‘Where are they?’ Seneira asked for the third time as she went from one darkened room to another, her pace and her voice becoming increasingly frantic.
When we’d first found the place empty, I’d thought nothing of it, but then I noticed the way Ferius and Rosie moved slowly, methodically, through each part of the old house, their eyes catching on every sign that something here wasn’t quite right. The first, and most obvious, was that there was food on the dining-room table. Reichis leaped up and sniffed at a plate of what looked to be some kind of poultry with vegetables. The squirrel cat turned back to me, his mouth open the way it gets when he’s smelled something rotten. ‘Must be at least three days old,’ he said, hopping back down. ‘What a waste.’
On the floor where he landed I noticed a fork lying there, as if it had fallen and no one had bothered to pick it up. Somebody had left in a hurry.
Hearing Seneira’s frenzied footsteps on the top floor, Reichis and I climbed the stairs and looked around. In addition to three bedrooms, a study and a small library, we found a large and well-appointed bathroom. I normally wouldn’t have paid it much mind – other than to wonder when the last time was that I’d actually been properly clean – but then I saw the faint reflection of moonlight coming in through the window on the surface of the water that filled the ornate copper bathtub. It was room-temperature, of course, having been abandoned at the same time as the food downstairs. As I was walking away from the tub, my foot struck a wooden bucket. When I knocked it over, water spilled out. That was odd for two reasons: first, because the bathtub had a tap for running water that came through a kind of wood-stove furnace that would heat the water as it passed through. But the stove had no wood inside, nor any ashes, which meant the water in the tub had never been hot. The second strange thing was that when I reached down and felt the water that had poured from the bucket onto the floor, I noticed how cold it was.
‘Stinks of magic,’ Reichis said, coming over to sniff at it.
I picked up the bucket, and even in the dim light noticed the glyphs along the copper bands that held the wooden slats in place. ‘It’s got a cooling charm on it,’ I said, looking back at the contents of the tub.
A cry from Seneira sent me running to the smallest of the three bedrooms. Though it was sparsely furnished, the cloth animals on the bed and the pair of wooden play swords mounted on the wall like trophies made it obvious that this was the room of a young boy. The bedsheets were in disarray and the blankets were strewn on the floor.
‘They took them!’ Seneira said, her hands squeezed tightly into fists.
‘Who?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know! My father has enemies, people who resent the idea of the Academy. It must be one of—’
‘Your family was not taken,’ Rosie said, coming into the room with Ferius close behind.
‘You don’t know that! You’re just—’
‘Look, child. Look all around you.’
Seneira did, and it amazed me that, despite being so clearly terrified for her father and brother, she was able to get herself under control. I’d have been climbing the walls. I followed her gaze, and noticed the signs all around us. There was a pile of extra sheets stacked on the floor next to the night table. The sheets on the bed weren’t just in a messy tangle, they were soiled, which Reichis noticed immediately when he sauntered into the room. ‘Piss and sweat,’ he said, backing away.
I forced myself to examine the bedding more closely, and that’s when I saw the ripped fabric on either side about halfway down – the kind you might get if the bed’s occupant were clawing at the sheets repeatedly. It reminded me of the desperate, feverish reflex Seneira herself had shown when she’d practically broken my hand squeezing it during her last attack. The pieces that Rosie and Ferius had already put together finally made sense.
The sweat-soaked sheets, the discarded blankets – both of these pointed to someone with a fever. The extra sheets folded and piled up next to the bed meant the fever had been going on for some time. The half-eaten meal on the dining-room table suggested things had suddenly gotten worse. I imagined Seneira’s father, hearing his son screaming for him and running up the stairs. So what does he find? The fever’s worse than before, so he uses the bucket with the cooling charm to fill the tub with cold water and puts his son in there to bring the fever down, but the fever doesn’t go down, so he carries the boy in his arms and flees the house to find help. Judging from the rotting food in the dining room, that would have been at least three days ago.
I caught Seneira’s horrified stare and knew that she’d worked it out too – had, in fact, gone one step further. ‘Shadowblack,’ she whispered. ‘Tyne has the shadowblack.’
It was all any of us could do to keep Seneira from running out the front door in search of her brother. ‘Father will have taken him to one of the hospitals,’ she said, rushing down the stairs.
‘Kid, wait a second,’ Ferius called out, but Seneira ignored her.
Rosie was more direct. She leaped over the banister to the floor below, landing lightly on the balls of her feet with her knees bent before standing up to block Seneira’s path. ‘Your reckless urges serve no purpose, child. Listen to all the winds before—’
‘Don’t start with that Argosi nonsense! This is my brother we’re talking about! If he’s got the shadowblack then it means—’
Rosie put her hand on Seneira’s cheek with a gentleness at such odds with her previous action that it reminded me of the name by which she called herself: the Path of Thorns and Roses. ‘You assume it must be your fault, and yours is a kind and noble heart, one that cannot stand to be the cause of suffering for those you love. It is a good thing, this heart of yours, but you must temper it with wisdom and strength if you wish to help your brother.’
Seneira stared back at her, and I could see in her expression twin impulses fighting each other: an intense dislike of being lectured warring against the desperate need to protect her family. ‘Tell me what I need to do,’ she said at last.
‘First we need to figure out where your pa will have taken your brother,’ Ferius said, coming down the stairs to join us. ‘A regular hospital is too public. Too many people would have to know that your brother was sick, and word of the shadowblack tends to spread like wildfire on dry brush.’ She gestured to the empty house. ‘Since nobody’s burned this place down yet, it’s a safe bet nobody knows about your brother.’
‘The Academy has a faculty of medicine,’ Seneira said, her face lighting up with hope. ‘My father could have snuck Tyne in through one of the maintenance passages in the bottom of the tower and stationed guards outside one of the private rooms.’
Rosie looked unconvinced. ‘Such an elaborate plan would be foolhardy and require putting trust in too many people.’
‘You never did understand people too well, sister,’ Ferius countered. ‘A man gets scared, he’s going to want to go somewhere safe, somewhere he feels in control.’
‘Very well, we will investigate this medical facility inside the Academy first.’ She looked to Seneira. ‘You must wait here, child, until we return.’
Seneira nodded, then walked right past Rosie and out the door, forcing the rest of us to follow.
Ferius chuckled as she walked by the stunned Argosi. ‘See what I mean?’