“I don’t know. I’ll have to ask around to find out.”
“Do it,” he snapped, and the man rushed out of the room. “She’s got a fever. Give her a cool sponge bath to get her temperature down,” he told Nanta, “and Gantalla, prepare some ginger tea. Get her to drink a full cup, if she can keep it down. Henrietta, prepare some opium. I’m not sure if we’ll need it, but better to be prepared.” The nurses all rushed off, leaving Liatra moaning on the bed, under the watchful gaze of the doctor.
An hour dragged past, as they all carried out the doctor’s orders, and by the end of it, Liatra was looking a little more stable. Her skin was pale and she was lying limply on the bed, but she’d stopped vomiting and her temperature was down. The sound of heavy footsteps sounded from out in the hallway, then Haber returned, out of breath as he skidded back into the room. “I spoke to Fiona,” he said. “She was organising the food last night. She said Rellia brought the mushrooms. She owns the pub on Hill Lane. She’s been bringing food for the warriors every day for the last week. Fiona said they were red caps.”
Samuel’s eyes narrowed. “Do you have any left? Or does Rellia have any? I’d bet a week’s pay they were actually purple caps.”
“She’s on her way over. I told her to bring what she had.”
Minutes later, a middle-aged woman with long, brown hair knocked on the door. She looked terrified. “I brought the mushrooms I had left,” she said, and Gantalla assumed this was Rellia. She hadn’t met the woman before, though with the size of the city, it was a reasonable bet that she could live here for years and never meet every single person in town.
Samuel took the basket of mushrooms she’d brought with her and sat down by the window, using the daylight to give each one a thorough inspection. And some ten minutes later, he sighed. “Well, it’s good news for you,” he told Rellia. “They’re all red caps. Every last one.”
Rellia sagged in relief. “Oh, thank the gods. I’m normally so careful with mushrooms. I felt so horrible that I could have got it wrong.”
“You’ve done nothing wrong. Thank you for coming,” Samuel said, offering her a sympathetic smile. “You can go now.” She left, but Samuel kept the basket of mushrooms. For all his certainty that they weren’t harmful, it was best to avoid the risk of any further incidents.
“Okay, so red caps were provided to the barracks, but I’d bet a week’s pay that it was somehow purple caps that ended up on Liatra’s plate,” he mused. He moved back over to the bed. “Liatra, my dear? How are you feeling? Any better?”
Liatra nodded. “A bit. The room’s still spinning. And my tongue feels weird.” From Gantalla’s memory of the descriptions in the book on mushrooms, her symptoms were a match to the toxic variety.
“Can you tell me anything else about what happened last night? Where did you get your food from? Who were you eating with?”
“June got the food from the tables. I was eating with her and Nalyx and Calium. And Helen. Everyone’s saying Calium’s going to ask Helen to marry him.”
“Right then.” Samuel turned back to the nurses. “Let’s round up the four others. Bring them here, and Henrietta, I want you to question them all. I want to know what they were eating and if any of them have felt the slightest bit ill this morning.”
“I’ll see to it,” Henrietta said, letting herself out of the room.
“Nanta, can you organise a bed upstairs and get Liatra taken up to a room. I have to get back to my other patients, but call if you need anything.”
After Doctor Samuel left, Gantalla returned to the reception desk. There was no point just sitting around doing nothing, after all. But half an hour later, the door opened and Henrietta returned, her four charges in tow. And maybe it was none of her business, but Gantalla got up and followed them back to Liatra’s room, curiosity gnawing at her about this mystery. It was nothing at all to do with wanting to see Nalyx again, she told herself firmly. It was just professional concern for a patient. That was all.
Inside Liatra’s room, Nalyx went straight to Liatra’s side, taking her hand. “Oh gods, are you all right?” he asked her.
“Feel sick,” she said, with a wince.
“She’s doing better,” Samuel told him, arriving in the doorway. Presumably one of the nurses had alerted him when Nalyx and the others arrived. “I don’t think it’s going to be fatal, but she’ll likely be off colour for a couple of days. She was lucky she didn’t get a higher dose. Much more and she wouldn’t have made it.”
“How the hell did this happen?” Nalyx asked.
“We were hoping you could help us find out. Helen, June, you can wait in the room next door. And Nalyx and Calium, if you’d be so kind as to go with Henrietta? She has some questions to ask you.” Both men looked baffled, but followed Henrietta without protest. And once again, Gantalla decided to trail after the group. She half expected to be told to wait with Liatra, but Henrietta said nothing, so she assumed she was allowed to go.
Inside another consulting room, Henrietta turned to face the men. “Okay, so my first question is have either of you been feeling ill this morning? We’re concerned that Liatra’s suffering from purple cap poisoning, and if anyone else has eaten them, you could get seriously ill.”
Both men shook their head. “I feel fine,” Calium said.
“Perfectly normal,” Nalyx agreed.
“Did anything unusual happen last night? Liatra said she was eating dinner with you, Helen and June. Did you notice anything out of the ordinary?”
“No,” Nalyx said, after taking a moment to think about it. “Calium and I were in the town square during the day. The women met us at the barracks at around six. We had a few drinks, then dinner.” He shrugged. “It was a pretty typical night. Then Helen went to bed with Calium, and June and Liatra went home. They both seemed fine when they left.”
Gantalla’s ears pricked up at that. So neither woman had spent the night with Nalyx? She felt a stab of relief at the news, and then immediately told herself that she had no right to feel that way. She’d broken things off with Nalyx – not that they’d ever really started in the first place. She had no reason to be interested in who he spent the night with.
“Well, actually, there was that argument between June and Liatra,” Calium said. “I mean, it was nothing serious, just a bit of posturing and name-calling, but they’ve seemed a bit at odds with each other lately.”
“Oh, come on,” Nalyx scoffed. “Yeah, there’s been a bit of jealousy, but that’s common enough amongst the serving women. There’s no way that could have anything to do with Liatra eating toxic mushrooms.”
