The Ambiguous Puzuma

His career had followed Arvin's, just as Arvin's career had followed his. It had started by coincidence, Dale chosen as a body double for the up-and-coming actor, just by virtue of their remarkable similarity in appearance. But like any relationship, what had started by chance took a lot of effort to maintain. They'd had to work at it, following the same diet, the same exercise regimen - and, when Arvin was thrust further into the spotlight, the same cosmetic surgery. Dale was his double, as Arvin was his. Their likeness was the basis for his career, and they had climbed the box office together. Arvin's star rose, and Dale's moon followed.

It might have been easy to resent his status as stunt double, a reflection of the man who shared his looks, and couldn't act much outside of them, but he never did. The pair had bonded outside of work, spending so much time together, and reproduced the same dynamic. Dale had helped Arvin move to a new apartment, change the tires on his car, put up a set of shelves. Arvin had dealt with a landlord dispute for Dale; smoother in the way he spoke, more practised in the way he lied. Both men were loners, with no family to speak of, and that helped to draw them closer; alike in more than just appearance.

As they progressed to larger jobs, higher-grossing roles, their paths increasingly diverged. Arvin was paid much more for his part of their shared work, taking on less physical risk, but Dale didn't even resent him for that. It wasn't an actor's fault that people prized him more. That was the way the system was set up, and neither of them had any control over that. He could either live his life in bitterness, or enjoy the benefits of having a friend with a mansion and unlimited funds for partying and travel. It didn't matter that it wasn't him with the sports car. He was in the passenger seat, which would make him the envy of anyone else.

That was where he'd been when Arvin died, swerving too fast on their way back from a bar, and colliding with a stop-sign coming the other way. He'd been brained on impact, whilst Dale staggered out without a scratch. There was a tragic irony in that. He had always been the one behind the wheel when they filmed car chases, mitigating any risk of collision on set, but Arvin had been the one to risk his life outside of it. By all the rules of their relationship, he should have been the one to take the blow.

The guilt came instantly, retching over the sight of the body, tears flowing freely with no acting required. He should have stopped Arvin from drinking. He should have stopped him from driving, no matter how insistent he got. He should have taken the wheel himself. There was no career for him, a dead man's lookalike. Arvin would have gone on without him. He was the action hero, wooden though his acting had become. They'd find him another stuntman, in the way they'd never find Dale another actor. It would have been better if he'd been the one to die. That was the decision every studio had made, when they'd put him in a harness. It should have been him.

In fact, he considered that it had been.

That was the second thought, arriving some minutes later, just ahead of the emergency vehicles. People would expect Dale to have died. That would fit the narrative. They would be glad that Arvin had survived, and there would be no particular mourning for his double. No cover stories, no breaking news, no tribute that he didn't lead himself. If Dale told them who he was, who would question it? He had the ID in Alvin's pockets, and the face to match. He knew as much about the man as anyone, having been with him from the start. He had the keys to the mansion, and knew where the scripts were kept. He could pick up the threads of a life cut too short, and see if he could muddle through the rest.

Sofie was a regular, but she wasn't usual. Whilst most visitors came with friends, or, like Cad, sought her out at the bar, she took a table in the furthest corner of the inn, her face half-shrouded in shadow. Tarbera would have said that she kept to herself, except that she always seemed to attract her own company. She brought things to trade, they told Tarbera, reporting back whilst she drew their pints: she had all sorts of wonders to be bartered, and accepted all sorts of other things in return. That was why she never ventured to the bar herself. She never had to buy her own drinks.

The more talkative guests described her as a travelling trader, who spent the months between her visits trawling foreign lands, although none could give a hint of where. That was the nature of a crossroads, Tarbera supposed; without anybody seeing her arrive, Sofie could be visiting from any direction. All they knew was that the wares she brought back were far from local goods; even to call them exotic would not do their strangeness justice. Cad, who was a frequent customer of Safie too, referred to them as Mooncalves. Aberrations. Things which were never meant to exist.

He had once traded for a fox pelt sewn with shells, like the scales of a pearlescent fish; a rose tattooed with poetry on each petal; a beetle's wing-casing which opened on tiny hinges to play the sound of a song-thrush. He was a farmer, so was always able to barter his produce in exchange, although others were not so lucky. Where a patron had nothing to offer in trade, Safie was said to ask them for a secret, or a favour, although Tarbera never learnt what that might be. If they were reluctant, she offered to play them for it, always travelling with her own deck of cards. They would find a deal, or she would deal them in.

There was an old superstition about bargaining at crossroads, but Tarbera had never paid that any heed. Her livelihood depended on it, after all: trading song for ale, silver for gold. The inn had always been a place of business. Many a deal had been more pleasantly hammered out over a mug or two or ale; the grease that kept the clockwork turning. Most of them were legitimate, although there had been some more shady proprietors, hawking goods which had fallen from the back a wagon. Tarbera knew better than to ask questions. Her trade was in pouring drinks, and she profited as much as any of them. She had her own business to run, and her own business to mind.

So it was with Safie. Tarbera had never approach her directly, always working whilst she had set up shop, as she was at all times, and too busy serving their mutual customers, but she'd acquired some of her wares second-hand. She was not averse to barter herself, from patrons run dry of conventional coin, and would sometimes accept artwork, furniture, or glassware in settlement of a tab. If it was something the inn might need, it only saved her the time of finding it elsewhere. Cad had paid for many a tab with a sack of onions come harvest time.

After a while, it almost became a point of principal. If Safie wouldn't deign to come to the bar, Tarbera didn't want to be the one to come to speak to her, as if her business was the more important one. It was bad enough that some of her other patrons seemed to think so, flocking to her corner every month to see what new impossibilities she'd brought. But she could only hold out for so long. There were only so many miracles she could hear about before her own curiosity got the better of her, and she had to see the mooncalves for herself.

It was a quiet evening. Only a few of the more frequent regulars were left, and the inn was largely empty; the night outside as silent as it was dark. Tarbera could only hear the ticking of her clock behind the bar, and the deathwatch beetles drumming out their vigil in the timbers overhead, and Safie shuffling her cards, dealing them out to herself, and shuffling them back into the deck again. A game of patience, Tarbera assumed. Like the one she'd finally lost.

"Good evening," she said, trying not to seem as nervous as she felt. Trying to act as if she owned the place. Remembering that she did. "Can I bring you anything?"

"That depends," Safie said, with a smile as rare and beautiful as any of her treasures, a crescent moon to fill the vacuum in the sky. "What do you have to trade?"

She had her own wares laid out for all to peruse. Tarbera liked to think of herself as a woman of the world: before settling at this crossroad, to cater to travellers from all directions, she'd done her share of exploring herself. She had seen the Sah's palace in the south, and visited the Tower of the Flamingo in the east, but she'd never seen anything quite like this. A butterfly-sized songbird in a matching golden cage. A painting that seemed deeper than the well she kept downstairs. A gemstone in a colour that she couldn't rightly name.

It was said strange sights could be found in the Blue Forests of Umir, where the air shimmered between the trees and whole glades filled with gossamer, but nowhere was such wildness tamed and set out on a velvet cloth. Tarbera lost herself just looking at the mooncalves, each marvel stranger than the last, and was embarrassed when she recovered herself, not knowing how much time had passed. She saw that the remaining space on Safie's table had been taken up with offerings from earlier that night: unfinished plates and drinks still not yet touched.

"Nothing you're wanting for, I'm sad to say."

"Oh, I can't believe that's true." She flashed her smile again, as silver as it was white. "We could play a round of cards, if nothing else."

"For what stakes?" Tarbera knew men who had lost more than they wished.

"For the winner, the satisfaction of a good game."

"And from the loser?"

"Only a good game played." She must have seen the surprise on Tarbera's face. "Sometimes the enjoyment is enough. I would not choose cards to wager on if I had not already mastered them, and I could not have mastered the game without a love for it. Consider yourself warned."

This time she dealt for two. The cards were beautifully painted, the usual suits illustrated with human scenes. Tarbera caught her breath when she drew the Dame of Cups, which bore a striking similarity to her own appearance; but she supposed the picture was merely meant to be a typical innkeeper, which she supposed was what she was. True to Safie's word, she emerged victorious in five games out of five, with none of them particularly close.

"You're right," Tarbera conceded after the final hand of the round. "You're too good at this."

"I've had the benefit of a lot of practice."

"Can you teach me?"

"Of course," Safie said. "I'm always willing to make a trade."

"In exchange for what?" Tarbera remembered the rumours she had heard. A secret. A favour. Each prospect scared and excited her both.

Safie considered it for a while, appraising the inn and Tarbera in a way that sent a tingle down her spine.

"I want your stories," she said at last. "You must see the comings and goings of all manner of folk. Half of them in their cups, as well. You must have quite the collection of tales to tell."

"You have a deal." Tarbera did not pause for nearly as long.

"Thank you," came the small echo to his right. His daughter, I hoped. She couldn't have been more than ten.

"No trouble at all," I told them, as if I did this all the time, and hadn't just blazed past a couple of their peers. "Where abouts are you headed?"

"I take it you're going Harmouth way?" The man turned the question on me.

"That's right. I'm happy to drop you wherever you want."

"Anywhere in the city works for us. Don't you worry about us; we're just grateful for the ride. You wouldn't believe the number of people who just drive past."

"Unbelievable," I told them.

We settled into a natural silence. It didn't feel particularly comfortable, but it was more comfortable than I'd been before. Just having the company helped. I had been worried about coming back to this stretch of road. There was a reason I'd put it off for as long as I could. A reason I'd had a beer before heading out, just to steady my nerves. It was better not to face it alone.

"It's a dangerous business, actually." The man broke the silence. "My wife died on this road. Georgia's mom."

"I'm sorry to hear that." I tried to think of something else to say. "Hitch hiking, you mean?"

"Yeah. But it wasn't like the horror stories, if that's what you're thinking. She wasn't abducted. Just clipped by a driver who wasn't paying attention. We think a truck like this one."

"I'm sorry," I said again. That was a normal thing to say, wasn't it? It didn't mean anything. "That's awful."

"Yeah. Thanks."

"I'm surprised you still do it, in that case. Especially with your daughter. Doesn't that make you scared?"

"Sure. But we don't have a choice."

"You can't drive? Or more closer to town?"

"Mara can't," he said. "It's her we do it for. The police never found her killer."

"Oh." I wasn't sure what to say to that. "That's what you're trying to do?"

"Whenever we have a free afternoon. That's when it happened."

"Is that safe?" It was a stupid question. "I mean, you get some odd sorts trying to catch a ride at the best of times. But you're looking for a killer."

"We're prepared to find one." He pulled open one half of his jacket, revealing a hammer in his inside pocket. "Not as deadly a weapon as an eighteen-wheeler in the wrong hands, but it'll do a job at close quarters. Plus we both have our phones, so Georgia can call the cops. That's the plan."

"Is she a little young for a cell phone?" I asked, as if I was any judge of such things. The important thing was to change the subject. I didn't like looking at that hammer.

"She's too young to have lost her mom. I want her to always have access to me."

"Right. Of course." I was out of my depth there, but that was fine. I wouldn't mind muddling through a conversation about parenthood, or anything else I could pretend to know more about than I did. We had come too close to the alternative. Things I knew more about than I'd like to let on.

"We think they were drunk, the driver. Not looking at the road."

"You think they'll be back?" I tried to lay on a normal amount of scepticism. There was nothing wrong with having one beer for the road, but I regretted it now. I'd just wanted to take the edge off the long road to Harmouth; alone with my thoughts and fears. I wished I had my edge now. I hadn't known the memories would sit next to me. "Returning to the scene of the crime?"

"Nothing so dramatic as that. It just figures they would, doesn't it? If they drove here once. Most people repeat the same journeys again and again."

"It still seems a long shot." I'd avoided the road to Harmouth, after the accident. But I hadn't even known she'd died. She might not have. She might not have been Mara. "So you watch the trucks all afternoon, looking for swerving? I'll have to keep an eye out too. That could be dangerous for anyone on the road."

I was glad I'd only had the one drink. Glad I'd stopped for them, so they didn't really get a chance to judge my driving. I just needed to make it into town, and then we could go our separate ways. I didn't have to come back this way again, now I knew that the ghosts were real. It seemed another long absence was required.

"Oh no. We're only here until the first truck takes pity on us. We just come to catch a ride back into down. See if I can smell alcohol, or hear a slur in the driver's voice. That's a more reliable test. There's no guarantee they'll sway at the same stretch of road, but I can sniff out the root cause if I sit with them a while."

"Right." I fought the instinct to breathe more shallowly. That would be a giveaway itself. I just needed to find another cause for doubt. "I still don't see it, though. I mean, you're relying on a killer to stop for hitchhikers. I doubt they'll be that decent a person.

"Actually, this killer may believe that they are. They might not even know they're a killer. They phoned an ambulance, you know. Anonymously calling in the accident, before driving off and leaving her to die alone."

"Awful." There it was: my last scrap of hope mowed down. Too specific a detail. There could be no coincidence.

"They didn't want the consequences, you see. Any of them. The law, or their own guilt. They didn't want to know. They might have even convinced themselves the medics got there in time, that she recovered, that no harm was done. That they were still a good person."

"Surely not."

"I couldn't stand that," he continued, apparently not minding the inadequacy on my responses. "They idea of them thinking they'd got away scot-free, without a hitch. That they were absolved. But if they thought of themselves as a good person, that would make them easier to meet. They'd be the sort of person who might take pity on a young girl by the side of the road, to support that belief. To convince themselves, if nobody else. To placate the buried guilt."

"Why are you telling me this?" I dared to ask, unable to stand it anymore.

He stared at me for a while before answering. An uncomfortable silence, now. "I needed to know for sure. To gauge your reactions. I've told this story a few times, as you'll imagine. The others did a better job. It's good that you understand, too. To understand why."

"I didn't kill your wife." The drink made the lie easier. It had made everything easier, until now. "I haven't killed anyone."

"Maybe not," he said. "But you would have. And you will do."

"Please." The hammer was in his hand.

"Don't worry," he said. "We'll give you the same chance she got."

I felt the pain before I registered the movement. White fire blossomed from my temple. I was made of broken glass, and the world cut itself to ribbons on my shards. The road ahead of me blurred in rosy hues, and I couldn't tell if the distortion was in my sight or in my thoughts, the blood pooled in my eyes or brain. My hands were lifted from the wheel, and the cab tilted sideways, and I'd had more than one drink after all.

The last thing heard was his daughter. Grace. Josie. Georgia. Such a small little voice. An echo. A ghost. An angel.

Today, Laithe was a jar for other people's souls, a reliquary for the voices of dead kings, a container only for something more valuable. The music had been etched into his memory, and he only needed to be commanded with the name of the song, an opening lines, to be compelled to regurgitate the rest. He was a music box, to be opened at Lady Esten's pleasure. She need only turn his handle and his lips would twitch into life, his fingers dancing freely on his lute, like a bird-catcher spider on the end of his hand, a puppet on his strings. He would vomit up the song for her. Then, when he was finally dismissed to his own dismal rooms, he would vomit for himself.

It was a tremendous honour, to be a minstrel in the great halls of the great houses, or so people said. That was why this had been done to him, his parents wanting to secure a higher place in the world, for themselves as much as Laithe. They had bought Lady Esten's influence with his life, like the firstborn sacrifices of olden times, and his youth brought them an excuse to stay close at hand: ostensibly to care for him, but that ship had sailed before he was born, when they had set this as its course. They only cared for their coveted place at court, where they might mingle with their betters and exaggerate their own importance. Perhaps it was a tremendous honour for them.

Laithe said nothing, and nobody asked him to. He watched in silence as his parents, proud to have laid the golden egg, preened and puffed out their new plumage. He watched them feather their own nest, not caring that it was empty. He listened to Lady Esten holding court, numb to his own playing, drinking in the music of her words instead. He listened when she asked him to attend the parlour outside her chambers, for quieter gatherings of confidants and friends. Nobody asked him to offer a preference, or opinion, or any spoken word at all. He only sang, reciting the words of other men long dead, without speech of his own. He was just the instrument. His voice, like that of his lute, was made only for music.

But his ears were for listening. They had taught him to play by ear; to sight-read without sight. He could hear a tune once, and know it forever, for it echoed always in the hollow space they'd left. He listened to the whispers in Lady Esten's chamber, and learnt to decipher the rhythm of their secrets. He heard footsteps in the night, and traced where they went, and when they softened their tread. He heard the discordant chords of lies; the muffled notes of betrayals. He drank in his parents' grasping and his patron's own ambitions, and heard all they had to say about those above and beneath them, and put it to the music that resounded with his heart.

Salma was the second. She had travelled in on horseback, as was traditional, navigating marshland that surrounded this stretch of coast. A lagoon festooned with flamingos. Trees barnacled by timber crabs, a recent pest brought in from the docks; they had developed to feed on the sunken wood of wrecks, given the lack of organic material in the sea, but since moved on to intact ships, and now followed them back to their source. The lagoon was full of blue-green algae too. This town had already been diseased.

Aitana had met her at the gates. She was short, and slight, but Salma could not tell much more than that. The not-mayor was clad head-to-toe in greased leather, with her face further obscured with a conical, comical nosebag. It looked absurd, but Salma had read that this was a necessary precaution in places of plague. Aitana had prepared a spare suit for her, and helped her into it; organised even there.

"Do you know how it started?" she asked, her breath fogging the lenses for her eyes.

"It seemed to start from the docks, and spread inwards from there." Aitana's voice was muffled by the leather, but Salma knew that hers would be the same. The mask was hard to talk through. It felt like the sort of nosebag she might give to her horse. "Like the timber crabs."

Salma nodded. "It's been imported. Simarrons, they think."

"The rebels?"

"They've been harrying our ships for a while, and we think their piratical adventures have spread further afield. This is a contagion brought back from across the seas. They call it the velvet death, from what I've heard. A slow fever which furs a man's insides, transported using living sufferers in the hold."

"How can we know all that?"

"They went too far with this particular plot. Not all involved had the stomach for it. There was a dissenter; a rat from the stinking ship. He turned informant, and warned us of what they planned to do. That's why I was sent here. Cab Tal too."

She dabbed her brow. It was hot under the suit, and Salma could feel the squat beads of sweat as they squeezed from her pores, like slugs emerging after rain, and then rolled lazily down her neck, her back, the inside of her trouser legs. It would be hot here without the suit, and it was near intolerable inside. But she knew the alternative would be worse.

"But here..." Aitana was digesting what she'd heard. She seemed more accustomed to the heat, which made sense. She lived here, and must have long since adjusted to the suit as well. "Do you know why we would be the target?"

"You aren't. At least, not the ultimate one. We were told there would be an initial attack, at a coastal town; a test, before they move onto larger game, or with the home that it would spread. I've been sent to contain it by any means. To find a treatment, or a cure."

"By any means," she repeated. "And if you can't cure us? Will you seal us off? Burn the town to the ground?"

"It will not come to that." Salma avoided the answer, but she knew what she would do to keep the kingdom safe. She was a Caballero Medico, and that meant both the salve and the sword. She would would have no hesitation in taking lives to save more. "You have already done such good work in keeping it contained. Your quick action may have saved the town and kingdom both."

"I hope that is true." She paused. "How can I help you now?"

"If you wouldn't mind, I would like to see Cab Tal." The desire to see her mentor was personal, but Salma also told herself that it was the logical first step. If he was able to speak, he could catch her up on what he'd found out so far. If not, she needed to examine one of the infected, and knew that he would have volunteered.

Aitana led her through to the room where she'd put him, like a librarian remembering which books were on every shelf. Salma had thought she had a firm stomach, but the motion made her feel queasy, watching the movement through the lenses in her mask. Or perhaps that was the nosebag of aromatic herbs. The combination of rosemary and sage, combined with the odour of dead flesh, was sure to have ruined many a future meal.

"Can we go more slowly?" she asked.

"Of course," Aitana said. "You have had a long journey. If you need to rest, you only need to say. I can find an empty room for you to sit or lie down."

"On a desk?" The idea seemed wrong; like a mockery of those afflicted. But Salma didn't feel that she was well. She leant an arm against the wall whilst they paused, fighting to catch her breath.

"Are you feeling ill?"

"It's this mask, I think. I can't breath."

"Do you have a fever?"

"It's just hot in here..." She stopped. How would she react if she was standing where Aitana was, looking at her as a patient? "I can't be infected. You're the only person I've met since arrival, and you've been wearing a suit throughout. I've been wearing a suit since then. It must just be the mask. I'm not used to it."

"Yes," Aitana said. "Caballero-Medico Tal said much the same."

"This was how it started for him? Even in a mask?"

"This mask, in fact. He wore the same suit, before I took it from him and gave it to you. The next physician they send will wear it after you."

"The mask isn't clean," Salma realised, struggling to take it off. "The nosebag... forcing me to breath it in. Shutting out the sea breeze. Opening my pores. You put me in a trap, and I allowed you to fasten it around me."

"It's much too late, you know. Your predecessor made it out of his suit, and even tried to attack me, but the movement only hastens the decline. Physical activity will be difficult for you, and it only makes you need to breath more, pushing the contagion deeper. I have studied it extensively."

"You poisoned Tal. Me. All of these people. Your whole town?"

"Not my town. I only told you that. I just dumped a dying body in their midst, and waited to see how far it spread."

"You're one of the rebels." Salma felt that their positions were reversed, and reached back for Aitana's own initial questions. "But... why here? Why contain it like this? Surely you could have just sent your captives out into the city, and let it spread much further?"

"We wanted to study its progress for ourselves, first. To see how many infection points we needed, to create a plague that you couldn't control. We needed test subjects. And bait, of course. Your informant sold it to you perfectly."

"So... what he said about the attack?"

"All true, more or less," Aitana said. "We're planning something big. For deployment in the city. But this isn't designed to spread at all. In fact, that's the last thing we would have wanted; a trickle that you could easily stem, before we were ready for the flood. We chose this town because it was isolated by the marshes. There was no need for it to be contained."

She led Salma into one of the rooms, and folded her gently over a desk. There was no resistance. Her arms felt impossibly heavy. She tried to roll onto the floor, but only turned enough to see Tal lying next to her. She called his name, but could barely make out her own voice. If he was alive, he couldn't hear her to respond. Only Aitana could.

"It will be easier if you don't fight it."

"They'll send others after me," she whispered. "If I don't report back. That's what happened with Tal. This time, they'll know something is wrong."

"And they'll burn the whole town down, yes. I understood your threat before. I'll be long gone by then, of course, but the flames might bring you some relief. They'll save me having to clean up after myself, too."

"But having seen what you've done here, they'll be awake to the scale of your threat. They'll be ready for you."

"Or they'll think the danger has passed." Aitana shrugged, as if it didn't matter to her either way. "I'll ask the next one what they think. Sure, they'll go to extremes eventually, but I think I'll be able to speak to a few more of them first. I made a good impression on you, didn't I?"

"A whole town destroyed." Salma was still reeling from the magnitude of this atrocity. "And not even your target. Just... a test run. An experiment. To see if you could."

"That wasn't the main purpose, actually. We'd worked that out on the ship. But you'll like the real one even less."

"What do you mean?"

"I got to meet you." Aitana couldn't smile through her mask, but there was something sickly in her muffled voice. "Planning the perfect contagion was one thing, but we knew the Caballero Medicos would stand in our way. It made sense to start a small plague, and draw you all out first."

"This was all... for me?"

"Not at all," Heiner said. He was due to retire next year, and had ceased taking on new patients of his own, which had left him some flexibility to lend his experience to others. "It's a great honour to treat a Duke."

Alexander Elsvig, the 13th Duke of Honburg, did not look particularly ducal when they walked into his room. The straightjacket was white stained with a rusty red, and lacked the usual regalia, only stains of what looked like meat; Heiner was unsure if those were attempts to feed him, or something coming out the other way. It was livery only in a different sense of the word.

"What troubles his Excellency?" he asked, seeing that his mouth was also a mess of blood. "Consumption?"

"Of a sort," she said. "We think it's a fungus, originally. A flesh-eating kind. Its spores make their home in your stomach, and it grows outwards from there."

"He is being eaten from the inside out?" Heiner assessed his patient in that new light. "How long does he have?"

"We've been able to slow the progress to some extent. Giving him a diet of rare meat, offal, to sate the fungus and prevent it from feeding on its host."

"He eats that?" He was not sure what a Duke's diet usually included, but he imagined offal rarely featured at his table. Blue steak, perhaps.

"The fungus encourages it. It compels its host to share its appetites. He's become an obligate cannibal; he won't touch anything else. We have to crush vitamin pills in with the flesh."

"Like giving medicine to a cat?"

She nodded. "The appetite is quite something, too. We were too late to catch on, and he'd bitten off his own lips from the hunger first of all. Swallowed his tongue, too."

"God." That explained the bloodstains on his front, and meant the marks on his face weren't stains at all. He was eating through an open wound.

"Anything he could reach. He took the flesh from his fingers like drumsticks. Arms, legs, even some of his toes. He's surprisingly flexible."

"God," Heiner said again. That was enough on the symptoms. "How are you treating that?"

"The diet delays the deterioration, and we then try to work on the damage. The fungus had spread to a few of his internal organs, so we gave him a few transplants when donors became available. Moved him to the top of the list, of course."

"Of course." Heiner didn't like it, but that was how things in St. Freida's were done. More important patients received priority treatment. That was the whole principle of the place. Those who couldn't afford it got no treatment at all. "Did that work?"

"We haven't been able to cut it out entirely. We can swap in one organ at a time, but the spores still grow back. We're working on a treatment, but it's taking some time. The challenge now is keeping him alive for long enough."

"I thought you said you just needed to keep feeding him? To slow it down?"

"That's right."

"Surely we can get enough meat for that? I know you said the appetite is increased, but he's one man. A single butcher should be able to keep him fed."

"Oh. I didn't mention that it had to be human flesh?"

"What?"

"It's what the fungus feeds on. It's a human disease. If you don't provide it with another source, it starts to take apart its host." Jactina chewed her own lip. "Honestly, we tried everything we could. Pig, goat, cat, dog. Human was the only thing that stopped the spread."

"Where have you been getting human meat?"

"I mentioned the donated organs, right? We just kept them coming. Transplanting was too slow, so we start just feeding them to him direct. It's only temporary. Just until we can find the cure."

"How many organs has that taken?" Heiner stared at her. "How many other patients have died, waiting?"

"We've limited it as best we can," Jacinta said, shifting nervously. "We have tried all other options, believe me."

"Do I want to know?"

"No."

He paused, thinking it over. He already had a pretty good idea. "Tell me."

"Well, we're standing in a hospital. There are always bodies. Those we couldn't save. The family rarely need to see them, before the cremation, and ashes are easy to fake."

"You fed him... other patients?"

"Only the dead ones," she said. "Well, at first. When those ran out... well, there were some who were already dying. Terminal. It made no sense to keep them alive, and see the Duke die as a result. Or feed him another dozen donated organs, which could have gone to keep somebody else alive. A waste of resources all around."

"You killed them."

"We let a few of them pass gently away. The poorer patients, you understand. The philanthropic cases. Nobody that anyone would miss." Jacinta sighed. "He's the Duke. We need to keep him alive, to buy time to study this fungus. If I could cure him... it shouldn't be about that, but imagine the patronage I might enjoy. Who knows how many more lives that will save, if it spreads any more?"

Heiner nodded. It shouldn't be about that, but he knew how many of the staff here thought. He wouldn't mind a little of the credit himself. It might make for a more comfortable retirement. "How can I help?"

Jacinta gestured him back out of the book, and led him down a corridor to an empty room. The air was thick with the smell of the blood. This was clearly where she prepared the Duke's medicine and meals.

"I suppose I may as well tell you all of it," she said, preparing a syringe.

"There's more?"

"There weren't enough patients. Not enough dead, or dying and unimportant. We had to look elsewhere."

"You took in people dying on the streets?"

She shook her head. "Impossible. We would be seen. Nobody can know about any of this. If God is merciful, even the Duke will forget, and this burden will be mine to bear alone. No, we had to keep this in-house. We moved onto the poorer members of staff. The orderlies. The cleaners. The most easily replaced. It was an orderly who helped me, until now. Since then I've managed on my own."

"I can help with any carrying of bodies," Heiner told her, trying to focus on the job at hand. The less he thought about her choices, the better. They were for Jacinta's conscience to wrestle with. He was only here to follow her direction. "Even the butchery, although I am loathe to have any part of this. Whatever needs another hand. I may be old, but I might still have a bit more muscle in my arms than you do."