Tabula Rasa

Chapter 26

“Ah!” exclaimed Ruso, pleased to see the familiar figure getting up from the stool by the pharmacist’s table. “It’s today you’re back.”

Nisus, a man who parted with words as if he were obliged to pay a fee for each one used, responded to this statement of the obvious with silence.

“How was leave?”

“Good, sir.”

“Sit down, man. I need a word with you.”

Nisus perched back on the stool with his body slightly turned toward his table, as if he were waiting for the conversation to end so he could get on with his work.

“Our clerk’s gone missing. I’m hoping you know where he is.”

“I see, sir.”

Remembering Nisus’s tendency to answer the question you asked rather than the question you meant, he said, “Any idea where he might have gone?”

“Far away, I hope, sir.”

“Any particular reason?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Perhaps you could tell me . . .” Ruso paused, then rearranged the sentence. “Why is that, Nisus?”

“He talked too much.”

“Did you tell him that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you, ah . . . threaten him in any way?”

“No, sir.”

“You’re quite sure?”

“Yes, sir.”

Ruso left it there for now. He needed to know about the supplies that Nisus had agreed to try and pick up while he was over in Coria.

“Did you get hyssop?”

Nisus pointed to the bowl he was weighing on the scale.

“And honey?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Rue?”

“Yes, sir.”

Fortunately, when not obliged to converse, Nisus was very good at his job. It was not surprising that he had been irritated by Candidus’s slapdash attitude and incessant chatter. Ruso said, “Figs?”

“Some, sir.”

“Enough?”

“No, sir.”

“We’ll have to wheedle a few out of somebody’s kitchen.”

Nisus assumed an expression like a wet winter afternoon. Ruso said hastily, “I’ll do it.” He had never thought of himself as a man with charm-that was Valens’s job-but even he could do better than that.

To his relief, the struggling conversation was put out of its misery by a barrage of noise from behind the office door. It sounded much as Ruso imagined a large bear might sound if it were trying unsuccessfully to dislodge something disgusting stuck in its throat. He peered around the door to see a huge soldier standing by Candidus’s rickety stool and trying not to knock over stacks of writing tablets and scrolls arranged in a semicircular wall around him as he coughed and waved one arm in an attempt at a salute.

When the man had finally regained control and snatched a drink from his waterskin, Ruso asked, “Who are you?”

“I’m your new clerk, sir. Gracilis.” The man looked Ruso in the eye as if daring him to laugh. Ruso remained solemn, largely because Gracilis had the sort of physique that would be useful for hiding behind in the event of an oncoming cavalry charge. If his parents had chosen to call him “Slender,” it was none of anybody else’s business. “Sorry I didn’t notice you before, Gracilis. Welcome. We’re not used to having anybody sitting there, as you’ve probably guessed.”

The reply of “Don’t worry, sir, I’ll sort all this out” was the sweetest sound Ruso had heard in a long time.

It was swiftly followed by another sound, one that made the muscles of his abdomen clench: the distant wail of a native horn summoning reinforcements. He had not heard it for a couple of relatively peaceful years, but it was a sound that no soldier who had served during the last rebellion would ever forget.

Tilla had insisted on going to the farm alone. He should have made her promise to take someone. Anyone. Better still, anyone and a large dog. Relations with the locals had gone seriously downhill, and now it sounded as though they were gathering to make trouble.

“Sir?”

He returned his attention to the clerk. “Sorry. What did you say?”

“Is there anything I shouldn’t touch, sir?”

“Very possibly,” Ruso told him, “but none of us would know. Just don’t go near anything that isn’t a document. How long have you had that cough?”

“Four weeks and two days, sir.”

Having ascertained that the man had not tried figs boiled in hyssop, Ruso glanced at his pharmacist. “When the cough mixture’s made up, let him have some. Gracilis, you’re to take one spoonful every morning and one before you lie down at night.”

He had expected Nisus to get straight back to his table, but instead of returning his attention to the pale green and mauve of the dried hyssop under the scale, the pharmacist was watching as the new clerk glanced over each document before adding it to the correct pile on the barricades around him. Finally Nisus said, “Better than the last one, sir.”

Ruso, taken aback by this unsolicited opinion, ventured, “Can you remember any conversation you had with the last one?

“I told him to stop talking or I would kill somebody.”

Behind the flimsy rampart of administration, Gracilis’s eyes widened.

“I thought you didn’t threaten him?”

“I was measuring out mandrake, sir.”

“Ah,” said Ruso, explaining for the benefit of the alarmed clerk: “Medicinal in small quantities, dangerous in large ones. And did that stop him?”

“He went away, sir.”

Ruso said, “Perhaps he misunderstood.”

The pharmacist might have been considering this possibility, or he might have been staring into space and hoping Ruso would go away so he could get on with measuring out the hyssop.

Ruso tried, “Can you remember anything of what he said?”

Nisus pondered his reply and finally offered, “I wasn’t listening, sir.”

“Well, try to remember what you weren’t listening to.”

Nisus let a long breath out through his nose. The hyssop stirred gently in the bowl with the movement of air. Nisus looked as though he might be about to open his mouth to speak when Ruso’s ears were assaulted with another bout of coughing.

This was how it would be as they went into the winter: sniffly conversations punctuated by involuntary bursts of noise. As if talking to Nisus were not difficult enough. Finally the pharmacist answered, “Something about meeting somebody for a drink.”

“On his last day?”

Nisus shrugged. “On my last day, sir.”

“Yes, of course. Sorry. Did he say who?” Perhaps he would not send that letter to Albanus just yet.

“A man he’d seen somewhere else, sir.”

“Where?”

Nisus did not know.

“Anything else he said that you can remember?”

Nisus paused. “Nothing relevant, sir.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“ ‘Doctor Ruso is just as miserable as my uncle.’ ”

“That,” Ruso assured him, “is a compliment.”

“He wanted a transfer back to Magnis.” Nisus gave a sniff of disapproval. “Said Doctor Valens would be more fun.”

Ruso said, “Not if you have to work for him.”

Nisus, now positively chatty, ventured another unsolicited opinion. “I was expecting better, sir.”

“So was I,” Ruso agreed. “Anything else?”

“Something about recruitment, sir.”

“What, exactly?”

Nisus opened his mouth, thought for a moment, then closed it again. Anything else he might have considered saying was lost beneath the sound of Gracilis coughing, leaving Ruso free to wonder how he was going to trace a drinking companion with no name and no description. Whoever he was, the man hadn’t yet come forward despite all the appeals for information. Which might mean that he was no longer here-or, worse, that he was here but he didn’t want to be found.