A Burning in the Bones (Waxways #3)

Chapter 27 Mercy Whitaker

27 MERCY WHITAKER

The Safe Harbor morgue became something of a second home.

Dr. Williams served as her unofficial roommate. The two of them shared meals, discussed theories, and drank tea. Mercy was a lightweight compared to him. The coroner seemed to either be boiling, pouring, or sipping the substance no matter what time of the day she saw him. Their time in the morgue would have felt normal if not for the interruptions whenever a family member arrived to collect the departed. A cousin or an uncle or a mother. They all seemed to knock on the door the same way. As if they did not want to bother the rest of the world with their mourning. Most of them muttered a small apology before saying the name of the loved one they’d come to find. Mercy had no idea how to comfort them. What words would soften a blow that had already struck so deep?

Research kept her spirits up. The feeling that they were actually doing something to answer all this pain and confusion. Williams primarily dedicated his time to studying waterborne illness. Hoping to find some clue from the previous pathogens and their impacts. Mercy’s reading focused more on the historical instances of magical disruption. A good deal of what she’d read was terribly anecdotal. A man who lost magic after sneezing one too many times in a row. A woman who supposedly had an orgasm that destroyed her memories of all spellwork. Slowly, their hours transformed into a rhythm of reading and mourning, reading and mourning.

Until a voice interrupted, “Dogs in or out?”

It was early. The voice that asked that question echoed to them from the hallway. She and Williams exchanged a confused glance before she remembered that she’d put in a request to the local kennel. Safe Harbor had contracted with them in the past, but only when a disease required additional tracing. She’d put in the request with almost no expectation of a response. Most of the city was still not operating properly, but here was her request, poking its head around the corner.

“Hello?”

“Yes,” Mercy said, shaking herself. “I’m sorry. What was your question?”

“Dogs in or dogs out? I can keep them in the hallway if you like.”

Mercy blinked. “Do you have them with you?”

She wasn’t really sure what the protocol was, or if the hospital even had protocols anymore. Traditionally, animals were not allowed for sanitary reasons, but at this point, who was going to come down here and scold her for inviting dogs into the morgue?

“Bring them in, I suppose.”

The man whistled. Mercy wasn’t prepared for the terror of watching three, full-grown hellhounds come slinking down the steps like exhaled smoke. All of them were dark-furred, a brown on the verge of black, with eyes like golden coins. The eyes were too wide and too large on their faces. It had the unhappy effect of making them look adorable, even though Mercy knew the evolutionary purpose was to lure smaller prey into brief stillness. The creatures circled around the room before sitting—straight and regal—along the far wall. Their master trudged into the room with the opposite effect. He looked as if he’d not showered in several days.

“So, what are we tracking?”

“Well, we were actually hoping to take samples today….” She trailed off. The man was close enough now that she could see bruises on his chest, running across his collarbone. “Can you track without magic?”

He offered a crooked smile. “Of course. They’re the ones who use magic. Not me.”

She sighed with relief. The hounds would be incredibly useful. All they needed now was for the samples to arrive. Absurdly, she heard a knock at the door. She glanced up in time to see a paladin peeking around the corner. “Excuse me? Where do you want these corpses?”

Mercy gestured. The houndmaster made room for them by reuniting with his dogs on the opposite end of the room. If a corpse delivery was surprising to him, he showed no sign of it. Six paladins funneled through the entrance. Each pair ferried a gurney between them, and on each gurney was a covered body. When the final body was set down, the paladins retreated from the room. She didn’t blame them for wanting to be gone from this place. These were no ordinary corpses.

“How exciting,” Williams said.

Mercy nodded. “I can’t believe we found them.”

Locating these three bodies had taken an inordinate amount of searching. The city had five water treatment facilities. According to the reports, every building responsible for supplying water to Kathor had been tainted. Corpses were discovered at each facility. She and Williams had risked the streets to hunt down their storage locations. The first four buildings reported that the bodies had been delivered to local morgues. They’d collected addresses and left. When they arrived, however, they were told that hospital personnel had already come by to collect the bodies. All of them had supposedly been transferred to Safe Harbor.

No one was better positioned to know that was a lie than them.

The city wasn’t functioning. Their hospital was barely operable. She suspected that Kathor’s larger governing entities were faring no better. The normal result of dysfunction was inactivity. She thought it would have been far more likely that these bodies found their way to the smaller morgues, and then were completely forgotten. Maybe—and it would be a big maybe—some official would remember them weeks down the road and rush back to take care of the neglected business. Which was what made these instances so odd. The city’s disarray had somehow led to expedited service? And the swift response just happened to have removed very important evidence?

Mercy found that all unlikely. Suspicious even.

Their final visit had involved a stroke of luck. An elderly woman had come to the door of that morgue. “Bodies?” she’d replied. “Yes, plenty of those.”

The bodies from the final treatment facility were still there. Whoever had worked to round up the others had missed these—or else been unable to gain access. She always secretly pictured Nance as her opponent. His failure in this was her victory. Now she adjusted the fit of her gloves, ignored the tingling in her stunted fingers, and nodded to Dr. Williams.

“Let’s begin.”

He loosened the seal of the first bag and they set to work. The victim was a young man in his midthirties. His hair was trimmed tight. His skin was pale and bloated. Matching slits ran down both biceps. Twin wounds cut across each exposed thigh. Every wound was perfectly identical to the first corpse she’d inspected. Williams leaned close, examining the edges of the lesion by the throat.

“You can’t do this with a standard scalpel or knife. Look at how wide the actual incision is. For all of these cuts. Wide, and yet perfectly straight….”

“Could they have been made with a bigger blade?” Mercy proposed. “A broadsword?”

“I’d still expect the wounds to be tighter, but maybe. The chest wound is also odd. It would take enormous pressure to create a wound like that. I wonder how they did it? Some sort of machine?” He shook his head. “The whole thing is strange. It almost feels…”

“Ceremonial.”

Williams nodded. “Exactly the word for it. Are all three patients like this?”

They carefully uncovered the next two bodies. All of them had matching wounds. The first time she’d seen a corpse like this, she’d lacked the wider context. Now, she knew that the people involved had been unleashing an illness. The wounds were designed to spread something. Mercy knelt down so that she was eye level with the nearest body. There was a reason she’d wanted to inspect these particular corpses. “It’s still happening. Unbelievable. Look at that.”

A small thrill ran through her. She hadn’t dared to hope for this. Recovering the body was one thing, but having access to the substance they’d designed to enter the water? A literal godsend. As she stared, the substance drifted up from each wound. There wasn’t as much leaking out as there had been with the first body she’d inspected, but more than enough to gather samples.

“All right. Let’s collect as much as we can.”

Both of them set to the task. The sealable flasks they used for each corpse appeared empty. Only when she held them to the light could she see the dark swirls. Like some kind of corruption. They took samples from each of the bodies. The houndmaster didn’t interrupt them, but a glance back showed that all three hellhounds had altered their stances. Each one was tilting its head to the right. Ever so slightly. The houndmaster cleared his throat when he saw that she’d noticed.

“It has a scent,” he said.

“Pardon?”

“Whatever you’ve got there,” he said. “They can smell it.”

Until that moment, she would have described the substance as odorless. She tore her gaze away from those unnatural golden eyes and refocused on the task at hand. Williams labeled the individual containers while she secured the corpses back in their shrouds. Once the room was properly tidy, she signaled the houndmaster.

“What now?” Mercy asked. “How do we proceed?”

He shrugged. “You give them the scent and then let them go.”

“Right. And the three of us just follow them?”

That drew a snort from him. “Not unless you’re faster than you look, Doctor. There’s a tracing map in this hospital. These three are linked to it. You can follow their progress there as long as the spell hasn’t expired. I’ll follow them. Once they reach the end of the trail, I’ll send word. Could take a few days. Just depends on how far they have to travel.”

Mercy nodded. “Got it. Let’s get them moving, then.”

“Effie,” the houndmaster called, turning. “Go on, girl.”

The middle hound broke from its pose and trotted forward. Mercy carefully unsealed one of the sample containers and set it on the ground. The dog was well trained. Focused in an unnatural way. It shoved its nose as far into the flask as it could. Several deep inhalations, and then the creature straightened. They all watched it slip from the room like a departing shadow. Mercy stoppered the container and traded it out for a sample from one of the other corpses.

“Emma.”

Another dog came forward. Mercy repeated all the same steps. The final dog—who bore the unfortunate name of Eustace—was the only one who broke protocol. It took advantage of its proximity to her and gave Mercy’s palm a quick lick. She scratched the pup behind the ears, then let it get back to its duty. Once all three had vanished, she turned back to the houndmaster.

“You said there’s a map?”

He nodded. “Guy I always worked with was short. Bald. Rimmed glasses. Quietlike. He worked in the back wing. The map is in his office.”

A ghost of a smile crossed Mercy’s face. “Dr. Horn.”

The houndmaster confirmed the name before bidding them farewell. Mercy stared after him, an odd feeling stirring in her chest. It was almost as if an invisible hand had reached inside her and started tightening the screws of her heart. Williams somehow noticed. He was kind enough to set aside the containers and throw a friendly arm around her shoulder.

“Come on. We can go up there together.”

She couldn’t have been more grateful. Walking into her dead mentor’s office was threatening to unmoor her. Only a few months ago, they’d performed a surgery together. And then Horn sent her on an assignment that would echo up and down the eastern seaboard. An assignment that would eventually lead to his death. They found Dr. Horn’s office untouched. Exactly as he’d left it. Perhaps a few more folders than normal, as he’d been reviewing several cases prior to his departure. The map in question was hanging over his desk. She couldn’t believe she’d never noticed it.

“Do you think that’s it?” Mercy asked.

Williams squinted. “Well… it’s the only one… Oh, look! There.”

The map shifted before their eyes. It had been a wider scope stretching from Ravinia all the way down to the first citadel cities well to the south. Now, the map homed in on Kathor’s districts. All of them charted neatly. Three marks appeared. Like burning embers. One for each hound , she realized. All of them began inching across the cityscape.

They maneuvered through the Lower Quarter. Then it was backroads and alleyways to the industrial heart of the city. She saw a long pause there before the hounds were on the move again.

It took another hour for them to reach the city gates. They were delayed there for several minutes. Mercy found herself wondering how they would get through doors or gates or anything that normally required opposable thumbs, but after a short delay, they were outside Kathor proper. The map expanded to follow their path. Slowly widening until they had glimpses of rivers and hills and mountains. She and Williams sat in silence, spellbound by a magic that would have seemed so commonplace just a few months before. She was starting to drift to sleep when Williams spoke. “Look at that.”

Slowly and inexplicably, one of the hounds split from the others. It happened just north of Kathor. In the foothills that separated city from farmland. They watched that flickering ember turn inward. Heading west, away from the others. Mercy eyed the foothills in that direction.

Where are you headed? What’s out there? Do I even want to know?

“… pretty good run.”

Mercy blinked. “What?”

Williams smiled. “You know, you’re a terrible listener. It’s a wonder that you ever made it through school. I was saying we’ve both had a pretty good run. Been at least seven days for me.”

“Seven days of what?”

“Not getting sick,” he said. “I guess Professor Porthinos was right. Follow the protocols, blah blah blah, wash your hands, blah blah blah.”

Williams was fussing with his tea, so he did not notice the effect his words had on Mercy. The way she leaned back into the cushions of her chair, struck by an idea she’d only thought of once in passing. All this time, and still she wasn’t sick. Not even a hint of the disease. Who had more exposure than she did? She’d discovered the first body. She’d been with the earliest known patients. She was guilty of drinking water in Running Hills and in Kathor. There was no way she’d gone this entire time without being exposed to the illness.

Enough time had passed that Mercy thought she knew the answer. Every disease they’d ever studied—whether a one-off plague or a seasonable illness—shared three commonalities. First, they were all transferable in some way. Whether through physical contact or the air or water. Next, they produced similar symptoms in their victims. The degree might differ, but there would be a consistency across the population. The last component, however, was that every disease she’d ever studied involved a select group that came to be known as the immune .

There were some people, for example, who never caught the coastal flu that swept through the city every winter. Doctors in ancient times would have called them lucky. Maybe even favored by the gods. But medical studies showed, time and time again, that some people simply had the genetic makeup to resist a disease. Mercy frowned at that.

Williams and I are both… immune?

It felt statistically unlikely. Although, now that she considered this angle, she hadn’t heard of any other exceptions amongst their staff. Nearly everyone had gone home sick. Many had even returned after their recovery to help out. She was debating the odds when the answer hit her in the chest like a two-ton anvil. Even now, Dr. Williams was performing the very task that had saved him.

Sipping tea.

She’d never seen anyone drink as much tea as him, and she realized she’d not seen him drink even a single glass of water. You’ve been boiling it out each time. He might be the luckiest person she’d ever met. Weeks had gone by, but he’d been unknowingly boiling out the pathogens before they could ever reach his body. Until…

… today. The two of them had just spent hours in a room full of the disease. Heavier doses than what would be found in water, in fact. It was possible his mask enchantments might have worked, staved off the illness, but she knew she’d just unintentionally exposed him. She watched him take another sip of his tea and could not decide how or what to tell him.

Better to hold on to hope for now.

The two of them sat in the quiet of that office, watching the three glowing embers work their way across the seemingly endless plains. Mercy found herself dreaming of a world with more answers than questions. More solutions than problems. Maybe, just maybe, the hounds were leading them to that place. Maybe Williams would not get sick. Maybe something would go right.

For once.