Chapter 55 - Sharp Improvements

"Lady, there's a message for you," Missus Jackstone held out the object in question as if it were a snake.

"Thank you. Ah, it is from the Free Clinic."

Lady LeJean,

I thought you might like to have an update regarding your acquaintance, Mister Sharps. I'm pleased to report that his physical condition and mental state have continued to improve, and with Sir Samuel's reluctant approval I have been allowing him short trips outside the clinic. Accompanied by one of my orderlies, of course, for his safety as much as anything else.

He has been inquiring after you regularly. Daily, in fact. I heard from Sir Samuel that you had some difficulties regarding your safety, and explained this to him, whereupon he asked whether he could, instead, come to visit you.

Frankly, I see no harm in this, and it might do him further good. Please let us know if this would be acceptable, and when he might call on you.

PS: Don't mind the orderly. He doesn't talk much.

PPS: Please give Roustam my regards.

Yours,

Mossy Lawn

She was overjoyed. Roustam less so.

"But this is ideal, is it not? I can visit with him, which helps him, without leaving the residence, which protects me."

"This is correct, anissa, but I do not trust this man. He is unpredictable."

She shook her head. "You just do not understand him. Will you forbid it?"

He sighed. "I cannot."

"Then it is settled." Myria gasped. "I have not sent more waferbread! I shall ask Jonathon to prepare an additional supply for him to take back with him."

Jonathon was no happier than Roustam to see Mister Sharps again enter Myria's life. He had hoped that Myria's would let the clinic do the job of rehabilitating the former Auditor.

Obviously that wasn't going to happen, but as it turned out it wasn't as bad as he expected when Sharps arrived the next day.

He's still a loopy little git, Jonathon mused, but he definitely seems more calm.

For her part, Myria was pleased by the change in Sharps appearance and behavior.

"You look well, Mister Sharps."

He plucked at his plain, but clearly clean and new, clothing. "Does the LeJean like our clothing? We have been given an allowance! We are allowed!" He giggled, eyes rolling to the orderly, and his voice lowered conspiratorially. "We have a bodyguard too."

"I see that this is so. And you have been shopping?"

"Yes! We have an allowance, and we are allowed to spend it as we please. We have bought a portable pool for our newt!" He pulled a small, ceramic dish from his pocket. "May we have water? For Nedley?"

That supplied, he fished in his beard and extracted the newt, placing him carefully in the dish, where it seemed content to rest on the bottom for a bit.

"That is excellent, Mister Sharps. What else have you done?"

"We have talked at people. Sometimes they talk back. Today one said 'geroff, loonie' and we laughed, and our bodyguard prevented the man from hitting us." He giggled again.

Roustam shot a glance at the orderly, who seemed unfazed by the surroundings and completely uninterested in the conversation, to boot.

The rest of the visit went much along this vein. Afterward, Jonathon noted that Myria was thoughtful.

"What's wrong, Myria? I thought you'd be happy to see him doing better. And he was giddy over the waferbread we gave him."

"This is correct. But I have come to a realization."

"What's that?"

"It is an unpleasant one. It seems that Mister Sharps has now surpassed me."

Jonathon laughed. "What are you talking about? He's still pretty loopy."

"Oh that is just his way. He will improve. I mean in that he is free to do the things I wished to do. He can go shopping. He can see the city. He can talk to strangers." She sat heavily, eyes taking in the sitting room, with its silk-covered and expensive furnishings. "And I truly am in a gilded cage."

She spoke the words that Roustam dreaded to hear.

"I wish to go out."

Roustam and Myria argued. They came to an agreement which neither found fully satisfying.

She would start slowly, with trips to the bakery.

Jessica and Jonathon thought it was a great idea. For Roustam, it was both easier and harder than other things she might insist on. On the one hand, it was a short trip, and the destination was secure and known, and it was in a relatively safe area only blocks from Pseudopolis Yard. For another thing, it put off the more risky trips she was now again considering.

On the other hand, she seemed to have no understanding of the risks in routine and predictability.

"Anissa, anything that can be predicted can be exploited."

"I see. What can be done?"

They compromised again. He allowed the trips, with the caveat that they would take a different route each time. And leave and arrive at unpredictable times. And not go every day or with any clear pattern of days. It actually became a bit of a game for Jessica, and she started making wagers with Jonathon on when Myria would show up.

Another insistence of Roustam's was that she not loiter in the public areas, but spend her time upstairs or helping out in the back of the bakery. He stopped short of confiscating all the knives in the back, though the thought made his fingers twitch.

Things had changed at the bakery since her "gift" to them. For one thing, the bakery had all the calm of a loaded gonne resting innocently on a table in the midst of a barfight.

Jonathon's uncle Pars had resigned himself to the fact that there was no reasonable way to continue to pay rent on a building he now owned, and no reasonable way to sell or give it away. But he stubbornly refused to use the newly available money to hire someone else to work there. The month's lease payment sat in the bakery safe, awaiting its friends to arrive the following month.

On the upside, Pars seemed to accept, finally, that trying to keep Jonathon away from Myria, and yes he had to admit to himself that this is what he'd been doing,[1] was an absolute failure. Who knew what that woman would do if he kept it up. So he relented, and Jonathon's stress levels dropped. But Jonathon couldn't help feel it was an uneasy truce, not the end of hostilities.

And when Susan stopped by a few days later, to Jessica's horror Jonathon actually did ask Susan if she'd be interested in tutoring Jessica.

This backfired horribly when, with a crooked smile, Susan agreed to do so only if Jonathon attended the sessions as well.

Roustam enjoyed people watching.

He was sitting in the front of the bakery, having tea and scanning the customers. It was one of his few delights, people watching when he wasn't in immediate fear of his client's life. It was amazing the things you could read on people's faces and movements.[2]

His reverie was interrupted by Jonathon, clearly terrified, yelling from the back of the bakery.

Jonathon had just taken a loaf of bread out of the oven. It is… perfect, Myria decided. She had been chatting with him as he worked, and the oven always drew her like moth to flame. The smell had bedeviled her from the first days of her creation, and the taste had nearly undone her the one time she had tried it before.

Still. It was… alluring. And each day she was at the bakery, she found herself lingering around the fresh loaves, fascinated and repelled both at once.

Myria leaned forward, and inhaled deeply through her nose. "Jonathon, it always smells… sublime."

He laughed and turned back to grab a second loaf. "Yep. Nothing like the smell of fresh bread. But seriously, you know what hap-"

His body froze as he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Myria had torn a small piece off of the end of the loaf and was holding it up to her nose, eyes closed and breathing in.

"Myria." He spoke carefully. "What are you doing?"

She turned bright eyes toward him. "I find that I suddenly have the irresistible urge to try this… bread."

"You're joking. You've got to be joking. Myria that's not funny. Remember-"

He gasped as she opened her mouth, and tossed the morsel in.

It was his yell of horror that brought Roustam running. Roustam found him shaking Myria by the shoulders, nearly crying. "Gods Myria, what are you doing?! Spit that out! Are you insane!?"

"What is happening? Has she been poisoned?" Roustam's eyes took in the scene. Bread on the counter. Jonathon panicking. Myria leaning back against the wall with face flushed and eyes closed.

"Mmmm Mmm mfmfmf!"

Roustam reevaluated. She didn't appear to be in actual distress. If anything, she looked to be rather… disconcertingly… enjoying something far more than was proper...

"What's going on back here!? What did Myria do?" Jessica added to the chaos as she rounded the counter.

"Myria ate bread!" Jonathon was near tears at this point.

Roustam felt his body relax and the post-adrenaline surge made him laugh. "Would you like me to summon the Watch?"

"You don't understand! She…"

Jonathon lost his grip on Myria's shoulders as she slid bonelessly down against the wall, a look of bliss on her face. She swallowed audibly, and opened her eyes.

"Well," Jessica mused, "She's down, but she's not out this time."

"Oh gods," Myria croaked. "That was better than chocolate smells." She turned wide eyes to Jonathon. "I want more!" She tried to lever herself off the floor, but failed because several of her major muscle groups seemed to have taken a vacation. Or perhaps it was her nervous system that was not cooperating. This is not important, she decided. Bread. Bread is important. She began groping at the counter to her left, attempting to get that wonderful, wonderful bread within her grasp.

"Johnny, relax, she's not dying. Oh close your mouth, you look like an idiot." Jessica hurried to Myria, who had managed to get the entire loaf, and began trying to prevent her cramming the entire thing into her mouth at once.

Roustam shook his head. He didn't understand all that had just occurred, and his tea was getting cold. "I will return to the front. Please, try not to yell like that unless someone is bleeding."

Jessica snorted, intercepting Myria's hand-to-mouth trajectory. "Well looks like the bodyguard can't protect us from ourselves, now can he? And you," she managed to pry the loaf out of Myria's grasp. "Slow down or you'll make yourself sick. Here let me." She tore off another piece and gave it to the pawing woman still propped up against the wall.

"Mff fmfmff!"

"Good grief, we've created a monster."

[1] Well, we say "admit to himself." The truth was that after his little binge at receiving the news, his loving wife had the next morning pounded two metal pie-tins together over his head and explained to him that she had had quite enough, and he had, in his hung-over misery, spilled his guts. The ensuing argument had made his head hurt worse, but they'd come to a meeting of minds (one of them throbbing) that he would stop acting like an idiot.

[2] Roustam would have made an excellent copper, if it wasn't for his tendency to leave an excessive number of corpses when his clients were threatened.