The Chimera

Chapter Eleven: Deduction, and Other Engaging Pastimes

In the long hours of the night before the seven gift-receivers meet, the physician Dalmar comes to visit the Taymons.

Edeline calls out to him from where she stands near the back door, beckoning him inside to examine her brother.

Dalmar, though skilled at his work, has no knowledge of where the corpse in the garden could have come from, nor what dangers its bite could possess. He's worried by the obvious pain Rian is in, who is fooling no one with his stoic expression on a drawn, bloodless face. Looking at the wound, which is relatively shallow given that the teeth grazed past his shoulder more than truly biting in, it shouldn't merit such an extreme reaction.

Dalmar washes it, applies ointment, dresses it gently. He instructs them to change the bandages at least three times a day, and to send for him should the wound worsen, or if Rian develops a fever. He looks at the injury, scrambles through all his knowledge for any additional advice or care he can give, comes up with nothing. Exhausted after trekking so far, he receives Edeline's thanks and returns home.

That night, he lays in bed considering the patient he does not know how to do more for, and the creature that had put him into that state. It had been hard to look at a monster like that and believe that any damage it inflicted could be healed.

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The next morning, two households receive a letter in Tai's own hand, atypical coming from a man who usually dictates to a scribe.

Come to my residence at 6 o'clock in the evening, to discuss our gifts. I have, unfortunately, met again with the nuisance with the bell, and have instructed him to attend as well.

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In the early afternoon, the young clockmaker Skander is summoned once more to Tai's home. The senior clockmaker volunteers to go in his stead, but Tai's messenger politely declines, explaining that it is Skander who was particularly sent for.

Skander is led into the same overly-lavish sitting room as before, only this time he is awaited by his summoner himself, who is somehow dressed even more ostentatiously than last time.

Tai dismisses the messenger so that it is only them two, wasting no time before slipping into clipped denigration. "The clock isn't working again. All that time you spent idling by it, and it didn't even last a day."

Skander's face burns. He had been so sure that it was fixed, but maybe the sudden appearance of that eccentric man Jasper had disrupted his work.

Too embarrassed to meet Tai's eyes, Skander pulls open the clock's access panel, peering inside. Then he frowns.

"One of the gears is missing. I could have sworn it was there yesterday."

Tai, who for all his condemnation of loitering is for some reason still here, doesn't even glance at what Skander is indicating.

"While I have you, I have a query to make. You mentioned yesterday that your brother had turned into a bird: explain that."

Skander's hand slips from where it rests on the wooden access panel, looking to Tai in surprise.

"You were listening?"

"I was right by you. And I was the only other person in the room, at the time."

"You didn't say anything; I thought you weren't paying attention."

"I heard you talk, I just didn't care about it."

Skander really does not like Tai.

"Was it true?"

"Well," now that he has Tai's undivided attention, Skander's not sure that he wants it. Tai's gaze is intense, and largely without warmth. "It was. My brother woke up to a feather pin from the chimera a few weeks ago, and he worked out that he can turn into a bird while wearing it."