The Poisons of Caux: The Hollow Bettle (Book I) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Cecil returning to the workshop. Hastily, Ivy returned her failed Aqua Artilla to the very same brandy bottle and artfully restored the golden wire to the bottle’s stopper.
    “What are you doing with that bottle?” Cecil’s brow was raised in surprise.
    “Dusting.” Ivy smiled, and with practiced distraction, she presented her uncle with the small vial of her failed Aqua Artilla.
    “Here,” she said. “I got the smell right this time.”
    Away went her pots and pans, and she turned her attention instead to making customers for Cecil.
    Now, as an apotheopath, Cecil was indeed an effective healer.
    If practiced properly, this illicit brand of doctoring had astounding results. Yet as with everything, there were failures.And when confronted with one, Cecil believed a patient could be well served by a simple dose of sugar syrup.
    Shortly before the arrival of Mr. Flux, Cecil had been making such assurances to one Mr. Rankl, a ruddy pear-shaped man who suffered from a particularly incurable case of gout. None of the ancient medicines was working for Mr. Rankl, and Cecil found himself hopelessly confounded. So, with the cheerless eyes of his patient upon him, Cecil reached for his fail-safe sugar syrup—only in his carelessness he grabbed the wrong vial. This ampoule was the discarded result of Ivy’s Aqua Artilla distillation, the very one she had presented to him not long before.
    After administering the potion to Mr. Rankl with his usual seriousness, Cecil soon realized his mistake. The room was thick with the telltale smell of the queen’s perfume! Try as he might to maintain a look of professionalism upon his face, he could not. He soon twitched and spasmed with a morbid anticipation, a fine bead of sweat trailing down his forehead.
    Luckily, the goutish Mr. Rankl noticed none of this.
    For the first time in quite some years, he was walking about the room without an insipid dagger in his left big toe. In fact, he was such a picture of health he declared himself to feel a man half his age. The patient flushed and sparkled with enthusiasm. He declared his many appetites returned, and talked of taking a wife—but would begin his celebration with a good bowl of the Bettle’s rich soup.
    Cecil had no choice but to agree that Mr. Rankl’s incurable case of gout was cured. The results of Ivy’s tonic were nothing short of miraculous, and he resolved to keep the elixir on hand for a time when his medicinal talents might fail him. Since he was a very good apotheopath, he would hardly ever use it.
    The same, however, cannot be said of Mr. Flux, who—quite unbefitting a taster—had in his possession a small garish bottle of the real thing. He found it quite easy to administer the Aqua Artilla to the Bettle’s kettle of soup and from there to a roomful of Nightshade sentries.

Chapter Six
The Field Guide
    orrel Flux’s other possession, more befitting a taster, was a copy of the
Guide
, as it was commonly called. The leather-bound book was impossibly thick, edged with gold leaf, and riddled with myriad thumb tabs. There were several sets of ribbons sewn directly into the binding for marking interesting pages, and the contents were helpful and all-encompassing. About the author little was known except—at least according to the book’s cover—that he was a man called Axlerod D. Roux, who over the years had proved to be a recluse of such renown that many had come to doubt his very existence. The
Field Guide
was Flux’s only book, and for the most part it went unread. His mind was not one to wonder at something and turn to a book for an answer. He felt, were he to be asked, that there was little of interest in books at all, and he would not shed a tear if a calamity struck his vision and rendered him unable to read.
    It was in this way that for the entire year Sorrel Flux had spent in the tavern, he had no idea that there was a hidden back room. Since the entrance to Cecil’s office was disguised—apotheopaths were