Mustard and Salt

White froth bubbled from the corners of the boy's mouth, streaked with pink bile and carrying the faint, peppery sting of monkshood.

Arslanbek did not waste breath shouting at the orderlies. Keeping his knee braced hard against the boy's ribs, he shoved the closest fleeing attendant back toward the pantry with a thrust of his boot.

"Fetch two flagons of warm cistern water from the hearth kettle," Arslanbek said, his tone flat, cutting through the hall's mounting shrieks. "Bring the coarse sea salt crock from the brine barrels and the tin box of ground yellow mustard seed from my pantry shelf. Move your limbs, or I will let the boy choke and tell the Warden you threw the broth."

The fallen orderly scrambled to his feet on scraping sandals and bolted toward the scullery archway.

Timur-bek stood four paces back, pressing a linen kerchief steeped in camphor over his nose and mouth until his knuckle joints turned chalk white. "Is it the distillate?" the Warden muffled through the cloth, his round eyes darting across the high vaulted ceiling. "The poison you found in Cell Nine, Arslanbek? Did the butcher strike the servants next? We must bar the refectory passage before the panic spreads to the south dormitory."

"If the murderer wanted scullery boys, Warden, the imperial court would not have wasted eighty feet of braided hemp rope hanging a gantry basket to dump him here," Arslanbek said.

Yunus's spine arched in a rigid bow against the cold stone, the boy's neck tendons twitching with the erratic, violent cadence of acute aconite ingestion. With his thumb already wedged painfully between the lockjawed teeth, Arslanbek pulled a curved piece of hollowed ox-horn from his belt pouch. He slipped the narrow tip past his thumb, driving it between the boy's back molars to take the crushing bite of the jaw and keep the airway open.

"Hold his shoulders flat," Arslanbek ordered.

"He is frothing," Timur-bek stammered, staying glued to the stone column. "The poison is in the bile—"

"Hold him, or dig two graves before midnight," Arslanbek snapped.

The orderly returned on stumbling feet, slamming a stone crock of salt, a battered tin box, and a steaming earthenware pitcher onto the flags.

Arslanbek seized the horn funnel from his kit. He tipped three generous heaps of yellow mustard flour into the hot water, followed by a double handful of coarse rock salt. He stirred the slurry with his bare index finger until the brine turned an opaque, greasy ochre that stung the cuts around his fingernails.

"Pin his forehead," Arslanbek told the orderly.

The orderly hesitated, then pressed both trembling palms against Yunus's temples, pinning the boy's head to the lime-grouted floor.

Arslanbek slipped the spout of the horn funnel deep past the ox-horn wedge, straight down the gullet. With his left hand pinching the boy's nostrils shut, he poured the scalding mustard brine down the horn in a steady, unyielding stream.

The boy gurgled. His chest heaved against the floorboards as the burning mixture hit the paralyzed mucosa of his throat. Reflex fought the numbing poison. Yunus bucked once, twice, his fists drumming against the stone flags, his eyes rolling back until only the bloodshot whites showed.

"Pour more," Arslanbek murmured to himself, tipping the remainder of the yellow sludge into the funnel. "Give the gut no choice."

He yanked the funnel free and struck the boy sharply between the shoulder blades with the flat of his palm.

A shudder ripped through Yunus's small frame. The boy doubled over sideways, retching violently onto the flags.

A torrent of thin, grayish liquid and half-digested turnip scraps splattered across the stone, followed by a second, deeper spasm that dragged up ropy, yellow-green bile. The sharp, acrid stench of gastric acid and raw mustard cut through the stale camphor in the corridor.

Arslanbek did not flinch from the mess. He leaned down, his face inches from the vomit, scooping a sample onto the tip of his horn spatula.

The liquid was clear beneath the yellow mustard slurry, but it carried a faint, iridescent sheen—the distinct oily film left by cold-distilled monkshood roots when suspended in water without wine.

Beneath his fingers, the frantic, bird-wing flutter at the boy's jugular slowed. The terrifying pauses between heartbeats shortened into a steady, if feeble, thrum. Yunus drew a long, wet gasp of air into his chest, his limp fingers curling in the foul wash on the floor.

"He breathes," the orderly whispered, wiping sweat from his eyebrows with a trembling forearm. "By the saints, Master Arslanbek... the rot did not take him."

"There is no rot here," Arslanbek said coldly. "Only two ounces of stolen extract and a pair of clumsy hands."

Timur-bek lowered his scented kerchief an inch, peering at the shivering boy with guarded suspicion. "Why pour the distillate into the watch flagon? For a fourteen-year-old scullery hand?"

"Yunus," Arslanbek said, ignoring the administrator. He grabbed the boy by the collar of his grease-stained tunic, lifting his head until the boy's unfocused eyes found his face. "Look at me. Spit the bitterness out and listen."

The boy spat a thread of salty saliva, coughing weakly. His lips were still numb and clumsy, but the mortal blue tint around his fingernails was receding.

"Where did you fill that jug?" Arslanbek asked, pointing with his spatula toward the shattered earthenware shards three feet away.

Yunus swallowed dryly, his vocal cords rough and scraped raw from the mustard wash. "Not... not the watch flagon, Master..."

"Speak clearly," Arslanbek demanded.

"The night watch flagon was empty," Yunus rasped, each word hitching in his chest. "Brother Oghuz sent me to fetch the heavy service jug... from the scullery trestle. The big brown pitcher."

Arslanbek's hand went rigid on the boy's collar. "The service jug on the main trestle?"

"Aye," Yunus wheezed, his eyes watering from the lingering burn in his throat. "I was thirsty from stoking the bathhouse flue. I took two mouthfuls straight from the lip before carrying it up. It tasted... like sour iron and winter berries."

Arslanbek released the boy, letting his head rest back against the orderly's rolled cloak.

He rose to his feet and walked over to the shattered pottery scattered near the door. He picked up the curved base of the broken vessel with a linen rag. The earthenware was thick, heavy clay stamped with three concentric circles—the mark of the refectory's communal serving vessels.

Inside the hollow curve of the base, a residue of dark, syrupy sediment clung to the unglazed clay.

Timur-bek stepped closer, his brow furrowing as he noticed the maker's stamp. "That is the evening ladle jug. That vessel sits beside the great copper cauldron in the refectory. It is used to distribute the warm herb tea to all eighty quarantined souls at the eighth bell."

Arslanbek rubbed a speck of the dark sediment between two fingers, then held it to his nose. The unmistakable bitter, metallic sting of concentrated monkshood prickled in his sinuses. Two ounces of root extract sat dissolved in that vessel—enough to stop twenty hearts in the time it took to say a psalm.

He let the clay shard drop back into the puddle of mustard and bile. Across the corridor, beyond the heavy iron sconces, the refectory archway yawned like a pit. In less than an hour, the eighth bell would toll, and eighty men would gather with empty bowls.