7 August 1062 P.E.
Gladiator Row, Darnan
The lurch of the carriage as it came to a sudden halt jolted Brand back to the land of the living. He pulled out a coin and inserted it into a small slit in the wall of the carriage, then twisted a small lever next to it. Beside him, the carriage door unlocked with a grinding clank.
Brand stepped out onto a street that couldn’t have been more different from the district he had just left. The street was paved with glistening white stone and lined with two stately rows of pindo palms, their lush feathery fronds rustling in the breeze between the tall black lamp posts. The buildings gleamed of polished stone. Very few people walked, but the street was crowded with carriages, their mechanical horses’ hooves clacking smartly on the pavestones.
Brand went up the smooth stone steps to his house and barged in, leaving the door ajar and leaving dusty footprints on the thick rug stretching down the entryway hall.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. James,” he mumbled to the elderly housekeeper, who was wiping down the hall mirror.
“Take those dusty boots off and close that door, young man! You’ll let the dust of ages in!” She shook her rag at him.
Moira James was about as short as Brand was tall and had the sort of personality that could fill a room on its own. Her short-cropped white hair, faded rose-kissed lips, and graceful long fingers whispered of the memory of a beautiful young woman, though the years and her devotion to Brand had tried to bury that memory in worry lines. Her worn, leathery lips pursed together, but her soft black eyes twinkled at the hulking gladiator.
“Oh,” he mumbled, as though he were a schoolboy instead of a grown man of fifty-two, and dutifully obeyed. He donned a pair of house shoes set by the door.
“How has your day been?” he asked. He blinked several times, trying to brush aside the brain fog.
Mrs. James arched an eyebrow as she took in his battered appearance.
“Quite well, thank you,” she said primly. “I see you’ve been busy.”
“Nothing to worry about,” he said.
Her mouth formed a line as her eyes went from the cuts on his face down to his bloodied knuckles, but she didn’t press him.
She handed him a sleek, sealed envelope. “This was delivered for you this morning. Dinner will be roast runnerbeast with potatoes and pear sauce at six o’clock, Mr. Brand.”
“Thank you, Mrs. James,” Brand replied. “I’ll be up in my office.”
“Of course, sir. If you’d do me a favor and not burn any more holes in your office rug, though, I’d be most grateful. I’m running out of excuses for the man who sells the rugs down in the market.”
Brand smiled and gave the old woman a peck on the cheek. She patted his cheek fondly in return.
“I’m so glad they allowed me to come keep house for you, boy,” Mrs. James said with a smile.
“It was a part of the agreement,” Brand said for the hundredth time. “I told them either I brought my old nanny, or they couldn’t have me.”
“Your old nanny, hah! If my dear William could have been here to hear you call me your nanny, he would have died laughing.”
Brand’s face fell at the name of his old mentor. Mrs. James saw and smiled sadly.
“He’d be so proud of you, as I am,” she said.
Brand shook his head. “Would he be, though? What’s there to be proud of? Hiding my abilities, barely using them, championing the cause of the very creatures he taught me to fight.”
“William never wanted to admit that his cause was a losing one,” Mrs. James said, “but it was. The kashmari can’t be beaten. But your abilities have enabled you to rise to the top where you can do as much good as you can, inspiring people, lifting their spirits.”
“Distracting them from realizing how bad they have it so they don’t have the will to resist.”
“Distracting them from realizing how bad they have it so they don’t throw their lives away on a lost cause.”
Brand crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head with a deep frown that knit his thick dark eyebrows together. His heart sank. Mrs. James hadn’t always been this cynical. He turned his thoughts to the plague-ridden woman who had accosted him in the alley.
“If I were a better pharmakon, like those of the past, I could do so much more,” the gladiator murmured.
“I could cure the plague, find a way to get rid of the kashmari, and make life better for people.”
Mrs. James patted his shoulder.
“I need to go prepare for the fight,” Brand said. He sighed, then strode off to his office. “I’ll take coffee in my office, please,” he said over his shoulder.
He let his hand glide along the smooth acacia wood of the banister, following the rich dark grain, then looked down over the foyer below.
When he’d bought this house with his earnings from fights, it had been a burned-out, dust-filled husk, the victim of a fire caused by a lightning strike. Over a few years, he’d refurbished it, bit by bit, from the ground up, adding in a sweeping staircase and balcony overlooking the parquet foyer, importing rare stones from the mountains for tiles in the bathrooms, and thick rugs from Niven, a town of shepherds and master rug knotters.
It was a great life, he had to admit, but…
He shook off the discontent and continued on to his office, a high-ceilinged library lined by floor-to-ceiling bookcases stuffed to overflowing. Papers had been unceremoniously jammed in the cracks between volumes. A pair of huge wing-back leather chairs large enough even for Brand sat in front of an enormous fireplace. Beside the tall windows, a desk stood, covered in disorderly piles of still more papers and books.
Brand sat down at the desk, dropping his sack and the machine suit cooling unit by the side of the desk. Elbows on two spots devoid of paper, he rested his head in his hands and scrubbed his fingers through his hair. His head ached as the fog now pressed painfully on his eyes, making it difficult to focus. He didn’t want to think about Kushchai or any other kashmari right now, anyway. All he wanted was to sleep. Why was the prophylactic so effective when all other drugs and chemicals simply burned away in his blood?
Perhaps he could rest his eyes for just a moment before getting to work.
His eyelids drooped. Succumbing to the fog, the gladiator slumped on a pile of papers and was fast asleep.
* * *
Brand woke with a start at the squeal of a creaky floorboard.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr. Brand,” Mrs. James said. She picked up a book and replaced it with a cup of coffee and a small envelope on the desk in front of him. “Lord Kushchai’s servant delivered this a few moments ago.”
“How long have I been asleep?”
Brand rubbed his eyes. The fog was gone from his brain and he felt wonderfully rested.
“It’s been no more than an hour since you returned home.”
Brand grunted a little in surprise and glanced out the window. The sun had not yet retreated fully behind the houses along the row. And yet, it had been enough for the effects of the pill to finally wear off. How odd.
The gladiator stretched. His arms ached from being curled under his head on the desk. He winced at the ache from the bruise forming down the length of his back where the machine suit had slammed into him.
He flexed the fingers of his right hand. His knuckles stung from punching the man in the suit, though they were already scabbing over nicely.
Brand shoveled aside papers until he found a slim letter opener, then sliced open Kushchai’s note. The letter inside was written on very smooth linen paper.
Brand,
Excellent job with the Duati and Navari. Lord Jinn is thrilled to be establishing more regular and amicable relations between Darnan and Duat. I have high hopes for the future of the city’s food stores if this continues.
On another note, I have just been informed that guards will check your gear before the fight. No need to be alarmed. Just a safety precaution after last week.
—Lord Kushchai
Brand frowned. He knew he shouldn’t have anything to worry about with his gauntlet. He’d designed it to look identical to its normal companion. The vials and their delivery contraption were completely hidden within the lining; only the tiny needles protruded out of the pocket. Even the added bulk was hidden from the outside by thick leather and a hardened steel plate. But it was another opportunity for him to be found out, and that made him tense.
“Bad news?”
Brand looked up to see Mrs. James standing in the doorway. She brought over his coffee.
“The message was personally delivered by Lord Kushchai’s footman. That worries me a bit. Is everything alright?”
Brand smiled reassuringly. “It’s nothing much.” He glanced at the fireplace. “I’d rather not be disturbed until dinner, please.”
“Of course.” Mrs. James smiled and left.
Brand walked over to the tall window and gazed out at the city. The many square panes of the window made him feel like he was locked in a cage, a creature owned and used, a rare creature to be admired, sure, but never more than a pet. It kept him alive, but at what cost?
He balled his hand into a fist. “Stop complaining,” he growled to himself. “It’s a good life.”
Then he returned to his desk and picked up his sack and the machine suit cooling unit and moved past the wingback chairs to one of the bookcases next to the fireplace. He set the sack and cooling unit next to his feet, then reached up to about the same height as his face and pulled out a heavy tome labeled, “Twenty-seven Unique Spear-holds for the Discerning Combatant.” He reached into the gap between the other books and pulled a lever.
The fireplace, a section of the bookcase, and a semicircle of hardwood floor that he was standing on lifted slightly and spun around into another room, then settled, leaving no visible seams in the floor.
He couldn’t help but chuckle a little. He’d had dozens of kashmari come to his house, even had inquisitions searching for alchemical devices, and all of them had been fooled by the simplest and most obvious secret room anyone could devise.
And then last week he’d nearly been made because he’d been stupid enough to leave his kit at the arena. Luckily for Brand, the fight officials had determined that his opponent had left the satchel of poisons near Brand’s preparation room to frame Brand; the city still buzzed with suspicion, though.
The lab was lined, floor to ceiling, with smooth, sealed granite tiles so that it seemed to float in a quartz-studded night sky, interrupted only by a series of slit windows. After single a day of working in there the first time, he’d discovered how easily crystal shattered on the hard tile and had asked Mrs. James to procure some rugs. Rugs were cheaper and easier to replace than crystal kashmari vials, which were technically illegal for him to purchase.
Brand picked up his sack and the cooling unit and moved to the large stone brazier on one side of the room. With a pull of a lever that made a bellows wheeze, he stoked the coals to a blazing red.
Along the back of the room was a stone bench beneath shelves upon shelves crammed with various vials and jars. His experiments over the years had resulted in some interesting adjustments to his standard pharmakon’s kit. As a result, he’d taken to collecting and researching as many herbs and minerals as he could. Bits of scribbled notes describing his discoveries were pasted on many of the glass jars.
Both walls flanking the bench were stuffed with yet more overflowing bookcases. He’d recently suggested to Mrs. James that he might want to get another bookcase, to which she’d replied that he ought to let her tidy them up a bit and throw out the books he hadn’t looked at in a decade. After that scandalizing conversation, he’d never mentioned his bookcases to her again.
He placed the sack and cooling unit on the bench, pulling each item out and carefully arranging the various poisons in neat rows according to which concoction they would go into.
Adrenaline, Stamina, Armor, Strength, basic Repellent, Night Vision, Healing, Poisoned Blood, Rooted, and Time. The first eight were the basics; the last two were his own inventions.
A smile tugged at the corner of Brand’s mouth as he wondered what his mentor would have thought of the new elixirs. Brand liked to think William would have been impressed.
He set up an elaborate decanter, where the liquid twisted through a series of coils before arriving in a globe flask at the bottom. From a shelf, he pulled an alchemical still comprised of two long-necked flasks and a long tube, and set it down to the left of the decanter. Lastly, he pulled out a mortar, a pestle, and a cast-iron pot.
Brand took a mask with goggles off a nail on the wall and placed it over his face, careful to fit it snugly against the skin rather than his beard, then donned a pair of thick leather welding gloves and a heavy leather apron. He then carefully emptied the contents of the first set of vials into the mortar and ground them up slowly. He added alcohol and other ingredients that he pulled off the shelves. The mixture began to smoke slightly, fogging up his goggles with a greenish smoke. As he stirred, it turned from green to brown. Brand then carefully poured the mixture into the cast-iron pot and covered it with a lid, carried it over to the brazier, and set it directly on the hot coals. He pulled a sand timer off a shelf, double-checked the words “Sixty Minutes” engraved in the wooden endpiece, and set it on the table. The sand began to trickle down.
Brand opened each slit window a crack, then took a moment to wipe out the mortar and placed the used towels in a metal basket with a lid. He’d burn these once he was finished.
The next elixir, Stamina, was finicky and would take sixty-four hours to ferment. With only three days before the fight, if he didn’t make it correctly the first time, he’d be going into the fight without it. Stamina was one elixir he had no interest in being without against his much younger opponent, so he set up a pair of large gallon glass jars. He’d double the recipe just in case one batch didn’t set up properly.
He filled each jar three-quarters of the way with water, then added a generous amount of salt and stirred until the salt crystals vanished. Then he turned back to the mortar and ground up the next set of ingredients. They fizzed and popped beneath his pestle.
This time he simply added the bubbling paste to the salt water and stirred until the water turned a dirty brown. He then carefully pulled out and untangled two sets of cables with clamps on one end and electrodes on the other. He then carefully hooked them to the cooling unit from the machine suit and dangled the electrodes within each jar.
Brand watched in fascination as hair-thin lines appeared in the murky water, connecting the electrodes like strands of spider silk. He felt a pang of sadness. In another life, he could have attended the university and become a scientist and spent his days investigating and experimenting to his heart’s content. His shoulders slumped a little as he cleaned out the mortar. Brand’s survival depended on no one knowing about any of this, so he shoved that thought away.
The last of the three elixirs that he wanted to ensure were done was Time. This infusion was by far the most toxic of those he used, the shortest acting, and the most dangerous for him to use in public, as one of its side effects was to turn his blood an unnerving black color that could be seen through the skin. But the ability to move out of time was also one of the most crucial abilities that could turn a loss into a win in a matter of moments. Brand rarely used it, but never went into a fight without it.
He combined his ingredients in the mortar as per usual, and then carefully tipped them into a jar with plain water. He then added some small tan grains to the mixture. Then, as slowly as he could, he screwed the lid on, taking great pains not to jostle the water. Then he left it alone. He would check on it tomorrow morning.
Brand glanced over at the jars of murky saltwater and was pleased to see the lines in the murk arcing from one electrode to the other, becoming darker and more pronounced.
The large man continued to work on other various concoctions. Humming softly, he lost himself in the work and let the various tasks carry the time away. Kushchai’s letter faded from his mind.
Brand looked up at the Adrenaline’s sand timer and saw that it had only a few grains left. He dropped what he was doing, strode over to the brazier, and pulled out the cast-iron pot. He lifted the lid. Where before the liquid had been brown, now it had taken on a rusty orange color. Satisfied, Brand set the pot aside to cool.
Suddenly, a tinny voice came from a little brass horn attached to a long tube that ran down into the floor. Mrs. James had learned quite early on in her life as a pharmakon’s wife that one should never barge in on them at work if one ever wanted to use one’s lungs again, so she had been adamant that Brand install the little speaking horn for her.
“Mr. Brand?”
“Yes, Mrs. James?” His deep voice was muffled by the respirator in his mask.
“Dinner is ready.”
“Thank you. I’ll be down shortly.”
Brand hurriedly finished up the Adrenaline decoction and set it aside to ferment overnight. Then, without taking off his protective clothing, he grabbed a long piece of wood and stuck it in the brazier until the tip burst alight. He carried it over to the metal bin of dirty towels and shoved the flame down into the fabric until the corner of one towel caught fire and began to burn with an evil green flame. He closed the lid with a clang and plunged the wood into a bucket of water, then tossed it into a waiting wire mesh bin with other pieces of wood with burnt black ends drying and waiting to be used again.
Finally, he stripped off the mask, gloves, and apron and hung them on their appropriate nails. With one last glance around the room to make sure all was in order, he left.
Mrs. James was waiting for him in the kitchen. They only rarely used the elegant dining room when Brand had guests, preferring to eat together in the kitchen. A little table sat next to a window that looked out onto a shaded terrace that Brand had built for Mrs. James. In it, she’d arrayed various colorful pots overflowing with innumerable flowers. As the night was pressing on, Brand opened the window to let some of the sweet cool air and fragrances seep in to mingle with the delicious smells of the kitchen.
Mrs. James dished out hunks of buttered potatoes smothered in gravy and generous slices of still-pink runnerbeast roast, then spooned a sweet pear sauce over the meat.
“I’ve finally gotten around to looking through some of William’s old boxes,” Mrs. James said, turning to pick up something from the counter before sitting down and handing it to Brand. “I found this. I thought you might like to have it.”
She handed him a photograph framed in a simple copper frame. It was of him, as a young boy, standing beside William. Even then, Brand had been nearly as tall as his mentor. He smiled fondly at the man’s bottle brush mustache and ever-present pipe.
“Thank you,” Brand said. He propped the photograph up against the vase next to his plate so they could both see it. “I think I’ll put it upstairs in my office.”
“I thought you might.”
They ate in silence for a while. Brand chewed quietly, but his mind wandered back to the man in the alley.
“Is everything alright, Mr. Brand?” Mrs. James asked. “Only, it looks as though your mind is somewhere else entirely.”
“Sorry, Mrs. James. I ran into a woman with the plague today. She reached up and grabbed me. Don’t worry; I took the prophylactic,” he said to her raised eyebrows.
“I’m not terribly worried about catching it,” she reassured him. “I had it when I was a girl. Such a strange disease, isn’t it? Some of us catch it and recover and move on with our lives, and others…not so much.”
Brand grunted. “All this running from a disease that most people survive. Some days, I wonder if it wouldn’t be easier to catch it on purpose and be done with it.”
Mrs. James shook her white head.
“You shouldn’t, not according to Mr. Sanders, remember? He knew more than he could say, and he told William you were never to catch the plague. Something to do with your parents, William figured.”
Brand took another bite, chewed thoughtfully, then swallowed. “My mother died of the plague. Alastair said I was more susceptible to it because of her. But some days I wish I could just catch it and if I die, I die. And other days, like today…promise me that if I ever get like that, you’ll go up and get my rifle down and finish me, alright?”
Mrs. James gasped. “How could you ever say a thing like that? I would never! You’re like a son to me!”
Brand was about to protest, but the look in her eye changed his mind. “Alright, Mrs. James. You’re right. Shame on me for even contemplating such a grotesque action.”
But privately, it stayed on his mind for the rest of dinner. He didn’t say much, and left quickly, mumbling about getting back to his concoctions.
