Chapter Eleven: Like Flies

Yuri, is everything alright at your house? Are you feeling well? I haven't seen you around in the past few days.

Stop freeking out. Like I said last time: I'm still here. I've bin helping Estelle prepare food for the kwora koren quoranteend people.

"Quarantined", for your reference. And I'm just checking in. I know it's been hard on you since Ted got locked up.

I'm fine. Ted isn't sick yet, far as I no. Just his dad. Stop worrying about me when I'm still totaly helthy.

Alright. Sorry if I'm worrying too much. Every day I pass more locked up houses and it's almost time to start another layer in the plague pit. It's hard to keep my hopes up.

Ya… It's bin hard for me too honestly. But - I'm still here, I haven't got sick yet. That's about all anyone can hope for thees days.

The smell of sulphur hung in the air on a warm afternoon. The theory was that plague was spread by toxic miasmas in the air, and overwhelming the miasma with a stronger scent would prevent people from breathing it in. To that end, braziers filled with burning sulphur had been set up along the major roads. Two weeks after the troops arrived, Yuri and Estelle were walking down one such road. A few of the shops they passed were boarded up, the owners having fled town when they could.

They went around a corner and found a soldier sitting on a stool across the street from a red-crossed door. The soldiers were much more strict than their local watchmen had been. Unlike the locals, the soldiers never napped on the job or showed pity by letting loved ones in for "just a minute". He recognized Estelle, though, and stood to unlock the door for her.

Estelle pulled her cloth mask up and tied it behind her head and then Yuri handed her a bundle of food wrapped in a napkin from his basket. She met his eyes for a moment and he wondered if she was trying to force a smile under the mask, and then she entered the dark house. Yuri fidgeted outside, wishing he could go with her. He didn't envy Estelle's job. Though her title was nurse, everyone knew her real job these days was checking infected houses for fresh corpses. The death count in Zaphias was up to about twenty already, and it had only been three weeks. Flynn was restless lately, too. He couldn't leave Zaphias, so he sent messages with Judith to pass on to the next Ankou at the border of their parishes and hope the content of the message stayed intact through all the Ankous it passed through. Whenever Judith was out trying to connect him with the outside world, he ran pick-up duty in town and came face to face with more death than was good for him.

Yuri glanced to the soldier and then the door. This was taking longer than normal. Was she ok in there? The soldier saw his impatience and gave him a glare; if Yuri went in there, he'd be locked in with the rest of them. Estelle would be fine, he assured himself. Yes, the longer she was in a plague house, the higher the chance she had of being bitten by a plague flea, but Yuri had doused her clothed in pennyroyal oil and insisted she wear thick stockings even in summer to try to protect her. He and all his friends would be spending the summer smelling like mint, but it was far better than the alternative.

As he was considering the possibility of breaking out of the house later if he got locked in, the door opened again and Estelle finally came out, eyes rimmed with red. She stared at Yuri for a wavering second, and then they moved together at the same time so she could fall against his chest. Yuri dropped the basket so he could wrap his arms around her and rubbed her back, while watching the soldier over her shoulder locking the house up again. Yuri stayed silent and just let her cry. He didn't need to ask what had happened. He didn't know this family personally, but knew from previous visits with Estelle that it was a family with four children. At least, there had been four children when they started visiting.

"I - I just left her," Estelle finally cried.

"Who?"

"Elara. She - she's six." Estelle's voice came out shaky and breathless. "H-her mom died this morning. Her dad two days ago. She's - she's the only one left and she's so sick. She's in so much pain and I can't… there's no cure, nothing I can do for her. I had to leave her there with her mother's corpse."

Yuri's eyes flickered to the locked door and he tried to stop picturing the scene beyond it. The mother's body would be picked up as soon as Estelle reported it, but until then…. He held Estelle closer.

"We should… keep going." She pulled away from him enough to rub her eyes. "There are other families who need food."

"Are you gonna be alright?"

Estelle took a deep breath and rubbed her eyes on her sleeve. "I don't know… does it matter? I still have to visit Ted's family. His father is sick."

"Alright. Let's get this over with, then."

Yuri led Estelle to Ted's house with a heavy heart. His greatest fear was that not far in the future, Estelle would be forced to leave Ted in the same nightmare she'd left Elara. The fact that this wasn't even an unlikely future made him feel sick.


Yuri moved slowly into Mari's bedroom. Mari herself was out buying bread, but Padreg was fast asleep in his bassinet. Yuri sprinkled dried pennyroyal leaves around his sleeping form, as he'd done every few days since the plague began. The faint whiff of mint seemed impossibly weak to fight off the plague, but it was the only weapon he had. Yuri ran his fingers across the sparse patch of dark hair on the baby's head. Babies were alright when they were asleep.

The door opened and he whipped around at the same time Mrs. Lagadeg gasped.

"Yuri! My goodness, you startled me. What are you doing here?"

"Just checking on the kid." He stepped away from the bassinet and brushed his hands on his pants to wipe away the last few pennyroyal leaves.

Mrs. Lagadeg crossed over to scoop up Padreg in her arms. She held him against her chest while giving Yuri a suspicious look. He understood why; even men related to a baby had very little to do with it for the first few years of life, let alone just a family friend.

"He's pretty cute."

Mrs. Lagadeg nodded and swayed back and forth to rock him. "Reminds me of when Mari was a baby… her hair was much lighter, though. Padreg's is coming in quite dark, isn't it?" She glanced up at Yuri. "Very similar to yours."

Yuri let the subtle accusation hang there. Of course people would suspect. Mari never said who the father was, although considering Padreg had been born almost exactly nine months after May Day and all its transient merchants, Yuri had his suspicions. "Yeah, well it's a pretty common colour."

She stared at him for a while as she rocked Padreg and then turned back to his bassinet. "Oh, what's this? Are you the one who put all these weeds in his bassinet? I've been clearing them out for days; I thought the window must have been left open!"

"Uh, yeah… it's just pennyroyal. I thought it would protect him from plague."

Her frown deepened and she set Padreg on Mari's bed while cleaning them all out of the bassinet. "A faint smell like this isn't going to dissipate the miasma. It's just going to irritate him. This is why men shouldn't be involved with babies - you have no idea what you're doing."

Yuri struggled to not get visibly annoyed. "I was just trying to help."

"Hmph. You be careful, Yuri. You were always a sweet boy, but I'm not sure I like the sort of man you've grown up to be."

Yuri cocked an eyebrow. "And what sort of man is that?"

"Someone with… loose morals." And with that, she carried Padreg out of the room.

As soon as she was gone, Yuri let himself roll his eyes and then followed her out. As far as he knew, he'd only demonstrated "loose morals" when he allegedly impregnated her daughter and then dared to be in the room when Padreg was born. Now that Mrs. Lagadeg knew he'd been putting pennyroyal in the bassinet, though, he feared he wouldn't be able to keep doing it.

Out on the street, he began the walk home. Church bells clanged as he passed a pair of soldiers making their way across town. He saw soldiers all the time now, especially around dusk to enforce the curfew. Civilians were also on the street, but only to head for the church. There were so many services lately; Yuri wondered when Duke found the time to sleep. But then, if he had any faith that praying had a tangible effect on the world, he'd probably spend most of his time pleading with God these days, too. He vaguely wondered if he should go to confession to get his soul in order just in case, which he typically only did once a year. Then he thought of all the lustful feelings he'd have to confess about Flynn, and decided he could put that off a bit longer. With any luck, he'd die of plague before anyone had to know how he felt.

"Oh, Yuri!" Mari hurried toward him on the street with a basket of mussels. "Hello!"

"Afternoon. That's some fishy looking bread." He nodded at her basket.

She looked down in confusion, then laughed. "They were all out of bread. The baker said he'd sold his last loaf to one of Barbos' men and he doesn't have any more flour until they let more food through the quarantine."

"At least there's always mussels." Yuri wondered what he'd bring to Flynn for supper tonight and if Flynn would suck it up and eat mussels if there was nothing else.

"What's on your mind?"

"Me? Eh, nothing to worry about. Your mom's still got her knickers in a twist about Padreg's birth and thinks I'm a sexual deviant corrupting the youth or something."

Mari rolled her eyes. "Oh, I'm sorry about her. I've tried to talk to her and I've told her countless times you aren't Padreg's father, but…."

"Don't worry about me. You've got a baby to worry about; I can take care of myself."

"Yes, I know. Would you mind helping me with dinner tonight, thought? My father isn't feeling well and I hoped a nice meal would get his spirits back."

Dread prickled down Yuri's spine. "Not feeling well?" Of course, ordinary colds and flus still existed alongside the plague, but these days, no one took even the hint of a cough lightly.

Mari clenched and unclenched her fingers on the basket. "Yes, well… it's probably just a bug."

"Yeah. I bet that's what it is."


Yuri tried to keep his hopes up. Not everyone who had fever-like symptoms had the plague; it could easily be a normal fever. Just because Mr. Lagadeg was feeling poorly didn't mean he had the plague. Yuri kept that stubborn optimism even while standing on the street outside Ar Kometenn, soldiers all around, waiting for Rita to come out with her diagnosis.

The door opened and Rita emerged. It was hard to speak through the mask, so all she said was one word: "Plague."

Barbos gestured to the door and then said something in French to his soldiers. They moved toward the door with a padlock and red paint.

"Hold on!" Yuri stepped past Rita to get between the soldiers and the door. "It's just Mr. Lagadeg who's sick, right?" He looked to Rita for confirmation.

She nodded and then pulled the mask off her face. "Yeah. His wife, Mari, and the baby are still healthy as far as I can tell."

"So let them out. They aren't sick!"

"They've been living with an infected person," Barbos said with a thick accent. He obviously wasn't putting any effort into speaking Breton beyond being basically understood. "They've probably already got it and just haven't shown symptoms yet."

"Then don't lock them up until they show symptoms!" One of the soldiers pushed Yuri aside, but he immediately grabbed the soldier's arm and jerked him away from the door. "You're just making it more likely that healthy people will get sick!"

The soldier holding the paint gave him an irritated look and then set the paint on the street. He cracked his knuckles and shifted to face Yuri head-on, making sure that the sword hanging from his waist was entirely visible. "Get out of the way or we will move you out of the way."

Yuri balled his hands into fists. "Quarantine Mr. Lagadeg if you have to, but let his family out."

"Yuri," Rita said, "you're not going to win this. Drop it."

Of course Rita was right. He was unarmed and alone facing four soldiers, including an armoured captain. No one was going to back him up, because even if the streets weren't deserted, everyone these days was too concerned with protecting their own families to stick their necks out for anyone else. But Mari was still in the house, and he refused to simply walk away and leave her and her child to their fate. He hadn't been present to try to help Ted when his house was quarantined, but here at least he could make a stand.

Barbos spat something in French and waved his hand. This was going to hurt. Yuri threw the first punch and appreciated that none of them drew their weapons. He managed to get a few more good punches in before two of the others managed to grip his arms and slam him against the door. Yuri brought his leg up to kick one of the soldiers and narrowly missed his crotch, but then Barbos slammed his fist into Yuri's gut with enough force to knock the breath out of him. Through the stars, he spotted Rita running away before the soldiers closed the gap between their shoulders.

After that, the world blurred into a haze of red. Yuri couldn't keep track of how often and where he was kicked or punched, or even when exactly he'd ended up on the ground. After a few token attempts to fight them off, the only defence he could muster was to pull his arms around his head.

"Stop, stop!" Flynn's voice registered on the edge of Yuri's perception, but the rain of pain continued. "Arrête!"

That one got them to stop. Barbos and his crew expected everyone left in town to be powerless peasants, but peasants didn't speak French. Yuri took long, slow breaths as every inch of his body throbbed. Over his head, Flynn spoke quickly with Barbos in French. Yuri had known him long enough to notice how much strain Flynn's voice was under as he forced it to keep from shouting, but Barbos evidently just heard polite diplomacy.

Mercifully, whatever Flynn had said had done the trick. Barbos said something else and the soldiers moved away from him, giving Estelle a chance to sweep in and kneel beside him.

"Yuri, are you ok?! Oh, of course you're not, what a stupid question. It'll be ok, we'll help you get home."

"Not… home," Yuri grunted and started trying to get up. On his elbow, his arm shook and he fell to the ground again with a wheeze. "Hanks'll… kill me." Flynn and Estelle jointly helped him rise to his feet and then slump most of his weight onto Flynn.

"You're such an idiot," Rita said with her arms folded. "I told you not to stand up to them!"

"We'll take him to my place," Flynn said. "It's closer than yours."

They started moving, but Yuri looked over his shoulder at Ar Kometenn, where the soldiers were now painting a sloppy red cross. "Wait… Mari."

"Leave it, Yuri," Flynn muttered. "There's nothing you can do for them. If you try to interfere again, I don't think I can talk Barbos out of beating you unconscious."

The worst part was that Yuri knew he was right. The powerlessness hurt even more than the beating. Mari was locked in with death and all he could do was shout and rage about it.

They brought Yuri to Flynn's house and led him to the sitting room. Flynn eased Yuri onto a couch and left to fetch towels, leaving Estelle to descend on him.

"Let me see your face." She lifted his chin and inspected his nose. "Ok, I don't think it's broken."

"Great." Blood spilled onto his lip and filled his mouth, but he forced himself to swallow rather than spit on Flynn's fancy rug.

"You shouldn't have fought the soldiers, Yuri. What were you thinking?" She continued to inspect him for anything worse than a bruise while she spoke.

Yuri's spirits were as battered as his body. "Mari's going to die. That's what."

Estelle stopped with her hand on his knee. Rita turned away to face the window.

Estelle hung her head, her hair partially concealing her face. "We don't know that for sure…. And you getting beat up won't help her even if she is."

"Someone's gotta stand up to those bastards, even if it's not successful."

Rita snorted. "Are you calling yourself a martyr?"

"Hmph. Something like that."

Flynn returned with some old towels and a bucket of water. Estelle set to work dabbing away the blood on his face with dampened towels, while Flynn and Rita stood back, looking worried. Estelle went as gently as she could, but Yuri still had to fight the instinct to hiss and flinch away every time she poked a growing bruise.

She pressed a handkerchief under his bloody nose. "It doesn't look like anything is broken. Hold this. But you should take it easy for few days. Oh, I wish it was winter so I could give you some ice."

"I'm fine." Pressing the fabric against his nose made Yuri sound like he had a cold. "Thanks for the help, Estelle."

"You're welcome, but please be careful in the future. If you anger the soldiers again, I'm sure they'll do much worse than this!"

"Hmph. I can take it."

Rita rolled her eyes while Estelle gave him one of her looks - the ones that were supposed to be angry and disapproving but just turned out pouty. She said, "I have to go see other patients now. You should stay here and rest for a while."

"Don't worry," Flynn said, "I can keep him under house arrest for the afternoon."

"Thank you, Flynn."

After Estelle and Rita left, Flynn stood before Yuri and surveyed him. "You got blood on my couch."

Yuri glanced at the spot of blood on the cushion beside him. "I'm so sorry my wounds harmed your furniture."

Flynn sighed as he took a seat beside Yuri. "I'm sorry about Mari. I understand what you were trying to do. It was stupid, yes, but I understand."

Yuri shifted the bloody handkerchief to see if the bleeding had stopped. "I hate those bastards. Mari and Padreg wouldn't have been victims of the plague, but they are now. It's the culling of cats all over again." A bitter and conspiracy-oriented part of his mind wondered if the upper classes wanted them all to die.

"It's like Estelle said - we don't know for sure. Not everyone in proximity to the plague catches it, and not everyone who catches it dies. Do you want to stay here tonight? You said you didn't want to see Hanks today."

He sniffed up a trickle of blood escaping his nose and reapplied the handkerchief. "If you don't mind. I don't need him yelling at me about provoking the soldiers. Tomorrow I'll tell him we sparred a bit too aggressively."

"Fine. And please be more careful. I don't want you to get hurt like this again."

Yuri rolled his eyes at yet another admonishment. "It's my ass. What's it to you if it gets kicked?"

Flynn frowned. "Do I need a reason to not want to see you in pain? I care about you."

Yuri turned away from Flynn's serious gaze. "You shouldn't worry about me."

"Well, I do. But fine, next time you're getting your ass kicked, I won't interfere." Flynn shook his head, stood, and left Yuri in silence.


Yuri awoke hours later, still on the couch. As much as he didn't like being told what to do, the fact was that by the time the adrenaline from the fight had worn off, every bruise had sunk into his bones and made any form of movement miserable. He thus spent the rest of the afternoon and evening drifting between naps. The slam of the stable door was what woke him up. He raised his neck and heard Repede get up from the floor beside him. A minute later, the kitchen door opened and he heard footsteps.

He heard Leblanc say, "Good evening, sir, can I - are you alright?"

Whatever Flynn's reply, it was too mumbled for Yuri to make out from the sitting room. Then the kitchen door closed and her heard Leblanc's heavy footsteps leaving. Repede sniffed and then left the room to investigate. Yuri would rather not get up and exacerbate his injuries, but a minute later, Repede returned and stood in the doorway, whining. Yuri frowned and then eased himself off the couch. His knees creaked and he hissed as the movement tugged a scab. Slowly, limping, he made his way to the kitchen to find Flynn sitting on a stool at the centre counter, one hand supporting his bowed face.

Flynn lifted his head and the faint moonlight through the window gleamed on streaks of tears. That made Yuri stop and cold dread slid down his chest. Flynn went out on his coach at night to collect souls, and had done so for thirty years. He had long since grown hardened to the grief and even with the uptick of work since the plague began, Yuri had never seen him so affected. Not really wanting the answer, he asked, "What happened?"

Flynn rubbed the back of his wrist over his eyes. "Ted's dead. I'm sorry."

Yuri fell against the doorframe. After all the blows he'd taken today, this one hit hardest. "I… I didn't even know he was sick yet."

Flynn shook his head and closed his eyes tight enough to squeeze out more tears. "Sit down. You're in pain."

Repede, sensing Yuri's distress, licked the back of his hand. Yuri absently rubbed his nose in return and then rounded the counter to sit on a stool beside Flynn. The hard, narrow surface wasn't good for his aches, but at the moment he barely noticed. "Tell me what happened."

Flynn nodded and rubbed his eyes again. He coughed a little to clear his throat and then began his story. The longer he spoke, the heavier Yuri's heart became.

Yuri had been right that Flynn had plenty of experience with death and tragedy. He'd spent the last thirty years meeting people on the worst day of their lives and learned a long time ago how to keep their grief from wrecking himself. There were occasions when he slipped - days where he came home from dropping someone off and needed to have a quiet drink and a cry once alone. These were often the days when he had to explain what death even meant to someone very young. These occasions, though, were rare and became rarer with every year on the job. So even when he knew his next appointment was at Ted's house, he thought he would be ok. He thought he could handle it. Ted wasn't even sick, as far as he knew.

Then he'd arrived. Flynn couldn't go inside because the door was locked and the soldiers were a lot more alert to the keys than the local watchmen had been. Regretfully, he'd knocked on the door and called out, requesting anyone who heard him to walk through the door and he would help them. He'd stood on the street, wondering who would emerge. Ted's sister had died a few days earlier, so it was down to Ted or his mother.

Ted was the one to come out, stumbling and confused. He bore no marks of the plague and when he saw Flynn, he ran to him in a panic and began babbling. Confused, Flynn leaned down to listen and offer what comfort he could. He was used to the recently deceased being confused or scared, but he couldn't have been prepared for the story Ted gushed in traumatized gasps. His blood ran cold and his chest ached. All he could do was hug Ted and give him paltry reassurances, and then lead him into the coach to sit and wait. His job here wasn't done.

He actually needed to get inside this time, so he fetched the crowbar from his coach that he carried during times of plague for just such an emergency. In the dark and muddy alley beside the house, he pried off the boards nailed over the window, grateful that his magic was enough to keep the task silent. With the window opened, he climbed in and wiggled through the opening. It was just as well they didn't have glass, or he'd have to break that, too.

Once he was done worrying about the technicalities of accessing the home, he had to return his mind the situation he'd arrived in. For a long moment he silently surveyed Ted's mother, weeping on the floor beside Ted's body. She hadn't yet noticed him, but he knew he wasn't invisible to her. The scene he took in gave form to the jumbled pieces he'd gotten from Ted, and he understood with horrible clarity what had happened.

Ted had had the plague, but only barely. He'd had a single bubo and a light fever, the earliest proof of infection. Sometimes people survived the plague… but only two days ago, his older sister had died in his mother's arms. She'd spent the days prior slowly succumbing to the agony, shivering, deformed, and frightened. Witnessing the death of her child like that had nearly destroyed Ted's mother. How could she bear to go through it again? How could any mother watch her child spend days in agony only to ultimately die? She'd done what she had to do, to spare both Ted and herself that pain. It would be better for him to die quickly, and as painlessly as she could make it. Better to be coerced into an alcoholic stupor and strangled before coming to his senses. Better to die today than succumb to the plague.

But even after making such a choice, how could any mother bear the pain of what she'd done? When the nurse came the next day to check on them, everyone would know what she'd done. They wouldn't understand. They'd charge her with murder, and she would be put to death for it. Why wait? Why sit here wallowing in the grief of her dead family, knowing her path ended at the gallows anyway? This would damn her soul to hell, but what she'd done had already condemned her. So she took a rope and a stool and… took care of it herself.

"What do you even say to a woman after that?" Flynn ask a dumbstruck Yuri. The tears had resumed as he told the story. "I still have no idea. I barely remember what I ended up saying… something about there being nothing else she could do, Ted was at peace now, it was time to move on… useless platitudes, really."

"Jesus." Yuri stared at a whorl in the counter.

"I drove them to meet Judith at the gate in shock. I can't even imagine the level of despair a mother must reach to do such a thing." Flynn sniffed and irritatedly rubbed his eyes again. "I'm sorry for losing my composure like this."

"I can hardly fault a guy for weeping over something like this. Just… Jesus." He'd watched Ted grow up. To think of that energetic young boy dead in the ground…. Yuri shuddered.

"And to think, I was so worried about Alexei knowing my identity. My biggest concern was whether he recognized me or not, and I dreaded seeing him around town. But now he's out there, safe in his chateau while we're locked in here. I wish he could be my biggest concern again."

"I could beat you up, if you want. In my experience, it's really hard to think about anything other than getting beaten up while you're getting beaten up."

Flynn raised an eyebrow. "Are you an expert now?"

"I like to think I've got some experience."

"Thanks for the offer, but I already feel like I've been pummelled tonight. I'm going to bed."