Power of Shadow (Earth, Blood and Shadow Book 1) by Dean Chalmers

Author:Dean Chalmers [Chalmers, Dean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aon Forge
Published: 2015-08-25T23:00:00+00:00

Malleck’s sitting room—if one could call it such—was in the attic of Red Brick House.

The House was a tall, narrow structure; five storeys in height, if the high attic was counted as part of the total. How it had ever escaped the Tower Law I did not know; perhaps Malleck’s more influential patients had helped him in that regard.

It was not an imposing structure, somehow too long and yet not wide enough to avoid seeming awkward despite its impressive rise. But it did offer a broad view of the New City through the wide attic windows with their expensive panes of flawless clear glass, the one true luxury the place offered amidst its towering modesty.

We sat sipping cups of a Southland root tea, a bit bitter to my taste, while looking down at the lights of the houses below. My hand had been salved and bandaged, and the clothes Malleck had promised turned out to be fine indeed, despite his earlier warning.

There was a silk shirt and fine linen trousers, along with boots of supple calf-leather. None of the items showed any sign of use; though the trousers were evenly creased at the knees, probably from being long hung. I wondered if these garments had been gifts to him, but had failed to suit his modest and irregular taste.

Malleck had brought us here by pony cab, and afterwards, hearing my concerns, he had sent the driver back to the Asylum to let Cleosole know that we were fine.

I still would have to make my real goodbye to her; could I risk going back there one more time?

The “sitting room” was really only part of the huge open attic, high and long under the vaulted roof. The space around the window had been cleared, tables and chairs placed there upon a fine rug, and dust swept back to the edges of some invisible perimeter.

Just beyond the dust-line, the stacks of junk began.

The junk collection of Healer Malleck was infamous, another part of his eccentric legend. It had been said that it filled most of Red Brick House, and this seemed to be true. There was even a dubious rumor that once thieves had broken in, but the hapless burglars had become lost in the junk, and starved there.

The towering stacks loomed around the free-space of the “sitting room,” filling the long tall space like some odd hybrid of warehouse and museum.

A pyramid of wheelbarrows was to one side, leaning against the wall; near that, chairs both fine and rough were stacked nearly to the ceiling. Other stacks and piles had discarded stair railings, or carriage parts, or bed frames.

All of it was piled high, and stacked close. Malleck had confessed to us that three storeys of the House were nearly full of the junk, with only the ground floor and a few other open spaces set aside.

Each piece bore a number in white chalk, clearly visible.

“I had once sought to catalog them,” he’d said. “The notebooks are around here somewhere. But at some point, when the House was near full, the classification of them ceased to hold my interest.

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