Inversions

The doctor considered bleeding the King, in effect the only thing he could think of which he had not tried, but bleeding somebody with a weakening heartbeat had proved worse than useless in the past, and on this occasion, thankfully, the urge not to make matters worse overcame the need to be seen to be doing something. The doctor ordered some exotic infusions to be prepared, but held out little hope that they would be any more effective than the compounds he had already administered.

It was you, master, who said that Doctor Vosill would have to be summoned. I am told that Duke Ulresile and Duke Quettil took you aside and that there was a furious argument. Duke Ulresile flew from the room in a blinding rage and later took a sword to one of his servants such that the poor fellow lost one eye and a pair of fingers. I find it admirable that you stood your ground. A contingent of the palace guards was sent to the questioning chamber with orders to take the Doctor from there by force if necessary.

I am told that my mistress walked calmly in to the terrified confusion that was the King's chamber, where nobles, servants and, it seemed, half the palace were assembled, crying and wailing.

She had sent me, with a pair of guards, to her chamber for her medicine bag. We surprised one of Duke Quettil's servants and another palace guard there. Both looked anxious and guilty at being caught in the Doctor's rooms. Duke Quettil's man held a piece of paper I recognised.

I have never, I think, been so proud of myself for anything I have done in my life as for what I did next, for I was still half terrified that my ordeal had merely been postponed rather than cancelled. I was shaking and sweating with the shock of what I had witnessed, I was mortified at the callow and cowardly way I had felt in the torture chamber, ashamed of how my body had betrayed me, and my mind was still spi

What I did was take the note from Quettil's servant.

"That is the property of my mistress!" I hissed, and stepped forward, a look of fury on my face. I grabbed the note from the fellow's fingers. He looked blankly at me, then at the note, which I stuffed quickly into my shirt. He opened his mouth to speak. I turned, still quivering with rage, to the two guards who had been sent with me. "Escort this person from these apartments immediately!" I said.

This was, of course, a gamble on my part. In all the excitement, it had been quite unclear whether the Doctor and I were still technically prisoners or not, and therefore the two guards might rightly have concluded that they were my jailers, not my bodyguards, which was the way I was treating them. I would modestly claim that they were able to recognise something transparently honest and true about my righteous indignation and so decided to do as I commanded.

The Duke's man looked terrified, but did as he was told.

I buttoned up my jacket to further secure the note, found the Doctor's bag and hurried to the King's chamber with my escorts.

The Doctor had turned the King on to his side. She knelt by his bed, stroking his head in a distracted way, fending off questions from Doctor Skelim. (A reaction to something in his food, probably, she told him. Extreme, but not poison.)

You stood, master, arms crossed, near the Doctor. Duke Quettil lurked in a corner, glaring at her.

She took a small stoppered glass vial from the bag, holding it up to the light and shaking it. "Oelph, this is the salts solution number twenty-one, herbed. Do you know it?"

I thought. "Yes, mistress."

"We'll need more, dried, within the next two bells. Can you remember how to prepare it?"

"Yes, I think so, mistress. I may need to refer to our notes."

"Just so. I'm sure your two guards will help you. Off you go, then."

I turned to go, then stopped and handed her the note which I had taken from the Duke's man. "Here is that paper, mistress," I said then quickly turned and left before she had time to ask me what it was.

I missed the uproar when the Doctor pinched the King's nose and clamped a hand over his mouth until he turned nearly blue. You, master, held back the protestations of the others, but then grew concerned yourself, and were about to order her away at sword point when she let the King's nose go and thrust the powder which the vial had contained under his nostrils. The ruddy powder looked like dried blood, but was not. It whistled into the King as he took a huge, deep in-drawing breath.

Most of the people in the room took their own first breath for some time. For a while, nothing happened. Then, I am told, the King's eyes flickered and opened. He saw the Doctor and smiled, then coughed and wheezed and had to be helped to sit up.

He cleared his throat, fixed the Doctor with an outraged stare and said, "Vosill, what in the skies of hell have you done to your hair?"

I think the Doctor knew she would not need any more of salts solution number twenty-one, herbed. It was her way of trying to make sure that she and I were not brought to the King, made to cure him of whatever had befallen him and then promptly led away again back to the torture chamber. She wanted people to think that the course of treatment required would be longer than what amounted to little more than a quick pinch of snuff.

Nevertheless, I returned to the Doctor's apartments, with my two guards in escort, and set up the equipment necessary to produce the powder. Even with the help of the two guards — and it was a refreshing experience to be able to do the ordering around, rather than to be subject to it myself — it would be a close-run thing to produce a small amount of the substance in less than two bells. At least it would give me something to do.

I only heard later and at second hand about the outburst of Duke Quettil, in the King's chamber. The sergeant of the guards who had released us from the cell in the torture chamber spoke quietly with you, master, shortly after the King was brought back to the land of the living. I am told you looked a little shaken for a moment, but then went, grim-faced, to inform Duke Quettil of the fate of his chief questioner and his two assistants.

"Dead! Dead? By fuck, Adlain, can you arrange nothing right!" were the Duke's precise words, by all accounts. The King glared. The Doctor looked unperturbed. Everybody else stared. The Duke attempted to strike you, and had to be restrained by two of your men, who acted, perhaps, before they thought. The King inquired what was going on.

The Doctor, meanwhile, was looking at the piece of paper I had given her.

It was the note that purported to be from you and which had lured her to the trap that had killed Duke Ormin and was supposed to dispose of her. The King had already heard from the Doctor that Ormin was dead, and that she had been meant to appear to be the killer. He was still sitting up in bed, staring ahead and trying to digest this news. The Doctor had not yet given him the details of what had supposedly happened in the questioning chamber, but merely said that she had been released before being put to the question.

She showed him the note. He called you over and you confirmed that it was not your writing, though it might be said to be a decent attempt at it.

Duke Quettil took the opportunity to demand that somebody be brought to justice for the murder of his men, which may have been a little hasty, as it raised the question concerning what they had been doing there in the first place. The King's expression darkened as he gradually took in all that was revealed, and several times he had to tell people trying to interrupt others to stop, so that he could get clear in his still slightly befuddled head what had actually happened. Duke Quettil, reportedly breathing heavily and with staring eyes and spittle on his lips, at one point attempted to grab the Doctor's wrist and pull her away from the King, who put his arm round her shoulders and ordered you to keep the Duke distant.