Free Master of Plagues: A Nicolas Lenoir Novel by E.L. Tettensor Page B

flanks, and a dozen more sat slumped against the bridge side, resting, cooking, cleaning rifles. The main force stood guard on the other side, facing the Camp; it was there they found Sergeant Izar.
    “Inspector,” the sergeant said, “I didn’t expect to see you here again.” He started to say something else, but then he spotted Merden, and his golden eyes widened. He dropped his head low and murmured something in Adali. Merden inclined his head in return.
    Izar’s gaze shifted between Lenoir and Merden. Lenoir could almost hear the questions, but he did not have time to explain. “How are things here, Sergeant?” he asked, scanning the barricade. The men looked edgy, and most of them wore scarves tied around their faces.
    “Quiet, for the moment,” Izar said. “We had an incident this morning. A mother tried to get one of the watchmento take her children through. She was very determined. We had to subdue her, and that made some people angry.”
    “Where is she now?” Kody asked, glancing around.
    “Unconscious. She was taken to the clinic.”
    Lenoir winced. “Anyone else hurt?”
    “A few, but nothing serious. Good practice for the men, I suppose, for when it gets bad.”
    When,
not
if.
It hardly took a soothsayer to make that prediction; one look at the faces of the crowd milling around the barricade—angry, fearful, desperate—was evidence enough.
It is only a matter of time.
    “I hear you had some trouble on the Fishering side,” Kody said.
    Izar smiled wryly. “Good thing the chief moved me here, where I can stay out of trouble.”
    Kody said something in reply, but Lenoir had stopped listening. Instead, he watched as Merden made his way over to the crowd. Many of the watchers were Adali, and they all bowed their heads the way Izar had done, some putting their hands to their chests. A gesture of respect, it seemed. They recognized him as a soothsayer, or perhaps as a witchdoctor. The cloak, Lenoir presumed.
    “Izar,” he said, interrupting the sergeants. “That rune on the back of Merden’s cloak—what does it mean?”
    “
Mekhleth.
The Wise. Few men have the right to wear a cloak like that.”
    “Do you know him?” Kody asked.
    “Only by reputation.”
    “And he’s some sort of . . . what? A holy man?”
    “Not exactly. More like a shepherd. It’s . . .” Izar shook his head. “The word doesn’t translate.
One who knows the way,
I suppose.”
    “If he’s so special, what’s he doing living in Kennian?”
    “That is a very good question, Kody.” Izar’s gaze followed Merden as he spoke with the crowd. Several of them were pointing and talking animatedly.
    “Time to go,” Lenoir said. “Carry on, Sergeant.”
    As they approached Merden, the voices around him died, replaced by silent, distrustful stares. A woman said something sharp in Adali, but Merden raised a hand and spoke a few quiet words, and she subsided. “I have asked these people where they go for healing,” the soothsayer said. “If you will follow me, Inspector, I think I know the way.”
    Lenoir nodded, only too happy to move away from the tense scene at the barricade. They made their way down to the main road, a wide track of earth flanked with market stalls. Pickings were meager today, Lenoir saw; the vegetables looked tired, the fruits dull and withered. They passed only a single butcher, and he had no beef to sell, only a bloody slab of mutton and a crate full of tatty, resigned-looking chickens.
    “Look at the price of cooking oil,” Kody said in an undertone, inclining his head at a nearby table. “Three times the price they were charging in the poor district the other night.”
    Three days in, and already the quarantine was biting. “It will get worse,” Lenoir said, “and quickly.”
    “The women I spoke to at the barricade mentioned this,” Merden said. “They want to keep their children inside where they will be safe, but they dare not leave their livestock unattended.”
    Lenoir