Infernal Investigations

They’d had a carriage waiting for me, which had drawn enough onlookers pulling out onto the street had been an issue.

“I’m going to have no peace for the next few months, perhaps even years,” I observed as the carriage tried to make its way through the district. “You’re aware there’s a march of…protestors going through the district?”

Protestors was the diplomatic term. I didn’t know how anyone else in the carriage may react to my thoughts on the marchers. There were three of us in the carriage: Gregory Montague, Lady Karsin’s servant, and myself. I barely knew the servant more than I did Montague. I’d been to Lady Karsin’s estate twice to examine her heir and then later to deliver the cure, precisely at a time when as few people would be around as possible.

It had been a different experience, being in a noble’s estate during the night with their permission.

Montague and the servant did know each other, based on the former’s cajoling of the latter to let him into the carriage.

“We’re aware,” the servant replied evenly. “We’ll be avoiding them, although getting the carriage in here to begin with was a struggle in of itself.”

They should have just left the carriage on the district's border and come to get me on foot. “You said Lady Karsin is convinced her son was poisoned again?”

“She thinks it might be the case,” the servant clarified. “Not Angel’s Sorrow, she said, but perhaps another toxin. Lord Desmond collapsed in the middle of a public banquet hosted by Duke Beractel.”

“It would be too soon for Angel’s Sorrow,” I said for the benefit of Montague. “It’s a slow-acting toxin. You probably noticed it with your brother; he would have first appeared to have some minor illness, but only for the effects to have built up over time. Honestly, you should have sent for a doctor or another alchemist.”

“Lady Karsin wanted someone who could be discreet to examine him. And also someone she knows she can trust with matters such as these.”

I smiled politely, pretending to be flattered by the compliment. Internally, I was much more doubtful.

If Desmond Karsin had collapsed publicly, there was very little hiding this. Outside of being discreet, the only advantage I had over another specialist was the Angel’s Sorrow cure. Besides his public collapse, coming to get me in this fashion was also not very discreet.

I couldn’t forget that all signs pointed towards someone picking me to harvest that dead wyrm’s brain. Shortly afterward, I’d heard from Edwards that someone was looking for a cure to an unknown disease afflicting their heir. Had that been arranged?

It seemed ridiculous to poison someone only to arrange for a cure to be made available immediately. Perhaps two factions? This only reinforced my desire to find a way out of this mess.

Someone was playing a game, and I was a piece on the board.

The servant cleared his throat. “If you don’t mind me asking, my lord, what were you doing there?”

Gregory Montague grinned. “My father sent me to seduce Miss Falara, of course.”

“He tried to rob me,” I replied flatly.

The servant’s eyes moved between the two of us as if deciding on who to believe. He ultimately chose silence, which was probably the best choice. I turned my attention to Montague instead.

“You seem remarkably calm about us heading to Lady Karsin’s,” I told Montague. “Considering that this will delay us seeing your brother?”

"Well, Lady Karsin’s is only a few blocks from the family estate, and since I have a dose if your business with Lady Karsin runs long, I’ll just nip on down and-”

“Don’t do that,” I interrupted, getting a shocked look from him and the servant before I added a belated “my lord.”

“My coming along was for the sole purpose of arguing that you should not administer the antidote,” I continued. “You said your brother was getting worse than previously? You witnessed this yourself?”

Montague frowned, his expression uneasy. “I only saw Edward briefly before being sent here. Father has been restricting who could see him and for how long.”

“Good,” I replied. “Still, you must have seen some of your brother’s current condition. How is he?”

“Weak, and pale. Edward seems to barely hold onto consciousness most of the time. While he keeps his food down now, he’s still a prisoner in his own body. He can barely move most days.”

His unease had only grown while recounting his brother’s condition. It was about to grow worse.

“My lord, under no conditions should your brother have the cure yet, especially if it grows even worse.”

“What?” He snapped.

“Did your father mention the instructions I gave when we negotiated our initial deal?”

He shook his head. “Father didn’t inform about exactly what the particulars of the deal were, as I think we had found out just a while ago.”

“That was just a hypothetical,” I said quickly, all too aware that Lady Karsin’s servant was in the carriage with us. “But the point is, the cure is a violent one. If one’s system is weakened too far, it will kill them.”

“What? It’s supposed to cure him, isn’t it?”

“It does,” I assured him. “But it is more accurate to describe it as, say…a battle. And battles tend to leave scars on the land.”

“I follow the logic, but my brother grows weaker every day. Letting time pass would only decrease his chance, wouldn’t it?”

“He won’t get weaker, not by much more,” I replied. “If you feed him the dose now, it’ll kill him, and far more violently than the poison would. Angel’s Sorrow is not a particularly quick poison. The only real benefit to using it is the difficulty in curing it. The patient increasingly gets weaker, but towards the end, there will be a period when if he’s treated well, he begins to recover. A last grasp for redemption, some call it.”

It was the leading theory for why the patients did recover. Angel’s Sorrow was the only poison derived from celestial creatures, and some believed its effects were a passing of judgment on the poisoned mortal, with a brief period to try and repent before final judgment. It also could explain the rather sudden shifts in character found in survivors of the poison.

If it were a celestial judgment on one’s sins, it would certainly explain why very few survived it.

“Follow my instructions, and he’ll build up his strength again, enough to survive the battle between cure and poison.” A battle might be a slight embellishment of how the process occurred, but I could hardly think of another term better fitting the conflict between a draconic and celestial-derived substance.

“Are you certain of that?” Montague asked in a flat tone.

“There’s little I can offer except maybe suggesting you consult another alchemist. If they’re any good, they’ll tell you the same thing. Or you can insist, I can give you the cure, and when your brother dies because he’s not strong enough to take it, it’ll be on your head and not mine. Do yourself a favor, my lord. Let me make the decision and not you. My cure, my fault if he doesn’t survive.

Montague hesitated, his face a mix between anger and sorrow.

The servant cleared his throat, startling the both of us. Truth be told I’d forgotten he was in here.

“Far be from me to instruct my lord in any way, but Master Desmond went through the same process, and before the incident last night, he was back to his normal self.”

“That wouldn’t be Angel’s Sorrow,” I added. “I can’t be sure what it is till we get there, but if there was a sudden relapse after a period of seeming normalcy, it would have been much more violent. Even those who barely suffered tended to expel blood, and afterwards were perfectly fine if weakened.”

Placated, Montague finally nodded his assent. The rest of the ride passed in stilted silence.

***

Most noble estates weren’t very large outside of the Imperial Palace.

This wasn’t some expression of restraint on their part, more the fact that for centuries past noble seats of power tended to be out in the lands they owned. Dealing with the monarch had meant either a grand procession from the monarch out there to meet them, or the nobles to the rather meager size city Avernon had been back in those days.

That had already been changing by the time of the attempted invasions of the Hells, as the world had gotten more connected and correspondence and the occasional trip was proving insufficient. Of course plans to change that had been forcibly altered by the fallout of the invasions. During the reign of Her Most Profane Majesty, most of the nobility had stayed on their estates for the express purpose of avoiding being near the court.

That had all changed after she’d been killed, her body publicly hung, drawn, and quartered in front of a crowd of thousands, including the nobility that had survived her reign.

Lady Karsin’s estate was close to as grand as they got, probably due more to it having existed long before it became fashionable to put estates inside the city. A central tower stood tall, old stonework still strong and layered in enchantments, still as formidable and defensible as it would have been back then. Smaller buildings dotted the estate, forming a wall along its edges, most of them servant’s quarters and a guardhouse over the main entrance.

We weren’t headed for there. There was a small entrance along the side for servants and for guests who were best not seen publicly arriving. I qualified for the latter, and I accepted a hooded cloak produced from the carriage’s storage without protest as we came to a halt. He’d been gracious enough to let me store what little I could salvage from my apartment there.

I got out of the carriage, almost stepping into a small crowd.

About half a dozen humans, men and women dressed in laborer’s clothes, had been lurking around the side gate. They’d started walking away as soon as the carriage arrived, the driver and servant staring after them suspiciously.

Once it was clear they were not going to return, the servant produced a key and slipped through the gates, saying to wait just a moment while he arranged a place for us to wait for Lady Karsin.

I absent-mindedly nodded, focused more on the disappearing group of humans.

One of them wore a top hat, and I stared at the group’s departing backs. Had this been a group of Pure-bloods loitering around Lady Karsin’s estate? It seemed too much a coincidence to not think about, but also maybe a bit paranoid to think that of a group of humans.

I shook my head slightly. I was just being too judgmental and perhaps a touch too suspicious. I didn’t want to end up like some members I’d known of the Black Flame, thinking any human who crossed my path thought ill thoughts of me.

“Pure-bloods,” Montague noted, disdain in his voice. “What are they doing here?”

“You know for certain?” How could he tell?

“Yes. However, only because some of that group was at our estate. They tried to beg funds off of father and were very disappointed when he had them ejected from the estate.”

“Really?” I asked in surprise before quickly swallowing my ill-thought. I was being far too frank with the son of my client, even the disgraced son. Speaking ill of him would not help an already tense relationship that would only become more tense over the coming days.

Montague raised an eyebrow, inviting me to continue. Carefully wording my next sentence, I spoke.

“He doesn’t seem like the kind of man who would object to their goals,” I said cautiously.

“Some of their goals,” Montague snorted, looking at where the Pure-bloods had just rounded the corner, disappearing from sight. “My father definitely has his prejudices, but they are nowhere near broad enough to fit with their worldview.”

“For the same reasons, I can’t imagine they were here to meet with Lady Karsin. I imagine half-breeds would probably top the list of things they find distasteful. Unless they like elves?”

“From my very brief time with them, they don’t,” Montague said. “Not likely to make them friends even among other supremacist groups. Honestly, very strange.”

“How so?” I asked. My own thoughts led in the same direction, but no need to let anyone else know about my run-ins with them.

“We’ve entertained nobles with views like that. Father is one as well. But most don’t approach this level of bigotry. Not against so many groups at the same time, and not as hostile as they presented themselves. Elves and gnomes have been able to get citizenship for centuries at this point. Centaurs were among the founding members of the empire. Yet they seemingly consider them blights as well. I’m not shocked they are so desperate for funding if they’ve alienated so many, but they’ve seemingly popped up suddenly and with so many members.”

I nodded, but privately, I suspected that quite a few of these nobles Gregory talked about would be more biased than he expected, just not necessarily at events hosted among the notorious gossips that were nobility, not in an empire where the ruling Empress still owed so many not of human descent for her throne.

Then again, the dwarves had once ranked among those.

“They weren’t around till recently?” I asked.

“You don’t know? I’d think that an Infernal would know more than anyone.”

“I know the bigger groups, but some things are harder for me to find out than it might be for you, my lord. They are recent, then?”

“I thought we’d hosted every noble who might lean that way in their beliefs, if only for politeness' sake. If they have been around a while, it’s been out of the sight of every noble in the city.”

Ah. Useless information, then. I was acquainted with how much you could hide from nobles in this city if you wanted to—a slow takeover of their capital, for one.

The conversation came to an end as the gate opened. It was time to head inside and see exactly why Lady Karsin had sent for me. I could not think of an answer that made any sense