Dr. Matthias Corvus's Arc

Chapter 4 of 8

The summoning bell still rang when Matthias slipped out the back of Silas's shop. The third body was proof, but proof did not brew a cure. His formula waited in a corked flask, useless without a vessel that would not poison it. Bronze had already ruined one batch. Glass or clay. Nothing else. He kept to the alleys. Every apothecary he knew sat under the Council's eye, and by now the Council had a description: a plague doctor, beaked mask, moving fast. He pulled the mask off and tucked it under his cloak. His face felt bare in the daylight. He went east, toward the plague ward. The nurses there bought their own supplies. They did not answer to the Council. He found her outside the ward's back door, sleeves rolled, scrubbing a tray in a bucket. Mercy Sweetwell. He had seen her twice before, carrying baskets of honey cakes into the rows of the dying. She sat with them when no one else would. She had never asked his name and he had never offered it. She looked up. Her eyes went to the mask under his cloak, then his hands. "You're the one who works alone." "I need a clay pot. Sealed. Unused. Big enough to boil in." "For what." "A cure. I'm close. My bronze mortar ruined the last batch." She wiped her hands on her apron. She did not ask if he was lying. "I have one. My mother's. I bake in it." She said it flat, the way she said everything hard. "I can pay." "No." She stood and went inside. He waited by the bucket. Through the open door he heard forty beds breathing wrong. He counted three coughs before she came back. She carried a squat brown crock, glazed inside, the lip chipped once. She held it against her hip like a child. "It held honey and flour for twelve years," she said. "Nothing else. Bring it back clean." "I will." "If your cure works, you come here first. Forty beds. You start in this ward." "I promise." She pushed the crock into his arms. It was heavier than it looked. She did not smile. She went back to her bucket and her tray and did not watch him leave. He returned through the alleys with the pot wrapped in his cloak. The bell had stopped. That was worse than the ringing. It meant the guards had been given somewhere to go. In the shop's back room he set the crock on the bench beside his flask and his dried herbs. His hands were steady for the first time in three days. He measured the first pinch. Someone pounded on the front door. Three hard strikes. A voice through the wood called for the plague doctor by profession, not by name. Matthias looked at the crock. He had the vessel. He did not have time.