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Obscurity 1 Obscurity, The Prologue Free 2 Obscurity, The First Chapter Free 3 Obscurity, The Second Chapter Free 4 Obscurity, The Third Chapter Free 5 Obscurity, The Fourth Chapter Free 6 Obscurity, The Fifth Chapter Free 7 Obscurity, The Sixth Chapter Free 8 Obscurity, The Seventh Chapter Free 9 Obscurity, The Eighth Chapter Free 10 Obscurity, The Ninth Chapter Free 11 Obscurity, The Tenth Chapter Free 12 Obscurity, The Eleventh Chapter Free 13 Obscurity, The Twelfth Chapter For paid subscribers 14 Obscurity, The Thirteenth Chapter Free 15 Obscurity, The Fourteenth Chapter Free 16 Obscurity, The Fifteenth Chapter Free 17 Obscurity, The Sixteenth Chapter Free 18 Obscurity, The Seventeenth Chapter Free 19 Obscurity, The Eighteenth Chapter Free 20 Obscurity, The Nineteenth Chapter Free 21 Obscurity, The Twentieth Chapter Free 22 Obscurity, The Twenty-First Chapter Free 23 Obscurity, The Twenty-Second Chapter Free 24 Obscurity, The Twenty-Third Chapter Free 25 Obscurity, The Twenty-Fourth Chapter Free 26 Obscurity, The Twenty-Fifth Chapter Free 27 Obscurity, The Twenty-Sixth Chapter Free 28 Obscurity, The Twenty-Seventh Chapter Free 29 Obscurity, The Twenty-Eighth Chapter Free 30 Obscurity, The Twenty-Ninth Chapter Free 31 Obscurity, The Thirtieth Chapter Free 32 Obscurity, The Thirty-First Chapter Free 33 Obscurity, The Thirty-Second Chapter Free 34 Obscurity, The Thirty-Third Chapter Free 35 Obscurity, The Thirty-Fourth Chapter Free 36 Obscurity, The Thirty-Fifth Chapter Free 37 Obscurity, The Thirty-Sixth Chapter Free 38 Obscurity, The Thirty-Seventh Chapter Free 39 Obscurity, The Thirty-Eighth Chapter Free 40 Obscurity, The Thirty-Ninth Chapter Free 41 Obscurity, The Fortieth Chapter Free 42 Obscurity, The Epilogue Free

Obscurity, The Ninth Chapter

In which a bottle of poison is discovered in rather familiar company.

We last read The Eighth Chapter, in which blood was spilled at the Mardi Gras ball.

There was one man in town, an Englishman, who brought with him to the territory a knowledge of sorts. He was an apothecary—one who curated herbs and chemicals from every corner of the world and used them to prepare materia medica for the city’s physicians and patients.

Though the room was dark, the apothecary’s services were primarily used for light. To bring healing to the ailing, or to tempt those bodies who lingered too closely to the veil to return from it. For these services, he was well sought, and a great many were healed by his remedies. But though the apothecary was greatly emboldened by his profession, discovering in his clients the natures that ailed them and delighting in finding the treatments that healed them, he knew there was no money in a cure. Circumstance had long taught him that fortune favored a touch of the gods and so he had become adept at administering them.

As a young gentleman, the apothecary left England to learn from the doctors of Europe. As we have thus far ascertained, the methods employed at those times left something to be desired—there was merely a lot of bleeding and leeching, methods that, needless to say, did not meet the desired end of wellness. So, our apothecary continued his search for the herbs and tonics that would remedy the sick and draw fortune from the rich. When he did not find what he was looking for in the West he set sail for the East.

How amazed he was by the Orient and how knowledgeable they were in the healing arts. There he discovered a people who were not only well, but thriving. Whose skin was not marked by smallpox, nor ailed by yellow fever, but rather was smooth and beautiful, as though dipped in healing waters. He asked after their physicians and, for a time, apprenticed under a man who served his patients herbal tea on golden platters and set brass needles upon their skin.

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