Leech by Hiron Ennes

Author:Hiron Ennes [Ennes, Hiron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2022-07-28T17:00:00+00:00

XVI

THE SOUND OF THE château’s panic does nothing to assuage my aches. Pain is split evenly between my brain, pounding to the rhythm of busy hammers, and my abdomen, where some invisible hand has grabbed hold of my uterus and is kneading it like dough. I stand in Didier’s study, vainly trying to warm myself by his fire as he dispatches servants, ordering all doors to be locked, all keys delivered to the constable, all potential routes of escape boarded up. Holes in the walls will be filled, unused doors sealed and covered. Any cracks, crevices, or seams big enough for a mouse to slip through are big enough for Pseudomycota, I tell him, and he takes it to heart.

Hours pass, but the night seems eternal. As I stare at the wrought-iron leaves of the fire screen, my mind paints and repaints pictures of the tip of a cigarille, smoldering under Baker’s nose, moving from one side of his mouth to the other as he grins. Had he dropped it from his teeth, had the lighting of a match gone awry, had he, in his absentminded way, ashed it into a cauldron of flammables—I don’t know and I can’t know. All I can do is curse between my teeth at his luckless, dead, stupid soul.

It is almost dawn, and the purple light of the sun is slipping shyly past the jagged peaks. The citizens of Verdira, I suspect, are just emerging to investigate the strange explosion, and I cannot predict what they will find. The animals of the mountains might’ve come to claim Baker as they did for the bodies of the Montish for centuries, or the heat of the disaster may have kept them at bay. Priest might be bending over the body right now, muttering something akin to a prayer, as Baker’s friends gather his limbs and lash them together like a bouquet for burial. And Pseudomycota may be there, injured but alive, waiting for them.

A twist of guilt runs through me. I have no room to hope. I must consider every Verdiran outside the château infected. The whole village is dead until proven otherwise.

“What are we going to tell the baron?” I mutter, mostly to myself.

“As little as we can,” Didier answers, scribbling a hasty protocol to be passed between the gendarmes. “An explosion is . . . not unexpected. You didn’t know Baker long, but he’s toyed with dangerous things all his life. He was an expert, but there’s a reason he needed a second heart. He never treated himself with caution. Something like this was bound to happen.” A defeated sigh rolls from him. “Pèren will not be surprised. Only angry, which isn’t much better. A machinist like that isn’t easy to replace.”

I return my eyes to the flames. “The Institute can bring one up when the train comes in spring.”

And what do you think that train’ll find? asks a voice in my head. I have given up on deciding if it is mine or not.

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