The Poisons of Caux: The Hollow Bettle (Book I) Read Free Page B

the darker, more potent herbs.

    What followed was the new king’s First Proclamation:
    T O BE A PRACTICING APOTHEOPATH IS ILLEGAL, PUNISHABLE BY DEATH
    At the time, when the news reached him that he was now an outlaw, Cecil Manx had merely shrugged. He was a man of many talents. He’d always wanted to open a tavern, and so he did.
    It was hardly a secret, however, that he kept seeing patients in his back room.

Chapter four
Soup
    s it was unlikely that Sorrel Flux saw to any of the business concerns of the tavern, and as Cecil Manx never bothered Ivy about the taxes, it was safe to say that for the entire year her uncle had been gone, not a minim had been sent to the king’s tax collectors.
    There was a pile of correspondence behind the bar, and that was probably the best place to find the tax bills—but it’s hard to look for something you don’t know is missing. Besides, Sorrel Flux was often found warming his bony hands beside the fire—which, if it was not warm enough for his liking, he would ignite with a handful of paper nearby. It was in this way that the Notice of Default and Intent to Collect went up in smoke.
    When it came to taxes, King Nightshade was ruthless and efficient.
    His sentries, in fact, were waiting outside for first lightwhen they saw a candle flickering in the young girl’s room above the tavern before dawn. This was interesting to the group only insofar as it momentarily distracted them from their hunger. The men knew taverns to be occasionally a place of good food and drink, and they had been without either for the entire night. The glow vanished almost as soon as it appeared, and the sentries returned to the grumbling of their stomachs.
    Ivy was executing her dangerous plan. If her uncle would not come to her, she would go to him. An entire year had passed—a miserable year, one filled only with the tedium of Flux’s company. She was now eleven, and Ivy had no plans on growing any older without her uncle’s company. Besides, the thrill of experimenting on her freeloading taster was gone, but as a parting gift, she had slipped some of her famous sleeping draught into his nightcap. A double dose.
    Ivy was headed to the tavern with an audacious theft in mind. It was her intention to relieve the Hollow Bettle of the very jewel for which it was named. She paused in the low hall, straining to hear any sounds from the taster’s quarters.
    Cecil Manx’s mill house was resplendent with little hidden passageways, and in the dim morning Ivy used one of them to bring her down a set of irregular stairs. She soon found herself just where she needed to be: at a small door behind the Bettle’s bar.
    Ivy quietly opened the little door and discovered, to her complete surprise, that she was not the only thief in the room. Two other souls populated the tavern presently, and further to the young girl’s dismay, one of them was quite easily recognized (even at this early hour) as the unpleasant man who had been nothing but ill tempered and poor company to her for this past long year. Mr. Flux looked wide awake, she noticed, in defiance of her robust sleeping potion—a first, if ever there was.
    The taster’s companion—for they seemed on quite familiar terms—was even more inexplicable.
    He wore an objectionable amount of facial hair and towered over the taster. His eyes were deep-set and dark. And, most disconcerting, he seemed to speak—the few times he did—in guttural grunts that Ivy could make nothing of but somehow Mr. Flux comprehended with practiced ease.
    Ivy was no stranger to madmen—especially drunken madmen—but something about this friend of the taster’s made her hesitate. The bettle, in its bottle of brandywine, was on a shelf right above her, but to get it would require her to climb on a nearby cask and stand for a moment in plain view. This was unacceptable, considering her company.
    Fortunately, the two trespassers were embroiled in what seemed to be an argument and hadn’t