Chapter 20 Lysa
twenty
Lysa
The walk to the Apothecarium usually took ten minutes, but since last night, the world outside Maren’s shop had twisted into something from a fever dream.
I kept my head down, but I couldn’t block out the smell.
The river, our beautiful Silver River that sang over the stones, didn’t smell like water anymore.
It stank of what I could only describe as wet ash.
When I dared to look at it, my stomach rolled.
The water had thickened, sluggish and heavy, moving slow.
It didn’t splash against the bank; it just slithered.
A tremor shuddered through the soles of my boots, a deep thrumming from the earth, as if the ley-line beneath us was groaning in agony. Above me, the iron lantern bracket on the baker’s shop rattled, shaking a fine dust of mortar onto the cobblestones.
“Easy,” I said, stepping around a pile of debris.
A flash of movement in the brush near the water caught my eye.
I stopped, crouching instinctively. A red fox lay in the mud, its body seizing in unnatural spasms. I reached out, then snatched my hand back.
Weeping from the creature’s eyes and mouth were fine, silver-black metallic threads.
It was the same dark geometry that I’d seen writhing under Fenrik’s skin.
The manor’s sickness seemed to bleed out.
“Damn Stormgardes,” a voice grumbled nearby.
I straightened, pressing myself into the shadow of an awning as two dockworkers hurried past, hauling crates away from the water.
“Fenrik’s father chose the manor over the town thirteen years ago,” the older man spat, hiking the crate higher. “Drained the local lines to save his precious pile of rocks. We never recovered from the last collapse, and now the son’s finishing the job.”
“Reckon we should leave?” the younger one asked, eyeing the river.
“And go where? The roads are shifting, lad. Just keep your head down.”
I patted the pocket of my coat, feeling the cold glass of the vial Kelda had pressed into my hand. This will ease his pain.
I needed to know what kind of ease she was offering, so I turned down a narrow alleyway, slipping away from the river into the crooked cluster of shops known as the Alchemist’s Quarter.
I bypassed the respectable establishments and headed for a door painted a garish, peeling purple.
A sign hung askew above it: Barnaby’s Brews it severs your connection to the ley-lines before stopping your heart.
Very expensive. Very illegal.“ He paused, tilting his head.
“Also, it tastes like peppermint. To mask the bitterness of death, I suppose. Thoughtful.”
I gripped the edge of the counter. Kelda hadn’t offered Fenrik mercy. She had handed me a weapon to hollow him out.
Barnaby poked the pile of ash with a quill. “So. Are we going to talk about why you’re carrying around enough liquid murder to assassinate a High Lord, or should I make us some tea? I have a blend that doesn’t talk back.”
I shook my head.
“No? Well, then my advice is to keep it hidden,” Barnaby warned. “And Lysa? Don’t drink the thing.”
I didn’t have the heart to smile. I shoved out into the alley, the vial knocking against my hip bone with every step.
I turned onto the main thoroughfare, intent on reaching the Apothecarium, but a wall of bodies blocked the street.
I tried to shoulder past another group of dockworkers, but a rough hand clamped onto my forearm.
“Here she is,” a man snarled. His face was streaked with soot, eyes wide with sleeplessness.
I wrenched my arm away. “Let me pass.”
“Pass?” A woman stepped forward, clutching a shawl tight around her throat. “We haven’t been able to pass the bridge in two days. The river’s eating the stones.” She jabbed a finger at my chest. “It was bad before, girl. But ever since you went up to that accursed house the rot has moved faster.”
“It’s not me,” I lied. My presence had accelerated it. The house, the curse, the man, they were reacting to me.
“Go back to your master,” someone spat.
I broke into a run, their angry muttering chasing me all the way to the infirmary steps. Inside was madness.
The Apothecarium, a place of quiet bubbling brews and soft whispers, was a cacophony of animal distress. My father was nowhere to be seen, likely cornered in the back room, leaving the front exam room in chaos.
On the main table, the baker’s herding hound was thrashing, its claws scrabbling against the wood. Dark foam flecked its two muzzles, and I could hear that buzzing dissonance beneath its skin, the sound of the corruption taking hold.
“Hold him!” I ordered the baker, who was weeping openly.
I reached for the sedative on the shelf, it was a simple valerian blend to stop the seizure.
My arm extended, but my fingers refused to obey.
They spasmed, a tremor I couldn’t get a hold of that radiated up to my shoulder.
My hand clipped a ceramic teacup sitting on the prep table.
Shards of blue-painted clay skittered across the floorboards.
I stared at my shaking hands, horror rising in my throat.
I was unraveling. The magic was eating the nerves right out of my body.
The dog let out a strangled yelp, arching its back. There was no time for potions. I slammed my palms onto the hound’s ribcage. Quiet.
I didn’t ask the magic; I shoved it. I reached for the discordant noise inside the beast and crushed it.
The reaction was instantaneous. A line of heat seared down my spine, hot enough to make me gasp.
Something wet and warm dripped onto my apron.
I blinked, and the room smeared into shapeless grey blobs.
My nose was bleeding in a freakin steady stream.
The world tilted. I gripped the edge of the metal table, my knuckles turning white, fighting the darkness crowding my vision.
Beneath my hands, the dog went still. The buzzing stopped, but so did its heart.
I pulled my hands back, leaving bloody smears on the animal’s golden fur. “No,” I whispered. “No, come back.”
The baker’s wife let out a broken sob that cut me deeper than any knife. I stood there, swaying, wiping the blood from my upper lip with a trembling wrist. “I... I tried to stabilize him. The corruption was too deep.”
“He was five years old,” the baker stood, his large hands resting gently on the dog’s two still heads.
He didn’t look at me with anger, which would have been bearable.
He looked at me with exhaustion. “He used to chase the frost-voles out of the grain stores. Best mouser we ever had. Never let a single sack spoil.”
“He liked the crusts,” the wife said, touching the dog’s ear. “Whatever we burned that morning, he’d wait by the oven door for it. Even when the flour got scarce last winter... he always waited.”
“I’m sorry,” I choked out.
The baker looked up, his eyes rimmed with red.
“We saved for months to pay for this visit, Miss Emberlin. We thought... well. We remembered how the valley used to be. When the beasts just got old, instead of turning into monsters.” He shook his head, looking past me, out the window where the sky was bruising purple. “Before the Stormgardes forgot us.”
He gathered the dog’s body into his arms, hefting the weight with a grunt. “There’s no fixing it now, is there? Not for any of us.”