Read Roil for Free Online Page B

Drugs and Damages.
    Cadell shook him awake, the Old Man’s touch cold enough that David could feel it through the sheets. He shivered.
    Cadell pulled his hand away, looked almost apologetic.
    “You were talking in your sleep.” Cadell’s breath stank of liquor, David blinked in the burning wash of it. “Bad dreams?”
    “Yes,” David said. “Bad dreams.” Churning, horrible dreams that he’d fallen into every time he closed his eyes: knives and blood and Downing Bridge itself, drowning bridge in truth, with its dribbling levee-bed, its profusion of spiders and their hungers.
    Cadell chuckled. “Curse of these times. The city’s rotting as the Weep swells, no one has pleasant dreams. Of course the lack of Carnival in your veins wouldn’t help.”
    He nodded to the table. David’s breath caught in his throat, a small syringe of the disposable type lay there. Not more than a few feet away.
    “I’ve powders for the journey ahead, better for travelling, less chance of breakage. But today you’ve need of the purer stuff,” Cadell said. “Much as I might wish it otherwise, we’ve no time for you to break free of the Carnival. It’s a maintenance dose, but a quality one.”
    David’s mouth was dry. It was all he could do to stop himself from leaping out of the bed and driving that syringe straight into the fattest vein he could find. He already had three in mind. He’d shove it into an eyeball, if it meant he could have it now.
    “I understand such hungers,” the Old Man said, drawing David’s attention back from the syringe, though his voice sounded distant.
    David’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, but he worked it loose. “You were a user?” he said thickly.
    Cadell shook his head. “No, but there are other addictions – believe me, and some much more harmful than sticking a needle in your arm or your foot. When you’re done, there are clothes in the bag by the dresser, they should fit.”
    Cadell left the room then, and David did the one thing that he’d desired since he’d fled his father’s house into the dark and the rain. These were no sere old pills. This was the good stuff.
    When he was done, and the Syringe disposed of, he slumped in the chair, breathing deeply a stupid smile broad across his face. Cadell hadn’t been lying about the Carnival’s purity. The tension left his limbs and the deep grief that had threatened to overwhelm him evaporated. It was almost as if none of it mattered, and it didn’t really. Not one little bit.
    But he’d kick along with Cadell, of course he would. He didn’t want to die – unless it was right now. That he could handle
    David finally dragged himself from the chair and looked through the bag. Cadell was a man of impeccable sartorial taste, and a good judge of size at that. David cleaned himself up, dried himself down, and dressed.
    He winked at his reflection in the dresser mirror. He looked almost human.
    “If you’re done...” Cadell said, startling him.
    Everything had increased in clarity. Cadell’s bloodshot eyes gleamed. David blinked.
    “You look better now,” Cadell said. “Much more the man about town than the fugitive fleeing through it.”
    “Clothes and Carnival maketh the man,” David said, feeling stupid as soon as the words left his mouth.
    Cadell sat down. “We’ve a while yet, and time to talk. Ask what you will.”
    David nodded. “What do you know about the Roil? Your name always came up when father spoke of it.”
    “More than I ought. More than what’s good for a man. And so will you, before this is done.” He reached over to the table, picked up his hat, ran his hands along its brim, turning the hat around and around, perhaps to keep his fingers busy and his eyes focused on something other than David. “But that’s the way of this decaying world, and I owe your father this much at least.”
    This much? Was David, this much? “What do you owe my father?”
    “Plenty,” Cadell said. “Just believe me,