The Vinegar Bowl

Dead princes smelled no different from dead draymen, but they usually arrived in cleaner wool.

Arslanbek dragged his hemp apron over his head, knotting the cord at his waist with fingers stiffened by brine and cold. He wanted the noon examination over before the midday tide turned, so he could return to the stillroom and decant his winter batch of pennyroyal. A proper bone-setter had no business washing dead aristocrats, yet on the limestone rock of Tash-Bashi, where four dozen fever cases rotted behind iron grates, anyone who owned a brass scalpel was treated as an undertaker.

"Keep the cloth over your nose," Timur-bek muttered from the threshold of Cell Nine, his fingers gripping the doorframe. The administrator held a wad of dried rosemary pressed against his chin, his round face slick with sweat despite the draft blowing off the gray sea eighty cubits below. "The sweating sickness takes a man in three breaths if the vapors are thick."

"The sickness takes a man because his humors curdle, not because he smells a corpse," Arslanbek said, kicking the iron brazier aside to clear a path. "If bad air killed on contact, every fishmonger in the capital would be in a common pit."

He set his wooden tray on the stone bench beside the pallet. On the slab lay Prince Bahadir-oglu, nephew to the Grand Vizier and exiled three fortnights ago for reasons the mainland clerks had declined to write down. The prince had spent his exile wrapped in greased lambskin, coughing into the dark, until an orderly discovered his limbs cold at daybreak.

Arslanbek pulled back the damp shroud.

The face underneath was pale, almost waxy in the tallow candlelight, with the lips pulled back over clean white teeth. There were no dark blisters along the neck, no bloody discharge dried in the nostrils, and no black petechiae mottling the collarbone. When the sweating sickness broke a body, it turned the skin into spotted leather and flooded the lungs with frothing bile. The prince looked merely asleep, save for the blue tinge pooling beneath his fingernails.

"See?" Timur-bek stepped back into the corridor, waving his bundle of herbs. "The fever burned out his vitality. Sign the slate, Arslanbek. The rope-basket leaves for the mainland cliffs at four bells. The Governor's secretary expects the seal of natural demise before sundown, or he will hold back our grain allotment."

"The Governor's secretary can eat rock salt," Arslanbek replied. He picked up his horn spatula and wedged it between the dead man's molars, prying the locked jaw apart.

"What are you doing?" The administrator's voice rose, shrill against the wet stone vaulting. "The corpse must be wrapped in quicklime by noon! We have protocols!"

"I am checking why our noble guest died without shedding a drop of pustular fluid." Arslanbek peered down into the prince's gullet. The tongue was dry, swollen at the base, and coated with a thin gray fur. He lowered his face until his ear hovered an inch above the cold mouth.

There was no sour reek of putrefying lung tissue. Instead, a faint, pungent sharpness drifted from the back of the throat—a dry sweetness that reminded him of crushed plum stones and wild bitter cherries.

Arslanbek reached for the earthenware bowl on his tray. He poured two measures of sharp pickling vinegar into the vessel, then added a pinch of powdered sulfur from his leather pouch. The mixture hissed faintly, clouding into a pale yellow wash.

"Hold the lantern closer," Arslanbek commanded.

"I will not step into the miasma," Timur-bek squeaked.

"Then set it on the flagstones and shut your mouth before you swallow your own rosemary." Arslanbek dipped a linen sponge into the sulfur wash and pressed it firmly against the dead prince's jawline and lower gums.

The acid bit into the mucous membrane. Instantly, the faint sweetness bloomed into a sharp, suffocating vapor that filled the narrow cell. It was not the stench of disease. It was the distinct, biting odor of bitter almond, concentrated and distilled until a few drops could stop a man's heart before his cup touched the table.

Princes were remarkably alike in death to tavern brawlers, Arslanbek thought, except their linen held fewer fleas and considerably more expensive poison.

Timur-bek blinked from the doorway, sniffing the air with sudden unease. "What is that stench? It smells like baker's paste."

"It is the distillate of wild laurel and peach kernels," Arslanbek said, rising and wiping his fingers on his apron. "A peasant dies of dysentery because he drinks swamp water. A prince dies of this when someone wants his inheritance before the winter ice sets in."

Timur-bek's fleshy face drained of color. "Poison? Here? That is impossible. The prince was confined to this wing under triple lock. No boat has landed since the autumn equinox. Only the rope-basket brings supplies, and every basket is searched by the harbor master on the high bluff."

"Then your harbor master needs spectacles, or one of your seven orderlies knows how to brew distillates." Arslanbek stepped over to the iron sconce bolted beside the door.

Hanging from a bronze nail was the patient's daily slate, marked with charcoal tallies to record the stages of the quarantine. Arslanbek lifted the slate to the candlelight.

Three days ago, the slate noted slight trembling and excessive thirst. Two days ago, it recorded high fever and purple spots across the torso. Yesterday's entry, written in dark, heavy charcoal strokes, described violent convulsive shivers and blood-spotted sputum.

Arslanbek looked back at the corpse on the bench. The prince's chest was unblemished, smooth as polished marble, without a single mark or ruptured boil.

"Look at this," Arslanbek said, thrusting the slate toward the administrator.

Timur-bek squinted at the charcoal lines. "It... it details the third stage of the sweating plague. Brother Oghuz logged it himself during the second watch."

"Brother Oghuz was either blind drunk, or he was writing a fairy tale to cover a murder," Arslanbek said, his tone dry as kiln sand. "The skin on that slab has never seen a fever rash in its life. Someone fabricated the symptoms on this board hours before pouring the bitter water down the prince's throat."

A gust of wind whistled through the high arrow slit, carrying the salt spray of the lower rocks. In the far courtyard, the iron bell of the lazaretto tolled twice, signaling the changing of the cistern guards.

Timur-bek swallowed hard, his rosemary bundle trembling in his fist. "If word of this crosses the channel, the Grand Vizier will send a galley of Janissaries to burn the entire cloister. They will butcher every sick man and orderly on the rock to ensure no secrets escape."

"Then I suggest you do not sign that paper for the Governor," Arslanbek said, setting the vinegar bowl back on his tray. "Because whoever ground those peach stones is still inside these walls, and they still have the rest of the vial."