Am I just imagining things? Those words could have countless meanings. But still...
I’m elbow deep now. Worms burrow frantically away as I uncover them, occasionally squiriming over my fingers.
“Zivah,” says Sarsine. “We shouldn’t stay long.”
There’s nothing here. My stomach sinks as I survey the growing mess around me. There’s no way I can fill this hole well enough to blend in.
My little finger hits something hard and smooth—too smooth to be a rock. More digging, more clearing away of dirt. My fingers close around a wide-mouth jar, small enough to fit in my hand and sealed with wax against the moisture. Jars like this can preserve documents for years. My heart pounds as I jiggle it loose from its place. I glance at Sarsine, who’s still looking up and down the path, and then I carefully break the seal. A sharp, astringent smell assails my nose.
There aren’t any documents inside. Instead, it’s filled to the brim with a red-orange powder. When I hold it to the light, I see the powder’s pearly finish.
Red with a hint of yellow, iridescent in the sunlight.
I slam the plug back onto the jar, scarcely daring to breathe. How had Baruva gotten a jar of suona pollen? Using slaves to protect himself was apparently not enough of a safeguard for him. Is this what Baruva meant when he said he was my last hope? I try to remember what his notes had said about the pollen. Prince Nia of Mishikan had taken a pinch of pollen in his tea every morning. At that rate, there’s enough pollen here to last several years.
Scrawny caws.
My hands are sweating now, and I get the absurd notion that the jar will dissolve between my fingers. I could take this treasure and flee. We could be hours, even days away before he realizes it’s gone.
I swallow a lump in my throat. Why does he live in luxury, when I am sick? Why do Kione and the other slaves die a slow death while he grows in prestige and reputation?
Someone grabs me by the shoulder. I swallow a scream.
“Zivah, didn’t you hear me?” Sarsine hisses. “Someone’s coming!”
She kicks the mound of dirt I’d piled back toward the hole. About half of it lands in, and she lets out a string of curses, grabs my sleeve, and hauls me deeper into the garden.
“You there, stop!” shouts a man behind us.
I turn and lock eyes with a guard near the path. We keep running.
A path leads off the garden at the other end. Sarsine and I race down its length and then cut through the flower garden. There’s a wall of hedges past the flowers. Sarsine points to a gap near the bottom, scarcely large enough for a cat to fit through.
“We’ll fit!” she says, and gives me a shove. Dirt rubs onto my sleeves and tunic and branches snag at my hair as I scramble through. Cobwebs brush at my face. I hope to the Goddess I don’t get stuck in here forever, and then I burst out into yet another garden.
Shrubs carved in the shape of different animals surround a central mosaic of red and black flagstones. Behind us, I hear the guards closing in. The jar of suona pollen is heavy in my hand, far too precious to lose if we’re caught. As Sarsine fights her way through the hedge, I crouch beside the nearest shrub—one shaped like a trumpeting elephant. The base is a tangle of branches and leaves, and I thrust the jar of suona pollen as far in as I can, ignoring the sharp twigs scraping my skin.
“What are you doing?” Sarsine asks.
“Never mind,” I say, brushing cobwebs off my arm. “Go.”
We race past a small fountain with statues of the seven gods, and past an altar to Hefana. We’re just a few sections away from the wall now. Just a little bit farther.
One more turn, and a wall appears in front of us.
And so do five guards.
Five guards stand between us and the wall. Another three close in from behind. Sarsine reaches for her sword, and I for my blowgun.
“Touch your weapons and we’ll sever your hands from your arms,” says a guard.
Sarsine’s eyes flash as she looks from soldier to soldier. For a moment, I fear she may fight. But then she raises her hands in surrender, and I follow suit.
A familiar voice speaks behind us. “What is this?” Baruva strides into our midst accompanied by another man in official-looking robes. Baruva gets a better look at me, and his face reddens with fury. “Zivah.”
“The fugitive healer?” says the official next to him incredulously. “The emperor will be eager to have them.”
A spasm of irritation crosses Baruva’s face. “Yes, we’ll send word. Take them to the outside holding room.”
Sarsine and I look at each other helplessly as the soldiers tie our hands and march us to a small building with barred cells. How could I have been so careless? An umbertouched soldier searches us. Sarsine scowls as they take her swords and daggers, while I fight the urge to hang on to my blowgun.
“Nothing else?” Baruva asks the soldier. “Are you sure? They stole some items from my tent last time.”
Why don’t you come pat me down yourself? I think.
The soldier shakes his head.
Baruva looks at me with a distaste usually reserved for leeches and flies. “It’s a pity. By all reports, you are a brilliant physician, though admittedly backward in some ways. I suppose talent doesn’t always come hand in hand with sense.”
“If sense means letting slaves face the dangers of disease for me, then I am proud to be backward.”
His smile is condescending. “My cures and treatments have helped thousands of patients. No one else can do what I do. Would you rather I contracted the disease two decades ago and let the world stumble on with the same treatments we’ve used for centuries? Should I have been like you? Promising, dedicated, and dead before twenty?”
His words empty my lungs better than any blow his guards could have thrown. Baruva gives me one last knowing smirk before turning to his companion. “Come. We’ve more pleasant things to attend to.”
As the guards file out, a heavy silence falls in our cell.
“Don’t listen to him,” says Sarsine. “You are a hundred times the healer he will ever be.”
Am I? His words echo in my head, sharp and painful in their truth. Promising, dedicated, and dead before twenty.
I slump against the wall. “I’m sorry. I should have run when you warned me.”
“No use looking back in war,” Sarsine says firmly. “Now we look forward. How do we get out of here?
I do my best to take on her resolve. She’s right. We’ve come too far to die out here, leagues away from anyone we know. The one window is too small to fit through. The door, as well, is shut tight. Sarsine starts prying pebbles from the earthen floor. “You can do a lot of damage with these. Do you think they will take us back to Sehmar City?”
“Perhaps,” I say.
The room darkens. A crow-shaped shadow appears in the patch of sunlight on the floor.
“Scrawny!”
The bird puffs his wings as I run to the window. “Scrawny, can you bring us something? A weapon perhaps?”
He tilts his head.
“A weapon, Scrawny. You must know what a weapon is. A knife maybe.”
He caws and flies off. A half hour later, he returns with a stick the length of my hand.
“No, not that.” I send him off again.
Evening falls soon after. We have a pitcher of water but no food. Sarsine and I huddle together for warmth as the sun sets. Her breathing quickly grows even. It takes me longer, but eventually I drift into a fitful sleep.
The door to our prison slams open. Baruva stands framed in the doorway, his face illuminated in stark angles by the light of his oil lamp. He comes straight up to the bars and almost grabs them before remembering himself. “Where is it?” he hisses.
“Where is what?”
Next to me, Sarsine leaps to her feet.
“You know what,” he says.
“I think you’re mistaken,” I say.
“You think you’re safe because of your rosemarks?” he sa
ys. “I have an umbertouched interrogator I trust in the capital. And in the meantime, your friend poses no danger to the untouched.”
Sarsine lifts her chin. “Just try and make me talk, old man.”
Baruva gives her a dangerous smile. “Be cocksure while you can. We’ve broken the spirit of many a Shidadi at Khaygal. Eventually they scream and beg just like all the others.” He turns for the door. “I’ll return tomorrow, and you’ll do yourselves a favor by confessing without trouble.”
Baruva leaves, and we’re plunged into darkness. I can hear Sarsine’s shaky breathing next to me. “Do you still have what you took from him?”
“No,” I say after a pause.
“Don’t tell me what you did with it,” she says firmly. “Don’t even tell me what it is. Then I won’t be able to give them anything.”
“Sarsine, if it comes down to you being tortured, I’ll give Baruva what he wants.”
She looks at me as if I’m the world’s greatest simpleton. “This is the only thing you hold over Baruva right now. If you tell him, there’s no reason for him to keep either of us alive. Does he seem like the type of man who will keep his word?”
As horrifying as her words are, they seem all too plausible.
After a while, Sarsine speaks again. “Khaygal was where Dineas was imprisoned, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I see.” She says no more.
Wind whistles outside our window. As the silence stretches, I think about the way Baruva stormed in. This is the first time I’ve seen him alone, without umbertouched soldiers or slaves to do his work for him. Why is that? Even this late at night, he should have the authority to command someone to follow him.
“He may be bluffing,” I say abruptly.
“What do you mean?”
“I think he wants to keep the su—the thing that I stole from him a secret. If he tortures us, he won’t be able to.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Despite Baruva’s threats, Sarsine falls asleep quickly. I wonder if it’s something the Shidadi learn early on, to sleep in the face of danger. As I lie listening to her breathing, I remember the haunted look in Dineas’s eyes whenever he relives his time in the Amparan prison, and I resolve to do everything in my power to protect Sarsine.
I don’t know when I fall asleep, but when I open my eyes, it’s morning. An umbertouched soldier comes in and places two bowls of gruel on the ground for us. A short while later, Scrawny comes back with a shard of pottery, which we break into two sharp halves. The thought crosses my mind that if we can’t get out, at least we could send him back to tell Dineas what became of us. But I push that thought away, because it’s too early to think about giving up.
Sarsine spends the morning trying to pick the cell lock with the handle of her spoon. I walk around the edge of the room, looking at the points where the wall meets the floor, and for any small cracks.
“What are you looking for?” asks Sarsine.
“Scorpions. It’s how I escaped prison last time.”
Sarsine raises her eyebrows. “Can you get them to sting for you?”
“No, but they’re useful as distractions.”
She laughs. “I’ll say.” She stretches and takes a step toward the window, only to fall face-first onto the floor.
“Sarsine!”
She shakes herself and pushes onto her knees. “Must have tripped,” she says.
There’s something strange about her eyes. I drop to my knees and tilt her head to the light. Her pupils are dilated, and her inner lids are pale, almost white. Her breath comes slow and uneven. “Sarsine, how do you feel?”
She blinks, struggling to focus her eyes. “I...”
I catch her as she slumps, fighting back panic as I lower her to the floor. Her skin is cold and clammy. What is this? Disease? Poison? I crawl across the room and pick up our empty bowls. Was it the gruel? Or the water? The water had tasted fine. The gruel...Now that I think of it, it did have a distinct aftertaste.
Sarsine rubs her forehead and wriggles on the ground. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she slurs.
I rush to her side. “Lie down and rest. See if it passes.”
It doesn’t. If anything, Sarsine grows more disoriented. Sweat beads on her skin, and her breathing grows more erratic.
Footsteps sound outside. I place a protective hand on Sarsine’s shoulder as Baruva opens the door. He gives a satisfied smirk when he sees Sarsine, though his brow furrows slightly when he sees me. In a flash of recognition, I realize that the bowls of gruel were served to us together, in two identical vessels on the same tray. The water too was given in one pitcher. There was no way Baruva could have chosen which one of us to poison. He must have poisoned both, which means I’m supposed to be sick too. I let myself slump against the wall and unfocus my eyes. It’s not hard to feign illness. After the past day’s ordeal, there’s a constant ache in the back of my head, and I feel hot and uncomfortable. Baruva takes a second look at me and relaxes.
“You see,” says Baruva. “I have means of applying pressure, even in the absence of interrogators. This is a slow-acting poison. It starts with disorientation. In an hour or two, the pain should set in around your liver as the poison slowly eats it away. It’s excruciating, from what I hear, and only grows worse over a course of days. Tell me what I want to know. If you tell me early enough, I’ll give you the cure. If you tell me too late, I’ll grant you a quick death.”
“What did you give us?” I ask.
“I’m sure you would love to know,” he says. And then he leaves.
I rush to our bowls as soon as Baruva leaves, running my fingers along the bottoms and sniffing at what little gruel was left behind. They have a faint acrid odor I don’t recognize.
But I’m not sick.
“Zivah,” says Sarsine. “What did he do to us?”
I lay the bowls back down and wipe my finger on the tray. “I don’t know.”
It wouldn’t be the first poison I’m immune to. Dara healers are charged with harvesting venoms for cures. As part of our training, we inject ourselves with increasing amounts of venom to protect against accidents. I’ve survived bites from creatures that would fell men twice my size. Of course, none of this helps Sarsine.
She groans and presses her hands to her abdomen. “I think the pain is starting to settle in.”
I run to her side again, wracking my brain. Is it a plant? A spider venom? There’s a red-skinned frog in Monyar that causes similar symptoms, but I know of no poison that acts this slowly. Even if I were sure of the poison, I’d have no herbs with which to treat her.
Sarsine curls into a ball, whimpering. I bite my lip, willing my panic not to show. I need to stay calm for Sarsine. Getting her worked up may speed the poison’s spread.
Could I treat her without knowing what the poison is? The Goddess tells us blood confers both strength and weakness. Sometimes with poisons, we’ll strain out the blood of a star vole, which is immune to most snakes, and use it to treat the snakebitten.
Sarsine moans again, and I put my doubts aside. There’s no time to dither. Either I’m wrong, or I’m right. I empty our water cup from breakfast and place it under my arm. The guards took my herbs before locking me up, but they didn’t take my bracelet of snake fangs. I untie the cord and detach two of them. My hands shake as I dig the first into a vein in my arm. Blood flows out in a thin stream. I let it flow until the cup is half-full, and then press the bottom of my tunic against the cut until the bleeding stops.
“How do you feel?” I ask Sarsine.
“Like there’s a knife between my ribs.”
That kind of pain isn’t a good sign.
“Hold still,” I tell Sarsine. I pierce her arm with one of the fangs and leave it there. I can tell Sarsine’s trying not to move, but she writhes despite her best efforts. By now, the blood I let into the cup is starting to clot into its elements, the red solids at the bottom, and the clear serum up top. “Red for vigor
,” I recite under my breath. “Clear for essence.” I dip the other fang into the serum and feed a drop onto the fang in Sarsine’s arm. The liquid drips into the wound, both along the outside of the tooth and through the hollow middle.
We keep at this for hours—Sarsine squirming on the ground and me feeding the drops one at a time into her vein. It’s precise, exhausting work, and my arm shakes from fatigue. Though the residual venom on the snake fang helps against clotting, I still have to jiggle the fang regularly to keep things moving.
As night falls, I hear footsteps outside the door. As the latch turns, I hurriedly push the cup against the wall and slump against it. Baruva comes in, and I twist my face as if in pain. It’s not a hard act to do.
“Have you thought about what I’ve said?” he asks.
“Zenagua take you.” Sarsine’s curse ends with a whimper.
The healer smirks. “The pain only gets worse. You have half a day before you’re beyond saving.”
The moment he leaves, we get back to work. Sarsine and I continue the treatment into the night. Eventually, she falls asleep, though I don’t know if it’s because the pain has decreased, or simply due to exhaustion. I too collapse soon after.
I wake to the sound of multiple voices outside our door.
“I would like to keep them longer,” says Baruva. “They can be questioned just as effectively here. It may be dangerous to transport them, since they seem to have fallen ill.”
“Emperor Kiran would like them in Sehmar City.” I don’t recognize that man’s voice, but he speaks as to allow no argument.
Sarsine stirs and looks at me, bleary eyed. Her face is no longer strained with pain.
The door opens, and an umbertouched man in imperial purple walks in, followed by two umbertouched soldiers and a very displeased Baruva. The healer’s eyes pass briefly over us, and then he stares. We look far too healthy.
The man points at me. “This one is the healer?”
Baruva nods, still looking from me to Sarsine and back. I allow myself a small amount of satisfaction at his obvious confusion, but it’s tempered by the imperial soldiers about to take us away. There’s something familiar about that man in purple, though. I wonder if I’ve seen him before in Sehmar City.
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