyway, and tried to force his grimace of pain into a grin.
Life, after all, was full of little challenges.
Elizabeth’s side of the bed remained smooth and dry. He pressed fingers to his lips and touched the place where her head had once rested. Years of washing the sheets had thinned the outline of her wounded body until there was nothing left but a faint line of old blood. One day, he supposed, all trace of her would fade completely.
He removed the sheet and dumped it in a basket, then he set to work tending his own wounds. First his arms: he dabbed the weeping skin with a soft cotton pad steeped in alcohol, smeared away the blood, and then gently