Dr. Matthias Corvus's Arc

Chapter 2 of 8

Matthias came back at dawn with the ruined batch wrapped in oilcloth. He set it on the counter between a mortar and a bundle of lavender. The old man he had sat with the night before was already awake, sorting stems by touch. Matthias watched the blind fingers move and felt the size of what he had asked for. "I brought the compound," Matthias said. "What's left of it. I need to know what went wrong before I mix the next batch. I can't read it by taste. I don't trust my nose anymore. I've been breathing this work too long." The old man lifted the cloth and passed a hand over the dried crust. He frowned. "Not me," he said. "My nose knows plague. It doesn't know your chemistry." He set the cloth down. "You need Silas." "Silas." "Corvain. Blind like me. Sharper. He diagnoses by smell. He'll tell you what soured your batch in three breaths." The old man tapped the counter. "He's also busy. He's been examining nobles the Council wants buried fast. Come at him wrong and he won't hear you." Matthias found the shop by the lavender hung on the door. He knocked and gave his name plain. The door opened on a small man in a long black coat, a beaked mask pushed back on his head. Milk-pale eyes fixed somewhere past Matthias's shoulder. A cane rested against his hip. "I was sent," Matthias said. "I have a ruined compound. I need someone who can tell me what spoiled in it." "Plague work?" Silas said. "A cure. Two years of it." Silas held out a gloved hand. Matthias placed the oilcloth in it. Silas lifted it to the mask's beak and drew one slow breath. Then another. "Willow bark. Angelica. Something sulfurous." A pause. "Copper. You mixed it in a copper mortar." "Bronze," Matthias said. "Then your bronze is bad. The tin's leaching. That's what killed the binding." Silas handed the cloth back. "Change the vessel. Glass or fired clay. Your compound isn't wrong. Your tools are." Matthias stood with the oilcloth in his hands. Two years of failed batches rearranged themselves in his head. Not the formula. The mortar. "I can pay," he said. "Not in coin." Silas stepped back into the shop and tilted his head toward the inside. "I have three noble corpses the Council wants gone by week's end. One's already been embalmed against me. I need a second pair of hands that knows a poisoned liver from a plagued one. You help me find who's killing them. I'll help you finish your cure." Matthias followed him in. The door closed behind them. On the workbench in the back room lay a sheet, and under the sheet, the shape of a body. "Start with this one," Silas said. "He was nineteen."