The screaming stopped after seventeen seconds. Kael counted. It was something to do with his mouth besides tasting copper.
One Mississippi.
Two Mississippi.
Old habit from a childhood spent waiting out tornado warnings in his aunt's basement back in Oklahoma. (Wait. Did he still have an aunt in Oklahoma? Did that body still exist? The thought made his new throat tighten. He shoved it down. Later. Panic later.)
By twelve Mississippi, the scream had dissolved into wet sobs. By seventeen, silence.Kael stood in the middle of the room, still wearing Silas's bloodied shirt, and tried to decide if he should run toward the noise or away from it.
His legs chose for him.
They moved toward the door with the steady gait of a man who had answered midnight emergencies before. Muscle memory.
Creepy, useful muscle memory.The room was large. Larger than his entire college apartment. Bookshelves lined every wall, crammed with volumes bound in leather and cloth.
Medical texts, mostly.
He recognized Latin prefixes. Corpus. Anatomia. Some titles were in a script he didn't know, angular and sharp, like broken glass arranged into words.
A gas lamp hissed on the desk. Not electric. The flame danced behind frosted glass, casting shadows that seemed too long.
Too purposeful.Kael reached the door. Turned the brass handle.The hallway beyond was narrow.
Wallpaper the color of dried sage, peeling in strips the color of old bruises. More gas lamps, these ones dimmer, turned low to save fuel. (Even rich doctors worried about fuel bills, apparently. The detail made him weirdly fond of Silas. Or pitying. He couldn't tell which.)
The stairs were to his right. He descended them carefully, one hand trailing the banister, the other pressed against his throat.
The wound had closed to a pink line. It itched. Not a normal itch.
Something deeper. Like the skin remembered being whole and was trying to convince the rest of the body through sheer force of will.
The clinic occupied the ground floor. He knew this before he reached the bottom step. The smell hit him first. Antiseptic and alcohol. And underneath, the particular sweetness of ether that lingered in the back of the throat like a bad promise you couldn't refuse.
The waiting room was empty. Chairs arranged in neat rows. A reception desk with a ledger open to today's date.
The name at the top of the page was written in the same cramped hand as the journal.
Miss L. Grimwell. 9 o'clock. Follow-up.
Fracture Sickness, stage two.Kael stared at the words. Fracture Sickness. It meant nothing. Everything. The air in the room seemed to thin.A door to his left swung open. A girl stepped through.
Sixteen, maybe. Red hair pulled back in a severe bun. A stained apron over a gray dress that had been mended at the hem with stitches too neat to be professional.
She held a porcelain basin in both hands. The water inside was pink."Doctor," she said. No surprise in her voice. No alarm. "You're early. I hadn't finished cleaning the mess."Kael opened his mouth. Closed it.The girl—nurse? apprentice? servant?—tilted her head.
"Sir? Your throat. Did the dressing come loose again?"Again.Kael touched his neck.
The pink line. "Again," he repeated. His voice sounded like gravel in a blender.The girl's eyes narrowed. Just a fraction.
"Shall I prepare the sutures, Doctor? Or will you be doing it yourself? Like last time?"Last time. Silas had done this before. Tried this before. And this girl knew.
Kael looked at the pink water in her basin. At the empty waiting room. At the ledger with its neat, hopeless handwriting."No," he said. The word came out steadier than he felt. "No sutures. Just... tell me. Who screamed?"
The girl's expression didn't change. But her knuckles whitened around the basin."The new patient," she said. "The one they brought in an hour ago. Before you... before you went upstairs."
"Before I went upstairs," Kael echoed."Yes, Doctor."
A pause.
The gas lamp hissed.
"They say he has the Thread-rot. They say he's from the Cathedral district. And they say—" She stopped.
Looked at the floor. "They say he's one of yours. A former patient. From the war."
Kael felt the floor tilt. Not much. Just a degree. But enough."I see," he said, though he didn't. "And what's his name?"The girl looked up.
Her eyes were green. Too green. Like bottle glass held to the light."Corvin, Doctor. Corvin Blackwell. Though the constable says he's been going by another name lately. In the Lower Streets."
She swallowed. "They call him the Hollow King."The basin in her hands trembled. Water sloshed over the rim.
A single pink drop hit the floorboards.Kael stared at it.The journal upstairs. The last page.
My patient wears the crown."Show me," Kael said.The girl nodded. Turned. Led him toward the door she had come from.
Kael followed.
His legs moved automatically. His heart did not. It hammered against his ribs like a bird trying to escape a cage made of someone else's bones.