Dr. Silas Corvain's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

The third noble had been buried at dawn, and Dr. Silas Corvain had not been called to see the body. He stood at the counter of the apothecary he kept above the lane, one gloved hand flat on the wood, the other sorting jars by the ridge of their wax seals. His mask hung from a hook by the door. The shop smelled of thyme and old smoke. Somewhere behind the beaked helm and the layered black armor, Silas was a blind man who had learned to read a corpse by its breath and its skin. He had ruled six plague deaths across the noble houses of Willowmaw this month. He now believed at least four were poisonings. He could not prove it without the bodies. And he could not find the bodies without a list. The city registrar would not give him one. Silas had asked twice. The clerk cited the Council's quarantine order: plague dead were sealed and interred within the day, and no physician outside the Council's own was permitted the roster. Every hour the list stayed shut, another grave closed over evidence. He pulled a bundle of trained herbs from the drawer beneath the counter — rosemary, mint, thyme grown against a wire so the stems bent the way his fingers needed. Crushed near a dead mouth, they sharpened any bitter-almond trace on the breath. Useless without a corpse to hold them to. The bell over the door rang. Silas heard armor, not cloth. Buckles, oiled leather, the click of a beak against the doorframe as the visitor ducked. "You're the plague doctor who signed the Vellin boy," the visitor said. The voice was a crow's — dry, clipped. "I am the house physician at Hearthvale Manor. My lady's cousin was buried this morning. She does not believe he died of plague." Silas turned his masked face toward the sound. "Then you have come with a name I need. Give me the others. Every noble the Council has burned or buried as plague this month." "I brought the register." Paper slid across the counter. "Copied last night. Six names. Three still above ground until sundown." Silas laid his palm flat on the sheet. He could not read ink. He did not need to. "Read them to me." The Asterwing read. Silas marked each name against his memory of who had called him, who had not, who had been rushed to the ground. By the fourth name his hand was already moving to the herbs, to the mask, to a small bundle of lavender he kept for the families. "Three still above ground," Silas said. "We go to the nearest now. Before the gravediggers finish their supper." He lifted the beaked mask from its hook and fitted it over his face.