And I wonder just how much longer we can endure.
Days with our patients bleed into nights, which blur again into sunrise. At first I wonder if I can do it, whether I can work so hard to save men who care nothing for us, who’ve made our lives difficult in so many ways. I wonder if I should drag my feet, leave their fates to the Goddess. But the plague is no less horrifying when it strikes an enemy, and all men look the same under the fever’s hold. And after a while I’m too tired to think about anything at all.
I alternate rounds in the plague-ridden soldiers’ cottages with visits to the commander. I mix potions for Arxa morning and night: vel tea for fever, valerian root to help him sleep, a tiny bit of snake venom to keep his blood flowing freely. Doron can find no fault with my treatments, but even our best drafts can only do so much. In his delirium, Arxa relives past battles, and there’s one in particular, in the southern deserts, that he commands over and over, ordering cavalry to harry the enemy flank, cursing the adversary for making his archers shoot into the sun. In a quiet moment, he calls for Mehtap, and I wonder if he has a woman back home.
On the fourth day, I’m walking between rows of patients when I hear Zad curse. In the years I’ve known him, I’ve never once heard Zad raise his voice, and I run to his side. Zad stares down at the glassy-eyed foot soldier lying on the pallet before us. The man is unnaturally still.
“He won’t be the last,” he says.
It occurs to me, as we dump the body into the freshly dug mass grave, that I don’t know this soldier’s name.
Nine more die that day, and then twelve the next. Disposing of the bodies becomes mechanical, and I no longer wonder about their names. The smell of the decomposing dead clings to my skin. At first I dutifully scrub my hands and gloves after disposing of each body, but as my skin begins to redden and crack, I have to stop. It should upset me that I can no longer take these precautions, but it doesn’t. Surrounded by so much death, it seems folly to think I will be spared.
On the sixth day, I notice a change in one of my patients. When I give him some water to drink, his eyes fix on mine, and I can tell that he recognizes me.
Hope bubbles up in my chest. “This one,” I call to Kaylah. “Is he recovering?”
Kaylah is as exhausted as the rest of us, but her eyes take on that familiar glint of concentration. She examines the patient—checks his pulse, looks in his eyes, and examines his skin.
“What is your name?” she asks.
The soldier’s voice comes out as a rasp. “Piruz.”
“Who is your commander?”
“Arxa, commander third rank.”
His answers are promising. The rose plague fever sometimes burns away a patient’s memories, but this man seems to know who he is. As Kaylah continues to question him though, I begin to worry. He looks to be gaining strength by the moment, yet his marks are still red. Finally, Kaylah gives the man a sleeping draft to help him rest. As he drifts into slumber, I see pity in Kaylah’s eyes instead of the relief I’d hoped for.
“He will survive,” she confirms. “And he made it through the fever with his wits intact. But he is rosemarked.”
A wave of helpless rage overtakes me. What cruel disease is this, that hands out hope only to take it away? This man might have wrested his life back for a few years, but he’ll live out that time in isolation. I look down at the sleeping soldier, who seems unaware as yet of his new fate, and in my mind’s eye I see Kaylah bedridden, covered with rosemarks, Doron burning with fever, and Zad raving with delirium. I suck in a breath and look away. I sense Kaylah’s eyes on me, but she doesn’t say a word.
More days, more deaths. Some others beat the fever and emerge with rose-or umbermarks. In his private cottage, Commander Arxa continues to battle his own illness. I’ve spent so much time with him that I’ve learned the patterns of his ramblings. Sometimes I give his battle commands alongside him. I even start bringing him good news from his imaginary war, in hopes that it might ease his mind and rally his spirit to fight. Other times I have nonsensical conversations with him about the mysterious Mehtap. I decide that she is his daughter, because of the protective way he speaks of her.
On the ninth day, I check on him at dawn and see his marks faded to a dull brown. His forehead is covered with sweat, but no longer hot to the touch. I can’t believe it at first, and I walk around him, looking at him from different angles of light. It’s the same from every direction.
When I step closer, his eyes flutter open.
“Zivah,” he whispers.
It startles me that he knows my name.
The commander looks around him, taking in his surroundings. “Where are my men?” he asks. “How many fell ill?”
I open my mouth to reply, but instead I break down into incoherent sobs. Doron comes tearing into the room, ashen, but I shake my head and point toward the still-disoriented commander. It takes me several tries to get the word “umbermarks” out clearly enough to be understood. By then, Doron is already at Arxa’s side, seeing his condition for himself. And a layer of fatigue lifts off his face.
Doron puts a hand on my shoulder. “Good work, Zivah. The commander is alive because of your care.”
The commander is one of the last to break the disease’s hold, and it doesn’t take much longer for the rest of the soldiers to die or pull through.
In another few days, the troops are ready to leave. The battalion of a hundred that had so proudly ridden into Dara is now reduced to half its size. Leading them are the lucky twenty who never contracted the disease. Then there are their eight comrades who fell ill and emerged umbertouched, though two of them have fever amnesia and remember very little of their life before their illness. They will return to their families, who will have the task of reintroducing them into society. Last are the fifteen rosemarked, whom Arxa has separated into their own group to travel back. There are so many of them that we don’t have enough cloth to make plague veils for all of them. It’s hard to look at these soldiers’ faces, because they have the hollow, hopeless stares of dead men. Central Ampara has strict laws regarding its rosemarked, stricter than ours. These men will live ten more years if they’re lucky, one year if they’re not. Either way, it’s likely they’ll never see their families again. Despite my general distaste for their kind, I can’t help but pity them.
Commander Arxa comes to speak to me as the soldiers line up to march. “You have my gratitude, Zivah. I may not have been in my right mind, but I remember enough to know that you spared no effort to save me.”
I don’t know how to respond. Comforting Arxa when he was my patient felt natural, but now he’s once more the hand of the empire, still weak from his illness, yet strong enough to destroy our village with a word.
Thankfully, he doesn’t seem to expect a reply. “You clearly possess great potential. I have friends in the Imperial Academy of Medicine who could arrange for you to study there. Would that be of interest to you? I suspect they’d have as much to learn from Dara’s healing arts as you would from them.”
Again, I’m speechless, but for a different reason. Sehmar City’s medical academy is legendary. Even in Dara, I’ve heard of the great physicians who’ve studied and taught there, and of their library, which collects medical texts from all corners of the empire. Amparan understanding of herb lore is unremarkable compared to ours, but their surgeons are said to be so skilled they can sever and tie off single blood vessels. I’d never even dreamed of being able to learn from them.
“I…” I manage to stammer. “I would be honored, Commander.”
Arxa gives a brisk nod. “I will send word.”
Kaylah comes to stand by me as the troops ride off. “The Imperial Academy,” she says. “The knowledge you could bring back to our people…”
I can hardly dare to think about it. If the commander proves to be a man of his word, then some good might come out of this whole ordeal after all. But the sight of our recently emptied hospital keeps my hope in check. First, I must survive
the next ten days.
The healers allow ourselves a day of rest before resuming our battle against the disease. Men from the village bring in three of our own who fell ill with rose plague. Zad takes over their care, while the rest of us begin the work of cleaning up.
The makeshift hospitals have to be scrubbed. The sleeping mats, rags, and blankets have to be burned. It’s hard, backbreaking work, but I attack it with obsessive ferocity, scrubbing until my arms ache, rubbing away the foul residue of sickness. After days of helplessness in the face of active disease, expelling its final traces feels like a battle I can win. I volunteer to make trips to the well for water, relishing the burn in my legs and the buckets’ weight on my shoulders. Everything I feel is proof that I’m still alive. I just need to hang on for another fortnight, and then I will know that the plague has passed me over.
I don’t even make it two days. On my third trip to the well, I collapse.
It’s like my test all over again—faces swimming in and out of view, disembodied voices talking about me, though I cannot make sense of anything they say. My skin burns, yet I shiver incessantly. In my dreams, I see rows of dying soldiers. I mix endless batches of potions for them and coax them to drink. Sometimes the soldiers morph into my sisters, sometimes into the other healers.
I do have some moments of clarity. I wake a few times to see Kaylah or Doron or Zad by my bed. A few times, I choke on whatever they hold to my lips. I look down at my arms and see red, and some part of me knows that this is a bad thing. But those moments are few, interspersed with dreams and hallucinations. I am at the fever’s mercy.
When my mind finally clears, it takes me a while to figure out that I’m in the same cottage that housed Arxa. Kaylah sits at my bedside, watching me. I think back to my last coherent memory of walking to the well, and then to the confusion that came afterward. I remember that even in my madness, I’d looked down at my arms and seen the bright marks of plague.
But what color are they now? I close my eyes, and I thank the Goddess for sparing me. And then I pray, harder than I’ve ever prayed before, that my marks will be brown.
I look down. Bloodred splotches stare back at me. Still I deny it. Maybe it’s too early. Maybe the marks just need more time to fade. But then I look at Kaylah’s face, and I see the tears she’s holding back.
“I’m sorry, Zivah,” she whispers.
It’s hard to hear her voice over the sound of my own heartbeat. My mind whirls with numbers. I’m seventeen right now. One year from now, I will be eighteen. In ten, I will be twenty-seven. That’s the best I can hope for, if I’m one of the lucky ones. Where will I go? What will I do? I try to breathe, but there’s no air.
“I’m so sorry,” Kaylah says again.
Everything around me comes into focus. The leaves blowing outside, the trickle of the water clock in the corner. I’m aware of every drop that falls. I’d never noticed how quickly they come.
Kaylah reaches to take my hands, as she so often had before. Except this time, she’s wearing plague gloves. The leather is worn soft from use, but there is no warmth in its touch.
Spasms run through me. I’ve long since vomited up the contents of my stomach, but wave after wave still grips me until I think I might die. No, that’s not right. I know I’m dying, but for this hour of misery, I have no one to blame but myself.
I’m huddled behind my cottage, crouched on the ground because my legs are too shaky to hold me. Once again, I go through the workings of my potion, the theory behind the disease. Rose plague essence is heavy and sticky, hard for the body to purge. The umbertouched somehow rid themselves completely of the disease, whereas the rosemarked dislodge all but a remnant, which clings to some unknown region of the body.
My recent attempts have focused on the liver, because I’ve noticed a yellower tint to my skin since I fell ill. A tincture of chozat to strengthen the organ, a drop of nadat-root juice to expel the disease essence, plus boiled syeb petals to stabilize the body’s energies. It seemed a good mixture, but now I’m on my knees, and the rosemarks show no sign of disappearing. The problem with expelling such a stubborn illness is that anything powerful enough to do the job wreaks havoc on the rest of my body as well.
At times like these, I’m glad to be in isolation. At least no one else is here to witness my recklessness, and my failure.
“Zivah?” Leora’s voice floats toward me from the direction of the village.
A tiny groan—the most I can muster right now—escapes my lips. I do my best to stand, but another spasm hits me and I collapse again. And on the heels of the spasm, as predictable as the plague’s steady march, comes the despair. Another potion, another failure. I don’t know how much longer I can keep on hoping.
Light footsteps come up behind me.
“Zivah!” I can imagine the shock on Leora’s face. “What—”
“Stay back!” My throat is raw, but for this, I manage to shout. Rose plague travels through touch and through the bodily humors, and Leora forgets caution when she’s upset.
Behind me, her footsteps stop, and I count it a small blessing. “Stay back,” I repeat, more quietly now. “I’m all right. I promise.”
I’m hardly convincing, doubled over as I am. If a vomiting fit is bad when I’m alone, it’s ten times worse when I have an audience, especially when I know the audience will be sorely disappointed in me.
Finally the fit passes. Everything aches, and I’m tempted to lie down and never get up again. When I finally turn around, Leora looks just as stricken as I’d expected.
She shakes her head. “Zivah, I would give my own life if I knew it would cure you, but are you sure these experiments are safe?”
“They are,” I lie. “The potion just upset my stomach, that’s all.”
Leora simply looks at me, and I can see her concern warring with her desperate wish to believe me. It’s maddening. I know so much of herb lore. I’ve memorized the makings of hundreds of drafts and invented dozens of others. But despite my years of study, despite the skill that everyone tells me I have, I cannot cure myself.
Truth is, Leora doesn’t even know the true extent of my efforts, how I stay up every night reading scrolls by candlelight, searching for some secret that will scrub these marks from my skin. For every time that Leora or Kaylah found me ill from my experiments, there are five more where I’ve suffered alone. Perhaps my efforts are futile, but what else can I do when the alternative is to quietly accept my death?
I collect my feet under me. With a firm grip on the bamboo frame of my cottage, I pull myself to standing. “It’s not your normal time to visit.”
I can see Leora trying to decide whether to let me change the subject. “I finished my bridal veil.” She stops, and suddenly looks unsure. “I thought you might like to see it.”
I brighten. Leora’s been working on her veil for months. “Of course. Take it to the sitting area.”
As Leora disappears around the corner, I hobble to the water basin to rinse out my mouth. Afterward, I lean against it, staring at the mottled red patterns on my hands. It’s been long enough now that I’m no longer surprised to see the rosemarks on my skin. I can feel them though, a heaviness in my limbs that follows me throughout the day. The scrolls tell me it’s not a common symptom of the disease, but then, the scrolls have never been ill.
“Goddess,” I whisper, “I could serve you so much better if you granted me a cure.” It’s a prayer I’ve uttered many times, and I’m ashamed at the desperation in my voice. As always, I get no response.
By the time I walk on shaky legs to the front of my house, Leora is settled under the awning where I entertain guests, seated in one of the four chairs I never touch. She unfolds her veil and lets it flutter in the breeze. My breath catches as I come closer. As a journeywoman seamstress, Leora’s stitchwork has always been fine, but she’s poured her heart into this one. Embroidered into the green headdress are paired butterflies, symbols of love. Their iridescent wings seem to flap with every
ripple of the silk. Interwoven between the butterflies are vines, flowers, and dazzling patterns. My fingers itch to touch the fine stitches, but I grab the hem of my tunic instead.
“It’s beautiful.”
She gives a modest smile. “Thank you. I’m working on Alia’s headdress now.”
It’s a sister’s duty to carry incense ahead of the bride and make the paths fragrant for her arrival. My rosemarks keep me from taking part in the celebrations, although my younger sister has promised to carry for both of us. It should be a beautiful ceremony, and Leora a radiant bride.
Suddenly, I don’t want to talk about the wedding anymore.
I stand. “I should tend to my creatures. Come with me?”
I start walking before Leora can reply, though I hear her follow several steps behind me. We used to walk hand in hand, but now the rule is five paces apart.
A great many things have changed since I fell ill. Treating patients is out of the question, of course. A rosemarked healer makes about as much sense as a tone-deaf minstrel. I’ve had to move to a house away from the village, and my only duty these days is to raise poisonous creatures and harvest venom for potions. Doron thinks the venoms are powerful enough to resist the rose plague essence, and there are so few trained healers that we can’t afford to waste my skills. It’s not a horrible existence, and I know things could have been much worse. In Central Ampara, I would have been quarantined outside the city and left to die.
But there are still difficult days. The hardest was when Commander Arxa’s messenger came to Dara with a formal invitation to the Imperial Academy. I sent my regrets, and then went to bed for the rest of the day.
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