The Alchemist of Souls (Night's Masque, #1)(71)

Mal rubbed his left arm. The tattoo was healing well, thanks to the skrayling's salve, but the morning was already hot and sweat was trickling down inside his tunic sleeve, making the still-tender skin sting like nettle rash.

"Fleas?" Sandy asked, taking a bite of gingerbread.

Mal laughed and shook his head. He took off his doublet, rolled up the tunic sleeve and pulled the bandage away to display the tattoo. "What do you think, Sandy? Sandy!"

His brother had given a strangled cry and turned as stiff as the gingerbread doll, arms and legs rigid and trembling. His eyes rolled back in their sockets and he began to toss his head from side to side, moaning.

"Help! Someone help us!" Mal shouted, taking hold of Sandy's head and trying to get the piece of gingerbread out of his brother's mouth before he choked on it.

One of the warders came running. "Gawd help us, the lad's possessed!" he wailed.

"Don't be an ass." Mal glared at him. "It's just a fever brought on by the sun's heat."

He didn't believe it himself, but it seemed to reassure the warder, at least for the moment.

"Let us get him inside," Mal told him. "Cool shade and a drink will soon bring him to rights."

The warder fetched a stretcher and they carried Sandy, still twitching and moaning, back to the gatehouse and his own bed. Some of the other inmates watched them go, moaning in sympathy. Back indoors the air was humid and pungent, promising little respite for any fever victim, but at least the cell was out of public view.

"Bring wine – the good stuff, mind, none of that vinegary swill," Mal said, pressing a shilling into the warder's sweaty palm. "Now, if you please."

Sandy had stopped moaning but was now muttering to himself in the secret language of their childhood.

"Sandy? Sandy, are you all right?" Mal whispered, crouching on the edge of the bed.

His brother opened his eyes and sat up. His pupils were enormous, great pools of darkness that seemed to draw Mal in…

"It? omiro?" Sandy asked. Who are you?

"It's me, Mal. Remember?"

Sandy screamed. Mal threw his arms around him, trying to quiet him before he set off the whole ward. Sandy writhed in his embrace but despite having a madman's desperate strength he was too frail from his long confinement to break free. Mal held him tight until he stopped struggling, then reluctantly snapped the gyves around Sandy's wrists and ankles before he could gain his second wind. Sandy's pupils shrank in an instant, like a door slamming shut, and he slumped back on the bed. Mal stroked the sweat-damp hair from his brother's brow, blinking back tears, then sank to his knees beside the bed and prayed to St Giles, patron of madmen, cripples and those with the falling sickness.

The warder eventually returned with a cup of sweet hippocras, made the sign of the cross at the sight of Sandy, and fled. Mal coaxed a few drops of the wine between his brother's lips.

Sandy gazed up at him with wide eyes. "Mal? What happened?"

"A brief fit, nothing more," Mal said. "We should not have sat out in the sun so long."

Sandy closed his eyes again, and soon his breathing began to slow and his features relaxed in sleep. Mal stayed with him whilst the sun traced its slow path across the floor, alternately pacing the cell with soft tread and kneeling in prayer for his brother's soul.

At last the bells of nearby St Botolph's tolled five, and Mal remembered he had promised to return to the skrayling compound by six. He knocked on the cell door to be let out. The thought of leaving Sandy in this condition and being unable to visit him for a whole week tore at his heart, but what could he do? They would both have to endure the separation as best they could.

When Mal returned to the compound he was shown back to the small tent. Kiiren was seated cross-legged on a large woollen cushion next to the brazier, where a lidded metal jug stood heating. The jug's spout emitted a thin wisp of steam. That smell again: bitter and woody yet strangely pleasant.

"Please, sit," Kiiren said in a low voice.

He took the pot off the fire and whisked the contents, sending up a cloud of steam. Mal breathed it in, and felt his spirits lift a little.

"What happens now?" Mal asked. "This… is not a good start to your stay in London."

"We go back to Tower, perhaps tomorrow."

Tomorrow, the day after, a week from now; Mal didn't care any more. He just wanted to see Sandy again.

"Next Sunday," he said firmly, "I must have time for my own affairs."

"Of course. We honour your customs." Kiiren looked thoughtful. "Day of sun. So many of you humans revere sun in different ways, yes?"

"We do not revere the sun as the pagans of old did," Mal replied, trying to shake off his melancholy. A discussion of history would perhaps take his mind off his troubles. "But we kept their names for the days of the week. You know about the gods of the Greeks and Romans?"

"I speak of humans that live near my homeland."

"I have heard rumours," Mal said. He leant forward, hoping to learn something of use to Walsingham. "Beyond Antilia, a mighty empire rich in gold."

"Always it is gold with humans." Kiiren gave a hissing laugh. "Gold, tears of sun… And yet you Christians still not agree if sun travel round earth, or earth round sun."